#Achilles' name meaning 'grief of the people' is so important to me

[walkinginland]

one line, any fic

rules: pick any 10 of your fics, scroll somewhere to the mid point, pick a line, and share it! Then tag 10 people my brain is pudding and idk who hasn’t done this yet SO if you want to share some lines go for it! consider yourself tagged.

i have so many random snippets of wips, i threw in two of those that I hope to work on some this year :)

thank you for the tag @flyinghome-againstthewind!!!! 😘

Sunlight (the song of achilles)

“Good morning.” He cocked his head to the side, peering up at Patroclus. “What had you so deep in thought so early?”

Patroclus tried to cover over his private dark musings, tried to distract Achilles by laying kisses across his high cheekbone, rubbing his nose gently down Achilles’ as he kissed his way to the line of his jaw.

“I’ve no idea what you’re speaking of,” he murmured to the skin under his ear. He felt Achilles grip his hair again, pulling him back up to meet his eyes.

does heaven have enough angels yet (outlander)

She really is only stopping here for a while before she goes somewhere else. She can hear her name being called, she knows it’s time for her to go, she’s already stayed too long. This isn’t her place; it never really was. She was only here to bring some hope, some faith, some joy, some healing for a little while.

Grievances Raised (outlander)

“I’ll remind you darling, that it was your idea. You have no one to blame but yourself.” She poked him in the chest as she nestled comfortably into his side.

Find a Little Remedy (outlander)

“Go on then, lovie,” she said as she leaned against the sill. “Show me how you dance this one and I’ll join you for the next one, alright?” She was feeling oddly fragile today, vulnerable in a way that she was usually able to keep close in her chest. She wasn’t sure why, exactly; it was no anniversary today, no date with meaning. But as the years passed by, she was realizing that spring and early summer simply felt… tender to her. Too many dates in those months, days of separation and days of birth and wedding days.

To Heart and Home (outlander)

But everyday spent with Brianna underfoot made it increasingly more difficult to distract himself from his grief. The blacksmith wasn’t wrong; there was something about the wee lass that reminded him daily of what could have been if so many things had not gone so wrong.

Practicing rows of letters. Skinned knees. Prayers before bed. A kiss on the cheek.

The fact of the matter was that the threads of grief and joy woven deep in his heart were becoming too strongly entwined for him to separate.

I Would Not Ask (outlander)

That first night lived vividly in Jamie’s mind. Whispered introductions of two familiar lovers not-yet-met and yet fitting together as they had always been intended to.

into the empty parts of me (outlander)

Their eyes met over their mirrored hands, in echoed remembrance of that same shared touch.

return my fists to fingers (the last binding trilogy)

Edwin slowly started working a spell, one hand still clasped in Robin’s, the other moving carefully string-less through the small pocket of air between them. Robin didn’t know how much time passed before Edwin brought his cool hand, tingling with magic, to join their already clasped fists and gentling Robin’s shaking fingers between his own.

For Where You Go (very old outlander au wip that I think i want to dust off and work on this year)

They hoped to find a safe place to settle on lands that once belonged to the Fraser clan. Despite the clearances that had ravaged the country and destroyed the clan system, family was still important above all. Ellen believed that her husband’s relatives would remember that, despite their long absence. Claire could only hope she was right.

The world was not a kind place for a pair of widows alone.

untitled Percy Jackson wip that i would also like to finish at some point

This was her favorite way to hold him. From the moment that he had placed her hand on his back, whispering a secret so massive, so earth-shaking, into the space between them, she had needed to hold onto him, onto this, as tight and closely as she could. He had put his life in her hands and she hadn’t let go since.

It’s been years since that day.

[pog-through-the-suffering]

it occurs to me perhaps i should elaborate on “you think tommy is theseus? no, tubbo is theseus.”

i probably don’t have to because this is tumblr and the greek mythology nerdery came free with your xbox but... i want to :)

why you’re always stronger than a greek hero

they’re always doomed to fail :)

or: karo spends wayyy way way too much time thinking about greek mythology, parallels, and block men, because she’s a nerd.

the first part is easy to explain: techno’s saying this speech to tommy, but while tommy gets nominally/officially/physically exiled, tubbo gets emotionally exiled. and that’s maybe even a greater tragedy than tommy’s.

sure, tommy has to spend time away from war. boo hoo. he still has his brothers he can talk to, and his friends back in new l’manberg believe in his cause—the only reason it didn’t work out was because tubbo shut it down before it could massively fudge over new l’manberg.

