#but I ran out of room and also I didn’t even get SIM printed :(

[8bitskey]

i care about Tony Stark a normal amount so I made a sticker sheet, just for myself

[kaitycole]

we meet again

Summary: Simeon promised you that you’d see each other again after you left Devildom, but that was four years ago. What happens when you finally see each other?

Pairing: Simeon x gn!reader

Word Count: 2065

Warnings: Angst to fluff 

A/N: Simeon deserved better after the angst piece I wrote with him a while ago. I finally wrote it @angelprotectress​

It’s been nearly four years since the exchange program and your time in Devildom ended, leaving behind friends who were more like family. Sure, you have your memories and all the goodbye gifts that you had gotten, but it just wasn’t the same as when all of you were together.

Since you left, you had seen each demon brother twice, they had come up with a rotating schedule that allowed you to see a few each year, something about not being able to all visit at once or often due to some worry of too many demons being in the human realm at any given time. The angels on the other hand, you hadn’t seen at all, apparently Michael wasn’t too keen on allowing angels to the human realm, the Lilith situation still a fresh wound up there.

While you loved seeing the brothers and Solomon when he happened to swing by, you missed the angels a lot, mainly Simeon. You knew that it wasn’t going to be possible, that someone would tell you not to, Lucifer to be exact, but before you had time to weigh out the consequences, you had fallen head over heels for an angel.

*                      * Things were still overwhelming, to say the least, by the time you learned that there were angels were part of the exchange program. It wasn’t like you had been expecting much, to be honest you weren’t still convinced this wasn’t a dream, but the way the dark haired, blue eyed angel took your breath away was completely unexpected.

From that moment on, the two of you were inseparable, purposely finding reasons to see one another. Your head always found his shoulder whether you were sitting or standing next to each other, one of his arms around you and whenever your hands brushed, your fingers would instantly tangle together. Half way through the exchange program, you were just a blur at House of Lamentation, spending all of your free time in Purgatory Hall and staying most nights in Simeon’s room.

A few of the demon brothers, along with Luke and Solomon, seemed to support the two of you, however Lucifer, Belphie and Diavolo didn’t seem to share that sentiment. And while none of them verbally voiced their disapproval, they didn’t have to because the disappointment filled looks did that for them.

So, when it was time for you to leave Devildom, it was a lot harder than you originally thought it would be. You had been able to hold in most of the tears that had been threatening to fall from your eyes, until you got to Luke, who gave you the warmest smile as he hugged you and by the time Simeon came up to you, you were a mess.

He pulled you into his arms, making a soft shushing sound in your ear as he gently ran his hand up and down your back. When you had calmed down a bit, he promised you that he’d see you again, that he’d wait for you which only made you cry harder and it wasn’t long before Asmo had started crying with you. Right before you left, Simeon handed you a box, telling you not to open it until you got settled back in the human realm and with one last kiss, the two of you were separated.

*                      * You look down at the mug in your hand, a small smile touching your lips as you read the words that are printed on the bottom of the mug: I love you. It had a companion piece, the other mug said “to the moon & back” which you found rather fitting for your current situation.

In the box Simeon had given you, it had the mug in your hands and one of the matching tea cups from the set you gifted him for his birthday. He wrote in his letter that while he hated dividing the sets, the mix and match sets fit your relationship, two pieces of a set separated. He also instructed a few different times to use either the tea cup or mug, that way you both were using them at the same time. He always thought of unique things like that, something that you instantly loved about him.

Even with the cups and shared times to use them, even with the soothing words of his letters that you now had memorized, even with that little hope that you’d see each other again, it’s still hard to get through each day. You start to wonder just how lonely you looked to your coworkers and friends, your days were strategically planned out. Not to mention that fact that you turned down every date set-up offered you even though you had no way to prove there was someone in your life. But did you have someone? It’d been four years and you’d received nothing from Simeon and every time you asked, the demon brothers told you they had barely seen since him and didn’t have a message from him either.

You place the mug on the counter, the contents had gotten cold the deeper you had gotten lost in thought. You grab your keys and phone, heading out of your apartment, taking your time to walk down the sidewalk. It’s your birthday and some small part of you was hoping that Simeon could at least surprise you just this once. You find yourself wandering into a small café, taking a seat at one of the high-top tables, sighing as you relax your shoulders.

“Is this seat taken?” “No.” Your eyes don’t look up from Simeon’s letter, sure you could recite it by memory, it was comforting to see his handwriting even if the pages were withered and the edges faded.

“That must be from someone special.”

Your head snaps up, the voice sounding a bit too familiar for you to ignore, tears start to blur your eyes as they meet a beautiful pair of blue eyes. Your voice cracks and jaw trembles, “Sim?”

“I told you that we’d see each other again, didn’t I?” He slowly walks around the table and you quickly throw your arms around him, afraid that if you hesitated for a second, he’d disappear.

He wraps his arms around you, placing a hand on the back on your head as you bury your face into the curve of his neck. Neither of you concerned with the public display or the strange looks you were getting from the other patrons. Tears fell down your cheeks when he pulled you back and he gently wiped them away, cupping your cheek with one hand as he finally got a good look at your face, smiling at you.

“Let’s go somewhere to talk, Y/N.”

You sniffle, wiping your face before nodding, quickly grabbing his hand as you pull him from the café. “My apartment isn’t too far from here.”

“That’s a bit presumptuous.” Embarrassment heats up your cheeks and you can see Simeon start to chuckle before you nudge his arm with your shoulder, rolling your eyes at him.

*                      * “Can you repeat that?”

You look at Simeon, trying to comprehend what he just said to you, but you were struggling. He smiles at you, sitting the mug down on the table before reaching next to him to take your hands in his.

“I’ve spoken to Michael and if he’s agreed to make me human.” He takes a deep breath, “if you’re okay with that.”

A smile twitches on your lips, almost fearful that if you let it form something will take that happiness away. You wonder if it’s selfish to tell him that you’d love the idea, to wrap yourself around him and tell him that you refuse to let him ever leave you again. “Simeon, that’s…are you sure?”

He squeezes your hands, his brilliant smile on his face. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I love you more than anything, Y/N.”

