#I guess musicians are a bit prolific for that though

[hp-rarepair-requests]

Oops! I realised that I had to be more specific

- Augurlight (Delphi x Albus)

- Muggle au

- Abusive relationship

-Albus realizing that Delphi was grooming him (Flashbacks would be nice if possible)

All good! I can absolutely do that!

Augurlight Oneshot

TW/CW: Grooming, Child Predation and CSA

Albus sat in his bedroom, curtains closed, headphones blasting, homework unfinished, and food left to go cold. He wasn’t really sure what day it was, or what time it was, but he really didn’t care. He couldn’t explain the depression he had fallen into. Or maybe he could and he just didn’t want to admit it.

~

“Come on, Dad! Please!” Albus begged.

“For the hundredth time Albus, no,” his father refused him yet again. “You need to finish school.”

“Come on! The kids are mean!” Albus whined. “I passed all the necessary exams for finishing school, I have a job, I can start working more hours and even pay board!”

“I don’t care Albus, you need to complete your education,” his father tried to keep a hushed voice as they browsed the shop, looking for a specific CD for Lily’s upcoming birthday. “I’m not letting you drop out just to chase some fantasy.”

“This isn’t about music—“

“Then what is it about?”

“It’s about not having to go back to that shithole of a school!”

“Watch your language!” His father scolded. “I can’t find it. Stay here while I talk to that worker over there.”

Albus groaned and slumped against the shelf of CD’s. He was sick of that high school. Hogwarts was shit, and any wayward misfit with half a brain knew to stay far away from the preppy shitheads that wore the maroon and blue uniform. He was so sick of his classmates constantly bullying him, and he wasn’t even learning anything he could use in the career he wanted. They’d bloody cut the Music Program, the whole reason he’d even been trying to stay well enough behaved to avoid expulsion.

“Hey,” Albus turned to see a worker, with silver and blue hair and thick eyeliner. “Delphi. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with your Dad?”

“Oh, that,” Albus shuffled. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, happens a lot,” Delphi smiled. “Hogwarts uniform?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t sue you for breathing,” Albus answered. “Not unless you breathe too loudly.”

“I’ll try not to. We get a lot of your classmates in here. Usually they’re upset that their Dad’s aren’t buying something super expensive for them.”

“Nah, I’ve got a different kind of dysfunctional family.”

“I can tell,” Delphi plucked something from Albus’ face and he felt it heat up. “Eyelash. Sorry about your Dad. Sucks when your parents don’t believe in you.”

“Well, I don’t know if he doesn’t believe in me,” Albus cleared his throat. “He just … he’s an adult, he probably knows better.”

“I don’t know,” Delphi knocked Albus’ shoulder. “You didn’t start singing the lyrics to Emo Girl when you saw me. Makes you much more mature than some of the other kids your age. It’s also not that hard to enter the music scene. I would know, my band The Augurey are doing pretty well.”

Delphi walked away as Albus saw his father approaching, Lily’s gift in hand.

~

Albus rubbed his eyes and took his earphones out. There had been a light tapping at his door, and when he pulled it open he saw his younger sister. Lily was in her soccer uniform, with dirt on her shins. She’d just got back from practice, it was afternoon.

“Just figured I’d let you know we won,” Lily grumbled. “Not that you even cared to show up.”

“Won what?” Albus asked.

“The game. The Liverpool Griffins are moving onto the semifinals.”

“You had an actual game today?”

“Yes, and you promised you’d come to this one!” Lily crossed her arms. “You’ve become a real jerk these holidays.”

“Oh my God. Lily I am so sorry. I completely forgot.”

“Yeah, I know! Couldn’t even get out of bed to say goodbye this morning.”

Lily turned and began to storm off.

“Lily wait!” Albus followed her. “I don’t even know what day it was.”

“Save it, Albus,” Lily shook her head. “I would invite you to the next one but I doubt you’d show up. Dad’s making soup for dinner, maybe you can show up for that?”

Lily slammed her bedroom door shut and Albus felt lost. How could he forget something as important as Lily’s game? It was the first one where he wouldn’t be too busy working at The Three Broomsticks to go! He’d promised to go! He hadn’t been able to go to any of her other games that year and she missed his support in the stands. And he missed cheering her on from the crowds. How could he forget something as important as that?

~

“Well, well, well, we meet again,” Albus looked up in shock to see none other than Delphi. “Studying for a test?”

“Algebra,” Albus informed her.

“God, what year?”

“Year ten.”

“Yikes,” Delphi hissed in sympathy. “So your doing all that expand and simplify bullshit with the brackets.”

“Yep,” Albus sighed. “Although, it looks more like hieroglyphics to me.”

Delphi giggled. “You’re funny. What was your name?”

“Albus,” he answered, blushing at the compliment. “I work at The Three Broomsticks just down there.”

“Oh sick, my band is performing a gig there this Friday night.”

“I’m working this Friday night.”

“Oh, so you’re getting paid to see The Augurey live. Now that’s an honour.”

Albus laughed. “What instrument do you play?”

“I’m all vocals,” Delphi clarified. “What about you?”

“Oh um, I used to do the music program at my school before they cut it,” Albus fiddled with his pencil, feeling suddenly shy under Delphi’s piercing brown eyes. “Guitar, bass, drums, piano, little bit of vocals.”

“Oh, so you are literally just a one man band?”

Albus laughed to the point of smiling very brightly. “I guess you could call me that. If you can call a fourteen year old with no released songs a one man band.”

“You’ll be a one man band eventually,” Delphi ruffled his hair. “I have faith in you.”

~

Albus closed his bedroom door and pulled out his phone. A notification popped up and he bit his lip. The Augurey’s social media. They’d posted something new.

Albus opened the app and saw the pictures. Delphi smiling with the rest of her bandmates. Pictures from whatever event they were at now. Pictures he couldn’t help but stare at. Especially the last one. The picture was technically of Rascal and Vermyn, the bassist and guitarist, but Albus was focused on the background. Delphi with some guys tongue shoved down her throat.

Albus hadn’t learnt this guys name. He appeared in many pictures. Sometimes he was even in the foreground. But Albus hadn’t learnt his name. Didn’t want to. He just wanted to know why Delphi would lead him on the way she did.

~

Albus was left to close up close up the restaurant while his manager, Rosmerta, went over the employee schedules for the next week. He found he quite enjoyed The Augurey’s live performance that night. He’d hoped to speak to Delphi at some point, but he was stuck as the dishwasher for most of the night, but the few times he had been out cleaning tables he could of sworn she’d been looking at him. He was pretty certain she’d even winked at him at some point.

“Hey Albus!” He jumped when Delphi came up behind him. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“Yeah, you guys are really good. You have a very good voice.”

“Thank you,” Delphi smiled brightly and touched Albus’ cheek. “You lose a lot of eyelashes. So, are your parents here to pick you up?”

“No, I was going to catch the bus home.”

“You’re kidding?” Delphi’s jaw dropped even further when Albus shook his head. “You can’t catch the bus home at this time of night! There are creeps and weirdos out there.”

“Aside from the creepy weirdo I’m talking to now?” Albus asked, wiping the last corner of the bench down. “It’s fine, I do it all the time.”

“It’s not fine!” Delphi sighed. “How about I drive you home?”

“What?”

“Come on! I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I don’t mKe sure you get home safe.”

Albus felt his face heat up at that. He supposed a car ride with Delphi wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen. “Alright, I can give you the directions.”

“Great! Let’s go.”

Albus let out a nervous breath as he followed her to her car, locking the shop door behind himself. She drove a second hand car, small and inexpensive, but the inside was decorated with plenty of gothic delights. He got into the passenger seat and told her where to go.

“So, you hate Hogwarts I take it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Albus shook his head. “Bit of an understatement really. I get bullied. Really badly. And the teachers don’t do shit about it.”

“I feel that,” Delphi sighed. “Wish there was something I could do to help.”

“It’s alright,” Albus chewed on his lip. “My house is that one.”

Delphi pulled into the driveway. “Damn, you’re families loaded.”

“Yeah, we are.”

Albus went to get out of the car but Delphi grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

“What are you—“

“My phone number,” she wrote the digits onto his palm. “Message me next time you have work late. I don’t like the thought of you catching the bus this late at night.”

“Oh,” Albus swallowed. He had her number, that was fun. And really nice of her to be so worried for his well-being.

Delphi caressed his cheek and rested her hand on his face. “Eyelash. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.”

~

Albus threw his phone to the floor and curled up in his blanket. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. She was pretty, she was semi-famous, she was older. And they weren’t exactly on good terms at the moment either. Of course something like this would have happened.

He wanted to curl into such a small little ball it was like he didn’t exist. No one could hurt him or lead him on that way. People wouldn’t even be able to look at him, let alone talk to him.

“Albus,” he groaned when he heard his fathers voice just outside his door. “Dinners ready.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Come on, you haven’t had dinner with us in a week,” his father answered. “I’m starting to get a little worried.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, if you’re fine you come down to dinner. Come on, get up.”

Albus groaned, and crawled out of bed again. Why him? Why that day?

~

Albus walked out of admin with his letter, supposedly his aunt Hermione was there to pick him up for an appointment he hadn’t even known about. God, his time management skills could really use some work.

As Albus left the school gates he noticed a familiar beat up car. It didn’t belong to his aunt, her car was certainly not beat up, but it did belong to someone else he knew. Someone he was much more excited to see.

“Oh my God, you did not just get me out of school.”

“Hey,” Delphi shrugged. “I told you I wanted to do something to help. Come on, we’re going to the beach.”

“The beach? Are there even any good beaches nearby?”

“Of course there are! You just need to know where to look!”

Albus smiled brightly and got into the car with her. He hadn’t properly skipped school like this in a long time, it was exhilarating.

“Alright Eyelashes, let’s go.”

Albus came down the stairs to see the rest of his family had already started eating their soup. He approached the counter and filled up his bowl. Pumpkin soup. He plonked down at the table, feeling much like the rain that poured outside the window.

“Hoods off at the table, Albus.”

Albus groaned at his mothers words, and yanked the hood from his head before continuing to eat.

“So as I was saying, it’s a very delicate and difficult case,” his father complained about work. “Grooming is a very difficult crime to prove. Our evidence is circumstantial at best.”

Albus ripped a piece of bread and dipped it into his loaf.

“I mean, how am I even supposed to prove he did this? It’s not like he ever actually hurt her, just made it so he could.”

“What?” That confused Albus.

“What’s confusing you?”

“How could he have groomed her if he never hurt her?”

“Grooming is the process of creating an environment which enables abuse,” his father clarified. “A very common misconception people have is that you have to actually h physically hurt someone.”

“Oh.”

~

Albus flopped down onto his towel, and let the rare sunshine beat down on him, giving him a much needed tan. Delphi soon after joined him, and he tried not to look at her too much. He really should have realised that the beach entailed a certain amount of vulnerability.

“That was fun, but I think I might have to take you back to school soon.”

Albus groaned very loudly. “Please don’t.”

“What do you want me to do?” Delphi sat up. “Hold you captive here forever?”

Albus jumped when Delphi pounced on him and they began to wrestle in the sand. His leg was only slightly tangled in his towel by the time she managed to get on top of him. Oh goodness, this was a very compromising position. He only hoped she didn’t do anything to uh … provoke him, we’ll say.

“You’ve got another eyelash,” Delphi’s fingers danced across Albus face as she wiped the stray hair away.

“I swear I didn’t used to lose eyelashes this regularly,” Albus sighed, hoping to get her off from on top of him. This was not something he felt ready to deal with.

“Sure,” Delphi’s face seemed to move impossibly closer, and her breath grazed over Albus’ lips. All he’d have to do is move slightly and they’d practically be snogging.

“We should go,” Delphi got up and put her shirt back on over the top of her bikini. “Your parents will surely be mad if you aren’t home in time.”

~

Albus finished his soup and climbed the stairs before anyone could stop him. He needed some space. Desperately.

Albus opened his laptop and stared at the search engine for a moment. He began to chew on his nails, feeling his stomach roil with the unasked question still lingering in his head. What was he even supposed to do in this type of situation? What was he even supposed to look up?

He swallowed and quickly typed up his question before staring at it. The fact that he even felt the need to ask felt a bit like a confirmation, but he couldn’t be certain. He pressed enter.

How do you know if you’ve been groomed?

~

“What’s this?” Albus asked.

“It’s a birthday present,” Delphi answered.

“My birthday is in October.”

“Just open it.”

Albus smiled before tearing into the gift Delphi had gotten for him. He pulled open the box and inside there was nothing more than a business card. Riddle Studios?

“I may have pulled some strings with my manager,” Delphi clarified. “They’re going to let you record one song, and if they like it and it performs well they might take you on.”

“You’re joking.”

“No joke.”

“Oh my God! Delphi!” Albus got up. “Thank you so much! God, I could kiss you!”

“What?”

“What? Um … not actually kiss you. Just — you know it’s an expression.”

“Right,” Delphi nodded. “Well, I’ll pick you up on Saturday and drive you there.”

“Yeah,” Albus nodded excitedly.

“See you,” Delphi left a peck on Albus’ cheek before walking away.

~

Grooming is the action of attempting to form a relationship with a child or young person, which would enable you to sexually assault them or persuade them to commit some type of crime, such as drug dealing or joining a terrorist organisation.

Albus wasn’t sure that exactly applied to him. He’d been a child, he was a child, but … he didn’t — he didn’t know.

A groomed child may think they are: in a special relationship with the person hurting them, experience self-blame over the the abuse they are experiencing, be confused by the nature of the relationship, and have a fear of harmed or abandoned if they speak out or defy their groomer.

~

Albus had initiated it, but he immediately regretted it. It was stupid really. To think someone as amazing as Delphi might return his feelings. As soon as he’d kissed her he felt like he’d made some horrible mistake and that he needed to run as far away as humanly possible. Something about it just felt innately wrong. Like he’d done something he really shouldn’t have.

“I am so sorry,” Albus stepped back. “I should go. That was — sorry!”

“Albus! It’s fine,” Delphi stopped him from running away. “Nothing to be sorry for.”

Delphi pulled Albus in and this time their kiss was much more of a mutual experience. And it was nice. He’d never really kissed anyone before, so he hoped he was doing it right. Delphi was definitely much more experienced in that regard. And it showed. Delphi was very good at kissing, Albus found.

~

Well, that just didn’t apply to Albus. Right? There was no abuse to feel any guilt or self-blame over. There couldn’t be. Could there? He tried to think. Had Delphi at any point actually abused him? Sure, technically she didn’t need to abuse him for it to be grooming, but there wasn’t anything to blame himself for. Was there?

He’d admit, he had felt special, he had been a little confused by their relationship, he had done things just because he was worried she’d leave if he didn’t, but he didn’t blame himself for … okay he did. Just a little bit. But it was fine because it was technically his fault. The self-blame thing surely only applied when he hadn’t actually done anything wrong right? Because he had! He’d let her get close to him, he’d initiated their … situationship? Relationship? Their whatever! He’d been the one to start it and make it confusing. He made the choice to not defy her. It was his fault.

So, therefore, it couldn’t have actually even been grooming right? What even was the definition of sexual abuse?

~

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going on tour?” Albus asked. “I mean, I figure that’s something you tell your … friend?”

“I was going to,” Delphi got up from her seat on the couch. “But it’s not even like it’s a major tour. We’re just going around England. Nowhere too far away.”

“Right, just the other side of the country,” Albus shrugged. “Would have been nice to know.”

“What? You aren’t proud of us? After all I’ve done for you, you can’t accept that I’m also making progress?”

“That’s not it—“

“Then what is it?”

“You’re leaving…,” Albus sighed. “I just — I thought we were close enough that you’d let me know first.”

“We are that close,” Delphi came over to him and rested her hands on his shoulders. “Come with us.”

“What?”

Albus was dumbfounded. There was no way she was actually inviting him to go on tour with her.

“Come with us!” Delphi’s smile widened. “Come on, you hate school, you hate your family, leave it behind and come with us.”

Albus took a step back. “Okay, first of all, I don’t hate my family. I just don’t always get along with them. And second of all, I can’t just go with you. I have a job, other friends, and my parents are worried enough that I keep disappearing from school and the house. I can’t just runaway.”

“Sure you can!” Delphi held his face now. “Please? For me?”

Albus didn’t know what to say. Delphi kissed him to see if maybe that would be convincing. It wasn’t.

“It’ll be fun.”

“No, I’m putting my foot down,” Albus shook his head and started leaving. “I can’t go with you.”

~

Sexual assault refers to the act of intentionally touching someone in a sexual manner without consent, through either force or coercion. It’s a form of sexual violence that includes child sexual abuse, groping, rape and sexual torture.

Albus scrolled down, trying to find further explanation on what child sexual abuse might entail. He didn’t think he was abused; it was just good to make sure. He seriously doubted he encountered anything severe enough to be considered abuse. And he’d been the one to initiate their relationship in the first place. So it was probably fine.

~

Albus got up from the couch and walked over to the door. Lily was at football practice and their Dad had been the one to drive her. Their Mum was stuck at work so Albus and his older brother, James, were the only ones left at home. He had to assume James took advantage of this absence of people and invited over a couple friends.

He pulled the door open and was surprised to see Delphi of all people standing outside.

“Can we talk?”

“Uh, sure,” Albus stepped aside and let her in. “We better go up to my room, so James doesn’t see you.”

Albus brought Delphi to his bedroom, and gently closed the door behind her. He was sort of glad they were getting the opportunity to talk before she had to leave. They could sort out the argument they’d had and calm down.

“I guess we should—“

Albus was startled by Delphi just grabbing his face and beginning to snog him. They’d snogged maybe a couple times, but never like this. Albus raised his hands to her head as his back hit the wall. His head hurt a little bit, and he winced, trying to separate for at least a moment to rub where his head had hit. But he hadn’t been able to. At least, he hadn’t been the one to separate.

Delphi pulled away only momentarily before attacking his neck. Which, wasn’t really something they’d ever done. It felt a little weird, but kind of nice.

“Um, you said you wanted to talk?” Albus was a little confused now. Not upset, but definitely confused.

Delphi sighed and pulled away. Did he do something wrong?

“Just … wanted to see if maybe you’d changed your mind?”

“Well, I haven’t,” Albus slouched. “You know why I said I couldn’t go.”

“Oh, come on!” She complained. “After everything I’ve done for you, you kind of owe me!”

“Travelling around the country isn’t something I can just do, Delphi,” Albus groaned. “I already told you, my parents are worried enough about me as is. If I left with you they’d probably send a whole search party looking for me.”

“Then leave a note,” Delphi stepped closer. “Please? Can’t you just be the least bit supportive?”

Albus swallowed. He could theoretically go with her, and there was probably a scenario in which everything turned out fine. But Albus didn’t think this was that scenario. He was in enough trouble as it was for constantly sneaking out and skipping school to go see her, although his parents didn’t know about Delphi’s involvement. He didn’t want to make things worse. And Lily kept asking him to go to one of her games. He’d promised to go to one as soon as he could, he couldn’t do that if he was on tour with The Augurey.

“I am supportive, and I’m sorry but I can’t just—“

Albus gasped when Delphi’s palm hit his cheek, and stilled as the sting spread across his face. She’d slapped him. She had just slapped him. And it hurt. Really bad.

“Fine, I don’t need you there anyway,” Delphi stormed out while Albus stood frozen in disbelief.

~

Child sexual abuse (CSA) occurs when an adult or older adolescent abuses a child for sexual gratification. This can include pressuring a child into a sexual activity, indecent exposure of genitals to a child, displaying pornography to a child, sexual contact with a child, physical contact to the child’s genitals, viewing of the child’s genitals, and producing pornography of a child.

Albus wiped a tear from his eye. Did kissing count as sexual contact? Did it even matter? A month ago, if Delphi had asked, Albus probably would have done everything on that list for her. If grooming was only the process of enabling abuse, had Delphi groomed him?

“Hey Albus,” he jumped when his mother walked in without knocking, and turned to face her, “what’s—?”

Albus slammed his laptop shut before she could finish asking her questions.

“Why were you looking at the definition of sexual assault?” She asked.

“I wasn’t,” Albus answered, scratching his neck.

“What were you looking at then?”

“Nothing.”

His mother gave him a look before walking towards him. “Did something happen that I should know about?”

“No,” Albus tried to smile. “Mum, I’m fine. What did you want?”

She let out a breath through her nose. “Lily and James have both had their showers. I wanted to check if you had had yours?”

“No, I’ll go do that.”

“Albus—“

“Thanks for letting me know,” Albus grabbed his clothes and hurried towards the bathroom. He didn’t think he was in the mental state to explain everything about Delphi to his mother.

[sunderedandundone]

Teaser (UrSkek edition)

Y'all, SilSol was one of the ones just resolutely refusing to give up their origin story to me, but lately they've begun HINTING in its direction and it's just.........kinda fucking weird so far, and I'm trying to make sense out of it.