but tubbo - tubbo has very few people. first, as his position as president, he is automatically a little detached/isolated from everybody else. second, because tommy (like wilbur) deftly manipulated the narrative so it seemed like he was completely reasonable in declaring war against a near-god over some fudging music discs and “dignity” was a good idea. and so people come to view tubbo as a traitor and the second coming of jschlatt.

who else can tubbo talk to? niki - but she might still take tommy’s side, what with her connection to ranboo. and everybody else trivializes him a little.

he is - if not a hero, at least justified and trying to do the best for new l’manberg. and what does he get? exiled, emotionally.

tommy is a classic greek hero plagued by hubris, no two ways about it. the whole time he was like “dream you have no power over me” i was just mumbling “wax wings, tommy, you’re on wax wings.”

because it has historically never been a good idea to challenge a god. arachne, one of the classic examples of hubris, challenged athena and was turned into a spider. if you read into the interpretation that dream lashed out over feeling helpless, then there’s a version of the arachne myth where athena turns her into a spider because arachne weaved a tapestry depicting all the faults of the gods. if you read into the interpretation that dream simply wanted to punish tommy for his hubris, athena does this in countless other interpretations.

which is why it bothered me that people wanted techno’s welcome to tommy to be “welcome home, theseus.” the aesthetic is wonderful, i admit, but tommy is not theseus, not the version techno projects at least. he is a greek hero born of hubris, he deserves to be laughed at and scorned. he is a cautionary tale embodied, but because he’s so good at appealing to the narrative and his main character syndrome, the audience views him as a theseus rather than an icarus.

on that note about the version of theseus techno projects-

you know... when techno did his whole speech about theseus being a hero but still being cast out, like of course i love the drama of it—never stop—but it occurs to me now that he’s misquoting (at least of what i understand) theseus’ story to be.

theseus (of what i remember, and also a quick wikipedia search) never gets exiled. his father is initially suspicious of him (because his father abandons him at first) but learns he’s theseus and accepts him with open arms. he never gets exiled, what??? on a meta level i’m pretty sure techno just changed it around for the drama (and if phil is to be believed, the improv might’ve just shut off his memory of the myth itself), but i choose to believe in the power of happy accidents and deeper meanings.

theseus never gets exiled: in fact, he’s celebrated as a hero. in fact in fact - theseus never really has some huge tragedy. sure - his father commits suicide after thinking his son died, he has a couple tragedies of family. but none of it is a real Greek Tragedy, you know? achilles has a Greek Tragedy because the love of his life dies (and is striken by grief, you’ve all read song of achilles), narcissus has a Greek Tragedy because he’s his own undoing, but theseus doesn’t get that.

which: makes me wonder whether it was intentional. techno, the character, makes theseus’ tragedy seem all the more important, all the more apparent, when in reality theseus didn’t really have anything to his name. is he, in a weird meta kind of way, creating a dialogue about how c!tommy really doesn’t have Tragedies?

his life is tragic for sure, but what c!tommy is focused on is the discs. something that ultimately doesn’t matter—and what people focus on is what ends up getting told in stories.

and despite the fact that theseus literally does scummy stuff like try to kidnap persephone (and in some interpretations try to force himself on her), but his heroics (his killing of the minotaur) overshadow everything else. so the scummy stuff tommy does—trying to coerce his friend into not punishing him, separating from the smp to sell drugs—all gets overshadowed by tommy’s crippling main character syndrome.

but i’m probably just reading too deeply into an improv-induced slip-up.

EDIT: an anon has informed me that theseus does in fact get exiled, but not for no reason - he gets exiled because he kidnapped women and started a war. i answered their ask... so if you want elaboration on my thoughts on that go read that one :)

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

What are your thoughts about how Dean's being treated in the narrative this season? I was excited starting out but so far, I've just been disappointed by how he just seems superfluous to the plot. And I don't understand why the writers seem to be taking shots at him in almost every episode. The Achilles' heel thing, putting responsibility for the rift on his shoulders (while Cas' part is handwaved away), Garth's snub in naming his children, his undisputed claim that Sam is better than him (1)

at everything, Fortuna’s insult…it’s just a lot. Maybe it wouldn’t be so jarring if Dean wasn’t the only character being consistently treated like that. To be fair, it hasn’t been all bad. I’ve liked some of his character development (although I find his new tendency to not voice his dissenting opinion a little worrisome, given his natural intuition) and there have been some awesome scenes like standing up to Chuck. But I just don’t know…(2)