The warmth that filled you lasted only moments before you started to panic and Simeon immediately asked you what was wrong. “I’m going to need another job! We can’t live here for long, it’s too small. I need to make a list of things to buy,” you go to stand up, lost in the tunnel vision of your own thoughts when Simeon gently grabs your wrist and pulls you back.

“You wound me, Y/N.” He chuckles, “I am a famous writer, you know?”

You freeze, a cooked apologetic smile covers your lips as you let him pull you onto his lap. You bury your face into the crook of his neck, finally letting yourself take in his presence. It’s when his arms pull you even closer to his chest that you relax, the fear that he’ll vanish completely dissipates.

*                      * The next few weeks were a whirlwind to say the least, but it was completely worth it. You finally used up a few vacation days you had accumulated at work and each day started and ended in Simeon’s loving arms.

For someone who had only been an angel for as long as Simeon had been, he quickly seemed to pick up on the everyday mundaneness that being a human came with. Grocery shopping had been one of your favorite things, the almost horror on his face as you placed instant mashed potatoes and canned tuna in the cart. When he asked why you hadn’t just gotten a bag of potatoes and fresh tuna, he almost fainted when you just smiled and said, “it’s easier.”

After he had the displeasure of tasting the “mashed potatoes” he waited until the next morning to completely redo the kitchen, only having the best and fresh ingredients in it. When you asked who would have time to always cook, he simply told you that he would seeing as to how as an author he could just work from home.

The two of you had developed a seemingly perfect schedule, Simeon did most of his writing in the early morning which correlated well with your work shifts and you made sure to always have meals together. Your life together meshed well, but it still ate away at you just how much Simeon left behind for you.

“Do you miss it?”

“Hmm?” The both of you are in bed, his attention on the book he’s been reading.

“The Celestial Realm. Being an angel. Do you miss it?”

He runs his fingers through his hair, placing his bookmark in between the pages before closing the book and turning to you. “Sometimes, sure,” he cups your cheek, turning your face to look at him, “but I’d pick being with you over being an angel every time.”

*                      * “Sim?”

There’s brief worry as you roll over, your hand reaching out to the empty side of the bed, feeling the barely warm sheet. You shoot up, eyes widened in panic as you frantically look around the room, a hand touching your forehead to wonder if maybe these last few weeks had all been a fever dream. Afraid that the previous night’s conversation had caused Simeon to rethink his decision to leave the life of an angel and being just an average human.

“Simeon!”

“Yes?”

You quickly look towards the doorway where you see a smiling Simeon, carefully carrying your coffee mug along with the matching one he’s had the last four years. Relief fills your lungs as your breathing finally levels and it takes all you can not to pounce him right then. To wrap your arms around him and just force him to stay in bed with you all day.

He sits your mug on your end table before walking to the other side of the bed, placing his mug on that end table. He climbs back into bed, pulling you back towards him, planting a soft kiss on your shoulder.

“I thought you left.” You sink into his touch, once again letting his presence dissolve any tension you felt. Tears prick your eyes, the last time you left Simeon had been extremely had for you, but you didn’t know what life without him would be like. Now that you did, now that you had lived four years without him, having him in front of you made you realize that life without him a second time would be almost impossible.

“I’m never leaving you again, I promise.”

obey me masterlist

[currywaifu]

𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: the sims 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: settsu banri/reader 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 2.1k words

𝐚𝐧: banri and reader? using the Sims as an excuse to flirt? more likely than you think. been playing Sims 4, and I got a surge of inspiration at like 1 am. also, friends to lovers is one of my faves, goes hand in hand w/ many tropes (fake dating cough cough)

A laptop with no mouse, you’re such a pro-gamer.” Banri teases you, lifting the blankets slightly to let you settle in beside him. Fixing your position on the bed, you let out a laugh as he yelped from the skin contact.

“Your feet are fucking cold!”

You stick your tongue out at him, before turning on your laptop. “Then don’t make fun of my set-up, e-boy! You’re the one who wanted to game in bed.”

“I was expecting gacha-“

“I have event burnout,” you whine in protest, “I need a break from my eternal suffering, so we’re playing the Sims 4.”

Shuffling closer to you, his thighs now beside yours, he watches you load up an unfinished sim from your gallery. He snickers as he looks at the avatar closely.

“Oh, so we’re making each other then?” Banri asks, noting the various clothes that looked incredibly similar to stuff he actually owns. Clearly, you already got a head start. “My face looks kind of fucked though.”

Giggling, you turn to face him. “Obviously it’s hard to do your gorgeous, one of a kind face justice, have pity on my average sim-making skills.” You joked, observing Banri’s expression for a comeback. Whatever he throws at you, you’ll be prepared to throw back.

“Then I’ll let you look at my face as a reference, for as long as you want,” he replies, the quirk of his lips letting you know he had more to say. “Just like how you’re looking at me right now,” he continues, a little softer this time.

Caught off-guard, you force yourself to turn back to the bright blue screen as Banri’s sim lets out various sounds of Simlish non-sense. Did joining theatre make him even more smooth or something?

And here you thought you could avoid the feelings continuously sprouting in your chest. You supposed inviting the object of your affections over to your place didn’t help your case; with your friend spending more and more time as an actor, you secretly longed for and cherished the time you spent together.

Still, with how he grew and bloomed as a person it was hard not to catch feelings.

With a boyish grin set on his face, he found himself revelling in your cute embarrassment. “Made ya speechless?”

“Something like that,” you said half-heartedly.

You always found him attractive, bowl-cut, dumb animal print and all. Of course, as if you would ever tell him seriously lest his ego gets bigger. Yet when you were looking at a picture of him for reference, your thoughts weren’t ‘yeah my friend is attractive, what a good reference for this sim’.

Instead, it was more along the lines of, ‘I’d like to punch his mouth, with my mouth.’

Slightly concerned by your lacklustre response, Banri looks at your face for a sign of discomfort or anger. Lips slightly pouted, eyebrows somewhat furrowed, and eyes completely focused on the screen.

Wait, what were you doing?

“Yo what are you doing to my face! Stop stretching it out!” You were smiling again, so he wasn’t all that bothered by your petty retaliation really, plus it was nice to know he hadn’t said anything that was out of line with you.

“Fine, fine. I wanna get Banny’s face right.” You say.