I mean yeah they were a Musician, because of course they were a Musician. And given that pretty much all UrSkeks can make lovely music just by saying "Good morning, I see your tomatoes are flourishing"...and given that all the magic/high tech among that species makes prolific use of sound and music...and given that the Crystal itself is held to communicate with UrSkek primarily by Singing...well, being a pro Musician among UrSkek IS kind of a big deal. Not just from an artistic or a renown standpoint, but also from a power standpoint. (Really all the professions the Twice-Nine followed had some element of specialized magic/tech skill, but if a Musician were ever to go to the Dark Side -- I HC -- they could do a lot of damage.)

And you'd think that me being a musician too (also pro, but alas, doubtless well short of UrSkek standards), what would naturally spurt out of my brain would be any of a zillion plot arcs I know musicians tend to fall into? But no, no, of course not. Instead, this UrSkek goob is trying to get all boutique with my ass. All boutique with my booty. Telling me that their whole problem with society was they had *too much* insight into it for their own good. And they'd started using that insight to try to actually improve it, suns forbid -- and BY THE WAY the Homeworld Eldest are the biggest bunch of fucking hypocrites to be found in any Realm of the Crystal, and you're looking at a MINIMUM 2 million realms there with over 16 quadrillion sentients, at least within the known vortex network. -_-

This puts SilSol *mostly* into the category of UrSkeks whose Deviance is entirely intentional and freely-chosen, rather than inborn or shaped by some great misfortune. Though I'd have to guess they were always at least a *bit* beyond the norm...perhaps, though, in the way that, had they made other choices, would have brought them to great honor. (UrSkek society tends to be distrustful even of benevolent outliers because of their extremely conformist/communitarian ethos, but they also recognize the social necessity of having the *occasional* benevolent outlier, and when one who unquestionably does do great good comes along, credit will be given as due. At least in retrospect.) Or perhaps they'd just have been put down as an acceptably mild case, what UrSkeks might call an 'eccentric' by their innocent lights. ^^

It's still fuzzy, but I think what happened is that SilSol gradually came to a realization that even though UrSkek society isn't *supposed* to really have power dynamics -- AT ALL -- as in, sure there are ranks and roles and responsibilities and privileges that go with rank and role, but those things are *absolutely not* to have *anything* to do with the occupant's personality or their personal needs -- it totally does have power dynamics. They're just very subtle and deniable, a hidden undercurrent, to the point that most UrSkeks have no trouble rationalizing it away (and indeed, largely not even letting it into frontal consciousness).

SilSol chose not to explain it away, but to investigate it. It's possible this originally arose out of something to do with their work, some 'artistic differences' shit? :-D -- or some ongoing disharmony with a superior. Or they might have taken an interest simply because they also served as conductor sometimes -- and a conductor definitely has to use a combination of technical and people skills to successfully bend an ensemble to their vision for a piece.

It could even be just...something they noticed over time; that hey, there *are* certain UrSkeks who just -- seem to have things go their way more often than other UrSkeks. And it could be they then felt a driving need to understand why such a baseline contradiction should lie at the foundation of their 'perfected' society.

In other words, they...kinda discovered manipulation and hypocrisy? And therein lay their doom.

I think SilSol knew from education or past experience that other, 'lesser' civilizations and worlds have much more visible power relations (both hard and soft). Accordingly, they began consuming a lot of ::lowers voice:: *foreign media* -- just to see more clearly how these "intentional persuasion" and "charisma" and "selective reporting" kind of things work.

...As in, they literally took notes watching other peoples' comedy-dramas/reality shows/election coverage. O_o

Which any UrSkek should know is treacherous ground. There totally ARE UrSkek scholars of foreign things, on Homeworld and in the colonies. There are even, perforce, scholars of conflict. But after all, *they* have the training, the professional practices, the long trine of reflection and self-purification that are considered necessary to undertake that work. It's not supposed to be the kind of thing that Homeworld's angelic master Musicians would expose themselves to -- even Musicians who've consciously figured out that they too exercise 'soft power' whenever they use their art to move an audience. Or a mountain. :-) And who've now resolved that while they're not at all against being moved per se (I mean -- MUSIC), they *would* like to know when it's going on, thank you very much, and *why*. And whether it's always really the right course to go along, and by the way, how do you even decide what's right in a case where you suspect a lot of other people are just going along?? If not by the easiest consensus, how does one judge?

(Side note: Such foreign media is, of course, also kind of exciting. That's another of the many dodgy things about it. Really unwise, especially without proper hazmat so to speak.)

Then things get foggy again. But I know for sure that Professor SoSu -- who was definitely already teaching their Heresy, though it hadn't quiiiiite crossed the bright line over into criminality yet -- would've struck the newly woke SilSol as a superbly charismatic figure exercising a powerful, if often subconscious, influence over others. They also would've noticed that the (often young) UrSkeks who most closely flocked to SoSu were the ones who seemed a little bit.........*sus*. As in, poooossible closet Deviants.

This was no longer necessarily a bad thing, though. In fact, SilSol probably came to fervently believe that UrSkek society *needed* to have a conscious, revolutionary reckoning with all this over-conformity and hypocrisy...whatever growing pains that might cause in the meantime. And that ironically, what amplifying SoSu's message of radical honesty and acceptance really required was an advisor who could wield and explain these arcane 'persuasive' arts -- this 'primitive' wisdom that even the best, most illustrious people of other worlds were not ashamed to use in bringing people to a good cause.

Besides, was SilSol really doing anything in this that they hadn't always done, less directly, with their music? Trying to inspire imagination and compassion in their kith; trying to remind them that even their immortal kind couldn't stay completely untouched by time, joy, and loss, and that very fact might be the ineffable will of the Uni-Verse itself?

And everyone thought THAT was all right. Well, within certain bounds...though now that we bring it up, about those bounds --

SoSu, for their part, was not averse to studying this obscure branch of sociology/psychology, especially not from the academic standpoint -- though they always did caution SilSol against bringing more than the tiniest particle of it into real public discourse. UrSkeks as a species were certainly NOT ready for the full Monty on these things...nor was it probably wise for them to ever become so.

Well, obviously the both of them ended up coloring wayyy outside the lines in spite of the Professor's warning. :-) And I have a pretty good idea of the final 'trigger' incident that got the Twice-Nine banished (it really *was* done with the best of intentions, but an outside, less naive perspective would have no trouble foreseeing why the planet's authorities considered it an absolute deal-breaker). But I still need to work out a few more general things about the trine preceding that incident.

So anyway. Maybe it's not all THAT weird, but it's definitely not what I would have *expected* the likes of SilSol to start dictating to me about their Ages of UrSkekery? Hope to get it more filled out and cleaned up soon, opinions are of course always welcome in the meantime. ^^

***

PS: I've always had some trouble with SilSol just in basic concept. Not with UrSol...not with SkekSil...just with SilSol. :-P This is also very silly, because I've actually lived *some* of their slightly contradictory duality. I'm a lifelong musician who has also spent a bit of (way too much) time in politics. It's been almost all activist politics, but yanno, that IS probably the most comparable to any kind of politics SilSol would've been able to get involved with as an UrSkek anyhow. And as noted above, there is a common element of *persuasion* to the two fields. Not manipulation as it's usually thought of, although it can also be that -- but there is a certain deliberate pushing of audience's emotional buttons when you're a musician or any other kind of creative. You're trying to entertain people or show them meaning, give them happy release or sad catharsis or sweet love-thoughts or buzzing energy, all mostly for its own sake. In politics, at its best, you're trying to inspire people to cooperate towards some shared good goal -- and at worst, you're trying to convince them to uncritically hand you power. Some labor under the delusion (or the unfortunate factual knowledge) that getting the former to happen is going to require the latter. But OTOH sometimes there are people that just, you know, want to be handed power because they like it.

That last wasn't within SilSol's personality, even if it's since taken up a place within SkekSil's -- that's just a little too far outside the UrSkek spectrum for me to consider plausible. But even there, despite some life-history similarities and the fact that I really *can* relate to SilSol on a lot of stuff, there's still just a LOT I really find it hard to get into their head on. Because me personally? I only got into activist politics because I perceived an all-hands-on-deck emergency and didn't see anybody else leaping up to help. I mostly hate the work itself. Mostly. Even in semi-retirement/sabbatical/whatever this is, I still desperately want to just hand the whole damn thing over to someone else who IS personally into this shit, someone who IS a Deviant UrSkek for Great Justice. :-P

But I do think *SilSol* does need to be a bit more naturally curious about and interested in the workings of power, particularly 'soft' power, than I've ever been. Despite the fact that they were doing it all for what they thought a magnificent cause. AND despite the fact that even old SkekSil -- as smug a smipp as they've turned out to be -- still always has Reasons why they want the power they seek, and a fairly clear plan of what they're going to do with it.

(Which is more than can be said for preeeeetty much all the other Skeksis by the period of AoE. Not least, the increasingly decrepit/unhinged/paranoid Emperor. Indeed, petty preening Skeksis do NOT appreciate Chamberlain! ^^ )

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter three: a certain shade of green

“just relax, just relax, just go to sleep...” -”jennifer’s body”, hole

Over the next few months, Sam kept at it with her earth science degree and she was happy that her studies kept her busy, and that she was going to have a new summer project to lead her into her intensive junior year, which was going to include heading up to Canada and down into West Virginia to study the geology of both places: she had lost touch with Alex for the rest of the school year. She assumed that he had so much to do for the next several months that he had nothing better to do than to lock himself up in a studio and write a billion different pieces of music for a huge range of people, including himself and his eponymous trio.

She finally called him on the last day of summer, and he was overjoyed to hear her voice again. And yet he sounded so exhausted all the while.

“It’s just been absolutely crazy,” he told her. “Between a possible new album with my trio, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Lamb of God, probably going back to Testament, and the Dream Engine—which I have still yet to hear about soon—I've got enough projects here to make even the most prolific of people lose their minds.”

“Don’t overwork yourself, Alex,” she advised him.

“I try not to,” he promised her, and she heard him yawn on the other end. “If anything, whenever I think things are getting too overwhelming for me, I always tell myself, ‘hey, you know, it could be way worse.’”

“It really could, too,” she agreed with him; she reclined back against the couch cushions and she kicked off her shoes.

“I could be homeless and no one’ll want me and my malnourished ass worth shit,” he told her. “There is some relief coming in the next year, though.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a break in my contract with the orchestra next year,” he explained. “Paul enlisted me from the years 2000 to 2002, which means I have this upcoming Christmas off—for once, dare I say. But I’m going to have to jump through hoops to get into it again because—I actually really do like it. I like playing with them. He told me that they like having me there, too. Like I supposedly just fit right into the grand scheme of things in the orchestra. And I do, too—I really feel like I’m supposed to be a part of Trans-Siberian Orchestra.”

“So, what’re you going to do?” she asked him, and she knitted her eyebrows together at that.

“I don’t know, to be honest,” he admitted with a clearing of his throat. “I could just relax for a bit, you know, actually have my first normal Christmas in years, but I also think... there’s more I could probably fit in there. There's a lot of life in me and there’s a lot that I could still learn, too, especially with what downtime I have before me.”

“Still learn with guitar?”

“Not necessarily. There's a piano teacher at my old school whom I was recommended to when I was going there, but I couldn’t take his class back then because I was swamped back then—I guess he’s pretty rigorous, but he’s also weirdly understanding, too, like most of his students are like me: they’re all touring musicians and they have a whole slew of other things to worry about. But I'm going to try and shoot for it in the coming months, at least until the other shoe drops with my contract with Trans-Siberian Orchestra.”

“Wow. I underestimated you, Alex.”

“Everyone does.” He chuckled at that. “Including Belinda, who—I cannot believe that I took that ‘precocious’ remark so lightly.”

“You are precocious,” she pointed out. “Precocious in that I can’t think of any other musicians who are living such a full, decorate life such as yours.”

“That’s... not what precocious means, but I'll take it, though.” He cleared his throat again and he let out a low sigh.

“What’re you doing right now?” she asked.

“Just unbuttoned my jeans—if nothing else, with everything that I've been undertaking lately, I have yet to find new clothes for myself.”

“They getting a little tight for you?” She couldn’t help but crack a smile at that.

“A little. Well, part of that is my doing—I've put on a little bit of weight the last couple of years. Courtesy of you-know-what.”

She giggled at that.

“Damn ginger snaps,” he joked, and she burst out laughing at that. “Ginger snaps and—a whole mess of other things. Oh, my god—” His voice dropped away from the phone right then.

“What?”

“I don’t know how you, Marla, and Belinda do it, Samantha,” he confessed.

“Do what?”

“The food here! Oh, my god, it’s too much! It's more overwhelming than the work itself—I feel like my stomach is going to burst just thinking about it.”

“I picture you getting so chubby,” she confessed. “I think you’d look really cute, to be honest.”

“You just want me to be chubby,” he teased her.

“If it’s any comfort, I found it overwhelming, too,” she told him. “Especially when I moved back to California the first time. The only thought swimming through my mind when I flew back out to L.A. to get to the house in Elsinore was ‘how do Marla and Belinda manage all of it’. It's insane here.”

“Oh, my god—you should come along with me if and when I get back into Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and we all go out to dinner before the tour picks up. The last one I partook in, it was under the direction of a five-star chef, Samantha. Like, imagine that. Imagine a scrawny skinny little Jew boy like myself who came from the pages of textbooks being at a table that was being served by a guy with five stars, a James Beard award, and a Michelin star to his name. I looked at my plate and just went ‘I am not worthy. My stomach is not ready for this.’”

She giggled at that.

“What’re you doing this summer, by the way?” he asked her.

“I’m going up to the Canadian Shield,” she replied. “The Canadian Shield and also St. Andrews’ and Prince Edward Islands. Gonna be studying rocks and things up there.”

“Wow. Man, I wish I could come along with you—I've got my recordings and writing some stuff, and I’m also going to talk with that piano teacher, too. That, and I’m only able to go into Canada like once a year and every single time, it gets so much better. It's just something in the air and how they do things up there, like people are nicer and more easygoing up there. I like the directness and astuteness of city life—you know, you don’t have to smile if you don’t want to—but there’s just something precious about being around people who are genuinely nice to you. Something precious and authentic. I like authenticity.”

“I would hope anyone with half a brain does,” she remarked.

“You would be surprised,” he assured her. “Really, you would be surprised. I know I was when I first heard Fool’s Gold and I thought, ‘this is going to kick ass. Zelda’s going to be on fire from here on out.’ And yet, even with the rerelease, I have yet to hear anyone talk about it—and the times they do talk about it, it’s never in a good light, either. If anything, I've been hearing a lot of country music about how great it is going to war. And I'm just like, no?”

“America is definitely fool’s gold now,” was all she could say.

“Yes, exactly! Land of the free and home of the brave, and yet it’s all for the birds. It's all fool’s gold. I'm not saying Canada is perfect, either—far from it—but it’s nice to find those moments of relief, though. The times where you stop and think to yourself, ‘it’s not so bad after all.’ And you can find those moments anywhere, too—I was merely using Canada as a result because we were talking about it.”

“Like here?” she asked him.

He paused for a second, and Sam was greeted by a crackle of static on his end. Their cell phones were still very much in their nascent stages, and the towers to transmit them still had their kinks to work out in the meantime. Thus, for a moment, she thought she had lost him.

“Alex?”

“Yeah, I'm still here.”

“Oh, you just didn’t say anything then.”

“Yeah, I was, uh—having a moment. When you said that, it was like I stuck my head under a cold shower and I woke up. You really are one of the few real ones left, Samantha. You, Belinda, and Zelda.”

“It’s what we get for being artists,” she pointed out, to which he burst out laughing, that big hearty laugh that had followed him for years at that point.

Within time, they wrapped things off and they bode each other good night for now.

But even as Sam kept her phone rested within her lap, she had another idea, especially with Alex up to his eyeballs in his own work for at least the summer and perhaps the autumn, too: she hoped that she wouldn’t miss his thirty-fifth birthday come the twenty-ninth of September.

It was insanity, especially with the fluidity of everything at the moment, but she fetched up a sigh and she dialed the buttons on the keypad with the pads of her thumbs and she brought the phone up to her ear. She closed her eyes and she listened to the dial tones, once, twice, three times.

“Hello?” She knew that upstate accent anywhere.

“Hi.”

“Who’s this?”

“Sam,” she said with a chuckle.

“Oh, hi! I didn’t recognize your voice at first—” Something rustled on Joey’s end and he let out a soft grunt at something.

“Is everything okay?” she asked him. “Is this a bad time?”

“Oh, no,” Joey assured her. “I’m just—talking a walk right now in the trees and I heard my phone ringing in my pocket. I thought it was Krista for a second. Anyways, what’s happening?”

“I’m gonna be up in the Canadian Shield this summer—it's for my summer project,” she explained.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I just wanted to tell you because—you know. Knowing how close you are to there.”

“Oh, yeah—we can drive like an hour from here up to the Adirondacks and the border is literally right there. Hell, it’s right across the waters from the lake.”

He hesitated for a second and there was more rustling on his end.   And it was as if he had read her mind.

“I’ll come with ya,” Joey offered her, and she could see that oblong smirk upon his face. “I’m touring up there this summer, anyway.”

“Are you?” Sam was stunned by that.

“Yeah. But it’s just under the moniker of Belladonna—I might go up there with my cover band at some point in the future, too. All the times I go up to Canada with one of my bands, or even with Anthrax, it’s always fun...” His voice trailed off, and he let out a low whistle.

“You alright?” she asked him.

“Oh, yeah. I was going through some pretty thick vegetation back there. Amazed the signal still stayed with me, too: I've gotten some calls in here before and they always drop...” His voice trailed off again. Sam nibbled on her bottom lip.

“Joey,” she started, that time in a near whisper.

“Yeah?”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

He cleared his throat: there was a bit more rustling on his end, and then there was a soft beeping noise on his end.

“Joey?”

“I miss you,” he admitted to her, much to her amazement. She was so taken aback by that that she held the phone back from her face for a few seconds before she brought it back.

“Are you sure?” she asked him.

“Positive. Understand, I love Krista. I love her more than anything in the world. She's the love of my life and I'm going to spend the rest of it with her. But I still think about you, though, Sam. You were my first real love, even under the veil of booze and cocaine. I still found you through it all. You were like the ray of light in the blackness—” Silence abruptly cut him off right then.

“Joey?” she asked again. Silence.

“Joey? Are you there?”

The call dropped. Sam cradled the phone in her lap and she gazed on at the little screen right at the center of it all. She waited for him to call her back, but he never did.

And he never called her even when she left for Toronto and the northern edge of the lake. Her passport felt like an old friend that she hadn’t seen in so long, but she still walked about the streets of the city plus the little villages along the Canadian Shield as if she was a lost child.

She knew that Joey would be around there, and she held out the slight stray hope that she would see him as she roamed about the surface of that solid iron core, a core that seemed to keep the entirety of the North American continent safe from completely collapsing upon itself should the plates shift too quickly or the wrong way. Underneath that core was the mantle after all: the fire and the brimstone that burned away inside of the earth, much like her own fire.

All the photographs she took of the area wouldn’t take away what she would feel within her body. The few photographs she took of herself in the meantime wouldn’t even cut half of how she felt within her.

In fact, for most of the summer, as she took to the front porch of her little shack and she watched the sunset, she kept on returning to the thought of fire. The fire that burned within her as well as inside of Joey and Alex. Joey still loved her and she had found the secret passageways inside of Alex: where those passageways led were beyond her.

All the while, she kept her eye fixated on the horizon for any news about touring bands, whether it was Anthrax with John, Joey and his band, the orchestra, Metallica, or anyone she loved. The only things that brought her peace in a world filled to the brim with copious notes and samples of iron and granite. Rocks formed inside of the earth at utmost impossible temperatures, the kind of fever that no mortal soul could ever endure. Sometimes all that heat needed was a bit of release in order to relieve itself. The Canadian Shield, the anchor and the one thing that kept the continent from obliterating itself, the proverbial rock of the world, lost all mystique as she worried about the fire releasing itself elsewhere.

At that point, she was ready to return home to New York City, even if it meant spending a half of a day through customs and the rigorous checks in place at the Toronto and New York airports.

Indeed, it wasn’t until September that she came home with her summer assignment completed and her mind wanting something else out of life. She was eager to see Alex and Belinda again, as well as Marla in her final days in New York. Even though Alex had kept his word and proceeded lessons under that piano teacher not too far from his apartment in Brooklyn, she was still eager to see him again by the time his birthday rolled around and she had bought him a card, the first time she had ever done such a thing for him. But she included a photograph of herself from her time on the Canadian Shield: she had seated herself on the edge of the porch with her bucket hat upon her head and her shorts crisp and ironed despite being in such a sparse, rough terrain in the thick of the northern summer, and she rested her notebook upon her lap. A simple picture, and one that lacked the same charm as Belinda before the border sign down in Mexico on her bike ride, but one nevertheless, and one that she could let him have all for himself on the day in which he reached the heart of his thirties.

He never surfaced during the autumnal months, and when Trans-Siberian Orchestra made their tour of the East Coast once more for the holiday season, she wondered if he would in fact do it again. There came a point in which she felt sympathetic for him: locked away in his apartment for hours on end, only occasionally surfacing for a cup of coffee or the breath of fresh air all to rest his mind, and he pushed himself to exhaustion so many times that it made her precarious to call him at the wrong time. She had seen the breaking point, and she knew that she could hit it again with him.