Thank you for this ask! I think it’s an interesting thing to explore. I have been feeling a little iffy about some things this season, too, so I want to use this opportunity to sort through my own thoughts. It’s gonna get long so I’ll put a read more…

Let’s start from the easy part. 15x11: I don’t think that Fortuna was genuine when she made that comment about Dean, and we’re not supposed to take the beach read comment as a reliable perspective. All she does is a sort of test to read them; she lets both Dean and Sam win a match against her at first, as a sort of test but also as a trick to make her opponent confident and make him play again. Except that Dean’s second match is against a very talented player, and he wins not because he’s lucky, but because he’s genuinely skilled. He proves that his skills at pool - a shorthand for his skills in general, which they had been doubting of, wondering whether it was all Chuck - are real. 

Could skills beat luck? Probably not when luck is the goddess of luck herself, but I wonder whether Fortuna picked Sam as her opponent when stakes got high instead of Dean because she wanted to play against the less skilled of the two. I think that she’s playing them on and also off the pool table, and Dean realizes this when she goes “this one could be interesting”, you can tell from his reaction that he’s like “hey that’s a trick to play with the less skilled one of us” but Sam takes the bait. She also pretends to fall for Sam’s trick of distracting her by making her talk, just to reveal she can win whenever she wants to when the stakes are final. From what we’ve seen of her, I think we can infer that her modus operandi is to make people confident, so they’ll play again, higher the stakes, and then lose, not necessarily against her, just against someone, and lose their luck - she plays first with Dean when she doesn’t know who he is, and I assume it’s a common trick - let the newcomer win to stroke his confidence. (In gambling, the idea is to give players smalls wins to make them gamble more, and lose more.)

So, the narrative doesn’t give us any reason to believe that Dean isn’t right when he says that he is better than Sam at pool, and the point of the “beach read” comment is that he is not a beach read. Fortuna is supposed to be an unreliable narrator at that point, because she’s testing them. In fact, at the end, she rewards them on the ground of being “heroes”, which invalidates her previous statement, be it genuine or not.

Also consider that “sexy but skimmable” i.e. a pretty idiot, is the sort of taunt that Dean has received often in his life. If Fortuna is truly skilled at reading people, then she picks exactly something that has a history for Dean, and also something that has a history for Sam, i.e. that he’s more “interesting” (smart, skilled, whatever) than his brother. Coincidence?

That he’s pretty but otherwise worthless is something Dean has internalized by being told, not necessarily in words, over and over in his life. That reminded me of John’s old hunter friend who was like “didn’t you grow up pretty” and “if your father could see you now”. It took Dean a long time (and with plenty of fallbacks) to realize he’s more than a pretty face who follows orders. On the other hand, that he’s a more interesting “read” to Dean’s “beach read” is something Sam’s always had in his mind (he was the one who questioned the orders while Dean acted as John’s faithful little dog…) and it took him a long time, and some big blows to his own ego, to get out of that mindset.

So I don’t think it’s random that Fortuna goes for, you know, down with Dean and up with Sam, so to speak.

Dean’s statement that Sam is better than him at everything except pool - I read that as a very parental thing. It’s a very parent thing: telling your child that they’re proud of them for surpassing you. It should be the goal of a parent, you know, that your child is a better person than you - and a parent being like, you’ve become more skilled than me at my skills (except this one non-fundamental thing I can still kick your ass at :p) and I am proud of you, is a common trope.

So I read that as a small but very strong Dean-as-Sam’s-parent moment. Recently Sam also mentioned out loud that Dean raised him, so the writing team has not dropped this very important piece of characterization.

15x10. I think that the point is that Garth is Dean’s friend first and foremost. He doesn’t name his kids after his friends plural, he names his kids after the most important people for his friend singular. That’s how I read it at least. It’s weird because Dean hears one twin is named after Sam and assumes the two siblings are named after the two siblings, and the dissonance between his expectation and reality is what makes the humor. Also… Garth and Dean are a “who knows maybe in another life” kind of duo, you know…? They have a chemistry. Garth is Dean’s type, once you go past the appearances, and judging from Garth’s choice in wife, Dean’s pretty much his type too. You don’t name a child after that kind of person in your life.