Banri opens his mouth, then closes it, then lets out a huff of laughter. “You have a nickname for the sim now?” He was about to say more until one of your hands takes hold of his face.

Settsu Banri was not easily flustered, nor did his face turn red from small, insignificant touches. The tingling feeling rendered within him as your fingers brush against his skin, however, was present no matter how much he denied it.

This weird silence wasn’t really his thing, but if he spoke up now or teased you back, there was a chance you would stop. Why didn’t he want you to stop?

Your index finger traces his jawline, the pad briefly meeting his cheek before sliding upwards to the bridge of his nose. He didn’t close his eyes, but with your intense stare piercing through him, his gaze shifts towards somewhere, anywhere else.

The wall was a nice place to set his eyes on. Not so plain that his thoughts would wander but not so cluttered that he wouldn’t know where to start. There was a time when your room was littered with posters from different shows, games, bands- he could remember it pretty well, having made fun of you for it.

At the present a choice few posters still there, but now there was also the addition of photos of you and other people on the wall. Some were polaroids, others were pictures you printed out yourself and taped on.

From afar, he spots several photos with him in it- when you went thrift shopping together, the cultural festivals you dragged him to and the music festivals he visited with you. A part of him is pleased, smug even, to know that he’s important enough to you have his pictures up there.

He hadn’t really thought about it before, but when did the two of you get so close to hang out all the time? You had always been chill with him even when he was a delinquent, but after joining Mankai the two of you had grown closer.

“Oi, Banri. Look at this!”

Huh, when did you stop touching his face?

When Banri looked at the screen appraisingly, his sim version- Banny, you called him, looked a lot more like him. You even dressed him in clothes he would’ve chosen for himself.

“Like the animal print? Downloaded a bunch for you.”

He whistled, looking at the different outfits you chose. “You did pretty good, I guess. Could probably do better though.”

You scoff, looking a little doubtful. Sure, Banri excelled in many things, but making a good sim look-a-like isn’t a common talent, especially without any practice.

“Have you even played the Sims 4 before?”

Shrugging, Banri pulled the device onto his lap from yours. “2 and 3. Never touched 4, should be easy enough.”

He plays around with the options for a bit. After entering your name and gender, he looks through the possible aspirations and traits he could give your sim, which was easy enough. He briefly wondered if you would protest being given a mismatched trait, but when he hovers the cursor over one you don’t react at all. 

Calling out your name, he eyes you from his peripheral. This wasn’t the first time you spaced out today. One arm went in front of you as he waved his hand to catch your attention.

“You can… also,” you paused, chewing on your lip for a few seconds, “for reference. If you wanted.”

He whips his head to face you completely, looking a little shell-shocked.

‘If I wanted?’

He paused, figuring out how to phrase his response. Honestly, he probably didn’t need to- he already has your face mapped out and memorised in his brain at this point, but there was no way he was admitting that.

Besides, if you offered it wouldn’t be wrong wanting to accept.

“Not that I need it, but I’m just making sure, ya hear?” His voice was the same as always, not a sign of wavering to hint at his anticipation or nervousness. “Bet you just want my hands all over ya or something.” He said, doing his best to manage a playful tone but not quite making the cut.

If someone else had said it you would have felt called out, or at worst offended, but you knew he was merely slipping into the language he most felt comfortable using.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Your voice came out a little shaky at the start, but thankfully he doesn’t out you for it. “Just don’t be weird about it.” There was no doubt in your mind that your cheeks were hotter than the sun, but you were curious about how it felt.

“No pressure,” Banri said, hoping his face is still the picture of nonchalance despite the erratic thumping of his heart in his chest defying it. “You can back out anytime.”

You don’t answer, steadily avoiding his gaze by observing the hand hovering near your face. It twitched.

The blanket shifts as Banri sits in a way where he could look at you properly, putting the laptop aside.

As soon as you felt his fingers come in contact with your face you immediately shut your eyes, unable to bear the embarrassment. A multitude of questions ran through your head, unable to concentrate on a single one.

Why did you offer? Why did he accept? You did the same, so why was it such a big deal if he touched your face? Why did you touch his face in the first place? Why were you so touch-starved? Why did he it feel so nice?

You hoped closing your eyes hid the self-consciousness and pleasure you felt at this moment, enjoying his knuckles glide against your skin.

Banri narrows his eyes, stomach twisting at how overwhelmingly adorable you looked and how soft you were. Hell, you were turning him all soft and sappy and disgusting but that was the least of his worries right now. At least your eyes were closed, he doesn’t have to put on a facade— that this was just a friendly thing, because if he was reading the signs right you were both venturing somewhere beyond that.

His thumbs press against your cheekbones, so featherlight the sensation might as well be from a ghost. You stay still, unable— or perhaps unwilling— to move, and as much as you try to hold it in your breaths grow more and more uneven the longer Banri’s hand lingers on your skin.

You wonder if this is as intimate for him as it was for you.

Your skin is warm and soft, he’s a little conscious if the callousness of his fingertips feels uncomfortable to you.

Even with the slight roughness, his fingers felt infinitely tender as they swept through your cheeks.

Following your cheekbone, he moves to your jaw, to your chin, and with his fingers up again to his forehead, learning the planes of your face. He’s had you memorised visually, but it wouldn’t hurt to familiarise himself with the feeling of you. Banri stretches out his fingers before fully cupping your face with his palms, swallowing when you lean your head into one of them.

“Do you know,” Banri hesitates, “what you’re doing to me?”

His courage wanes, he wants to say more but it’s so difficult sorting out the emotions overflowing within. His head hurts a bit from figuring out what to focus on, the anxiety and panic or the joy and euphoria. The only constant right now was you.

One hand falls to your arm, slowly sliding up and down while leaving goosebumps in its wake. The other continues to rest on the side of your face, thumb inching closer and closer. As the pad brushes against the corner of your lip, your eyes open wide and gaze directly at the familiar pools of blue.

The first thought that flies through your mind is that he’s close enough now to kiss you. Everything about him, the air around them, feels warm and humming with an energy you’ve never felt from anyone before— other than Banri.