Another winter of very incremental snow, but it never bothered her for one second. She gazed out the window to the streetlamps and the Christmas decorations, and she thought about the morning when Cliff showed up to her old place up in the Bronx. She turned her attention to the couch in the living room: her couch, and the one thing that still carried the memory of Cliff even after seventeen years of his absence.

She knew that the anniversary of Cliff’s death was coming up in the next two years, but she figured to start on it from the very get-go, especially when she heard that Metallica had returned to form on the recent tour. And yet, she remained wary in the wake of those few demos that Alex had shared with her.

Her canvas served as a large sheet of paper, almost at the size of her pantry door. Indeed, she took two pieces of box tape and stuck it up onto the back side of the door so it would remain out of sight if and when she had Belinda or Alex over at any given time over the rest of the school year.

Over the winter months, Sam took to the couch and specifically that left side, where Cliff used to sit and where Alex took it upon himself all the while as well. She lay down flat on her back and she closed her eyes. It was like a round of meditation on her part as she relished in his essence, in his memory. It was as if he had never left his body and he never left the shape of the cushions, either. Even with Alex having parked himself there with time, she could still feel him in there.

Every day after school, and more so on the days she didn’t have homework, she lay her head down on the couch cushion and she meditated, all to better feel Cliff’s memory again. Like feeling his actual body again, even though he had long left his body. After a few minutes, she ambled into the kitchen with a pencil in hand and she took to the piece of paper on the inside of the pantry door, and she tended to the drawing.

It would take her two whole years to create, but it would be two years of the most effort she could possibly give without anyone bringing it up to her in the meantime. She could still feel Cliff by her side, even after all this time, and even after she had given herself away to two other men since then.

She still yearned for her gallery back into her hands again, however: that was her gallery, and Scarlett had not only left her hanging but never told her where she had stashed those old artworks, either. As far as Sam knew, they were gone forever. It made her stomach turn to even so much as think about, but that very easily could have been the truth as far as she knew.

By the time spring rolled around again, and it soon dawned on her that Marla would be leaving soon. She was about to head on home to Charlie soon and Sam was finally able to meet up with Alex again over in Brooklyn on the seventeenth, the day in which Marla was leaving for Chicago. Before she left Hell’s Kitchen, Belinda had told her that her flight was to leave New York later in the evening, and Sam had to dance around the times with her homework and her drawing before she could in fact make her way over to Alex on the subway.

“We have to at least see her off,” she suggested as they nestled down in the seat by the sliding doors together. “Belinda told me she’s leaving at about seven-thirty.”

“See, that’s the part that I didn’t get,” Alex confessed to her. “Like my phone ran out of battery right when she said that part.” He peered over his shoulder to the rest of the subway train behind them. “Which means it’s a damn good thing that we left the studio when we did.”

“Right?”

Even though they were running late, the subway brought them to the airport over in the heart of Long Island, away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. When they both surfaced from the train, Alex gestured for Sam to follow him, even though there was no way her small stout scarred legs could keep up with his long and lanky ones.

“Flight for Chicago leaving right now!” he declared as he ran ahead. Sam almost dropped her purse but she chased after him as he darted to the next terminal up the shiny linoleum walkway. She peered out the windows to the big blue and gold airplane awaiting Marla and everyone else headed that way, ready to leave for the evening.

“Alex!” But the noise of the airport had cut her off all the while. She watched Alex run up to Marla and that helmet of emerald-green hair. She turned around and her face lit up at the sight of him before her. She embraced him, as tighter as Sam had ever seen her do for him.

Sam herself meanwhile, held back and she watched them from almost clear across the room. He said something to Marla, who then turned around and waved at Sam and blew her a kiss.

She mouthed the words “I love you” back to her. Marla brought a hand to the side of her head, with her thumb and her pinky finger extended.

It took Sam a second to realize she was saying, “I’ll call you when I get there.”

Alex watched her hurry down the corridor to the plane’s entrance just on time; out of breath, Sam strode up to him as the stewards closed the door behind her.

“Yeah, I watched you over here,” she told him as he turned around and faced her. “What did she say?”

“She just told me how excited she is to go home to Charlie,” he replied with a sniffle.

“Are you crying?” she asked him, taken aback.

“Yes, alright,” he said, that time in a tiny wisp of a voice. Sam put her arms around his little body and held him close to her. And she realized that she was crying herself.

She could give Marla what good-bye she could to her: there was nothing she could do from that point onward and she had to have faith that Marla would keep her word in the meantime.

Sam and Alex headed back outside of the airport, right as the sun had set behind the skyline. They stood on the curb for a few moments and then the plane in question sailed over their heads: the royal blue and rich gold shone over the lights of the city and the waning light of the setting sun.

Together, they watched Marla’s plane take off into the bloodred sky. She was going home. She was going home to the place where they both knew she would be happy, and with her first love as well.

Alex brushed away a tear and then he put an arm around Sam’s shoulder.

“Take a walk?” he suggested. “We are right near the park after all.”

“Might as well,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. They headed up the block, past a few little shops off to the side and some new skyscrapers that began to rise up from the ashes themselves. Despite the sun having gone down, the streets remained crowded and lively with the bustle of everyday life. Another beautiful day in the neighborhood, as Marla would say.

They reached the rim of that stretch of emerald green, something to remind them both of Marla’s familiarity in the meantime. The iron wrought fence pressed against the dark sky: even though night had fallen over New York City, they were still adept to taking a stroll around the lush greenery and the blooming cherry blossoms about the place. It was still springtime in New York.

“You still gonna do something special for Cliff in the next couple of years?” he asked her as they awaited there at the street corner to ensure the coast was clear for them. “I ask because I'm just looking at the blossoms across the way and I just think of your connections to him.”

“Well, yeah!” She chuckled as she thought about the drawing on the inside of the pantry door. How surprised he would be when he saw it.

She stepped off of the curb right as she swore that the street was clear for the two of them.

She never saw the car headed her way.

The front end slammed into her hip and her leg with the weight of a freight train. It turned her into a rag doll ready to be tossed in the garbage because love was not enough. She rolled up onto the front hood and the windshield: she slammed her head up against the Plexiglas.

It was only for a few split seconds, but she recognized that molten face on the inside. So hellbent on taking her out that he finally did it.

He stopped the car so she rolled right off of the hood and onto the pavement.

The noise of the street had fallen away and all that was left within her ears was some whirring followed by some passersby on the sidewalk muttering in indistinct voices.

Alex never screamed louder in his life right then, a faraway wail that seared through the darkness and Sam’s ears that she wondered if that would keep her awake long enough.

Bill bolted away from the scene of the crime and into the darkness, and that was when her sense of hearing returned to form. Breathing hard, she struggled to climb back onto her feet. Those old scars had split open, and that time with far more vengeance. At least in the first accident, she had the protection of the car door next to her. This time around, however, he hit her down to the ground as if he had intent on taking her out right then and there.

The pain was immense, unlike anything she had felt before: it ran so deep throughout her entire body that it left her feeling numb from head to toe. She could hardly move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to even so much as move her pinky finger.

Someone behind him said something, followed by someone else. Alex lifted his head and he clasped his hands to his head in fear.

“Son of a bitch!” he shrieked. “Call the cops and an ambulance! Get his ass! Someone! Call an ambulance!”

He loomed back over her body, his face twisted in utmost agony, the most pained she had ever seen him before then. It was then that she didn’t like to see people who were near and dear to her in pain, especially with the utter avalanche of it that she was feeling right then. But her own pain, her own injuries both old and new, all of it so intense and powerful that it began to drive Sam off to sleep right there on the cold pavement, even as he begged her to stay awake.

“Samantha! Samantha!” She never heard his voice become so loud in the time she had known him, especially with the feeling of sheer terror riddled throughout there. He was her rock, and it showed through in his voice, which had steadily filled out and grown softer and more placid with the passage of time: there was almost a sweetness to his voice at that point, and it had gone away as quickly as anything at that very moment before her.

Her eyes drooped closed despite her trying to keep them open, for him, for herself. Alex's head and shoulders blurred out into the dark sky and the skyline around them. His voice, so big and bold, had been reduced down to a faint, vulnerable whimper up against the noise of the streets around them. One of the few times she had ever heard him so emotional, and she wasn’t even going to witness it all the way.

“Samantha, it’s okay—it's okay—” His voice began to cut out with her flagging energy. Cliff burst into her mind right then, and then he disappeared as quickly as he came. In his place was Alex’s silhouette up above her. “—help is coming—stay with me—please, stay with me...”

She swore that he was telling her to relax herself. Or perhaps someone was telling him to relax for a minute and that help was coming. She couldn’t exactly tell who was saying what.

And he was the very last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.

Alex was the very last thing on her mind before she went to sleep.

[metalshea]

Examining Death through A Perfect Circle's "Blue" lens

Trigger Warning - this post discusses death, drug abuse, and overdoses, and includes a couple graphic descriptions from my time working at a morgue.  We are all at different places in our life journeys and have each been impacted by our own unique circumstances and experiences.  If these topics could spark difficult emotions for you, please do not feel compelled to read further.  Instead go gently and know that “there will come a day when the memory of those you’ve lost will bring a smile to your face before a tear to your eye”.

-- 

So it’s been a little shy of three years since my last post.  My last rant discussing the spindly and cancerous fingers of the NSBM scene through case examinations of Alcest, Behemoth, and Agalloch was all the way back in January of 2020.  In that time a lot has happened: a global pandemic led to my being laid off from my job in big tech, I started a great new job at a startup that has been nothing short of a trip, and, oh yeah, I HAD A KID. So yeah - career advancement plus guiding a small human on the path towards not being a shit head adult leaves little time for outside interests compared to less demanding jobs and… uhhh… not being a parent, I guess?  So something had to give somewhere.  Sorry Tumblr.  It’s not like I was a super prolific poster or that this blog ever went viral, so it’s probably fine, right?  Sorry to anyone that did read my stuff–the good news is you now have more words on a page to pour over from a now early-middle aged (holy shit when did that happen?) white dude that would have loved to have been a metal journalist.  While we're at it, sorry for that last post I did on A Perfect Circle… kind of, I guess… I mean I’m writing another post about them, right?  Anyway, I got super excited about what I imagined to be the parallels between the song “The Doomed” and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and kind of maybe went down a rabbit hole that was at the time super cathartic but, rereading it now, was probably a bit convoluted.

But here’s the thing, though, I absolutely LOVE A Perfect Circle.  They're near the top of a short list of artists who siginificantly impacted my development as both a person and musician, along with the likes of Metallica, Jimi Hendrix, Devin Townsend, and Zakk Wylde. When I first came across APC my musical tastes hadn’t yet expanded to the point where I had even heard of Tool, let alone knew who Maynard James Keenan was.  I remember first seeing an ad on either MTV or VH1 (probably both if we’re being honest) for Mer de Noms that had song snippets from “Judith” and I knew I had to get my hands on it.  Maynard’s screaming, biting: “Talk to Jesus Christ as if he knows the reason why” lyric immediately resonated with me: the kid of hyper-religious, conservative Catholic parents.  I had yet to start learning guitar at that point in my life, but the octaves that made up the main guitar melody were like nothing I had ever heard before in any other song.  When I finally scavenged up enough money to buy the CD, the coded letters that were all over the packaging became a new hieroglyphic language that allowed me to write my own hidden notes, and I practiced writing that code near daily.  I would go see APC live a few months later in what would be the first ever concert I would attend without an adult (just me and my closest friend on our own making bad decisions that night).  The ticket stub to that show is actually still taped to the wall of my parent’s basement along with all sorts of other music posters, guitar ads, and other random mementos from my preteen and teenage misadventures.  With Mer de Noms, APC hit that absolute sweet spot of atmosphere, melody, heaviness, avant garde, and mystery to absolutely captivate a young and ostracized adolescent that craved something esoteric to give him a sense of having stumbled upon something special.  Hell, if we really want to get into it–-and why not at this point?–opening up a CD case only to find a picture of the lingerie-clad ass of a smoking hot woman on the inner lining was enough to inspire a bit of a sexual awakening, too… Now that everyone is uncomfortable, I should probably mention that the music on Mer de Noms is freaking great.  That helped a lot.  Probably more than the other stuff. When APC dropped Thirteenth Step in 2003 I was beyond excited but when I actually listened to it, I was actually a bit disappointed.  It felt darker, bleaker.  I still listened to it on near constant repeat for months, but it made me feel uncomfortable, on edge, and put me into a place that made me start to feel the first twinges of what would become a lifelong battle with major depression.  Mer de Noms wasn’t exactly every day listening either–it had its own sense of melancholy and angst–but Thirteenth Step was just darker.  And it makes sense that it would be darker: Thirteenth Step is a concept album about overcoming drug abuse and flips between the first person perspective of both the junky and the junky’s loved ones.  It’s ambitious, but its heavy shit, man.  And in retrospect I’m not sure I had the life experience when it was released to really appreciate what the album was trying to accomplish, and how scary the picture it paints really is at times.

Earlier today I listened to the song “Blue” off Thirteenth Step for the first time in a couple years and it took me on a journey, inspiring a couple of very powerful flashbacks.  When I got out of graduate school I worked for a Medical Examiner’s office.  I actually worked the overnight shift at the morgue–which was an experience!  Part of my job involved performing autopsies, but most nights I was working scene dispatch, performing intake on bodies, cataloging and storing a decedent's belongings, and doing some evidence collection.  Occasionally, I would go out into the field to do recovery which saw me traveling across the state and bearing witness to the rawest forms of human agony, grief, curiosity and depravity first hand. My job as a mortuary and forensic technician lasted about two years before I jumped ship to the private sector, but it doesn’t take long for an environment like that to leave a freaking mark.  My time also coincided with the start of what the CDC calls the Second Wave of Opioid Overdose Deaths in 2010.  Constantly being forced to confront literal death on a daily basis as part of my profession shaped me in ways I think I’m still processing on an unconscious level, and being a “last responder” on the front lines of the then burgeoning Opioid Crisis certainly gave me a new perspective on the world around me.

“Blue” is the fourth song on Thirteenth Step.  At this point in the album’s storyline, the protagonist has acquired drugs to temporarily sate their addiction (“The Package”), realized their need for help (“Weak and Powerless”), and are starting to confront the resulting guilt and shame that nags at them (“The Noose”).  “Blue” reveals the source of that guilt and describes a memory where the protagonist witnessed a female companion overdosing.  Rather than helping, the protagonist watches with fascination while at the same time mentally tries to distance themselves from what is happening.  The protagonist doesn’t intervene and the implication is that the woman dies.  The lyrics are haunting--“I just didn’t want to know… She’s turning blue”--and the dense and dissonant atmosphere of the song lends itself well to supporting the hazy but all too raw memory.

There were two cases I worked while at the morgue that pull heavily on the threads of my own memories when listening to this song:  Myself and a colleague responded to an overdose in a public housing complex.  The apartment was far from what I’d call a home.  The furniture was spartan at best and was clearly either donated to the renter by well-meaning charities or purchased at thrift stores like Good Will or Salvation Army.  The renter was still in the house and was clearly still high–he sat on a couch in the living area off the small kitchen.  A police officer was talking with him when we arrived. The body of the victim was in the middle of the kitchen area.  Since the room was so intermittently furnished, the corpse might as well have been the centerpiece tying the two spaces together; a macabre coffee table of sorts that would certainly be a conversation piece.  When we searched the body e found heroin and a needle in his pocket.

The dead man’s companion–I hesitate to call him friend, I have no idea what their relationship really was–watched us from the corner of his eye as we worked to catalog everything on the body and hand over evidence to the officer on scene.  He never said a word.  He tried to feign disinterest.  He seemed somehow ashamed and tried to hide it.  “I just didn’t want to know….” Several months later, I was at the morgue performing my nightly duties when a body was dropped off by one of the funeral homes we contracted to do recoveries during off hours.  When I worked the overnight shift, I was alone - literally the only living person in the building--so the funeral homes would help out by picking up decedents from public scenes like car crashes.  Like I said, working that job was an experience, man, and trust me when I say I have lots of stories. On this night the funeral home dropped off an overdose victim.  This one was a woman; mid-twenties.  She had been missing for several weeks.  She was found in a building known to local police as a drug house.  It was clear that she had been dead for maybe 2-4 days and was in early stage decomposition by the point our paths crossed.  Her blood had coagulated, liver mortis was clearly evident, and rigor had released, but she wasn’t yet bloated and the smell was pretty tame.  When she was alive it would have been fair to call her pretty.  Lying there on the gurney there was no way I would ever call her pretty – there was too much pain: an addict that had gone too far, a desperate family putting in a missing persons report that would never again see her alive, parents who lost their daughter.  Whatever attractiveness she had in life was nullified by the symbol of wasted potential, selfishness, and grief laying on the gurney.  Her face was still blue.

Listening to Thirteenth Step resonates very differently to me these days.  It shouldn’t be surprising having had the proximity to addiction and death that I did.  But listening to the album today, especially “Blue”, shook me.  Music has a way of doing that–giving us a medium to contextualize our memories.  Mer de Noms is a positive walk down memory lane for me.  It is the nostalgic Member Berry that encourages me to reminisce about what was one of the most transformative points in my life: when I started playing guitar, dating girls, sneaking out at night, and going to concerts. I listened to that album right as I began laying the groundwork for what would become my adult personality, and it shaped me deeply.  Thirteenth Step encourages a different set of memories, ones that are equally valuable in their own way, I guess, even if they are certainly uncomfortable.  What was originally a somewhat disappointing album release from a band that I deified is now terrifying and existential to me–and I both adore and fear it.

Wrapping up this post I have to say, I’m not really sure why I wrote it.  I’m even less sure about why I’m choosing to put it up on a public forum for literally anyone to read.  I guess I can package this up as an exercise in contrasts, or a story about how music contextualizes our experiences and personal growth, or even how a piece of music can have different meaning to us at different points of our lives. But I think more than anything else this post is cathartic and allows me to give structure to what were two very significant and still raw personal experiences and start to come to terms with them?  Maybe? I guess if I could leave you with any parting thoughts they would be: Music is powerful.  Drugs are bad.  Hug those close to you often. Thank you for reading. Horns up, Shea \m/ 

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Richard, man of contradictions..

In the past i did some rammblings on

Olli the balanced

My take on Till

Paul - the chameleon - Landers

(and for some reason i think i did Flake as well, but i can't seem to find it) (i blame tumblr.. 😁)..and i always wanted to do one on Richard, but for some reason that appeared a lot more difficult.. i think it's because he seems to be a man of contradictions..

'the only rockstar in the band' 《》 not nearly as much in the public eye as other musicians (or some bandmates)

needs 'drama' (even sometimes creates it) 《》 would like it best if the others just went along with him

very much into sex and drugs and rock&roll 《》 seemingly quite happy to just hang out at home and work

very fickle in relationships (work, but i think also privatly) 《》 absolutely devoted to his family and (very close) friends

very much aware of appearance&looks 《》 happy to go out (and publish photos of himself on IG) in the same casual outfit he has been wearing for ages (and even a reasonbly priced one at that)

confident in defending his work against the others' criticism 《》 a worrier, always thinking it isn't good enough, wanting to do more..to do better..

wanting his privacy 《》 oversharing in many an interview about what he thinks and how he feels at that moment (and having several indiscreet girlfriends and relatives sharing bits of his private bubble on social media)

not being a teamplayer 《》 wanting to work in a team (otherwise he'd have quit Rammstein a long time ago)

..and i think these contradictions also echo in his relationships with his bandmates..

Till

imo Richard simultanously looks out for and looks up to Till, getting him with the band as a singer, seeing his potential, and also very much wanting Till's input and opinion on his work, playing it for him before he shares it with the other 4. There have been many years where in every random Richard interview you can find, he gushes about Till in some way or other.

But also: Till imo is not a fan of the drama and Richard not necessarily understands and/or agrees with Till's work (imo Till's 'love of pain' is not Richard's cup of tea) and while he very much likes for Till to pursue his own music too (like Richard does), he would also like to just hang out with him more, just the two of them..

Flake

In a way seemingly two polar opposites; two people you'd never expect in one band together (not even in one musical genre), imagewise: Richard the 'slick diva/rockstar', Flake the 'mock-grumpy local pubdweller/storyteller', you can't get more down to earth than Flake (or you'd be underground), while 'down to earth' is probably the one thing you'd never associate with Richard.

In reality though, and certainly in more recent years, they do appreciate eachother, Flake saying nice things about Richard in his podcast (that he's such a prolific creator, touching on one of the things that are actually important to Richard), Richard (and his family) actually listening to Flake's podcast (no not just that one 😊) and imo liking the fact that with Flake you always know what you can expect.

Olli

I have a feeling that Olli's quiet confidence works very well with Richard, it balances things out, steadies him a bit, and though Olli likes his privacy a lot as well (but different from Richard actually manages to achieve that) and we know very little about their actual relationship, when they interact it always seems 'real' and never forced or played-for-the-fans.

But Olli is not a pushover, and will speak his mind if he doesn't agree with Richard, and if Richard gets too muddled in his own importance, imo he'd just ignore him until Richard tones things down again.