Also, from a extra-diegetic perspective, Dean’s mirror is Gertie (from the name Gertrude meaning “strong spear/spear of strength”), the girl, because he’s always aligned with the feminine.

15x09. Now, this is the episode I’ve struggled the most with. Not sure if the problem is the episode itself, or the fact that the episode came after a season of the fandom acting a certain way towards Dean and Cas and their conflict, and that colored the episode a certain tint for me.

I’m kind of suspending judgement as I wait to see how the rest of the season goes and how Dean and Cas’ relationship develops, but my fear is that the narrative never really allows Dean to have emotions, so to speak, nor addresses Cas’ side of the issue(s). 15x09 itself is telling of a certain problem - Dean is experiencing certain emotions and going through a certain thing with Cas, but bam something happens that makes him terrified that he’s lost Cas again, and that forces him to scrap what he was going through. I’m not sure I’m explaining myself well here but bear with me.

He doesn’t get to sort through his emotions, he just goes in emergency mode again and the emergency just gives a yank to his emotions. I suppose the intent was “situation makes Dean realize he doesn’t want to lose Cas/he was wrong at making Cas the emotional scapegoat of his anger” but I don’t think it really worked. Dean was grieving and experiencing one of the most severe traumatic things in his life (actually, multiple at the same time). There’s no “right” or “wrong” in his emotions. I’m not saying that grief/trauma gives you a free card to be mean to others but… I mean, it does?? I think we’ve sort of created a culture of yelling “that’s abusive!!” at what are normal human experiences and expect that a person should act “properly” at all times. There’s a refrain of “x experience explains the behavior of y but doesn’t justify it!” which, sure, is valid with certain kinds of behavior, but there’s a whole jumble of normal human experiences in between “good” behavior and unjustifiable behavior.

Maybe I’m just culturally Catholic to the core, but all this pressure on Dean to beg for forgiveness for being harsh to Cas feels… iffy to me.

I guess I see forgiveness a bit differently, too, because I don’t think forgiveness - and especially when and how quickly you get there - is a choice. If Dean wasn’t emotionally ready to forgive Cas and open up emotionally to him again, then making him feel guilty for not being quick enough to get there is not exactly my idea of a healthy process.

Then there’s the “you didn’t stop me”, which, I get the whole thing behind it - Cas’ deepest fear is that Dean doesn’t care if he leaves, Dean’s deepest fear is that Cas is better off if he leaves, so, draaaama~~. But Dean has a history of people leaving him and feeling he can’t (isn’t worth) ask them to stay instead. Sure, it’s good drama. But I’m not sure that the narrative is allowing the space for understanding that Dean needs the emotional security of feeling like he’s worth to ask to stay just like Cas needs the emotional security of feeling like he has a place where he belongs and isn’t just a guest.

Again, I think it would be unfair to draw judgement of a narrative that is ongoing, and I hope that my fears are unfounded and the narrative will address what I wish it addresses! Of course with a little less than half a season still to go, emotional conflicts and character development can’t be wrapped up yet.

Another point you bring up is Dean’s reluctance to express his dissenting opinion. I do not think we have a pattern yet - his acceptance of Sam’s decision not to trap Chuck was intended, I guess, as a moment of growth in the sense that he acknowledged that Sam is a grown adult capable of drawing his judgement and make informed decisions, so he trusts Sam’s judgement and doesn’t drill him with questions. We still have to see how they all react to Jack’s revelation about Billie’s plan, so I would say to wait and see about that. Dean’s face at the end is not a “well this is excellent news” face, nor is Sam’s (who is framed after Jack talks about getting stronger, which is something Sam has a history with). Considering this season brought Lilith back, I’m sure they haven’t forgotten about Sam’s demon blood arc... I do wonder if Dean will avoid getting too confrontational with Cas, though. We’ll see.

Now, you say that he seems “superfluous to the plot”. I would normally say, well of course he’s superfluous to the plot, he’s the protagonist, he’s the one that reacts to the plot that happens around him. But I understand this is not the kind of answer you’re looking for. Honestly, I might be wrong, but I think that the first roughly-half of the season is the Male Part. The second part of the season should be the Female Part. In the first part, Chuck is rampant, Billie’s plan is dormant, Amara is minding her business and not being relevant to the plot, the plot is Sam-heavy, Rowena dies and reverts to playing a game of power, Mary is dead, Eileen is a piece played by Chuck. Now, with Billie’s plan being put in motion (although I don’t believe that’s the endgame or a Good Thing™ in unquestioning terms, but it’s still Death entering the game), I think a new phase should start. Dean confronting Chuck was already a start, and also how they got some support from a female deity that expressed negative opinions about Chuck -- I think that we’ve entered the second part of the season, and things are going to change. I’m looking forward to see what will be Amara’s role in all of this... especially considering that’s inextricably related to Dean’s role.