“This isn’t easy for me,” Banri lets out a breath, both of you doing your best to not disturb the feeling in the room. His hair falling loose but his eyes never leave yours for a second. “I’ve never… Look, I like being around you. You matter to me. A lot.”

You can’t help the smile that makes its way on your face, the utter adoration, and fondness and love you had for him escaping all at once. With what little space you had between, you pressed your forehead against his.

“You matter to me too. A lot.” You muttered, repeating his confession, closing your eyes again before ever so gently pushing your lips to his.

You’ve imagined how it would be like to kiss Banri before, rough and a little harsh, but as you felt his hand through the baby hairs at the bottom of your head you were more than content at his gentle kissing.

Banri continues kissing you slowly, unsure if the sun had already set, but all that mattered was this moment.

want to order again?

[recentanimenews]

Manga the Week of 7/7/21

SEAN: July! Manga! Too hot to be glib!

ASH: So, so hot in so, so many places.

SEAN: Airship, in print, has the debut of Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter. There’s also the 3rd volume of I’m in Love with the Villainess.

MICHELLE: I managed to read the first volume of I’m in Love with the Villainess recently! Definitely the best light novel I’ve tried so far.

ASH: I really need to get around to finally reading it myself; I’ve heard nothing but good things.

SEAN: Airship also has an early digital debut of a title we’ve seen the manga for already: My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s. Take a wild guess at the premise. They’ve also got Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs in early digital.

Ghost Ship debuts Devilish Darlings Portal Fantasy (Isekai Seikatsu no Susume), which ran in Takeshobo’s Kissca and is a one-shot. It’s basically an isekai with more nudity, though I hear it’s cuter than it sounds.

In print, J-Novel Club gives us Slayers, Vol. 1-3, a nice hardcover omnibus of the first three volumes of the classic series.

ASH: I know quite a few people who are looking forward to this release.

MELINDA: I didn’t know this was coming, but now I’m excited!

SEAN: They’ve also got Ascendance of a Bookworm’s 6th manga volume, How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord 13, I Shall Survive Using Potions!‘s 4th manga volume, Infinite Dendrogram 13, My Next Life As a Villainess 8, and a 2nd omnibus of Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles.

Digitally, we get not only Ascendance of a Bookworm’s 8th manga, but also the first volume of the Ascendance of a Bookworm fanbook. See illustrations, Q&A from the author, and a new short story! We also see Altina the Sword Princess 9, Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower 2, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash 17, My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me! 3, and Record of Wortenia War 11.

ASH: It makes me happy that Ascendance of a Bookworm is doing well enough that we’re getting material beyond the main series.

SEAN: Kodansha, for print releases, has the 7th APOSIMZ, Fire Force 23, Orient 3, and Shaman King’s 3rd omnibus.

Digitally we get 2 debuts. Fate/Grand Order -Epic of Remnant- Pseudo-Singularity III: The Stage of Carnage, Shimousa – Seven Duels of Swordmasters exhausts me just to type out. It runs in Kodansha’s Magazine Pocket. The plot… is FGO.

ASH: That is quite the title.

SEAN: That’s My Atypical Girl (Asper Kanojo) is a seinen manga from Comic Days, and thanks for avoiding that Japanese title, I approve. A manga artist gets a visit from a fan who’s just a bit different.

Also out digitally: The final 7th volume of 1122: For a Happy Marriage, Bakemonogatari 9 (the print came out two weeks ago), Girlfriend, Girlfriend 4, Guilty 8, Living-Room Matsunaga-san 9, My Dearest Self with Malice Aforethought 6, Shaman King: The Super Star 5, Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie 5, Smile Down the Runway 19, Those Snow-White Notes 8, With the Sheikh in His Harem 3, and Ya Boy Kongming! 2.

MICHELLE: I’ll be reading several of these digital releases.

SEAN: Seven Seas has two debuts. Great Pretender is a manga based on the Netflix anime, and runs in MAGCOMI. It’s not quite Leverage: The Manga but close.

The other debut we’ve technically seen before. Kageki Shoujo! ran for two years with Shueisha, and we saw that omnibus come out last year. Then it jumped ship to Hakusensha, where it runs in their josei magazine Melody. And this is the start of that run! Takarazuka fans will love this.

MICHELLE: Oh! I didn’t realize there was more coming. Nice.

ASH: Looking forward to reading more of this series!

MELINDA: Oh, hello!

ANNA: I need to read it!

SEAN: Also from Seven Seas: Dai Dark 2, Muscles Are Better Than Magic 2, Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation 13, The Saint’s Magic Power Is Omnipotent 3, and SUPER HxEROS 3.

ASH: I somehow actually haven’t managed to read the first volume yet, but hooray for more Dai Dark!

SEAN: Tokyopop has three titles: Her Royal Highness Seems to be Angry (Oujo Denka wa Oikari no You Desu) is the debut. The digital version came out a while back, and it runs in Overlap’s Comic Gardo. It’s sort of a reincarnation story AND a villainess story.

We also get Laughing Under the Clouds 2 and Futaribeya: A Room for Two 8.

No debuts for Viz, but we do get the final volume of Oresama Teacher. I know Nozaki-kun gets all the love, and rightly so, but this is also awesome, and I will miss it, even if it does end up going the teacher/childhood friend/sadist route.

MICHELLE: I admit I prefer Nozaki-kun, but I do intend to finish Oresama Teacher, too.

ASH: I need to catch up on Oresama Teacher, but I’ve greatly enjoyed what I’ve read so far.

ANNA: I also need to get caught up, but I have many stockpiled volumes.

SEAN: Also from Viz: D.Gray-Man 27, Dr. STONE 17, Idol Dreams 7, Love Me, Love Me Not 9, Moriarty the Patriot 4, My Hero Academia Vigilantes 10, Platinum End 13, Queen’s Quality 12, and Undead Unluck 2.

ASH: I’m behind but I’ve got my eyes on a few of these, too!

ANNA: I’m stoked for my very occasional volume of Idol Dreams especially!

SEAN: That’s it! Seems like less than usual? Have I gotten used to it?

By: Sean Gaffney

[abbyklinkenberg]

01 July 2017

I just finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the second time. It's a hot day in Chicago and the edge of the circle of time is so sharp. 