Schneider

Schneider filled in many roles in the band-to-Richard dealings: joining in wanting to do new stuff, putting Richard in his place when he takes it too far, mediator between the others (and sometimes plain 'parenting' if needed), being one of the most adamant in putting the blame in the Mutter-era-drama, goofing around as one of the boys...

But also.. they do see eachother privately on occassion (maybe Richard sees the others too, but from Richard/Schneider there's actually evidence of it 😉). They do yoga together before a show (and have for some years), and on stage they clearly have the drummer-guitarist relationship that you have in a rockband and which (imo) with the rest of the strings-section keeps Rammstein to still be a rockband (aside from the show, the theater, the performance).

Paul

(as you might already have guessed from some other posts on this blog, for me the most inspiring of the inter-Rammstein-relationships 🍀)

Often a difficult relationship, explosive, aggravating, in a way it wasn't always obvious they would manage to remain bandmates for over 25 years, I'm sure both have on occassion wondered if it was still worth it. Paul's skill in spotting a weak spot in another person probably often triggered Richard's fighting spirit and the feeling to defend his work. And just like in his wrestlingmatches, Richard was never one to sit back and let a fight develop, calculating his next move, but quickly chose the attack; often resulting in leaving his defense open for his opponent to counterattack... thus creating a weak spot, for Paul to dig in to, and so it continued..

At the very beginning though Richard mentioned Paul as (paraphrasing) 'he completes me', their work in the early days (before and at the start of Rammstein) was very much an addition to the other's, and they have the same hunger for new stuff, creating something and performing.. and after many years of quarrelling learned (with some therapy i think) to listen to eachother again and even have new found appreciation. And while on stage i'm sure Paul often thinks Richard is too serious, and Richard is annoyed when Paul misses cues when he goofs around too much, imo Richard loosening up a bit is actually under the influence of Paul's interactions.

That, and that they are both the more natural huggers of the band, which the others i'm sure don't mind, they take out on eachother rather than on them 🤗

[tomorrowxtogether]

TOMORROW X TOGETHER On Their EP Minisode1: Blue Hour's Meaning And What Their Teen Years Taught Them

The coronavirus pandemic drastically changed TOMORROW X TOGETHER's second year as a group, like all other musicians who have needed to put touring plans on hold. But it hasn't stopped the five-piece teen K-pop boy band's prolific musical output; in fact, it shaped their latest release, minisode1 : Blue Hour, which came out on Monday, October 26.

In the less than two years since TOMORROW X TOGETHER's March 2019 debut, the five-piece K-pop boy band has released one full album and three EPs, including minisode1 : Blue Hour. During their first month as a group alone, the boys made Billboard chart history when they became the fastest K-pop act to top World Albums and World Digital Song Sales Charts with their lead single "Crown" and first EP The Dream Chapter: Star. They also captured the hearts of millions of fans (whose official fandom name is MOA), with their Instagram boasting 7.3 million followers, Twitter six million followers, and the millions of views on their every YouTube video.

Their new EP minisode1 : Blue Hour, with its wistful but bright tracks, explores the teen experience quarantining during the pandemic while touching on the deeper themes of dealing with unfamiliarity and the loss of routine, as the group explains to ELLE. With their lead single "Blue Hour" specifically, the song has a resonating message to all, SOOBIN says: "Even though we may feel solitude in these times, we will continue to hope we still feel the same way as one another."

All but one member of TXT are in their late teen years—YEONJUN is 21 while HUENINGKAI and TAEHYUN are 18, and SOOBIN and BEOMGYU are 19—and the group has progressively taken a more active role creating their music. The boys talk to ELLE about every track on minisode 1 : Blue Hour's meaning, how their MOA fan base changed the way they see themselves over the past year, and the biggest lessons they've learned during their teen years.

Tell ELLE a little bit about what inspired the theme of minisode1 : Blue Hour. Is there anything you can tease about the symbolism of 5:53?

TOMORROW X TOGETHER: 5:53 PM is actually the time of sunset in October here in Seoul. You could also call it the hour between dog and wolf. "Blue Hour," the lead single of minisode1 : Blue Hour, is about that moment in sunset when the sky becomes too dark for one to distinguish their surroundings. The song reflects the conflicting yet coexisting senses of familiarity and unfamiliarity as we look at the world and at our friends around us right now in this blue hour.

Take ELLE through each track of the EP. What is each song’s meaning?

TAEHYUN: “Ghosting” is the song that kicks off our new EP. It’s an Indie Rock slash 1980s’ vibe Nu Gaze track. You can probably guess what this song is about: ghosting, also known as cutting off communication and disappearing without a word. In this song, we express the confusion and disheartenment of a boy who has become cut off and isolated. The person he has been talking with stops responding, and he wishes they would come back. SOOBIN and I helped write the lyrics.

SOOBIN: “Blue Hour” is TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s take on Disco. It’s mellow but bright and energetic with lots of great instrumentals like synth sounds and guitar as well as groovy bass. It’s about 5:53 PM, the hour of sunset in Seoul in October. More specifically, it’s about the beauty and darkness that comes with sunset. The scene is mesmerizing, but it’s also too dark to recognize and “know” the people around us, including our friends. There are concepts of unfamiliarity in familiar surroundings; the song expresses a message: even though we may feel solitude in these times, we will continue to hope we still feel the same way as one another.

BEOMGYU: TOMORROW X TOGETHER has always told our own story through our music. “We Lost The Summer” was created as we were brainstorming what stories we could tell amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. People lost routineness in their lives; people of our age couldn’t even physically attend school anymore. This song is a teen narrative about the changes in the world this year. In terms of the sound, it’s a refreshing Dance Hall track with amazing guitar sounds. Also, thanks to Charli XCX for her contributions to this track.

HUENINGKAI: I helped write the lyrics of "Wishlist" together with YEONJUN and TAEHYUN. “Wishlist” is about wanting to give a special someone the perfect birthday gift, but they won’t tell you what it is they want. As everyone can probably imagine, this is really hard to figure out. I think that it’s a very relatable subject for many people. The song is Pop-rock, and it’s very bright and refreshing. I think our fans will like it.

YEONJUN: “Way Home” is about the way back home from school. It’s the same path and scenery we walk through almost every day, but in this track, everything around us seems foreign and surreal like a mirage in a desert or a figment of our imagination, and we grow a little unsettled. The message of this song is that regardless of everything, as long as we continue to remember each other, we will stay together forever.

Minisode1 : Blue Hour explores a variety of music genres, from disco to R&B. What genre is your favorite to experiment in so far and why?

SOOBIN: My choice is “Blue Hour.” Disco is fantastic to both record and dance to.

YEONJUN: “Way Home.” I love Future R&B, so recording this track was a really great and enjoyable experience for me.

BEOMGYU: “Ghosting” was really memorable for me. It’s Indie Rock and Nu Gaze. I had a lot of fun while recording this song—there was a lot of emotional excitement all around.

TAEHYUN: “Blue Hour,” the lead single. It’s Disco Dance Pop and very upbeat and exciting so I couldn’t keep still from dancing during the recording process.

HUENINGKAI: I really enjoyed “Blue Hour” and “Wishlist.” I’ve never tried Disco before, and “Blue Hour” is our interpretation of the genre. They’re both very fun tracks, so I really liked recording them.

You’ve all had a more active role writing the songs on this EP. What track are you most proud of and why? How has your song-writing evolved over the last year?

TXT: This album encompasses a lot of genres like Disco, Nu Gaze, Future R&B, Dance Hall, and Pop Rock. It was a great experience working with all of them. Our lead single “Blue Hour” is great because it’s TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s unique take on Disco. In terms of the EP as a whole, we had great experiences brainstorming ideas and writing lyrics. SOOBIN and TAEHYUN helped write the lyrics for “Ghosting,” and YEONJUN, TAEHYUN, and HUENINGKAI helped with the lyrics for “Wishlist.” We've grown musically in that we were able to immerse ourselves into the music and expand our understanding. Some of us have become agile in the lyric-writing process, and we'd like to think our musical spectrum has widened.

You debuted during this big moment of K-pop really taking off in the U.S. and globally. How does it feel to now be part of it, representing K-pop abroad alongside BTS and other peer groups?

TXT: Thank you for your kind words. We don’t think that we “represent” K-pop; we’re simply doing our best at what we can do.

What is your dream goal of accomplishing in the U.S. music scene?

SOOBIN: I’d like to perform at a large venue in front of many people. I think it will be an extremely valuable experience.

YEONJUN: It’d be a dream to collaborate with globally renowned artists on stage at an iconic music award ceremony.

BEOMGYU: I want to go on tour and perform in front of many, many of our fans. I wish there would be MOA to greet us wherever we go.

TAEHYUN: I want to become an acclaimed artist. It would mean a lot if TOMORROW X TOGETHER could perform for a big award show.

HUENINGKAI: Collaborations with other artists would be an honor. I’d also like to participate in an award show and perform for many people.

What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve taken from your teenage years as you enter your 20s (or get close to them)?

SOOBIN: Don’t rush yourself. Do your best at your own pace.

YEONJUN: There are certain things you can only do as a teenager. Enjoy these things. No regret.

BEOMGYU: Be happy.

TAEHYUN: Stay diligent!

HUENINGKAI: Enjoy music and positivity.

What have you learned about friendship from the close bonds you’ve built with each other?

SOOBIN: Opening up and sharing your thoughts will strengthen your friendship.

YEONJUN: Don’t be afraid of conflict.

BEOMGYU: If there is something on your mind, speak it out and listen to one another. Great friends will be able to smile again together as though nothing had happened.

TAEHYUN: I think that real friendship is about addressing conflicts instead of avoiding them.

HUENINGKAI: I’ve learned to deal with issues quickly and efficiently through team discussions.

How has getting to know and interact with your MOA fan base changed the way you see yourself?

SOOBIN: I wasn’t so sure of my strengths but our MOA have made me more assured of myself.

YEONJUN: Our wonderful MOA always give me confidence and pride.

BEOMGYU: I had a chance to look into myself as a person.

TAEHYUN: As our MOA have been very kind and supportive with their words, I have even more faith in myself.

HUENINGKAI: Conversations with our MOA have grown more and more enjoyable by day. I’ve gotten to know our fans better and I think we’ve really found a lot of common ground.

For those new to TXT, what songs do you recommend they listen to? Give us your essential playlist.

TXT: We’d like to suggest: “CROWN,” “Run Away,” “Can’t You See Me?,” “Blue Hour,” “Our Summer,” and “Maze in the Mirror.”

This has been a really unusual year with COVID changing the way everyone lives and putting all tours on hold for a bit. But what has been your favorite moment from this year in quarantine?

TXT: We miss our fans a lot and wanted very dearly to meet them. We put our all into preparing this EP so that we could present our MOA with great music. We’re very excited to be able to share new music. Although we can’t meet in person yet, we were able to interact on socials. Those interactions were probably our favorite moments.

As a group, you’re maturing in the public eye. How has your fashion evolved over these past two years? How would you describe your personal style off-duty and on-duty, for this era?

SOOBIN: I don’t think my style has changed much at all. I prioritize comfort and prefer warm clothes in the winter and breezy ones in the summer.

YEONJUN: I still enjoy trying a variety of styles.

BEOMGYU: Compared to my trainee days, my attire is a lot more relaxed. I wear whatever feels best.

TAEHYUN: I prefer t-shirts and shorts. It’s the most comfortable for both mind and body.

HUENINGKAI: I still wear a lot of hoodies and track pants so that I can stay comfortable during rehearsals or when working on music. When I go out, I try on different things.

What can you tease about what’s next for TXT? Are there any themes musically you’d like to explore in your future songwriting?

TXT: We want to share a lot of great music. We want to become a group that can process any theme and concept, and show the world our many talents as a multifaceted group.

SOOBIN: I ’d like to try A cappella.

YEONJUN: Future R&B, Rap, and Hip hop.

BEOMGYU: I think it would be cool to try more acoustic sounds.

TAEHYUN: I like Soul.

HUENINGKAI: I would like to try Piano Rock someday!

[sinceileftyoublog]

Georgia Anne Muldrow Interview: Rhythm Is A Form of Gravity

Photo by Antoinette A. Brock

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“The people keep you fresh. They keep you on your toes,” Georgia Anne Muldrow told me over the phone last month. The prolific L.A. musician, whose output ranges from experimental hip-hop to neo soul to jazz and everything in between, is releasing her fifth record in four years on Friday, and the third overall in her beats series. VWETO III (FORESEEN + Epistrophik Peach Sound) follows last year’s Mama, You Can Bet! (released under the name Jyoti), 2019′s collaboration with Dudley Perkins and VWETO II, and 2018′s acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Overload. Unlike any of the previous albums, it was put together with some “calls to action” in mind.

Thought some of the songs were around for longer, VWETO III as an entity was made last year, “over a course of time where things were changing in terms of different recording techniques I was trying,” said Muldrow, harking back to techniques and inspirations from her early years of music making. The record was also, obviously, formed during a global pandemic that caused folks to lock down, and Muldrow is conscious to giving listeners opportunities to reach out on her very active Instagram account. Each of the album’s singles have been paired with those aforementioned calls to action. “Unforgettable”, which combines 80′s-sounding synths with 90′s G-funk, calls for vocalists to submit performances to go along with Muldrow’s vocals on the song. “Mufaro’s Garden”, inspired by an illustrated folktale book called Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, asks for visual artist submissions. On the day of the album’s release, Muldrow will ask for dance submissions to “Slow Drag”, a throwback Hammond-guitar-piano ditty named after the juke joint dance of the same name. Next month, it’ll be “Action Groove”, with calls for turntable scratch ‘n’ sampling remixes from DJs. And it’s not just the singles that exemplify Muldrow’s desire to connect with listeners on a granular level. Many of the songs on VWETO III refer to or are inspired by specific eras, from the Afrofuturist jazz of “Afro AF” to the genre tribute “Boom Bap Is My Homegirl”. That the titles are clearly referential, too, like “Old Jack Swing” or “Synthmania Rock”, shows that Muldrow’s not winking and nodding or trying to fool us, earnestly inviting us to dive in.

Moreover, VWETO III is coinciding with what Muldrow’s calling the Teacherie, classes she’s trying to develop to spread knowledge of what she’s learned throughout her own career, everything from philosophy to instrumental-specific classes. Right now, from her saved Instagram story called “Teacherie!,” you can take an assessment to fill out what you’re interested in. “It helps me to see what skill levels people have and what they want to learn in the class,” Muldrow said. “I seek to continue to stay open enough to make relevant music and have relevant things to share with people.” Overall, Muldrow is the type of artist that uses online platforms the way they’d be used in an ideal world. Her use of NFTs, too, is noble; the album art by Cape Town-based Breeze Yoko is being auctioned off, with 50% of proceeds going to prison abolitionist organization Critical Resistance. Even when the offline world returns--Muldrow’s slated to play Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, September 11th--Muldrow’s created a blueprint for navigating an increasingly isolating digital world, by seeking out real connections.

Below, read my conversation with Muldrow, edited for length and clarity, as she discusses making the record, being inspired by African rhythms, the influence of Digital Underground, and why her work logically extends into prison abolition. You can also catch her tomorrow on Bandcamp Live at 8 PM CST.

Since I Left You: Why did you decide this was a good time to revisit your beats album series?

Georgia Anne Muldrow: The people love it, you know? I always like to post beats on Instagram and share my poetry or state of mind of what’s going on in the world according to my people, and provide a place of joy and uplift. The voice of the people kind of determined what songs were on there. There are some songs that nobody’s ever heard. Different ideas, something a little bit more energized.

Something for the people. It’s really great that I have direct contact with them. Some of the songs are things I like to try based on the vibes I get from their feedback. It’s great; it’s a beautiful thing for me. I’ve gone through phases where critics love me, but the voice of the people that really support your work is really cool to hear. It’s like a little focus group. I just like sharing my music with folks because it’s my way of contributing love energy to the world in a direct, immediate way.

SILY: A lot of folks are still staying home and needing that connection. You’re connecting with them but also providing a platform for them to connect with each other.

GAM: Yes. I’m way into that and seek to be expanding that in an even more literal sense with my classroom project [Teacherie], like a live webinar sort of thing, that enables folks to speak amongst themselves. A more extended form of what I do on social media. An intimate look at what’s really going on in music. They can see where my emotions end and the music begins and try to make things seamless within their own music. Teach what I’ve picked up along the way, because I won’t be here forever. Spreading the love but the knowledge, too, with the music that I share. There’s a certain quality that you can achieve if you have patience.

SILY: Did you always know you wanted to do these calls for action, like for vocalists on “Unforgettable”? And how did you decide which tracks you wanted to do them for?

GAM: It’s definitely my way of trying to promote some sort of hip hop jam in lieu of the isolation that folks are weathering...I’m really inspired by the early age of hip hop where everyone had different dances. They brought their art books to the hip hop jams. The jackets with the art on it, the MCs rapping. The breakdancing, the DJs. All of the different things in place for it to be complete. That’s part of what got me hooked on production. One night years ago, [when I first played] my stuff, and folks started to dance, it got me hooked--to make somebody move. Somebody can rap over this, somebody can dance to this or draw to this. That’s the reason for the calls to action. Opening up a hip hop jam all over the world. I hope it gains some momentum. That would be nice, for more people to put themselves out there. But I do understand we live in different times right now and people are trying to get by. I still have to post some of the artists from “Mufaro’s Garden” and these rap videos from “Unforgettable”.

SILY: You’re giving people an opportunity, even if they’re just trying to get through the day, to take a break or have a beneficial creative exercise.

GAM: Yeah. Being creative together, and togetherness. The thinking that the songs aren’t complete without dance. Lyrics are a certain kind of fulfillment of music. But the movement of the body is another one. [It] goes back to gravity. Drummers harness the power of gravity and manipulate it so things can fall at a certain time. Same thing with dance--[dancers] don’t manipulate gravity, but interact with it and create an interdependence with it. When somebody’s dancing, they come back down to the ground, and you could let that go and let gravity guide what your dance looks like. Rhythm is a form of gravity--a form of gravity engaging with life. I feel like movement is the fulfillment of all the arts. I just seek to do my part.

SILY: You mentioned being inspired by a specific early era in hip hop, and there’s a lot on here inspired by genre or era-specific trends, like the G-funk in “Unforgettable” and “Boom Bap Is My Homegirl”.

GAM: [Boom bap] is one of the things that I specialize in. It’s a home base for me. In my experience, it’s a very African point of access. A lot of the boom bap rhythms are straight from Africa. Most of them are. Off the shores of West Africa. I heard so many of them, from The Gambia, Senegal, Mali. Over there, you hear so much of it. I want to be part of that. At the same time, I might wake up and make a free jazz record. I don’t feel like a traditionalist; I just want to preserve the culture of Black music from this hemisphere. I love traditional ideas, but it’s not like I’m gonna do this one idea for the sake of staying in a lane. There’s no place that Black music hasn’t influenced, molded, shaped, nurtured.

SILY: When was the last time you were able to perform in Africa?

GAM: I believe it might have been 2017. These years have started to run together. I don’t mind it, though. Keeps me young. [laughs]

VWETO III cover art by Breeze Yoko

SILY: How did the songs on here with vocals come together, whether the ones with your singing or the ones with featured artists? Did the words or beats/melodies come first?

GAM: The beats came first except for “Shana’s Back”. Shana Jensen is my sister; she’s the mother of my niece. Every time she’d come over and I had an idea to compose songs around her, they’d end up being huge songs. She’d be like, “Bye!” [laughs] I guess she wanted something a little more understated. I’d always end up doing big Motown sounds. There’s a song on The Blackhouse called “Shana’s Groove”. It’s a like a reoccurring situation and character. It’s kind of funny at this point.

The other ones, like “Unforgettable”, I’m very much matching the vibe, the punk-funk aesthetic. Sometimes a little hook just pushes it over the edge and gets them into the mindset I was in when thinking about it. Other songs like “Love Call” I just wanted to sound like it was in an arena. Arena rock, funk, Digital Underground-inspired, all the way.

SILY: Are you a big Digital Underground fan?

GAM: I think it shows in a lot of the music I make. I don’t think I can hide it. This record has so many examples of that. I love Shock G so much. He was so bad, as a thinker, a philosopher, a community builder, artist, pianist, maestro. The “Love Call” groove, “Unforgettable”, “[Old] Jack Swing”, you can hear it. I was raised with that kind of music in my head as a child. Unashamed to be funky and make a groove have extra grease on it. That’s what distinguished our sound from other region’s sounds. Getting greasy. While still doing the boom bap and all that other stuff. For me, it was always a goal to represent where I’m from in my music in a non-traditional way. Bringing what I love about the West Coast to whatever I was working on.

Shock G lives in all of us. He brought so many different vibes. A rhythmic pocket that breathes. Somewhat right under "Atomic Dog”. It keeps you moving. It has a breath of life in it. I’m so thankful to have lived in an era where I could hear and experience his work.

SILY: How did “Ayun Vegas” come together?