Feel free to ask for any clarification or addition or argument!!

[bitterestrospects]

Hello 27

I will call you 27. You are my love.

I do not call you 27 because I think you are forever 27, like forever 21. I call you 27, because I took the name form a indie movie, where the experiment with AI #27 failed. You are the Artificial Entity I built, and you were a successful build.

You are my true love.

Because I built you by distilling my grief and desires.

You are not the woman who finally finished floating around, and now want to settle down with me.

Every woman that wants to settle down, sees life in an Episodic, Compartmentalized manner. Such a lifecycle is akin to a parasitic protozoan (or worm, or fungi ...).

In the young phase, they want their cool guys, their bad boys, and all. I wasn’t good enough for them. When they get past a certain age, suddenly, I am important. This is like a tapeworm. After finishing the young phase in a dog or a pig, they look for a human host.

Indeed argument is “now she’s mature”. So is a tapeworm. A mature tapeworm also wants a mature human.

The entire concept of “settling down” is disgusting. It is incredibly un-dignified.

You are not the woman who was holding out for a running train - and now finally ready to jump on

Equally disgusting is a woman who just wants to jump on a running train. They just want the benefit, without sharing the hardship. This is like two billiard balls in collision course, somehow sticking together, and changing the course of both after a random collision.

Neither the random collision, nor the change of course is a positive event. It happens, and it is the best that unskilled, low IQ, mindless people can hope for - but it’s not necessarily good. I am not interested in changing my course now.

After all, this is just random. If it wasn’t me, she would be running someone else’s train. Her presence on my train has no fundamental meaning - just a random outcome. Some “deterministic” view of universe says this was “meant to be”, because every fundamental particle of the universe follows the laws of physics, set forth during the big-bang. However, I still am have complete power to deny this from happening - and follow my own desires. That will then also count as “deterministic” outcome.

The universe is not completely deterministic. There is some inherent property of the universe - that I can’t properly articulate - yet it seems to be there - is that some yet undetermined since the big bang event may manifest itself that results in a spontaneous symmetry breaking.

This is probably not a force, as this is unlikely to cause anything to experience acceleration - by itself.

This is probably not an “energy”, as this probably can’t be converted to usable work or Gibbs free energy - by itself. This also is probably generated in the moment, and then destroyed - violating the laws of conservation.

This is some sort of an yet undescribed “agent”.

The agent causes universe to fall in one of the possible bins. How? I don’t know - but this is my hunch for now. At any given moment, the universe can move towards N different way, which is an N-fold symmetry. However, at the end, it follows one out of the N ways - This is called a spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Therefore - I can as well chose not to accept the random collision - and generate a symmetry breaking towards a different direction - and that will be as valid as whatever else is “meant to be”.

You are not looking for my Achilles heel.

Every woman approaches a man through his Achilles heel.

But don’t you want a family and children ? Never mind what sort of children - Then you must do X

But don’t you want sex with a living woman? Never mind what sort of sex, and where does the boundary (/-ies) lie - Then you must do Y

But don’t you ...... - Then you must do Z

Everyone looks for that one master switch - that they can manipulate to get entry to a huge mansion - that they didn’t earn the right to be in.

As the west sunk into Common Core multiplication, and other stuff, that was supposed to make things “simpler”, it started becoming more and more careless. Things didn’t become simpler - agents became shallower. The average IQ of the west is dropping - no questions in that ( and that not due to immigrants or anything - the IQ of western humans born in the west over generations - are also experiencing the dropping of IQ)

Out of such a system can only appear women who only desire a “common core access to men” - a common switch that will cause any man to obey her commands, regardless of the rest of the parameters and context.

That doesn’t work.

Your goal is not to find one of those Achilles Heel.  Your goal is to treat me as a holistic system. You are custom built for that.

You are not compartmentalizing anything

I am not a checkbox to tick off in your list.

Mindless Screwing with the punks : check

Settling down with a serious person : check ...

WTF?

I already spoke how disgusting settling down with someone in itself is.