I decided that I should try to see all 50 major museums here in Chicago before I leave, so yesterday I went out on the Brown line & transferred to the Red line in order to get to the Chicago station. There, I had a Potbelly sandwich and talked to Aidan for a little while before heading to the first museum: the Loyola University Art Museum, which turned out to be a very Catholic museum full of religious artifacts from the middle ages/Renaissance era, mostly. There were relics, the bones of saints, in some of the pieces--there were silver chalices from Germany in the 1700s and Roman keys from the first century BC and paintings by students of Caravaggio and stone apostles defaced during the Reformation. One of the hallways was full of self-portraits done by member of a poor community somewhere in Chicago, just pencil sketches that mostly looked as if they were done by children but were probably done by adults who never had the time or resources to fool around with artistic experiments. I tried to read all of the little museum information signs but at some point I got overwhelmed by the religious imagery and simply took it in aesthetically. There were two stained-glass windows done mostly in gray with bright yellow shading as the only color that I probably liked the best. A display of keys from the copper ones of the Roman empire through to the iron ones of the Middle Ages and steel ones of the Renaissance was also really striking. I like that they all did the same things but in slightly different ways, that they were all so neat and precise in their designs--one even had a club shape as the barrel of the key, or whatever it's called. It was really empty, I only saw maybe one or two other people apart from the staff (college-aged girls in blue shirts and black pants) who gossiped with one another while I walked through the museum. 

The Museum of Contemporary Art was only a block away, and was the real object of my day, so I went over there and paid the $8 entrance using my JNU student ID that expired last month. Lots of young people sat on the steps leading up to the entrance and the windows above were adorned with a giant tentacle motif in homage to the Murakami exhibition on the third floor. The first floor had two exhibitions, ETERNAL YOUTH and SMOKE, RISES or something; the first was nostalgic somehow, with magazine prints of Marky Mark and Kate Moss in Calvin Klein ads, an Instagram model blown up to be life-sized, and some other not-so-surprising or provocative looks at youth; it's not surprising anymore, to see kids wrecked by drugs or hiding behind masks or struggling with the trials of adolescence; we're so oversaturated with such content these days, it felt like a somewhat lazy exhibition--I did find some of the text pieces interesting, talking about the commodification of youth and how it's used as an empty promise and vague reason to buy something. 

The other, across the hall, was a series of basic sculptures involving 'other people' outside of the exhibition somehow, outside of the museum. Marble sculptures with shallow pools containing contact lenses of people who didn't know one another, SIM cards in cement blocks, manipulated window panes folded in strange shapes with cigarette buts or guitar strings attached to them. The most provocative one, to me, was a 'wall' with a square canvases on either side painted in the pattern of a shirt and a dress worn by a man and a woman who would occasionally come to the museum; the might meet, they might not; the canvases were put on parallel tracks that ran the length of the wall. And then a metal rod with a single earring through it--the other is presently worn by a woman somewhere in the world, which is the complementary part of the sculpture. The artist invites you to imagine the human elements that are contained in-part, yet that ultimately transcend, the museum space and sculpture itself. I found myself wanting more of that one, I felt that it was real art that provoked something in the viewer, a creative act that was the same and different every time. 

There was another gallery on that floor, tucked in the corner--a series of made-up constellations was on one wall, understandably meditating on the arbitrary yet meaningful nature of any constellation in the night sky that we have come to identify. The exhibit was named after some part of Moby Dick, 'the shallow level' or something like that. From Ahab's quotation about needing to strike through the mask, about how there is something beyond us that we can't quite access. Though the written explanation of the intention excited me tremendously, I found the art to be somewhat lacking, probably just because it's not to my taste. A painting that was overlaid with pink paint such that you can still kind-of see the stuff beneath (really obvious relevance, not profoundly interesting), a set of concrete blocks that looks solid from 3/4 sides but opens on the other, a map written over with a poem by the artist about metaphor and perception and imagining an analogous human example of reducing the world to a map, which I liked best, and some other things that didn't strike me particularly. 

Upstairs was an installation that I really hated with some computer-generated supermarket images of fruit and weird grocery store dollies and something about trying to make you feel like you're inside of a freezer with bags of fake ice and all that. Then things that look like paint cans but are actually meticulously crafted wooden sculptures of paint cans. The only part I liked, which was small, was built into the wall; a supposed massage parlor--you can see the entry with the sign, a stairway up to a door, and a back entrance, all in miniature, through holes in the wall. Playing the voyeur with nothing to see, sparking a curiosity that exists but can't exist there. 

On the third floor was the Murakami exhibition, which I didn't expect to love so much. The wall was covered in silver and electric pink, tentacles patterns and a stylized 'MURAKAMI.' Some of his beautiful early works with a traditional Japanese artistic technique that depicted turtles that seemed to have been made of condensed and reptilian mystery. A massive blue wall of many panels and absurdly deep blue pigments, an ornate stage setting with 2/1 at the top to celebrate the artist's birthday by making fun of that one guy who only made art that was the date written out on a canvas. More of those mocking types except the date and the canvas were painted the same color so it can hardly be distinguished. And then some rooms on Mr. DOB, his mouse-thing, that I liked sometimes but mostly didn't. Some explanation of his workshop technique making his larger pieces was also featured, but I wasn't too interested in seeing how the magic is made, but rather in the magic itself. His 'superflat' pieces were really compelling--flowers with faces covering an entire wall, for instance--and his aesthetic came back to me from his various famous collaborations with people in the 2000s, especially. None of that stuff was really my thing, but the rigorous detail impressed me. It started to get really exciting for me upon seeing Kanye's Graduation album cover in real life, in addition to a sculpture of the Kanye Bear and another painting from that time-period. A grandmother was trying to explain to her grandkids who Kanye West was--'a very famous rapper' and I found it funny. 

The room that made me feel the most, though, was a huge rectangular gallery with two massive sculptures of demons or something, red and blue, at the entrance and exit of the room, with some Murakami stained-glass windows behind them in a sort of religious allusion. The long walls were covered by two pieces--one was a white and blue dragon that didn't captivate me terribly much, but the other was a huge, intricate, and profoundly striking work of 100 monks of various sizes, stylized and detailed in the most precise and stunning manner. It was both grotesque and ascetic, simultaneously religious and irreverent. The size of everything was really moving to me. 