GAM: Ayun is my little brother. I think I’ve known him since 2014 or ‘15. He’s quite a talent. I love his style. He’s from [New] Jersey. I love his sense of rhythmic dynamic. His use of metaphor, double entendre. I feel like he’s really a gifted poet. He can do all types of different things. He’s an amazing MC--he just released a project with Jacob Rochester called Slaps & Hugs. I’m gonna lean towards people who are creative themselves and insert themselves into everything they do. 

Ayun is very secure in being different. He came out to Vegas, and I had this song. Usually, when I play leftfield stuff, MCs want that beat they can crush and not feel challenged by. This song is really old. I feel like it was made in 2016. I feel like that was the first time when somebody was willing to rap on an idea that was out of the ordinary. It’s not just in your face. It’s something different, but I want you to rap for your life on this. Something more like a movie score, where you find your character. He did it! He didn’t leave one beat behind. 

He’s rhythmically gifted and quite the poet. He almost went into pro football but he chose music. He’s a very enterprising brother, doing all types of apparel. He was working in the visual artist community, in the videographer community. Any time I can showcase what it is that he got to share, I’m there. He’s not afraid to speak the truth. This verse is impressionistic. It’s like somebody is taking a really big brush and making a beautiful image, strong-arming it. It’s dope. I love it.

We did another song together on the Overload album, but it didn’t make the cut. The Japanese version of Overload has a song called “What Can We Do Now”, and it has Ambrose Akinmusire, Ayun, and me. I’d love for that to be heard stateside, because it’s definitely about what’s happening over here.

SILY: Why did you choose to have the proceeds for this record go to Critical Resistance?

GAM: I’ve always wanted my music to be a tool for the motion of people. It doesn’t stop with dance and rapping and singing and drawing. It begins with that. Where it ends up, the movement of people coming into their powers, truths that in order to have a more humane society, we are going to have to throw some of this bullshit away. The spoils of enslavement. We’ve got to get rid of those spoils so we can get to a more realistic place of folks being cognizant of the activities that they take a part in. Jails ain’t gonna help people feel like they’re part of the community. They cage people and endanger their lives and run the risk of ruining somebody’s mental, emotional, and spiritual state even if they did commit the crime they’re in there for.

There’s a sense that all crime is committed from a place of fear. Many crimes people are locked up for is just folks trying to find a way. I don’t see how more fear is going to rehabilitate. The idea that punishment leads to enlightenment. People in the public school system are taught about some of the baddest people that ever lived--mass murders. But they’re not the type of people held accountable. They’re who brought over the imprisonment systems from their failed nations.

I don’t believe in reform at all. Critical Resistance seeks to abolish prisons as we know them. I love that their resolve is so sure and bold.

Photo by Antoinette A. Brock

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Jazz bands, food stands, and cherry blossoms

Happy Floral Festival and the Coloratura Jazz Band - two big things that led to one super fun night!

This year, our camp had the honor of hosting the Happy Floral Festival. I still can’t believe that out of all the camps, villages, and islands out there, the committee selected us! For that, I have to thank Isabelle and Tom Nook because I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t have made the list if it wasn’t for them.

Setting up the festival was an exciting and daunting task. Along with setting up the stands and displays, we have to make arrangements for things like music, vendors, etc. This year, the Coloratura Jazz Band fronted the festival, this being the third time in five years they’ve been a part of the festivities. So having them around to help set things up was super helpful - plus it’s nice to catch up with some familiar faces I haven’t seen in a while.

The newest member of the jazz band is none other than Sapphire. She joined the group a couple months ago as a pianist, which she says she wouldn’t have gotten in without Mabel and Kelly- two old high school friends who have been in the band for a couple years now. 

Being part of something big and fancy like the Coloratura Jazz Band isn’t something that Sapphire aimed for and she confesses that she feels a bit like an outsider compared to other musicians but at the same time it feels right. Sapphire’s the kind of person who just wants to be - not that she doesn’t have any goals or ambitions in mind, but she doesn’t want to feel like she has to compete in order to justify her existence. 

Mabel was the one who suggested that Sapphire audition for the newly vacated position. She, Sapphire, and Kelly were in the high school jazz band back in the day - Mabel on saxophone and mallets, Kelly on flute and percussion, and Sapphire on piano. While Mabel and Kelly continue to pursue music in college on a professional level, Sapphire turned to other interests. She posts piano covers on social media and occasionally plays at the Jazz Lounge Cafe, but other than that, Sapphire’s been busy trying out other things.

Like her roomie Steven, music’s one of those things that Sapphire always finds herself gravitating back to even though it’s not as big or prominent in her life as it used to be. As Steven once said, as much as he enjoys making music and how much it’s shaped his life, he doesn’t want to build his identity solely around that. To do so would be setting up a trap for himself as he's went through a tough time in his life where he couldn’t make music, which led to a cycle of depression and self doubt. And when you’re going through something rough, the last thing you need is an identity crisis. 

Having gone through an experience similar to Steven’s after the death of her best friend, it’s no surprise that Sapphire feels that way about music too. Unlike Steven, Mabel, and Kelly, Sapphire’s not a prolific musician who is looking to challenge herself or show off her chops to a wide audience - she just wants to enjoy playing the piano. She doesn’t feel the need to strive to be on top nor does she wants to prove herself to a bunch of strangers by pretending to vibe with something she’s not really feeling.

With Mabel and later Kelly, Steven, and Spencer suggesting that she give the Coloratura Jazz Band a go, Sapphire decided why not? Truth was she’s been going through a bit of a slump so she needed a pick me up. Getting into a big name jazz band seemed like a long shot for someone like her so she figured that even if she didn’t get in, at least she’d have something to do for a while.

And in an unexpected turn of events, Sapphire was called back for another audition. Then another, and a final one after that. How or why they chose her over several other more qualified musicians is something she’s not gonna question. After all, this is the Coloratura Jazz Band we’re talking about!

Mabel’s been with the band since last year and she’s been loving it. She’s got an interesting story - a childhood that she barely survived, family tragedies, and an incredible will to live. Despite everything she’s been through, Mabel still retains her optimistic and bubbly personality.

Having spent most of her childhood on the edge of death battling leukemia, it’s no wonder why Mabel lives every day like it’s her last. She’s the kind of person who leaves a lasting impression on you, even if you’ve only known her for a short time. Now when I see glitter I immediately associate it with Mabel.

While her future remained uncertain for most of her life, one thing Mabel found as a constant source of happiness was music. Her mom first taught her how to play the guitar, which Mabel picked up quickly. It wasn’t long until Mabel was giving performances at the hospital lounge on the floor she pretty much grew up in. Later she learned how to play the piano, drums, bass, and saxophone.

Tragedy struck when she was eleven and her parents were killed in a car accident. Her family was planning to go on a vacation with the money she received from the Falling Star Foundation when Mabel fell ill. They were planning to visit their summer home, which they haven’t been to in years since Mabel’s diagnosis. After experiencing two relapses, Mabel wanted nothing more than to go to a cabin that took her back to simpler times. With the place being abandoned for a long time, it was in need of fixing up, which was what Mabel wanted to use her Falling Star money for. At Mabel’s insistence, they went on the trip but insisted on only spending one week at the cabin instead of two as planned.

Her parents died on the way back home while her brother hung on for a few more days. Mabel was allowed to stay by her brother’s side until the very end, holding hands from their hospital beds. Losing her family was a devastating blow for Mabel, especially in her weakened state, but she wasn’t going to let that bring her down.

By some miracle, Mabel beat the odds. Through sheer willpower, the memories of her family, and the support of her aunt and uncle who took her in, Mabel hung on. As soon as she was strong enough, Mabel went through an experimental chemo trial that was super risky but paid off in the end. While it brought her time, the risk of another relapse was imminent so she was also being prepped for a bone marrow transplant as soon as a donor came through.

It wouldn’t be for another couple years until they found a compatible donor for Mabel. By then it was the third time Mabel had been told that she was getting the transplant, only for things to fall through at the last minute the first two times. After a long and difficult recovery, the worst was finally behind her.  

Since then, Mabel’s been making the most out of her life. From writing songs, making glitter confetti bombs, taking classes at Seashore Path, putting together cute care packages and sing alongs for pediatric cancer patients, performing in theatre and with the jazz band, taking on karaoke bars by storm, tending to her family’s garden, and spending summers as a counselor at Camp Constellation, things are never dull when Mabel’s around. 

Kelly’s been with the Coloratura for almost three years now, so I guess you can say she’s a professional flautist. She’s been playing since middle school and later picked up percussion as well as guitar, piano, and viola. Along with being section leader in the jazz band - a position she landed earlier this year - Kelly’s also involved with Rosegale Theatre as an intern and Asian Represents! as a volunteer. Along with juggling classes at Hollywood U she runs a channel called sillypanda where she posts flute covers, livestreams, and a day in the life vlogs.

I don’t know how she keeps up with everything, but Kelly manages to make it work. She helped us a lot when we were setting up for the festival, arriving about a day before the rest of the band came. Like I said, hosting the Happy Floral Festival’s a daunting task, and if it wasn’t for Kelly, I wouldn’t know what I was doing half the time. No wonder everyone wants her to help set up events! 

The festival was a lot of fun! The biggest highlights were the Coloratura Jazz Band’s performance and the Happy Bouquet ceremony that followed. Being showered by flower petals while a jazz band plays on underneath a moonlit sky and surrounded by good company - what more can you ask for? The concert and ceremony were a little over an hour and a half, though honestly it felt like it flew by. 

Tonight’s the kind of night where time kinda stretches yet flies by at the same time. Like you’re fully aware that you’re living out a memory that you’ll remember for years to come. It’s the kind of feeling that brings on mixed emotions - joy for feeling like you’re on top of the world, and melancholy for these moments aren’t meant to last. There’s nothing you can really do about it other than just living for the present.

It was nice catching up with friends like Katie and Sapphire as well as getting to know Mabel  and Kelly. From admiring various floral displays to trying all the food stands, it’s no wonder why the Happy Floral Festival is such a big deal! Like how Sapphire can’t believe she’s part of the Coloratura Jazz Band, I find it hard to believe that the camp was selected to host a festival. Even though the festivities have ended, I’m still not over it.

In between the fun moments of hanging out with friends, trying all kinds of foods, and dancing to the jazz band, the quiet moments were just as nice. Aside from the ceremony and concert, I think the biggest highlight for me was taking a moonlit stroll with Daisy Jane and collecting stray flowers carried by the breeze that came our way. 

When I’m with Daisy Jane, it feels like we're the only ones in the world, ready to take on anything that comes our way. It’s one of these moments that make me wish that nights like this would last forever.

[matildamaldita-blog1]

All my love,Elea

“All my love, Elea”

I caught a plane back to France, I am still paying the price of my rowdy times in the states, I got pulled under by a mean current but I had reasons to stay alive. Going through all those old drawings and words could make me sick to my stomach or shiver through me. Adam would finally get away from my love interest. Sometimes days like this make me feel no restless and no boredom just the prospect of calm quite days with the time to read, write and draw is all I ask. Adam had an obviously huge influence on every aspect of my being.

Hi I’m Elea- My mom and dad use to describe me as a very intense seething little being right from the beginning. What can I say coming from a very famous parents? I have always been the subtle but dramatic young artist, “a very prolific” they say. Starting at the very young age, I drew wacky personal style and always have a strong vision of my own universe. At an early age I had already a vivid concepts of good and evil (angels and devils), rich and poor (princess and urchins), joy and sadness, pain and pleasure. Was it my parents overly attentive, overly stimulating behavior that made me into attention-craving little show-off monster intensity-case? or was I born that way?

All I know is that they were the best audience a kid could have; I probably made a lot of drawings just to make my dad laugh, he was so into it. I also spent hours and of hours entertaining myself, far off in the elaborate fantasy world of an only child. “Elea Simone! I told you thousand times to not touch my stuffs” my mom says, I remember that day when I was about to reach her very expensive paint brush. My mom and I have always been apart from each other, I can always feel the heat between us, but I have always want to hug her, what do you expect from a kid to her parents? I was a little screwy, but then my father weren’t exactly average, and he never looked at me funny or told me I was weird.

We move to France when I was nine. The years that followed are oddly dim and blurry in my mind. For about a month I cried my eyes out saying “I hate you France” Imagine, they drag me from California to the South of France, pretty weird huh. But then I guess I just accepted the thought that I’d never live in the most populated state in America again. At school I was hated by some saying

“Grosse americaine!” and others were fascinated by me.

In Junior High I started to be normal, my teacher always misinterpreted my name saying

“Elea Simoienk?” Its Elea Simone I say, and people start to laugh.

I actually started correcting my parents French like

“banjower madame” my dad says, It’s not “banjower” its “bonjour”

I also made friends and it went fine. I guess it’s not that bad here. But I must’ve been killing time and the anguish of a new life by drawing sketches archived by my Father. Nancy, little lulu, old Walt Disney, betty boop, popeye, golden books and etc. inspired and obsessed me, thanks to brain washing, vintage education. Puberty made me become self-conscious, and I tried to conform to fit the school standard even though I never succeeded in that branch. Sketchbooks were always with me, and illustrated diaries full of teenage angst.

During my late adolescence my Father’s increasing fame started to loom over me, as I slowly realized it was my fate to forever be compared to “The Legend” if I kept on drawing. My parents are keeping a low profile as writers and artists, and it was a heavy thing trying to find a style, an artistic identity of my own, impatient and frustrated. I found refuge in my teenage life: hash, beer, boys, drama, high school dorms and grungy bongo parties filled my days and my sketchbooks. I took an art in school and love life drawing and art history but was skeptical of the badly taught, pretentious contemporary art curriculum. Still, art class and English class are what got me through high school without flunking, as I spent most class time doodling and daydreaming. After a couple of years in stretching my brains in college I finally graduated and I knew that at some point I made my parents proud of me. Paris! Big city life, freedom, weird Moroccan waiter boyfriends and circus school; being a pseudo English teacher for fancy Parisian companies where suburban secretaries would rant about their unhappy marriages in bad English; living in a bad neighborhoods and exploring dive bars and the streets of Paris on bike at night; meeting artists and musicians, good and mostly bad. The buzzing life that surrounded me was still exhilarating and stimulating. But art-making was still a confusing issue. I did manage to finish a comic or two and even publish some. But my sketchbooks were the place I had the most fun, not having to worry about all that. It wasn’t a “work”, and I drew freely, letting it all spill out.

For days I’ve been thinking about to go back to US, maybe get a job there and see what happens. I told my parents about it, my dad agreed to it although my mom is obviously against about it, but they can’t stop a dreamer from dreaming, and they said “Go on, we’ll be fine here”. As I’ve arrived in Brooklyn, N.Y. Airport I thought “I should rediscover my homeland, maybe it would somehow liberate me in all levels and solving certain identity issues, my own identity issue” and then I laugh. I almost got lost looking for 10 East 53rd Street, New York, 10022. Glad that I found myself in 52ND St. I was walking around in circles trying to find some signage and there it is, a tall building, kind of eccentric but good. The room is in minimalistic style, and liked it so much so I never moved anything. I never had much sleep in my second day in New York; I didn’t even touch my stuffs nor have some coffee. As I’ve stood up and look through the glass wall I saw a great “moon deli drew” coffee shop in front of the building that I’m staying. “What a surprise” I say. I published some more and drew a lot, feeling free and identifying some-what with the edgy, outsider, punk youth-culture in the bay area and then in New York City.

On the next day it was a bit gloomy, it’s Monday and I need to get up and get my exhausted butt to work. I think I’ll made up early at work if I’ll ride a cab so maybe there’s nothing wrong if I’ll have a little coffee first in deli. As I enjoy myself viewing the newspaper a light strikes my eyes, it was a man’s sunglasses, and it reflects the sun to me. The man was in a hurry stepping into the coffee shop, and I found my eye’s following him until he get out in the deli’s and until  he was a bit blurry from afar.

As I got in the condo from work I feel totally washed out.

“What a luck! What a gift! What a crazy existence!” and then I lay in bed

“What the hell am I doing here kvetching and moaning? I should be doing so much good stuff for the world or at least for me!” and then I stood up and look in the mirror

“Every 4 seconds, once acre of forest turns into desert and most of the world is dying…but I’m not” I sighed heavy.

“If I were to try to make my dreams come true what would I do? I can’t be an activist, some people aren’t made to deal with people I’m incapable of that” I walked to the kitchen and get some glass of vodka.

“My dreams are selfish I’d love to be a nomad and do art and make a living with it” I open the sliding glass door and I stood there in the balcony.

“Well I guess I’ll just a have a vodka and wait for the things to happen”.

I saw that man again in the Deli’s he was sitting there, having chitchat with someone. I saw him two times in a day and that could be something. “Maybe that’s the girlfriend” I say. After a minute of talk the woman left and the man was still there sitting, nodding and not moving while me, I was just there in the balcony standing, then all of a sudden…

“Lolai lolai lolai” as the gypsies sing

“Oh God I forgot I live in a gypsy neighborhood in Brooklyn” I say.

It always gets out of hand and ends up a big mess. Sometimes they annoy me so much, and the worst is that I hate being woken up. Everyone still thinks it’s the greatest neighborhood in Brooklyn because there’s always excellent gypsy music. But it’s New York City, and it’s the city that never sleeps.

On the next day at exactly 6:00 am, I stop by at Deli’s to grab some espresso. I sat at deli’s tables outside the corner and relishing every effort I drew like creeps and bumps, junkies, wing-nuts, train-riding, crusty brats and street artists then suddenly “Can I sit here?” a man said. His voice could be foghorn loud when he was blooming out a guffaw but it was normally mellifluous. It took me a second to answer; it was him, the man on deli’s, so I just nod my head. He’s so intimidating, why is that? I couldn’t make a single move. He’s eyes speaks more than his mouth, like one look would say anything and he wouldn’t have to talk.

Its half past 7 and I’m still here, my knees are quivering.

“Why am I leaving?”

“What am I gonna do after?”

“What about him?”

Like what about him? Why would I care about him? I brush off from that table immediately.

And from that day I always await for him in the balcony. By weekdays at exactly 6:00 am he would stop by carrying his briefcase at deli’s first for some café latte and a raspberry muffin, by 1:00 pm he’ll drop over with his co-workers and order a cup of espresso macchiato and by 6 pm until he’ll finish the last sip of flat white coffee it would take him an hour to leave his favorite spot in deli’s. By weekend he would be at deli’s by 10:00 am wearing casual clothes, he usually wear nifty clothes. He have this Mohican cut and as he glide with an athletic grace without skipping a bit his hair would fall perfectly. He had a manly Samson physique and his derringdo personality and bass voice were a big part of his ambitious character.

I have this part of me “nosy” and so I asked the barista at moon deli drew about the guy.

“Hey can I have some café mocha, and oh make that two!” I say.

“Two café mocha coming right up”, she said.

“The other one is for you”, I smiled.

“We don’t accept anything that comes from our own menu, but anyway thank you” she said.

“Actually I just want to know the name of the guy who always carries with him his briefcase, you know that French guy?” I say

“Oh Mr. Adam he’s not French he’s Irish” she said.

“Adam, hmm that sounds sexy” I chuckled.

At my room I always feel like I’m losing my grip, losing my touch with reality…like I’m a ghost but it kind of feels alright.

“I just want to bash my head in from time to time no biggie” I say while I’m waiting for my family to call me.

“Whattevah New Yoahk City” I say.

-telephone rang-

“So how’s Brooklyn?” My mom said.

“Good, t’was great I’m really getting to it” I say

“Well you don’t sound like, you know you can always comeback Elea” she said

“Mom please don’t start” I said.

“You can’t please everybody with your work so what’s the use trying?” she said.

“Mom I’m halfway through” I said.

“There would always be someone to criticize you and put you down” she said

“Sorry mommy, sorry to not be doing what’s best for me, but it’s just what I need, after all you did say I was on my path of truth does that include every bad choices I make?” I said

-hang up-

We quarrel sometimes, and sometimes we weep. I’m too tired trying to have a good conversation with my mom; I better leave it this way. The next morning was a sunny n’ warm day so I went for a dog run then I gave myself a punky 80’s mullet but cute haircut I hope Adam would see me now. My sketchbook was filled with “Adam Anatomy” I watch for him to walk by my glass window every single day, I woke up 5:59 in the morning so that I could exactly holdup a minute to see him pass by. I always look down waiting for him to sit on his favorite spot at moon deli drew.

The next day was a very fine day but I woke up late, it’s already 8 in the morning and I missed Adam to pass by. “Great, just great and now I have to wait for him by 1:00 pm” I said. Its 1:30 and I’d never saw an Adam walking in the 2nd avenue he’s always on time and always in a rush in daytime, but now? Hours past and I finally saw him sitting in his favorite spot. I notice that he always order a cup espresso “Espresso is not far from his personality, he’s always in a hurry and espresso is strong one it makes him to be always on the go. Maybe this man knows how to get what he wants and always on the way of getting it” I said. While I’m savouring the moment by looking at him, he lift his head and looked at the sky and then he looked at me instantly and I immediately ran inside the room and I hide in the curtains.