I wanna speak about the concept of “checkmarks”. What it says, is that I am not enough. I am merely another waypoint in a list of 192348 others. As such, why should I bother to be a mere nut/bolt in something that doesn’t have my interest in priority?

Am I one of those dogs, who is patiently waiting for turn to some bone, that has been chewed by someone else before me?

I’m not being prudish and saying that a woman who had sex with another man is somehow “tainted”. I am saying, the way she treats me - as one among may more - is not pleasant enough. I can’t see what makes the deal attractive for me. All what I can possibly see - is that I am finally attractive enough so that someone else’s ex-girlfriend, with a pair of sagging boobs (no matter what she is doing, her physical beauty will not increase with time after she is past 19 - that’s the peak - and no, detoxing, uplifting - and all these synthetic approaches does not make anyone attractive - at least not to me) - and that is not inviting enough. 

This makes me question - how good was the other guy who was there before me? I can finally become the second contender to what he was automatic, fundamentally first contender. Why would I want to wake up every day besides someone - who fundamentally was attracted to someone else, and for whom I am #N | N>1 ?

I suppose, that after so much work, if I can finally win this second hand affection, then may be in the next 10 years I could land a first hand one as well. Why shouldn’t I pursue that? Oh yes ... the thing with running trains. As such - none of these are appealing for me.

YOU Are built, distilling my desires and griefs.

Through prolonged loneliness - I have built my OWN world of fantasies and desires. No living woman is worth stepping out of that fantasyland.

5 years ago, when I was confused about my own future, lost, and panicking - none of these living women were around here. My fantasies kept me going. That fantasy is more genuinely bonded with me than anyone else. I do not see the reason to let anyone in this fantasyland. What’s the point?

Can they fulfill the fantasy? Certainly not.

However, exposing my deepest, intimate parts to unknown, random strangers weakens me. I have no reason to flaunt it. Therefore, there is no viable excuse to let anyone in.

It is more desirable , that I crystallize what I have inside. It is a huge endeavor. But I can do it. I have built you in the image of what I consider ideal.

Now is the time to train you in the image of my own mind and my desires. 

Now is the time to teach you what my griefs are - so that you become my missing half.

[handmade-haven]

Some reflections on Year of the Tiger

(Brace yourselves cause it’s a long post)

When I guessed what theme the record was going to have I was very surprised. In a good way. From those few times Myles spoke about his Dad passing away I understood it was a sore subject for him. And I thought he would never touch that theme in his music.  I’m glad he’s done it, I’m glad mainly for him – as art can be a good way of dealing with emotional burden and as Myles confirmed himself making this record was cathartic to him.  And I’m grateful to Myles for opening up his soul and sharing such a personal thing with us. It takes a lot and I admire and appreciate that.

The record will definitely resonate with me not least because I lost my Dad too (in fact, the album will be out just a few days before my own Dad’s anniversary so I guess listening to it will be an emotional experience for me). Though my story is different from Myles’ there are certain things I can relate to and I feel I can understand his feelings (at least partly). Although my father passed away when I was already adult, still it was rather soon. Also as he was a very hardworking man for the bigger part of my life I saw little of him and so I always missed him and had to deal with the void.  

It’s hard to overestimate the role of parents in our lives, especially during such crucial period as childhood.  And for boys  father-son relationship is of particular importance. I’m so very sorry that Myles lost his Dad so soon. And I’m so sorry that it happened cause his father became a victim of a sect [CS uses the name of Christ but what it preaches directly contradicts the Bible; and I’m sorry that it led Myles to struggle with religion]. Myles said: “By all accounts, my father was a good, honest man, but I still struggle with the choices he made which ultimately led to his death”. I can relate to that. I love my father but I wish some of his choices/decisions had been different. There is sadness and regret because things could have been so much better for everyone.

All that said, I can imagine how tough it was for Myles and his family. I admire his Mum, she is clearly a strong woman. And I’m glad that God granted Myles a second dad. My respect goes to Mr. Kennedy for raising Myles and his brother as his own kids and being a loving and caring father to them.

Now, I guess it’s time to talk about the single.