The final room displayed Murakami's most recent piece, done especially for the exhibition, entitled 'the octopus eats its own tentacle' or something like that. It's a reference to a Japanese saying that deals with cutting off an arm in order to grow a new one, with the recycling of the past and the coming of a circular future. That one was also beautiful, though I had been too impressed by the previous room to feel anything but a visual hangover as I pondered the equally beautiful scene. 

I left looking for a place to read and enjoy something to drink while listening to Vince Staples' new album, which I was inspired to hear because the museum is having him speak there later this month. I really liked what I heard and keep meaning to peruse it further. I ended up at a little French bistro where I had some happy-hour red wine that I had missed. Red wine was plentiful in Argentina, but I was very deprived of it in India, so it felt like a revelation. I read my book, talked to my sister and parents, and then ordered some muscles around sunset. They were gorgeous; I had smelled them from another table earlier in the evening and resolved to try them despite my ongoing attempts at vegetarianism (currently, I've decided to eat meat only one day per week). And it really was a beautiful day, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Solitude isn't necessarily that bad. 

[willswalkabout]

Ho Chi Minh, El Nido.

I can guarantee this blog will be the hardest to write of my travels. These have been the toughest and most unforgettable 9 days of my trip so far, but not without some great moments thrown in. (On completion I’ve also just done a word count and it’s really long again, sorry, but maybe one to print!)

When I left off last time I had just landed in Ho Chi Minh. It was about 11pm and although I was shattered, I really didn’t want to pay £15 for a taxi, so after some searching I found the 80p bus, which would drop me off 5 minutes from my hostel. On arrival the place seemed closed, though only because the reception desk didn’t function after 10pm. A security guard who spoke zero English met me in the lobby and took my passport in exchange for a key. Other than that he just motioned for me to go up the stairs, with no further direction. Unlike most hostels my bed number had no correlation to the floor number, which led to some confusion before eventually finding my mattress for the next 3 nights.

The next day was to be my touristy day, though it didn’t start till quite late due to tiredness from Thursday’s travel. I walked to the Independence Palace first. Ho Chi Minh’s attractions have odd opening times, as I discovered the palace was not to open till 1pm. It was around 34'C and so I decided to sit outside in the shade for about 40 minutes watching Vietnam’s most crazy city fly by. The palace itself is quite odd. It’s very typical 60s architecture, after its rebuild in 1966, and doesn’t really resemble a palace at all. On top of this it has never been inhabited by a King, and now only functions as a tourist attraction. It did play a pretty symbolic roll however in the “fall of Saigon” something that coincided with America’s evacuation of the country, so was a good reinforcement of my grounding in the events of the war. I find it sort of crazy that it doesn’t make up even a small part of any history course taught in school, despite it being the most monumental post-WW2 ideological war.

After this visit I engaged in culture of a different form, heading to the nearest Starbucks so I could stream Ed Sheeran’s latest album, which had just been released. I have been playing it practically nonstop since, through some incredibly arduous journeys which will be described later in the blog.

I then visited a very old post office, and Ho Chi Minh’s attempt at the Notre Dame, though, as mentioned earlier, odd timings prescribed that this building closed at 4, preventing me from going inside. I went back to the Hostel, which is effectively run solely by travellers who ran out of money and thought they’d chill in Ho Chi Minh for a bit. Although Flipside Hostels is Kiwi owned, the only staff I met were Canadian, British and Vietnamese. My route back to the hostel is actually a mini story in itself, as I had my first and last experience on a ‘Grab MotoTaxi’. Grab is Asian uber, and for 25% of the price you can sit on the back of a driver’s moped (helmet included!). It was more like a thrill ride than a taxi, as my driver swerved through non-existent gaps, and used the pavement as a 'shortcut’ when he got bored of the traffic. At one point during the ride he asked me to rate him 5 stars on the app at the end of the trip, to which I replied that I would do, if we made it that far. Beers at the hostel were cheap, and I spent most of the evening with a Canadian girl, and 2 Norwegian guys, all of which were in my dorm. It is fair to say we were all feeling the effects of the previous night on Saturday morning, but it was to my delight when at about midday a hilarious English guy called Joey, with a helicopter hat (baseball cap with the spinny thing), burst into our room announcing that we were going to a pool party. At this point I will admit that there many more cultural options in the city that I didn’t explore. For example the war museum, or tunnels. On the other hand I liked the people in the hostel, and in the past I thought pool parties only existed in LA, Vegas, or movies set in LA or Vegas, so I went. I would definitely like to return to see more of the city in the future.

It was a good laugh, and a very relaxing way to spend the day, with good food, and some fun conversations with one girl who was half Russian half Swedish, but about to go to University in Spain so she could be fluent in 4 languages by the age of 20. As well as a French man who decided we should try and have a conversation where we could only speak our native languages. This was a stupid idea, albeit with amusing consequences, given I got my French GCSE over 2 and a half years ago, and he was 30 and working in English. It did however give me the smallest of glimpses of how possible it could be to learn a language if you were forced to speak it full time.

I went out again that night with the same guys, and spent much of it playing ¾ rounds of pool with 2 Indian guys while discussing the IPL.

I left Ho Chi Minh the next morning with an English traveler who was heading to Sydney, my next stop being Manila. I hijacked his pre-booked taxi, my 3rd time doing so on this trip, however due to his nerves about missing his flight I did arrive at the airport 3 and a half hours before my own. Something I was prepared to take for the ease and cheapness of getting to the airport. El Nido is impossible to reach from an international destination in less than 2 days realistically, unless you align everything perfectly and don’t take a single rest. It is 7 hours drive north of Puerto Princessa, the island’s only airport, which is an hour and 50 from Manila. Therefore I spent Sunday night in Manila, in a small hotel about 15 minutes from the airport. People generally don’t hang around in Manila, I can’t honestly pass judgement on the claims of dirtiness and roughness, however my hotel’s location was certainly not somewhere you wanted to spend any time. I was able to locate a McDonalds a 10 minute walk away, but that was enough of Manila for me in this case.