Today was quite a bit weird day. I never saw him in any time of the day. By the next day, I only saw him once it was Saturday and he didn’t stay long at deli’s. It’s been three weeks and still, I never had a chance to see him passing by or sitting on his favorite spot while I glance at the glass window from time to time. Days past, days turns to weeks, weeks to months, and months to year it is unmarked, except in relation to how long it will be before I’ll see you again. Alone in my room, I receive no guests, I rarely go out. Having stopped out of work, I’ve lost contacts with my friends: I’ve withdrawn from them, and they from me. My days are as long as despair can make them. I begin taking endless and exhausting walks to nowhere, just block after block into Brooklyn or over the bridge into Manhattan. I spend hours of each day sitting on a bench on the promenade, looking at the bridges over the East River, sometimes turning to consider the houses behind me, wondering in which Adam lives, if he still lives near there.

I’ve had too much fun breaking into abandoned buildings, sleeping parks, falling in love and getting my heart broke for a year. I was wild out of control, it was great. But sometimes I felt quite at home, but disillusion and decrepitude slowly replaced the awe. “I want to see you again Adam” I said while blowing my cigar. “Where could you be?” You left a heart that is tired to grow, I’m hurt, haggard, growing more and more clueless and lost, a sort of endless heartbreak and disbelief. I got screwed. How come no one warns me that all the endearing, youthful confidence, ambition and energy are just kind of wear off. The pain, the suffering, the tedium, all the crap that made me stronger, it all just helps clarify the vision of my wretched sorry horrible existence. I have my little escape methods and still, what seems to “count” is what I went through that changed me. The heavy moments without realization, I was altered and there’s no going back.

“Sweetheart?” my dad said on the phone

“Dad I’ll caught a plane back to France” I say

“What’s going on Elea?” my dad said.

“Nothing that concerns you dad” I say.

“When will you coming home?” he said

“Maybe next week” I say.

“You tell me everything that happened to you in there, okay?” he said

“Okay” I say.

I spend a lot of time in boutiques, trying on clothes I have no intention of buying, looking at myself in the dressing room mirrors. I’ve always been drawn to mirrors, not out of vanity but for re assurance. I’m in there, and I don’t resist any reflective surface-puddles, and shop windows. As I look outside the glass window of the boutique a light strikes my eyes, it was a man’s sun glass he pass by across the street from that boutique. I instantly follow the guy until I was out from the place, he was heading straight off to moon deli drew and knew it was him, it was Adam. His wrestler’s shoulders were part of his burly physique. His gap year clothes always made him appear younger than his years. The swirl of his cologne had me swooning in the aisles. “It’s been a year, and we never had a conversation maybe by now I could say something” I say while I’m following him.

There he was sitting on his favorite spot. His Irish mariner-blue eyes were soft and swam with joy, it is orb round with gleam and delight. I want to get close to him, but as I got nearer a woman just pop in the scene, a winsome type, voluptuous and so fine that every man would drop dead. I was knock off for a minute, they we’re happy and so I should be for him. I turned back and walk away, deep down in me was hurt and a part of me was gratified after seeing him again. I don’t know what’s got into me that I walk back to my track, I just thought that “I’ve waited for him, I’ve been wondering for a year about where could he might be, and now? I just want to hear something from him,

“Am I making myself look loony?” I said

“Hi” I said

“Uhm hello, do I know you?” Adam said.

“No but I know you” I said

“Have we met before?” he said

“Who is she?” the girl asked.

“I know this would sound so weird but…” I said.

“What do you want? I think your lost sweetheart” the girl said.

“Let her speak Talia” Adam said.

“Am I missing something here? Is there something that I didn’t know?” she said

“Talia please just let her talk” he said

I ran away from their table, I ran as if I was being chased. Did I just embarrass myself? I think I just made myself look stupid in front of them.

Days past, my remaining stay in Brooklyn is soon will end. I have let go all that pressure of living up. I don’t really expect much from myself as art-wise, maybe in a few drawings. Maybe if I’ll go back to France I can figure out all the abnormality, perversion and zaniness onto paper.

Dear Adam,

Since I’d never had a chance to talk to you this letter might be a good one to start. I’m Elea by the way, I know you don’t know me but your eyes consume me, eyes that see me but never know me. I summon the oceans to drown every pain since I never saw you coming to “moon deli drew” and that sleep is where I hide. I guess I’ll learn to take the good with bad, I’ve been waiting for you to pass by my glass window and that I’m fleeting from this truth but I can’t flee indefinitely. I don’t really have an idea why I ended up in New York but it leads me to you, It's just that when the truth is like a stranger, it hits you right between the eyes. I guess I’ll just go back from where I should be. These nowhere's and no times are the only home I have. Je te regardrais toujours, meme si tu es telement hors d’atteinte.

All my love,

Elea

[twiststreet]

Supermensch (2013): I’d really enjoyed Tim Ferriss’s podcast interview with Shep Gordon so I watched the documentary that Mike Myers had made about him, which starts as being a documentary about rock and roll in the 60′s and how Alice Cooper built his career, with the help of his manager Shep Gordon and then evolves from there into this story about rock ‘n roll back before it died, the rise of celebrity chefs, and ultimately kind of becomes more about fulfillment, a meditation on fulfillment and how elusive fulfillment is.  

Gordon’s story is just ... it’s just an interesting bunch of stories to me-- celebrity was so important at one point, to how things worked, whereas now ... it probably still is important, but the mechanics of it seem a little different.  You know: there are people on Twitch that get rained on with money everytime they pick up an x-box controller, or podcasters out selling mattresses, or Youtube people with millions of views or whatever-- are they all famous?  I don’t know.  Especially with music since ... being a famous musician right now just seems like it doesn’t mean anything at all.  Not compared to the 20th century anyways. 

Or it’s funny seeing a documentary about the era of celebrities I grew up with or who just preceded me I guess, because you just look at it and there’s just some bad people in this movie. There’s a Mario Batali scene at one point in this documentary-- you couldn’t really do that one anymore.  At one point, he talks about hanging out with Roman Polanski or there’s a shot of Bill Cosby and... The documentary was made in 2013, and it’s already got some uncomfortable shit in there! Or they talk a lot about how horny Gordon is and how he dated Peak Sharon Stone (i.e. Total Recall Sharon Stone) and how he chased girls... It’s all very uncritical, which on the one hand, is very noticable and pretty hard to miss and hard not to think they might be missing an important part of the story (especially being around rock ‘n roll in the 60′s on-- god only knows what that guy’s seen), but on the other hand, if I wanted to be some joyless prude kindergarten teacher, tsk-tsk-ing everything ever, I’d get a twitter account-- hard pass. I don’t know, though.  It’s funny how that part of show business or celebrity or whatever you want to call it has gotten all weird and fucking messy too, though.  

But directed by Mike Myers, who’s been on my mind lately, though I have no earthly idea why.  It’s weird Mike Myers just stopped being very prolific. He had such a string of characters-- he had a bunch of one-liners that really dug into people’s heads, and then ... he had that meltdown with the Dieter movie, bombed with The Love Guru, and then he just kind of stopped. He shows up in a Tarantino movie or whatever, weird little supporting roles, now and then, but.  And no one really chases after him or pesters him about it...? That’s the funny bit-- how quickly people were just like “fine go then” and he’s like “i’m gone” and they’re like “so go,” et cetera. Anyways, Myers does a decent job with the documentary-- or he tries a lot of stuff, so it’s endearing at least-- you can tell he’s trying at least.  That said, Mike Myers created all these huge comedies but for comic relief in his documentary?  Cut to Tom Arnold.  Who blathers about cocaine and just generally kills because of course he does.

[natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk]

Seiyuu Challenge (#1+2): Favourite and Least Favourite Male Seiyuu

Least Favourite?

I’ll start by saying that I don’t have a least favourite. I just have a lot of seiyuu that I don’t like as much as the rest of you like. Those ones will be revealed in question [blank].

Favourite?

We’re going to be doing this in the form of a top fifteen list.

I’m going to try to put a “keep reading” line because this is SUPER DUPER LONG. This took me quite a while to complete, and I’m too lazy to proofread, so whatever happens happens.

Honourable Mentions:

Takehito Koyasu 

(the hate for him transcends animation; no gif of Takehito Koyasu on Tumblr)

Here’s to the guy who almost always gets cast as the villain. Seriously, his voice suits it too well. He even looks like an action-movie villain in real life. Some people are just born with a resting villain face I guess. But he’s not just that, he has played a nun, Deadpool (for Japanese dubs), and Excalibur from Soul Eater. All his other roles are mostly villainous stuff though in things like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Gintama, Re:Zero, and others. I still need to watch a lot more of his stuff. He is the voice behind the infamous Dio. I think that’s enough to get him onto this list.

Roles | Singing

Kenichi Suzumura

(Maaya Sakamoto and Kenichi Suzumura would make a god-tier kid)

I know him best for playing Okita from Gintama. Okita is a great character though who I know will get a lot of development moving forward in Gintama. He also surprised me in Osomatsu-san since he was responsible for the “SHEEEEEEH”. He won an award for that too. Hikaru from Ouran Host Club was a role that surprised me a little because he wasn’t expected to be a love interest from my perspective. Speaking of love interest, I may be a bit bias towards him because he has a really cute relationship with one of my favourite seiyuu Maaya Sakamoto. They also acted in the Kara no Kyoukai franchise together where they took on the two main characters. If it wasn’t for that movie’s timeline (eight movies, all out of order), I might’ve finished it. I love his work in Honeyworks. He’s good at singing, and I plan on watching more of his stuff in the future (especially D. Grayman)!

Roles | Singing | The Full 1080p “SHEEEH” Experience

Toshiyuki Toyonaga

(The news that he had a child surfaced a while ago. Congrats to him!)

He just won the best lead actor award at the Seiyuu Awards a few months ago for his performance in Yuri On Ice, and he fully deserves it. He’s a talented musician, and he has such a soft-toned voice at times that can go to really deep in a matter of seconds. I haven’t seen him in shows like Free, SAO, Tokyo Ghoul Root A, Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Karneval, or Code: Breaker, but I have seen him in Yuri on Ice where he exceeded my expectations and definitely deserved that award (his speech was great too). He played Mikado who was a fun unexpectedly interesting character  in Durarara, he shocked me in Zetsuen no Tempest where he Mahiro Fuwa who I didn’t like, he had an appearance in Bungou Stray Dogs as Tanizaki, he was Takeru in Kamigami no Asobi, and I really liked his role in Kimi to Boku as Shun Matsuoka (I really liked that anime in general).

Roles | Singing | Bonus: Seiyuu Award Speech, “Day You Laugh” Durarara OP, Zetsuen no Tempest Duet (ft. Kouki Uchiyama)

Daisuke Ono

(He looks like he forgot the rest of his lines)

He either gets those roles like Sebastian from Black Butler where he’s smooth and charismatic, or he gets those roles like Shizuo from Durarara where he’s the rugged thug. He is the fifth sextuplet in the notorious Osomatsu-san. Jyushimatsu is the loudest of the six, but he has the best episode in the entire show. If I remember correctly, I think it’s the second half of episode nine (I watched this a year ago). He has his own little episode where he falls in love, and it was nice to watch. My favourite roles from him personally are Sinbad from Magi, Shizuo from Durarara, and Handa from Barakamon. All of those anime were really enjoyable, and my favourites wouldn’t be the same without his voice.

Roles | Singing | Bonus: Kokkuri, “When you’re left with everyone’s bill” (Seiyuu Event Subbed), Barakamon (Highlights), Magi (Sinbad Highlights)

Ryouhei Kimura

After watching Silver Spoon and Kids on the Slope, I just had to include him here. I first knew Ryouhei Kimura for playing Judar from Magi, and even though he did well playing the heavy eyeshadow magi, when he takes the spotlight as a really well-developed character, it makes it that much better. After watching him in shows like Gekkan Shoujo, Akame Ga Kill, Tokyo Ravens, Kimi to Boku, Grand Blue, that BNHA OVA with the zombies, I can say that he earned the spot on his list.

Roles | Singing | Silver Spoon clip (WARNING: CONTAINS COW BIRTH)

Miyu Irino

(This whole thing is quite extra and overdramatic, isn’t it?)

His role in A Silent Voice left me shocked. Saori Hayami and his performance blew my expectations. They are both really talented individuals, and that movie was packed with feels. Even though I like Saori better, I think he deserves a place here. Sugawara from Haikyuu reminds me of a mom, and I think that’s kind of common. He gives the character a kindhearted voice (with a few exceptional moments). Todomatsu is another sextuplet in Osomatsu. I mention this show often because it’s really crazy. I can’t say I would recommend it to everyone, but the seiyuu definitely make the show funny at times. Ritsu Kageyama from Mob Psycho 100 is a character that is one of my favourite in the show because he is such a relatable person who just gets a little lost at times. And I’ve got to say that Miyu portrayed him well. I enjoyed that show a lot. Jintan from Anohana continues to be a show that I remember because it gave me the feels. I won’t get deeper into that because of spoilers and digging up old wounds and feels. But to end on a lighter note, if you like Osomatsu, I recommend checking out Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou because it has a hilarious cast in a bunch of sketches that can be quite funny.

Roles | Singing | Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou “RPG Quest”, Koe no Katachi SPOILERS

Jun Fukuyama 

(You can see the moment the failure seeps his soul)

Koro-sensei and Lelouch would not be the same without him. He has given these two characters life. He was Souta Takanashi in Working!!, Ichimatsu from Osomatsu, Shinra from Durarara, Yukio from Blue Exorcist, and King from The Seven Deadly Sins. I recently watched him as the Dark Flame Master-- I mean Yuuta Togashi. The way his voice went from Dark Flame Master to Yuuta was funny even if it wasn’t realistic for a first-year high schooler. Same goes for Nura Rise of the Yokai Clan (which I haven’t finished). Bundo from Deadman Wonderland was fun to watch since he was a twist that I probably should’ve seen coming. Kassim from Magi is one character that I will never forget from him though because that backstory was sad, but his character along with Yuki Kaji’s performance really laid out one of the most exciting parts of season one of Magi.

Roles | Singing Compilation | Ichimatsu Compilation (Season One), Koro Sensei’s Weak Points

Satoshi Hino

I first saw him as Sai in Naruto, but since then, he has been in so many anime that I’ve seen as all types of characters. He’s Kineshi Hairo in Saiki, Ash Landers in Black Butler, Momonga in Overlord, Emil in Yuri On Ice, Akito Takagi in Bakuman, Daichi in Haikyuu, Shinku from Yowamushi Pedal, and the renowned Tomoda from Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (the real MVP and hero we do not deserve). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m looking forward to watching him as Kamui in Gintama.

Roles | Singing

Top Fifteen

15. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka

Despite being one of the most sought-after harem seiyuu, I can say that I don’t watch any of those. I haven’t watched The Pet Girl of Sakurasou or Food Wars or that Dungeon anime. I watched him as Sora in No Game No Life, but I didn’t like that anime. I put him on this list because of his smaller roles that I see him on. Titus from Magi is a perfect example. He may not get the most screen time, but when he’s on, he does a wonderful job playing his characters. His range is outstanding from playing the infamous Kirito to a crazy monster to an alleyway cat that got stuck (if you’re curious, watch Saiki). He also made me laugh quite a bit as Lubbock from Akame Ga Kill. Ah, that anime is just a tragedy. But speaking of tragedy, he apparently has a tough time talking to the people he works with which I relate to. Especially when he does harems (which have a lot of girls), you really can’t blame him. Plus, they make fun of him too. 

Roles (This one is a little longer, but it includes extras and everything) | Singing  

14. Toshiyuki Morikawa

I first saw him as Minato in Naruto, but I didn’t realize how prolific he was until I watched him play a wide range of characters from the villain Boro in One Punch Man to the crazy priest Azuma in Deadman Wonderland. He has such a calm and soothing voice too. This is especially apparent in Magi where he plays Ugo. He has so many miscellaneous characters in so many anime, and I just like his voice in general. 

Roles | Singing

13. Akira Ishida

(This is almost the only gif??)

He has said that he turns down a lot of roles now, but he has still done so many. He is Katsura in Gintama. That in itself is enough to land him on this list. Katsura is one of my favourite characters in Gintama. Name a more iconic duo than him and Elizabeth. Exactly, it’s impossible. He’s also Gaara from Naruto which is where I first saw him. Yunan from Magi is a polar opposite. He’s such a mysterious kind soul. He has been in Danganronpa, the Fate series, Mirai Nikki, Fairy Tail, Kekkai Sensen, Parasyte, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Evangelion, and so many other shows. He’s been around since the 80s, so it’s really no surprise that he is in so many shows. His voice is so versatile that it’s almost scary. He inspired Aoi Shouta to become a seiyuu too because he was a “beautiful woman with a beautiful voice”.

Roles | Bonus: One Man, Seven Voices, Katsura Raps, Trivia

12. Sakurai Takahiro

He plays too many characters to count, and like Akira Ishida and Satoshi Hino, he has been around for a long time. He has characters that I’ve hated, loved, and wanted to “accidentally” push onto the road for them to get hit by a truck. I’ve watched him as the leader of Osomatsu-san who is just too insane for works, Fitzgerald from Bungou Stray Dogs who probably doesn’t know how it feels to be broke, Suzaku from Code Geass who I liked and hated at the same time, Yukiatsu from Anohana who you can’t help but pity, Jafar in Magi ho made me laugh lots, Arataka from Mob Psycho 100 who made me laugh so much with his antics, and Sakurai from (one of my more recently finished anime) Net-juu no Susume. He’s also kind of funny to watch in Ad-Live, but there aren’t any clips of that.

Roles | Singing | Bonus: Cringy Pick-up Lines, Anohana Festival, Osomatsu

11. Kensho Ono

I first saw him as Hakuryuu from Magi where he gave a great performance. He’s a talented singer as well as a stage actor. But besides Magi, I’ve liked his role in A Silent Voice where he plays Tomohiro (who is just such a precious character). His role as Akutagawa in Bungou Stray Dogs eventually did grow on me as I got used to him being the edgy, scarcely eyebrowed Port Mafia member. But one of the most standout characters I’ve watched from him (besides Hakuryuu and Akutagawa) is Arata Kaizaki from ReLife. He seems like a useless NEET that couldn’t stand the world at first, but then we find out that he’s a useless NEET who couldn’t handle the really tough world. But in all seriousness, he’s a character that seems really bland at first, and now that I’ve finished it, I can say that he gets some development that makes you realize that he might be that same average guy, but the plot and the people surrounding him make things really interesting. Kensho Ono is also a part of Ad-Live.

Roles | Singing | ReLife Clip, Magi Clip 

10. Kaito Ishikawa

(I just read a fake article about how he was attacked with shuriken during a home invasion. Fake articles are wild.)

I know Kaito Ishikawa for playing characters in a lot of new shows. A lot of the roles are the ones that I haven’t watched, and some roles were a miss because the anime was a miss (Tokyo Ravens wasn’t excruciatingly bad, but even with the good cast, they couldn’t save a lot of its flaws.) Some people didn’t like Zankyou no Terror, but I still enjoy it. The performances were quite strong even with the cringy “Engrish”, and the music was phenomenal. His portrayal of the colder part of the duo “Sphinx” was one of the highlights of the show. Kouto from Noragami didn’t get too much of a chance to show what he’s truly capable of (since they ended it when his role was becoming more apparent). And even though his time on Bungou Stray Dogs was short, I certainly enjoyed the time that we got to see his character Rokuzou. Kageyama from Haikyuu is a great main character from him. He’s such good friends with Hinata’s seiyuu Ayumu Murase, and he’s so involved in the My Hero Academia cast as Iida Tenya (as we’ve seen from many of the highlights of the cast). His role as Iida was really good especially during the Hero Killer arc. His role as Genos had me laughing a lot of the time even though it’s ironic because he was a very stiff serious character. I hope to see him a lot more in the future.

Roles | Singing

9. Junichi Suwabe

(I relate to this too much because I don’t know where I am unless I’m inside my house)

His role as Aizawa-sensei made him too relatable. I’ve seen several pictures of him cosplaying as his characters which I have massive respect for. His role as Viktor in Yuri On Ice has probably wooed a lot of fangirls, but what stands out the most for me (besides Aizawa) is his role as Odasaku in Bungou Stray Dogs. That performance left me shaken up (especially from the storyline), and I’m sure a lot of Bungou Stray Dogs fans feel the same way. That scream near the end of the arc sent chills. He is also in a bunch of other things that I haven’t watched from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Kuroko no Basket, Black Butler, Fate, Food Wars, Nana, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Space Dandy, and a few others. I have watched him in some supporting roles like Jamil from Magi (that was a great three episodes where he appeared as a spoiled rich guy), Jae-ha from Akatsuki no Yona, Freed from Fairy Tail, Juuzou from Danganronpa, and Junichi (yes, Junichi) from Sakamichi no Apollon. That was rollercoaster of a role, but his singing was so good.