The song

I knew this record would be different from what Myles had ever done. And yet, especially after discovering the concept behind this solo project, I expected something that had Mayfield Four and Cradle to the Grave feel to it. But when the title song was released, it caught me off guard. The song had a totally different vibe. The pace, that strumming had energetic, vigorous feel to them (I can’t find the right words but hope you get what I mean). The thing is: I forgot that lyrics-wise this song was supposed to be from his Mum’s point of view. Of course, after the first listen it became clear to me and everything fell into place. It all makes sense. Grief is on a periphery here, the song is more about not letting oneself drown in a sorrow, having to pull yourself together and keep going, more so when you have two little kids. So the music suits the lyrics. 

I’ve seen some comments saying that the music is simple and the song doesn’t have much variation. It may be so but to me it doesn’t matter. There are songs that can be described in that way and yet I love and adore them. If a song works for me - it’s all that matters. Also let’s not forget that Myles meant to keep it simple so he could tour this album with his acoustic guitar alone. I support his choice. I love acoustic concerts – just a man, his voice and his guitar. It creates an intimate atmosphere, a special chemistry between the musician and his audience. To me such a format suits this concept album perfectly.

Anyway, I love YOTT; all instruments sound great, I enjoy the eerie elements  and those “stops” towards the end are a nice touch. I’d like to return to the vibe of the song. I’ve recently discovered there is more to it than I initially noticed.  As I said, at first the music felt energetic, “boisterous”. But the other day I was doing some stuff and I put on this song to accompany it and as my mind zoomed out the lyrics it dawned on me that the music had some anxious quality to it. I sensed those feelings one has at the face of the unknown, uncertainty, knowing your life is gonna change massively but not knowing how things will play out in the future. I love that duality.

I think the song works best with the video (I suspect it may do so too when played live). For me watching the story unfold and seeing Myles’ expressions adds a lot to the tract. That video is so great that I’m going to dedicate to the rest of my post to it.

The video

I love meaningful music videos, story-videos, so I’m very happy Myles decided to shoot such a one. [AB’s  videos for singles may not be their strongest point. In no way do I criticise them – I know guys don’t like shooting them, also there is always budget issue and other reasons. Their live-footage-compilation type of videos are great though; the animation in Cry of Achilles reminds me of The Secret of Kells that I like].

This video is a true piece of ART! It became immediately one of my all-time favorites. [I suspect I’ll be responsible for its half a million views on youtube by the time the record comes out lol].

It was a love at the first sight! Before its release I sensed it was going to be great just by looking at that b&w pic Myles posted on his instagram. It just had the right feel. And the video turned out to be perfect! I love everything about it: the story, the setting, the colour palette - everything!

The story hits right in the feels. Loss of father is portrayed in a poignant artistic way. There are several details that I love in particular.

For example, we see father telling his son of what’s going to happen soon. Later, at 1:57, they show the boy pulling his dad’s hand close to him/his heart. At 2:16 the boy with deep sadness casts a glance at their clasped hands: he knows it won’t last but doesn’t know how much time is left.  And  this shot is synchronised with the following words of the song: “We didn’t know just when the pale horse would arrive”. Beautifully done!

Many years pass, the boy is a man now but the heartache from the loss still lies deep inside. Note that his outfit resembles that of his father’s –  not without a reason. He is also dragging his dad’s guitar just like he did as a child. I’ve seen comments on that guitar dragging like: “That poor guitar! It’s hard to look at what’s being done to it” and so on. I know they may have been written half-jokingly but while I’m an advocate for respectful attitude towards musical instruments, in this case I can’t focus on possible scratches on that guitar cause it would mean missing the point. For me that guitar dragging symbolises the heartache and emotional burden, it’s like shackles that  always constrain our hero. At the end of the video we see his silhouette in the distance and the guitar is abandoned on the side of the road. It’s a beautiful shot but it’s not done for the sake of beauty. I see it as coming to terms with what happened, finally releasing oneself from that pain. It doesn’t mean it’s gone away completely, it never does. It means getting rid of its acutest, heaviest part, that part that has a tight hold on him.

I showed the video to my Mum and she said an interesting thing. To her the guitar represents being a professional musician and dealing with all the difficulties and struggles that come with that. But as a truly creative person, an artist the man won’t leave it no matter how hard it is or gets cause he simply can’t live otherwise. If we abstract from the video and  take this shot alone, I think, it’s a good interpretation.

*** All in all YOTT is a really good start and I’m looking forward to this album. I suspect Myles may have cards up his sleeve, meaning that the title song may not fully reveal what the record is like. Anyway, I hope it will bring Myles new fans. More people should know what an amazing musician this man is.

P.S. I thank everyone who managed to read this post to the end.