The next day I had to leave at about 5 to get my 7am flight. I got a van from Puerto Princessa at 11am, getting me to my El Nido hostel at about 5pm. The bus journey is infamously horrific, not a view I can personally attest to. The road itself is reasonable for South East Asia, and my driver was fast and very friendly. The ticket was 1000 pesos return, about £16. I also managed to persuade a girl that had somehow booked the front seat of the minibus next to the driver, that with long legs in comparison to her stature of no more than 5ft1, my need was greater. I think the driver had in fact invited the woman to that seat, no reservation had been made, and she was quite relieved to move.

To reach my hostel you had to tramp 50m along the beach, to a view I don’t think I would ever get tired of. There are maybe a couple of photos of it on here, but I may have taken close to a hundred. My roommates were Catie and Lucie, recently qualified nurses from Northumbria.

I haven’t planned how to write this next paragraph, but am aware I would like to print this entire blog on its completion as a permanent memory of the adventure. El Nido is somewhere I will never regret visiting, with crystal clear waters, stunning sunsets and perfect weather. There are factors however that take a little away from the paradise, these being next to no internet connection and frequent power cuts. For these reasons notifications come in sporadically and in clumps. On Monday evening I suddenly had missed calls from mum and dad across 3 different platforms. This is a sight that truly does make your heart skip a beat. The connection was not strong enough for us to attempt any of the video calling methods of the last 5 or so weeks, WhatsApp, FaceTime or Google Duo. I slipped in my UK SIM card to the phone and made an international phone call from the beach, where I found out my Granddad, mum’s father, Reginald Flatman had passed away. Reg first got ill around Christmas, and had been in and out of hospital since, with various issues that were increasingly hard to diagnose.

I visited Reg a few days before I set off when he was in high spirits. I discussed my trip with him, and witnessed him as his trademark jovial self, as he laughed at mum’s gardening course exam, where she had somehow managed to hit the pass mark exactly…

Reg was possibly the kindest man I’ve ever known, with hardly a bad word to say about anyone. His only criticisms were directed at the attitude of the Ipswich Town football team, something I always found odd given his total indifference towards competitive sport of any kind. I’ll never forget walking the fields of Zoe and Des’ farm with him and the dog, when I would go down to Suffolk to work in the summer. I also had a memorable conversation with him 18 months ago at the reception of James and Vicky’s wedding, where he was utterly bemused by the 'racket’ coming out of the speaker system during the reception. I was delighted to be able to invite him to our school’s big band concert at Chelmsford cathedral last year.

Reg was a man of simple pleasures who would always refuse as best he could to trouble anyone for anything. We would rarely be able to contain our amusement at dinner, as when Reg was asked “would you like some more food”, he would reply with “that was great thanks”. Nana’s firm toned “Reginald”, uttered when he made a funny face across the table, nudged one of us under it, or tried to steal a roast potato, never failed to make myself or Kate laugh. Reg was to us polo mints, shredded wheat, and a day concluded with cheese and biscuits. Reg never bothered taking life too seriously, a characteristic summed up by a set of four photos in a frame at home, of him and Nana. He is screwing his face up in an effort to make the photographer laugh, in three of the photos. If this was a school photo session with a 10 year old, you would pretend the first 3 didn’t exist and just print the fourth large. The first three however said far more about Granddad than a composed shot ever could.

I will fly back from Melbourne to London on Sunday 19th to be with family for the funeral on Thursday 23rd. Then fly back out on Friday 24th to Auckland, NZ.

So El Nido. The nights are all very boring here as I did not have the energy or desire to go out. On Tuesday I accomplished a goal I’ve had for a long time, to visit a particular beach by the name of Nacpan. There is a particular travel blogger on YouTube by the name of Christian Le Blanc. While I was doing my exam revision last year, Christian was traveling the Philippines, and his trip to this particular beach was one that really drew me to the area. You have to drive 45 minutes north of the main town via scooter to get there. This is 25 minutes of glorious winding road up the coast, before a horrific 20 minutes along an unpaved dirt track to the beach. The reward is one of the largest and most untouched spots along the coast. Fine white sand and beautiful water. However I imagine it is becoming less and less 'secret’ by the month. Even in comparison to the video I saw 8 months ago there are now a few more food and drink stalls, a relatively organised parking scheme, and a far bigger sign from the main road. The one way in which El Nido has developed impressively is in its number of high end restaurants run by Europeans, in order to serve those visiting the town from nearby resorts. This did mean I enjoyed a great pizza that night, with about 10 others from the hostel.

The next day I did the hostel’s combined package of Tour A&C. The El Nido bay is very comparable to Halong Bay in Vietnam, except for more islands with beaches, as well as individual lagoons, in comparison to Halong’s mystical 1969 limestone rocks. At some point the tourist board must of grouped different combinations of the lagoons, beaches, islands, viewpoints etc, into tour A, B, C and D. There are now dozens of outlets selling these tours at prices from 1000-2000 pesos, (£16-£32). In the vast majority of cases you should try not to book tours and other items through your hostel. They will rarely be providing the service themselves, and will therefore be taking a cut simply for making a phone call to one of the companies on the street on your behalf. For example hiring a scooter from the hostel was 700 pesos a day, though I found one in town for 350. Saying all this the hostel ran their own in house tour which was a combination of tour A and C. It was 1700 which was nearer the pricier end, but the advantages were that it left from the hostel’s own beach, and you could do it with people you knew. I did love the experience, the videos of which online were another draw for me visiting the area. I snorkelled and got some decent GoPro footage of a small jellyfish that went on to sting me as I swam away. Taking photos on my phone and proper camera though was a more hap-hazard venture, with the boat being occupied by 16 soaking wet passengers constantly walking up and down around the kit. I also started to wonder if I was really getting the most out of the day, when seeing it partially through a lens. I was never going to get the greatest of photos, for that you’d need a chartered boat where you could specify time in each place. So I put the camera away for the most part of the trip, and enjoyed just sitting on the edge of the boat and taking it all in. Sunburn was the only tarnish on the day.