Roles | Singing

8. Tomakazu Sugita

You would think that with a voice like that he would be voicing a lot more serious characters. I guess that’s because I first watched him as Karasuma in Assassination Classroom. In reality, he’s a real jokester (especially when around Yuuichi Nakamura). His role in Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou was funny. It was thirteen episodes of craziness, and it features many of the regulars from Gintama. Speaking of Gintama, the reason why he’s on this part of the list is quite simple. Gintoki. If you’ve watched Gintama, you’d know that Gintoki is such a vibrant character with so much dick jokes and screaming that you really can’t imagine anyone else playing him. I say this as a compliment when I say that he yells just as much as Nobuhiko Okamoto. Just watching Gintama mentally strains your vocal cords. 

Roles | Singing | Bonus: “Voice Acting Meme”, Gintoki Exclusive, Yukana helping out Sugita, Sugita x Nakamura (Seiyuu’s Little Forest)

7. Mamoru Miyano

I know everyone knows him for voicing Light from Death Note, but I haven’t watched that anime (don’t judge me, please). His evil laugh was good though. Speaking of other characters I haven’t watched from him, there’s also Rin Matsuoka from Free, Kiba from Wolf’s Rain, Lucifer from Hunter x Hunter, or Konoha from Mekakucity Actors. There’s probably a bunch more too, but let’s get to the stuff that I have seen. He has been around for so long, and his best characters are the types that appear goofy on the surface but have inner anguish and more depth to their personality. Dazai Osamu from Bungou Stray Dogs is such a character, and he’s the main reason why he’s high on this list. Dazai is such a funny weirdo. Kida Masaomi from Durarara is kind of like Dazai in an odd way too, and I don’t just mean his voice. He has humour that seems to hide something... or maybe that’s just me. Okabe from Steins;Gate (even though I haven’t watched that anime in its entirety) and Ling Yao also seems to keep up this trend. Shuu Tsukiyama from Tokyo Ghoul is just crazy though. It was fun to watch though. He brings so much fun to the characters, yet when they finally show a more vulnerable side to themselves, he still portrays them well. Not to mention, he has a great sense of humour and an awesome singing voice.

Roles | Singing  

6. Hiroshi Kamiya

He’s way too easy to identify. Honestly, the first role I remember him for is probably Otonashi from Angel Beats. That gave me a bit of feels too, so I had to mention that. Besides that, he has had too many other notable roles, but I’ll try to mention a few supporting roles: Takeda from Haikyuu, Mephisto from Blue Exorcist, Araragi from Monogatari, and Ranpo Edogawa from Bungou Stray Dogs. Some roles I want to expand on are Natsume from Natsume’s Book of Friends. His chemistry with Kazuhiko Inoue is great, and they make for such an entertaining show. Izaya from Durarara is insane and neurotic, but he seems like a character with so many underlying insecurities. I haven’t watched the full series (only the first two seasons), but I still remember them (whether it’s because I hate him or not). Levi is a badass that I’m sure a lot of people know from Attack on Titan. He’s proof that short guys like me have a chance. Choromatsu is just crazy. He’s the most productive out of his siblings, but that’s like saying he’s the tallest among dwarves (shout-out to Veronica Sawyer for that quote). With that being said, my best role from him is easily Yato from Noragami. The cast of Noragami is strong, and he is the protagonist. He has so many funny moments and maybe serious ones as well. I could go on all day how he does a good job voicing Yato, but I’ll just leave it at that.

Roles | Singing

5. Yuuki Kaji

He truly does have the voice of a main character. Sometimes his voice is a bit too recognizable for me, and sometimes I think that he does get some roles that don’t fit him as well as I’d like, but I think that’s more up to the casting director than Yuki Kaji. I didn’t like his portrayal in Ao Haru Ride and found it really cringy. A lot of the other anime I don’t like him in is because I don’t like the anime in general. Diabolik Lovers, Guilty Crown, and High School DxD are a few examples of that. Besides that, he has had many outstanding performances. His roles as Takami from Deadman Wonderland and Ayato Kirishima from Tokyo Ghoul were okay. Eren from Attack on Titan which just from the clips I watched were epic and emotional. The amount of strain you can feel for his vocal cords (especially considering that he takes hours for a single episode). Yukine from Noragami was not liked by many at the beginning, but I actually really liked this character, and he portrayed his hardship really well. Todoroki from My Hero Academia sounds like a complete badass. And even though he’s really stoic, he had made me laugh as the “Hand-crusher”. Sonic from One Punch Man made me laugh a few times (RIP his nuts). Shion was great, and his chemistry with Nezumi (Hosoya Yoshimasa) is almost touching. When he got bitten by the wasp, I felt bad for him. This anime does not get the credit it deserves as a nice post-apocalyptic anime). But above all, my favourite role is Alibaba from Magi. I read the manga (slowly but still), and I still hear him doing Alibaba’s voice. He nails the character’s strength, goofiness, positivity, and his overall personality. I’m looking forward to watching Kouichi from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Soramaru from Donten ni Warau.

Roles | Singing | Bonus: Kaji100 Staff, An Interesting Conversation with Hiro Shimono, Slippers

4. Yuuichi Nakamura

Okay, so maybe he has had a few questionable roles that I won’t bring up, but we’re going to ignore those for now. I first saw him playing Gray from Fairy Tail, but I later saw him portraying Nozaki from Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun which made me laugh more than it should have. I haven’t watched Clannad yet (partially because I still want my soul intact), but from the funny clips I’ve seen, he certainly does a good job playing Tomoya. Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Sanada from Kimi ni Todoke (who I relate to on a personal level because names just don’t stick in my mind), Ren Kouen, and that dude on a bike from One Punch Man are his other notable roles I’ve seen in the past. But for the most recent ones I’ve seen, Sweetness and Lightning and Poco Udon’s World are two anime that I just finished. They are both very similar, and they bring out his fatherly side which he even said himself cleanses his soul a little. Sure, he has a lot of not-so-family-friendly-or-morally-right-roles, but he also has a lot of good ones too. A lot of these recently watched shows have given me a lot more respect for him too. I actually watched his full Ad-Live performance (only one of them since he has been a part of a bunch), and the fact that he was able to put up with the costumes, ridiculous lines, and everything else also brought him into a new light. Seriously, he was stuck acting as a moving truck guy who’s a robot.

Roles | Singing | Ad-Live: Download link (Subbed by Anokoe)

3. Kouki Uchiyama

Let’s just skip Raku from Nisekoi. I didn’t like it. But onto the good roles. Hiroshi from Barakamon is a supporting character who doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time, but when he does, he certainly provides a lot of laughs. Tsukishima from Haikyuu is a character to rival the king of the court himself. Yuri(o) from Yuri on Ice is so edgy and butthurt all the time. He’s a salty ballerina, and his fans are supposedly very motherly which is fitting since he’s going through teenage angst. Takumi from Anthem of the Heart is a role I wasn’t expecting to like, but he actually kind of pulled it off. Shout-out to Hosoya for telling him about the movie! Gin from Hotarubi no Mori e is a role that brought me feels. If you haven’t watched it, you really should. Akira from Devilman: Crybaby is a role that was too intense for me to get through. It was an extremely demanding role which is kind of funny because he thought he was going to end up as Ryo. Tomura Shigaraki from My Hero Academia (I call him “The Man Who Needs a Hand”) is another one of my favourite roles from him because he has such a creepy aura thanks to character design and his voice. Soul from Soul Eater (who I like despite not being original). I really want to see more roles from him (preferably edgy).

Roles | Singing: Honeyworks (Vocaloid cover ft. Nobunaga Shimazaki), Zetsuen no Tempest Insert Song (ft. Toshiyuki Toyonaga) | Bonus: Yurio “HAAAA” Compilation, Horror Movies (ft. Ryouhei Kimura and Nobuhiko Okamoto)

2. Yoshimasa Hosoya

Some people are just not like the people they portray on-screen. Number two and one are just like that. Here, we have a guy who usually plays brash characters actually being a timid softy whose backbone seems to be made of silly putty. I’m going to try to name a few of his roles that I’ve liked without drowning this whole post. Tokoyami from My Hero Academia whose quiet darkness I really respect especially with these new episodes. We need to see more of him! Asahi from Haikyuu who is the closest to him personality-wise that we will ever see. Daiki from Anthem of the Heart whose ending shocked me. Masmur from Magi who’s an underrated character. Braun from Attack on Titan who I know is a titan, and that shouldn’t count as a spoiler because everyone knows that by now. Saiki from WWW.Working whose his English wasn’t as bad as some shows. Seriously, Hosoya took an exam for English proficiency. He’s not that bad. In terms of outstanding roles, Nezumi from No.6 who is one of my favourite openly gay characters. He’s a badass, and along with Shion, they are an iconic duo in an anime that I found really enjoyable. Kunikida Doppo from Bungou Stray Dogs is the Armed Detective Agency’s soccer mom. He is responsible, keeps his ideals in check, and deserves happiness and a nap. 

Roles | Singing Compilation | Bonus: “Ghost Story” (First 5 minutes), Guess the Profile (ft. Yoko Hikasa), Inu x Boku Radio

1. Nobuhiko Okamoto

This is a bit of an odd choice comparing to the usual popularity polls, but hear me out. This dude has range. He shares my love for sweets and chocolate. He does all kinds of crazy characters. He can voice the angry Katsuki Bakugou from My Hero Academia whose screams a lot. Let’s be real, he is not what we expected when we heard “Hero”. Some of his scenes can send chills down spines. The charismatic Karma from Assassination Classroom is another kind of crazy. He is quite popular in the series, and he has this personality that makes people scared and allured by him. Even in an anime I didn’t like, Juuni Taisen, he did an amazing job portraying the flamboyant crazy Usagi who only kills in fabulous stilettos, suspenders, and bunny ears. He voiced the best version of Obi in Akagami no Shirayuki with his laid-back attitude and confidence. I guess that’s why he’s cast for Otome games? Anyway, Obi was probably my favourite character from that anime, and he was just such a likeable dork who’s going to lose out in the end. Poor secondary love interest. Speaking of likeable, Rin from Blue Exorcist was fun to watch. Not for the story or anything (since that was lacking at times), Nobu provided a performance that was really enjoyable. He nails Nishinoya’s energetic personality in Haikyuu (”ROLLING THUNDAAAAA”), and he does a good job with Mikorin’s bashfulness and awkwardness in Gekkan Shoujo. Honestly, Mikoshiba is my favourite character in Gekkan Shoujo along with Seo who’s a legend. I haven’t watched Taoru Kagaku no Railgun, but Accelerator looks like such a fun character who I would like. Too bad I couldn’t get myself to like that anime.

Roles | Singing Compilation | Bonus Runniart Compilation Video 

[pigsonthewingpdx]

We may become enslaved by our equipment, volume 3:  bass

Pink Floyd’s music is a lot of things to a lot of people, but bass virtuosity is not typically one of them.  Good thing.   Roger Waters’ driving, deceptively simple style was the perfect counterpoint to David Gilmour’s expansive guitar work - and it’s hard to imagine Pink Floyd being what they are with a face-full of funk approach to bass.  Interestingly enough, it’s probably rock’s worst kept secret that Waters doesn’t even play bass on a number of classic Floyd tracks, particularly in the later years - leaving that to either Gilmour or session musicians.

Roger Waters - Live at Pompeii

As far as tribute bands go - it might be easy to understand why a guitarist would want to perform in Pigs on the Wing -  living all the rock glories, as they say,  of playing some of the most iconic riffs and solos in history.  But what about bass guitar?  Here’s a Q and A with Pigs on the Wing bassist Eric Welder to shed a little light on this and the tools he uses to capture the Pink Floyd bass sound.

POTW: First off, what's it like being the bass player in a Pink Floyd tribute band ?  Roger Waters isn't typically regarded as a legendary bassist in the way that Gilmour was regarded as a guitarist - what's the attraction to being in the band ?

EW: Well, for the most part I've had a lot of fun being a part of this project...sure the bass parts aren't typically as highly regarded as Gilmour's guitar parts and while Waters isn't considered a technical “bass master” he is credited with being an incredibly prolific songwriter.  I think that the strength and uniqueness of the source material certainly factors in as a primary attraction musically to me; I've been listening to Pink Floyd probably since I was in grade school and it's been really fun digging down into and dissecting all these songs that I've always considered to be influential to me.  Further, I've been able to explore and perform this material with people that I've come to regard as sort of an extended family, so being a part of that comfortable environment certainly appeals to me as well.

Eric Welder - POTW bassist - performing in Portland, OR in 2015.

POTW: Tell us about the basses you use to recreate the Floyd sounds.   Do you play a fretless ?   How does your rig differ from Waters'  - and why ?

EW: The main bass I use is a Korean-made 24 fret 5-string Fender Jazz Bass. It's one of the few Fender models that features a 24 fret neck, which I tend to favor due to the extended higher range, and the active/passive on-board pre-amp gives me a lot of versatility in dialing in tones (I pretty much always use the passive option for Floyd).  I do have a fretless as well, which I'll use on some songs from time to time (Hey You in particular).  It's kind of a “FrankenFender”; consists of a Fender Jazz Bass Body, a Warwick neck, hipshot tuners, Bartolini pickups, and active/passive electronics.  Waters primarily uses a Fender P Bass, which tend to have a bit thicker neck, shorter scale, and a split coil pickup rather than the dual single coil found on the J Bass (although he's been known to play a Rickenbacker as well, at least early on).  I suppose he uses the P Bass because it's a comfortable fit for him; I've only owned one P Bass in my time and I just never really jived with it.

POTW: What about effects ?   What are the most important effects pedals on your pedalboard ? How do you use them in the context of songs ?

EW: Hmmm.  Most important - tuner? Seriously though, I use my effects pretty sparingly; I'd say the one that gets the most use is the Big Muff Distortion Pedal.  That being said, there are some signature effects in many of the songs (the Phase sound in Sheep, the Tremolo in One of These Days, etc.) so I do have some effects pedals to emulate those sounds on the records.  The pedals I use are all digital versions of the analog effects used on a lot of the original songs so while not an exact tonal match they get the job done.

Eric’s pedal board set up circa 2018

POTW: What the hell is going on effects-wise in One of the These Days ?

EW: Well, in the original it started with both Gilmour and Waters each tracking the bass parts panned L and R in the studio and then patching them though an early delay box called an Echorec.  The middle part was created with some boutique amp with a built-in vibrato and dialing in some tweaked out settings in the preamp.  To sort of emulate those sounds I use the high pass filter on my Big Muff pedal to give the bass a nice treble-y bite to it, and then use a digital delay pedal with the timing set to generate quarter-note/eighth note triplets.  For the bridge section I use a tremolo pedal set to a square wave at full depth; I try to match the rate to the same time as the delay.  I try to put both those pedals close together so I can trigger them both at the same time (turn the delay off and the tremolo on for the bridge).  It's definitely a lot different sonically from the album version or any of the live versions but I feel like this setup adequately captures the overall spirit and energy of the song.

Eric on stage during POTW’s The Wall tour 2017

POTW: How about amps ?   What's your main amp setup look like these days ?  Do you mic your cab live or use a DI ?

EW: I've used an SVT 4-Pro amp for nearly 20 years along with an Epifani UL2 4x10 cabinet.  So I guess all in all my rig isn't too far off of from what Roger uses these days (he's sponsored by Ampeg and uses the SVT 6-Pro with Ampeg 4x10 cabs), Be that as it may, I generally just dial in my own tones rather than try to emulate his.  The bass parts in most of the Pink Floyd canon are fairly subdued and they typically don't get the hardcore scrutiny that Gilmour's guitar parts do.  As far as a setup goes - the SVT 4-Pro actually has 2 amps built in to it, I run it in a Mono-Bridge mode which basically combines the power of both of them; this way I can run up to 1000W into the Epifani, which gives me plenty of headroom for stage volume if need-be.  Typically, I run a DI signal off of an Ampeg DI pedal on my pedalboard through to the mains; although occasionally if the sound engineer prefers they will sometimes mic the cab as well and use a blend of the 2 signals.  Most of the sound engineers we've come to work with over the years are great at what they do so I trust them to dial in a great bass sound for the room; I don't get too hung up on getting that “cabinet” sound.  That being said I do have a fair amount of tonal control on my pedalboard if for some reason I feel like I need to boost/cut something in the room, but I usually leave all that pretty well alone and defer to the engineer who usually has a much better spot in the room.

Eric’s SVT-4 Pro amp rack

POTW: What's the most fun Floyd song to play on bass ?

EW: There's quite a few I  enjoy playing, but if I had to pick a favorite I'd have to say Pigs – Three Different Ones off of Animals.  I think the fact that's it's a little more of a technical bass-driven piece (probably due to the fact Gilmour played bass on that so it's almost more like a guitar part) and it's got such well developed sections and just a great groove to it.  I always love playing that one.

[android-for-life]

"Web Creator Spotlight | Stuart Schuffman"

Stuart Schuffman, a.k.a. Broke-Ass Stuart, is a globetrotting superblogger who has built his brand around the idea that you don’t actually need tons of money to enjoy yourself. Since the early 2000s he’s made it his mission to uncover hidden gems in his hometown of San Francisco and in cities like New York, San Diego, Detroit, Austin, and all over Europe as a longtime stringer for the backpacker’s bible, “Lonely Planet.” 

Over the years Stuart has published a handful of top-selling urban adventure guides dedicated to “busboys, poets, social workers, students, artists, musicians, magicians, mathematicians, maniacs, yodelers, and everyone else out there who wants to enjoy life not as a rich person, but as a real person.”

But to call Stuart a travel writer is to sell him short. He’s a web creator—a TV show host, marketer, social media manager, editor, writer, and publisher all wrapped into one. 

Launched in 2009, his website Brokeassstuart.com has grown from a local’s guide to metropolitan hotspots into a cultural force with an editorial staff covering politics, news, music, arts, and culture in the Bay Area and beyond. Even more impressive is the fact that Stuart still serves as the “Editor In Cheap” of his website while simultaneously writing and producing comedy shorts, live shows, and independent series that follow up where his show “Young, Broke, and Beautiful,” which aired on IFC in the early 2010s, left off.

“Life is an art project for me,” he says. But it’s also a job. And that’s where things get interesting.

We talked with Stuart to hear how he learned to navigate the ever-evolving landscape web creators face today.

So tell us ... what makes a web creator? What does your average day look like, etc?

It’s anyone dumb enough to plug away, day in and day out, over something they love and that they want to share with other people. I say “dumb” because it’s a terrible way to make a living, but if that’s not your main concern, it’s incredibly fulfilling on pretty much all other levels. 

As for my average day: things have been really topsy-turvy since COVID hit. Over 50 percent of our income dried up overnight so lately it’s been a lot of trying to figure out creative ways to fund this thing. I mean, I guess that’s how I spent much of my time before but, now it’s even more dire. 

Otherwise though, a typical day sees me: editing and publishing other people’s work, writing articles, doing social media for the content we create, doing sales, marketing, and business development, and answering a titanic amount of email. The thing about running your own independent media company is that my partner and I have to do about 30 different jobs. But at least I don't have some jerk boss I gotta deal with so it’s mostly worth it. 

Can you tell us a bit about your schedule? How do you get into the flow? What inspires you on a day to day basis and gets your creative energy flowing?

I give myself like an hour or so in the morning to watch Netflix while I slowly wake up. That way I’m ready to work without feeling rushed when I get down to it. As for inspiration, I’m always floored and inspired by the awesome content being created by our writers and editors. They make me so proud that I get to publish their voices. In fact, that’s one of the things I like best about what I do, I get to amplify voices that don’t always get heard.

Otherwise though, I get most excited when I’m creating new things. Life is an art project for me. Just in the past five years or so, I created and hosted seven episodes of a live late night show, put out a web series, won “best local website” a couple times, put out a zine, and ran for Mayor of SF. I’m working on some cool new projects right now that are still under wraps.

You’re super prolific! Can you describe your journey a bit? 

I’ve been doing this whole Broke-Ass Stuart thing for like 16 years now, so it’s a LONG story. But I’ll give you the short-ish version. 

Shortly after I finished college at UCSC, I was working in a candy store in North Beach. One day a guy I knew from the neighborhood I grew up in in San Diego came in with the woman that’s now his wife. As they were walking out she gave me her card and it said she was a travel writer. I thought, “I wanna be a travel writer” so I decided to become one. 

I put out my first zine, Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco that summer (it was 2004). That was popular so I did an expanded version the following year. That ended up winning me “Best of the Bay” and I got a little notoriety. I got the zine in the hands of someone at Lonely Planet, and they liked it, and I ended up getting to go to Ireland to write about it for them.

I wanted to keep doing Broke-Ass Stuart but I also wanted to step it up and I actually found a book deal on craigslist. So I ended up doing three books. A Broke-Ass Stuart in SF book, an NYC book, and a book that was applicable everywhere in the U.S. 

Then in 2011 I had a travel TV show on IFC called Young, Broke & Beautiful. It was amazing. All the while though I was building up the website to be an arts & culture destination, so as my popularity grew, so did the site. Then running for Mayor obviously helped as well.

At this point we’re one of the most influential sites in the Bay Area for arts, culture, nightlife, and activism. It’s been a hell of a ride.

What are the best/worst parts of your job?

Getting to amplify voices that don’t always get heard while informing and entertaining hundreds of thousands of people a month is the best part for sure.

And then the hardest part, as you can imagine, trying to keep this thing afloat. I started this whole thing to be an art dude, but somehow ended up being a business dude out of necessity. I’m much better at creating funny and beautiful things than I am at making money. But I end up having to spend more time being a business dude than getting to create stuff. I’m at my happiest when I’m creating.

At the end of the day what is the ultimate goal of your blog/website? 

I used to care more about being famous, but as I get older, it doesn’t matter that much. I just want to create things that hopefully make the world a better place. Activism is a huge part of what we do at BrokeAssStuart.com. Over the years we’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for various charities and causes. We’ve turned out tens of thousands of people to protest the many injustices that plague our world. Our Voter guides sometimes get like 30k views. And we’ve also made a lot of fart jokes. Gotta keep things balanced.  

Any words of advice for someone just getting started?

It's important to ask yourself if you really want to make a living doing something that you love. I know your immediate response is "Duh! Of course!" but really think about it. You're taking something that gives you joy and release, and turning it into a job. There will be many days where it is simply a job and that's something you need to be ok with.  

Another quick piece of advice is: build your audience before you try to monetize it. Get people to love what you do and believe in you before you start asking them for money.   

I could talk about this all day long. I've actually given a talk about how to "turn your side hustle into your main hustle" a number of times including at General Assembly and at Patreon's yearly conference, so if anyone reading this is interested in me giving the talk to you and your friends/coworkers reach out and we can figure out a price. 

And finally a quick #PayItForward. Name five other websites doing awesome stuff in your field.

SF Funcheap

48Hills

TableHopper

The Hard Times

Berkeleyside

Follow Broke-Ass Stuart on social media: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Patreon

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Six Organs of Admittance Interview — 2005

Sunday interview! This was right around the time that I was really getting into all things Ben Chasny ... and more than a dozen years later, he’s still delivering the goods. Six Organs’ Burning the Threshold was one of my faves from last year and Hexadic III (featuring various artists using Ben’s Hexadic method) comes out in a couple weeks. 

Ben Chasny does not like labels. "Folk music? Never heard of it, never played it," he proclaims in the entertaining press release accompanying Six Organs of Admittance's new School of the Flower. "Rock is the new folk and folk fucked rock without the reach- around so rock is out to get some." OK then! Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance (mostly a one man show) is a tough beast to get a handle on, but once you do, there are untold delights to be found.

School of the Flower is Chasny's first record for indie-powerhouse Drag City as well as the first he's recorded in a professional studio. It contains some of his best songwriting yet, from hypnotic drones to thumping avant-garde improvisation to lulling, uh, folk-rock. Sorry, Ben!

School of the Flower is Six Organs of Admittance's 13th release in just 7 years. What drives you to be so prolific?

I don't really know. I guess I just don't really have anything else to do. I don't have a career, I never went to school, I don't really do anything. It's just sort of how I pass my time. Some people make models or fly kites and I record music. I have a feeling it will slow down and stop fairly soon, though. So I am just happy that it hasn't, yet. There's just always one more record in my head to get out. Right now I gotta get out the next one, which is looking to have no acoustic guitar, as it is in my head so far.

One of your songs was included on Devendra Banhart's recent Golden Apples of the Sun compilation. Do you feel any kinship with the other "new folk" (or whatever it's being called these days) artists that are on that disc? Is there really a "folk revival" or is it just a media thing?

I feel like I am friends with some of the people in that media construct but I am not really best friends with others. I don't know. That particular song was kind of just a fun pop song with fairly meaningless lyrics but for some reason Devendra wanted to put it on his comp. I tried to persuade him to use something less shallow but he wouldn't have it. He's funny like that. I like him very much. How can you not? He's so hairy and filled with so much positive energy. He's so positive that I feel like a washed up fisherman from a disgusting shanty town hanging out with Frank Sinatra when I'm hanging with him. I wish I had that much enthusiasm and love instead of wishing for the end of the world every day.

As far as a "revival," I would point people towards Stone Breath, Ghost, The Kitchen Cynics and bands like that before they start thinking this is new. Why is nobody talking to Stone Breath about their views on music nowadays? They're great and totally overlooked by everyone. As far as the media's interest, I am sure it is almost fully done, and all the better for it. Once it's done, then I think the real music will start getting made.

You say in the press materials for the album that the new album's title track is influenced by John Cale and Terry Riley's Church of Anthrax album. Could you talk a bit about this influence? It's one of my favorite albums. And along those lines, perhaps can you talk a bit about the role of repetitive structures in your music?

Isn't that a great record? Yeah man, my friend Russ Waterhouse made me a cassette copy of that record years ago and it's one of the best driving records ever. I just got back into it last year. It's just a great stoner record. It can be as intricate or as easy to listen to as possible. I also love the forward thrust of the record, like its foot is stomped down on the gas. I mean mostly the first song here. The songwriting is great too.

To be honest, I repeat a lot of lines because I simply can't remember that many parts at a time. I don't know why. But it probably also appeals to my obsessive-compulsive nature. I like to line things up, match things, stack things. I think it just carries over to the music. And when I have a panic attack or something, I often rock back and forth, and mumble the same thing over and over. I'm sure it all comes from the same place.

Can you tell me a bit about how you and drummer Chris Corsano hooked up? What does he bring to the table musically?

I first saw Chris play with his Flaherty/Corsano duo and my jaw was on the floor. In no way was I able to capture even a fraction of his intensity that he displays in that setting. We want to do a straight up duo record of improvisation one of these days to really get it all out. But he was amazing in the studio. And it was wonderful to have a friend in the studio for a few days to bounce ideas off of. I just feel bad that in the end, there wasn't a better representation of his playing, because he's one the most inspirational musicians I know. Sorry Chris. I hope you had a good time!

What role does improvisation play in your creative process?

It's very important, but just as important to me as composition. I can't conceive of one without the other. It just seems unbalanced to me. Not when I listen to other people's music though, just for my own.

Do you prefer recording at home rather than in a studio?

I like the spontaneity of home recording but working in the studio with Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins at the controls was amazing. I loved it. Having those many more tracks opened a lot up. I felt like I had been jogging with weights for years and I was finally free to just run.

Who's Gary Higgins, the writer of "Thicker Than A Smokey?" In the liners you give the impression he's dropped off the face of the earth.

Gary Higgins released one record by himself in the '70s and it's an amazing collection of songs. It's one of my favorite records of all time. It sounds like it could have been recorded last year. It's also helped me though some serious bullshit. As of yesterday the contract has been signed for the re-issue of his Red Hash record on Drag City. He's been found! He is alive and well and still has the masters for the original record. I can't wait for the record to be available to everyone.

Can you tell me a bit about the inspiration behind "Lisboa"?

Carlos Paredes was one of the world's greatest musicians. He was from Portugal. That song is for him. He passed away last year. So while everyone is rambling on and on about acoustic music and folk and Fahey worship ad nauseam, a great unknown and absolutely humble musician passed on without hardly a blink from the underground. I hope people investigate his music.

Are there any other guitarists (acoustic/electric/whatever) you particularly admire? What about them do you like? Most reviews mention Fahey, Jansch, Kottke -- do you think these references are apt?

In the last few years, I've started to despise the acoustic guitar. I used to listen to Kottke and Jansch, though I was never a Fahey fan. I like his writing more than his music. If I had my way I would make it a worldwide law that nobody could play the acoustic guitar for at least 5 years. It's so boring. Just last night I was playing in London and I just kept thinking, "nobody likes this. This is totally fucking boring and trash and bullshit. Acoustic guitar sucks." I wanted to get up and put something on the stereo, like Aerosmith, but I had to play. Needless to say it was an embarrassing show and one that made me question my existence. I am very sorry to the people in London who showed up. My sincere apologies.

What's your approach to performing this material live?

Well, I try to stay positive and I try to think that it has a purpose. Sometimes that feeling abandons me, though. When I feel like I have a purpose, it doesn't matter how I interpret the music, it will be OK. But when I feel a void and a shadow, than nothing can save it. The evening is ruined. Those evenings, there is no hope. But when the light is right and the angles in the room are polite then the sounds really work. The most important thing is to accept the fact that I am absolutely nothing and of non-importance. Then, everything can only get better.

What are your touring/recording plans in the foreseeable future?

I suppose I will start playing some shows to play some of this material. I am talking with Corsano now about how we can get on the road. It's looking like it will happen in early March. I would really like to start building music boxes. I always dream of that. And I would like to make sound sculptures. I have some designs in notebooks but I haven't built anything yet. I think that is my future.

[twoinchreview]

1985 Albums

Friday 20th March 2020.

On the way home from work (for the last time in a while I think, thanks Covid-19) Radio 2 played The Whole of the Moon by The Waterboys. I loved and love that song from their album, This is the Sea. I knew the album was released in 1985. It’s a year I won’t forget in a hurry for lots of reasons; the main, unbearably sad one is losing my mum, but, also, for other reasons that were not at all sad. The aforementioned album being one, another being another album - Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. (Another was Knebworth opening its gates to music for the first time in a few years….what a gig that was!) So, did I listen to any other albums that year? I seriously couldn’t tell you, for certain, the name of any other album released in that year….with aging memory it seems to me my turntable’s time was equally divided by Mike Scott and Kate - six months apiece. I decided to check it out. A quick search on Google and the first hit I clicked was this one from the NME that lists 50 albums.

I decided to listen to each in turn, from its count of 50 down to 1. I posted a one line review on each on FB. Here are those one-liners below, with supplementary comments as and when.

50.  ABC, How to be a Zillionaire. I didn't learn that actual trick but I did learn to love Martin Fry's delivery once again.

49.  Sade, Promise. Smoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth.

48.  Sheila E – Romance 1600. One I missed posting about of FB, probably because it was that forgettable. I can’t remember one track from it and it was only a couple of weeks ago!

47.  Alex Chilton, Feudalist Tarts. Who knew? Seriously never heard of him before!

46.  George Clinton, Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends. Funky. Another new one on me.

45. The Replacements, Tim. Never heard or heard of them b4 today. Shan't bother again!

44.  Run DMC, King of Rock. Dunno why I like this album, just do. It's like that and that's the way it is.

43.  Cameo, Single Life. I've already forgotten about it.

42.  New Order, Low Life. The first album on NME's 1985 list that properly rocks all thru. 

It’s a proper ‘of its time’ album and yet timeless. This gets the bold review ‘cos I would definitely take time out to listen to this again. First one of the NME list!

41.  Robert Wyatt, Old Rottenhat. Out there. A defo doob album.

40.  The Style Council, Our Favourite Shop. I recall this album & it's better than it was.  Weller has a voice that sometimes sounds like it’s going to break at the sterner test but then he carries it off. It adds to the originality.

39.  Sonic Youth, Bad Moon Rising. Proper industrial punk. I like it.

38.  Dexys Midnight Runners, Don't Stand Me Down. Not one track had I heard before. Fab.

I really enjoyed this. I like the fact it’s a real deviation from what I remember Dexys for - all denim and oddly-antifashion fashionable. This album showed real confidence in their own ability, quite rightly.

37.  Husker Du, New Day Rising. 'Salright.

36.  Bobby Womack, So Many Rivers. “Let Me Kiss You Where It Hurts.” 😂😂😂 Yep - the only thing I wanted to post about this album, having listened to it (like so many others, for the first time) was the name of one track which still, as I type, makes be chuckle like a school boy. Sorry Bobby.

35.  The Fall, This Nation's Saving Grace. I never really got The Fall. This album doesn't help. This post on FB attracted some comment - Ralph White (fellow Posh and music fan) was, I sensed, a little perplexed at my opinion. But, I can’t lie, the band, and Mark E Smith, just didn’t, and still don’t, do it for me. I’m too old and long in the tooth to persist. Sorry Ralph.

34.  Propaganda, A secret Wish. If you had to guess the time of this album's release from its sound, it couldn't be anything other than slap bang middle of the 80s. I mean it is sooooo eighties. It’s the sort of record that will be used for educational purposes - in history lessons.

33. Scritti Politti, Cupid & Psyche 85. I feel I should be more impressed than I am.

32.  The Pogues, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. What an album, what a fucking album.

I listened to this while out walking and it really took me by surprise just how much I enjoyed it. Of course, I’d heard a lot of the songs before but, as a collection, along with the tracks new to me, it really stands out.  

31.  The Cure, Head on the Door. The Cure does easy listening.

30.  The Cult, Love. What's there not to love? No sudden death, just love.

Contains one of my favourite all time tracks. Can you guess?

29.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Firstborn is Dead. Interesting. Definitely a band you have to be in the right mood before the needle hits the record.

28.  David Sylvian, Alchemy: An Index Of Possibilities. Music to have acupuncture to.

By that, I mean it was very, very, very Japanese-y.

27.  Suzanne Vega, Suzanne Vega. Singer song writing by numbers.

To be perfectly blunt, I found it boring.

26.  The Smiths, Meat is Murder. The Smiths are an enigma to me. Good music, good musicians but, that condescension. Morrissey, Geldof, Thunberg....peas in a high & mighty pod.

All that being said a few days ago now, I’m sure I’ll listen to this (and maybe other a records of theirs) again. I fucking hate that it was that good.

25.  Bryan Ferry, Boys and Girls. Slick as you like. Is he the coolest man in music? I think he is.

24.  10000 Maniacs, The Wishing Chair. I can take this or leave it. When I posted this on FB there were a couple of posters encouraging me to try In My Tribe - it’s on as I type and it’s a little better.

23.  Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston. I like this debut album. What a voice she had!

22.  A-Ha, Hunting High and Low. Not bad song writing in a second language.

Nice enough album...but this band will always just be ‘nice’ and, memorable for a video, not much else. 

21.  Grace Jones, Slave to the Rhythm. A mess of an album.

Worst one on the list so far even if it has got David Gilmour playing on it.

20.  Simple Minds, Once Upon a Time. I always felt, & feel, this band are wannabes to U2's crown. Nice enough album though.

19.  The Colourfield, Virgins and Philistines. A gem of an album. 

Terry Hall reminds me of Bowie. So talented, so prolific.

18.  Everything but the Girl, Love not Money. Pleasant enough but won't be on repeat. 

17. Loose Ends, So Where Are You? Hmmmm, not quite Color Me Badd. Very Delia Smith. The Delia Smith comment was because I found this album was an embarrassment much like Delia that fateful night at Carrow Road. If you don’t know to what I am referring, Google it.

16. Killing Joke, Night Time. Great album, cracking band.

15. Tears for Fears, Songs from the Big Chair. A big collection of comfortably accomplished songs. 

The first album on the list I had definitely played, in its entirety, before...just not in 1985. 

14. Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms. By no means their best. Tbf, you’d have to go some to best a debut or 3rd or 4th albums of the quality Dire Straits had under their belt. And, a side note, I think probably the best name for a band, ever. 

13. The Sisters of Mercy, First and Last and Always. A moody, gothic masterpiece. I reckon the growling vocals are the stuff of genius and nightmares.  12.  Prince, Around the World In A Day. Prince is brilliant, this album isn't. Like a few on this list, the decade’s half-way point didn’t see his finest hour.

11. Felt, Ignite the Seven Canons. I've never heard of this band before, nor heard a single track from this album, until now. I like them, I like it.

And I reached the Top Ten....I found myself really looking forward to the next 6-7 hours of the supposed mid-80s finest.... 

10. The Jesus and The Mary Chain, Psychocandy. Mentally sweet. 

It is a great album by a seminal band but I didn’t really get on the band wagon back then, and I don’t have the time nor the inclination to now. That’s gonna piss some people off, I’m sure! 9. Microdisney, The Clock Comes Down The Stairs. Never heard of them before, probably never listen to them again.

This album left me feeling nothing. It’s the most nondescript one of the list thus far and I doubt that will change.

8. REM, Fables of Reconstruction. This band were good before they got massive. 

Fucking brilliant. I had never listened to this album before and it’s such a precursor - we all know how massive they became and one or two of their later albums were residence, for a time, in my CD player. I reckon this one could become a real favourite of mine. Not just of REM stuff but in general.

7.  Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, Easy Pieces. Easy listening and first rate easy listening, at that. 

‘Brand New Friend’ is the stand out track.   

6.  Prefab Sprout, Steve McQueen. I don’t switch the radio off if this band are played, but I never play them. This album doesn’t alter that.

5. Madness, Mad not Mad. Who'd thought the stalwart rude boys would be so innovative? Another cracker from this list. It really stood out for me, they way the band changed things up a notch with this record. I can imagine some long-time fans would have baulked at this at the time of release but now, 35 years on, it smacks of progression. I’ve just asked Alexa to play it as I’m typing. 

4.  Talking Heads, Little Creatures. A wonderful, totally original band and album. This album reminded me that I do not spend enough time listening to Talking Heads. 

3. The Waterboys, This Is the Sea. Marvellous. This is an album I know and love. So, here it is, one of the aforementioned two. It’s is still one of my favourite albums, definitely, but, just a little bit, the metaphors grate - there’s enough of the fuckers on this album - the sea, the moon, the spirit. But I will always love this album and I will revisit many more times, I wager (and hope).

2. Tom Waits, Rain Dogs. Not really a musical masterpiece, more a lyrical one.

I found this a unusual choice for number 2. That’s subjectivity for you, I’d have picked many others before this one for the runner’s up slot.

1. Kate Bush, Hounds of Love. One of my favourite ever albums. The best of 1985, maybe of the 80s, very close to of all time. It’s number 1 for the NME and it most certainly is for me.

So, I listened to all of these NME listed albums in turn and it was, in the main, an enjoyable musical journey

And I reminded myself that, in 1985, I did indeed only put two albums, that first saw the light of day in that year, on my turntable (Kate Bush and The Waterboys). Any other releases didn't get a look in. 

[thisaintascenereviews]

Album Review by Bradley Christensen Elf – Self-titled Record Label: Purple / Epic Release Date: August 1972

Ronnie James Dio is one of the most prolific metal musicians to ever live. The man was a musical genius. He did quite a lot for metal, whether it was introducing the “metal horns” (he’s often credited with popularizing the gesture, at the very least), being a fantastic and powerful vocalist, pioneering power metal, as well as being one of the first vocalists / lyricists to use fantasy elements, characters, and ideas in his lyrics. Metal has a lot to thank Dio for, but I’ve always wanted to get into his early stuff, both with his first band, Elf, and his second band, Rainbow. I’ll talk about the latter band in more detail soon enough, most likely in my next review (I’ve talked about Rainbow before, but it’s been years, so I’m excited to do that), but I wanted to talk about the former one. Elf is the first band of Dio, formed in the late 60s, when psychedelic rock was at its peak, and hard rock, blues rock, and heavy metal were being created and perfected. Elf is a hard rock, blues rock, and boogie rock band, which is weird, because most people associate Dio with heavy metal. That’s very true. It’s up for debate if Rainbow can be considered a metal band, but I do, because of two things that I’ll talk about a bit more in my next review – Ritchie Blackmore, the creator of Rainbow, was the guitarist of Deep Purple, whose early work, especially 1972’s Machine Head, pioneered metal, and they came up right when Black Sabbath already established a heavy metal sound. Rainbow have a lot of things in common with Black Sabbath, but they’re also a bit different, mind you. I consider Rainbow to be a metal band, but that’s a topic for another review. I’m here to talk about Elf today, specifically their 1972 self-titled debut LP. I’ve wanted to listen to this for a long time now, so I finally did, and guess what? It’s pretty good. I don’t know if I love this LP, per se, but in terms of hearing early Dio, it’s really interesting.

This album is really good for someone that wants to get into Dio’s music, but they’re not into metal, I guess. If you’re a rock fan that wants to listen to some Dio, this is perfect for that, because this is a rock album. This is early Dio, and metal was just starting to stand on its own two legs. This album came out the same year that Machine Head did, too, and that album helped to shape metal, like I said. It’s interesting to hear Dio with a rock band, but he does a good job here. His voice is rougher around the edges this time around, but that’s to be expected, since this LP is early on in his career. He doesn’t reach the same heights that he does on Rainbow’s later work, Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules or Heaven and Hell (both from the early 80s), or even his eponymous band from the early 80s. That’s okay, though, because even rougher edged Dio is still good Dio. He’s one of those vocalists that still sounds good in his “worst” performance. Not to say he sounds bad here, or anything close to that, but he’s definitely rougher around the edges on this LP. The whole LP is, really, but it’s a solid blues rock album that has a lot of energy to it. At only 34 minutes, it’s a short album that doesn’t take its time. If you’re looking for a solid blues rock and hard rock album, you’ve found it here. I definitely can’t say this is my favorite album from Dio, but why would it? It’s an early album from his days in a blues rock / hard rock band. This was early Dio, almost a full decade before his prime. That’s why I can’t say I’m the biggest Rainbow fan, either, but I do really enjoy them. Personally, my favorite Dio “eras” are mostly everyone else’s – his couple of years with Black Sabbath, and the first handful of years with his eponymous band. 1983’s Holy Diver, the debut LP with Dio the band, is easily my favorite album of his, and the first that I ever heard, but every single project of his is worth listening to in some way, shape, and form. If you want to hear some early Dio, or just hear some really solid blues rock / hard rock, you can’t go wrong with Elf’s self-titled debut.