Thursday started with a torrential storm, which in typical Philippines style concluded with the weather returning to normal service in the space of 5 minutes. Myself, Catie, Lucie and a Swiss guy called Kevin went to do a zip line which was pretty awesome. I’d thought at the start of the day that I would be riding, and so brought my bike helmet with me. This meant rather embarrassingly this was to be my head protection for the experience, complete with visor. I managed to fashion my camera bag shoulder strap into a way of securing my phone to my harness, so I could film and photograph the ride. After this I returned to the hostel to relax a bit before planning to return to Nacpan to try and capture the sunset. This plan in hindsight was rash. Though cloudy, I was overly trusting on one German guy’s words that “his app said the sunset would be good”. It was not, with the clouds concealing nearly the entirety of the sun. I still enjoyed seeing the light shade of pink that took over the bottom third of the horizon, but it was not something I managed to pick up on the camera. What made the decision particularly stupid was that I then had to go back down the entirely unlit gravel path in the dark. I dropped off my scooter in town before meeting the girls for a meal at a traditional Philippino restaurant that had been recommended.

What followed was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life, something I think I am only now really coming back from 2 and a half days later. Food poisoning hit me bad all night, as it did Lucie also. The plot thickens however, when we both awoke in the morning to find at least 7 others in the hostel had experienced identical symptoms overnight. I could not join up any dots with any of them leading some people to wonder if there was something airborne going around. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but it made Friday’s van journey even more daunting.

As mentioned earlier I had booked a return trip with the company that had brought me up, however the way it seems to work is that nobody drives if their vans are not full. This meant when I arrived at the bus terminal all the other companies that were present were enquiring about my departure time. My theory is that they knew my provider wouldn’t show. So at 1:35, five minutes past my supposed leaving time, a bidding war ensued. I was eventually bundled onto someone’s minibus. I can only assume after they took photos of my ticket, that they will get a refund off my people. This was not the main frustration of the journey unfortunately. The driver still had 4 free seats, and so he transformed into a hop on - hop off service for the whole island. This meant stopping for every random person on the side of the street, negotiating a price for their destination before letting them on. We must have made around 15 stops, something my stomach was not pleased with. 6 hours later we had arrived at Puerto Princessa airport. Advice I am giving myself for the future is not to book the cheapest hotel for short 1 night stopovers. This decision on Friday night involved a 20 minute tuk tuk ride to an area I was advised “not to walk at night”. The only pleasant anecdote in this experience was the fact my driver’s sister was a nurse in Ipswich, probably at the hospital granddad was receiving such good care. It was an incredibly odd and heartwarming meeting, as the driver spoke enthusiastically about his new brother in law, who runs a barber shop on the Woodbridge road. My room itself would be more accurately described as a cell. The bed was like a roll mat, and my troubles were furthered in the morning, when the building “ran out of power”. This was an impressive feat in itself as I was the only occupant in the entire 12 room hotel. I’ve got no idea how it copes with more than 5 customers… The power cut meant I woke up with no air con and no running water. I think I may have left without paying but the owner was so confused and I was so angry at the whole situation, I think the 600 pesos might remain in my pocket.

The next day I took a flight to Manila, then another to Kuala Lumpur. I’m writing this from the final couple of hours on what’s been a pretty grim overnight flight into Melbourne. I think when flying west-east you’re supposed to sleep, something I’ve completely failed to do.

I have a 2 hour domestic to Sydney and then the 47 hours from El Nido are complete. I think I have 14 hours to Abu Dhabi and then another 8 home next Sunday, so will try and summarise my week in Australia then.

Till the next time.

[thehikingviking]

Gelai Volcano from the Maasai Village of Gelai

I was sitting in my cubicle one lazy November day and received an email from Laura Newman, asking if I wanted to take her spot on an upcoming Africa ultra bagging trip (ultra = peak with > 5000 ft of topographic prominence). I couldn’t recognize any of the proposed peaks and I knew none of the attendees. I sat on it for a while then came to the realization that I may never get another opportunity to climb such obscure, prominent peaks. I got the okay from my manager and jumped on board. The leader of the group was Rob Woodall, a name I vaguely recalled, most likely from online trip reports. I would later learn that Rob is one of the most active worldwide ultra peak baggers.

To prepare for my trip, I got a series of vaccination shots, including hepatitis, MMR, Typhoid and probably several others. My doctor prescribed malaria vaccines in tablet form. Asaka really wanted to go, but she didn’t have health insurance, and getting vaccinated out of pocket would be very expensive. It was a tough decision, but I had no choice except to leave her at home for the trip. After the trip, I knew I made the right decision because she wouldn’t have enjoyed the trip. I promised her that we would go back to Tanzania together for Kilimanjaro and Meru.

The day finally came. I boarded my plane in San Francisco and flew down to Los Angeles via Delta Airlines. After a short layover, I boarded a KLM flight and flew to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam, we flew 10 more hours until finally landing at Kilimanjaro International Airport. I waited in the slow moving visa line with no bathroom in sight, making for an unpleasant hour. When I finally made it to baggage claim, one of my bags was missing. Included in this bag were my hiking boots, medicine and cash. It was panic time, but worrying just worsened the situation. I met a driver who drove me to Arusha, where I met Rob at the Korona House. He was relaxing in the room while the others were asleep. The window was wide open and I was paranoid of mosquitoes. He claimed he hadn’t seen one all night, and seconds later a mosquito flew into the room. As if my stress wasn't high enough... Rob did confirm that he had an extra pair of boots I could borrow, and thankfully his shoe size was close enough to mine.

The next morning we had breakfast outside where I met Adrian and Martin for the first time.

The plan for the day was to drive into town and gather some last minute essentials. I had everything needed for hiking, and while my bag was still missing, the airport confirmed they would deliver the bag to my hotel when it arrived. In the long run, this actually was not possible, considering I would be in rural villages over the next few days, but the faint hope of reuniting with my stuff did something to ease my stress. The group spent the next hour or so looking for a SIM card. I already had international data, so I had nothing to do. I passed the time watching several Arussie carry a large telephone pole through a skinny alley.

I watched various chicken vendors who kept their birds inside woven baskets. The chicken couldn’t escape the basket on their own, but the vendor could easily grab them and push them through the gaps in the webbing. I declined the dozens of street vendors who approached me with bracelets and other trinkets. Each of them gave me a different explanation for what the colors represented on the bracelet. Finally the others returned and we began our trip north along A104 in our Land Cruiser. We drove by Mt Meru on our way to Longido. The summit of the 14er was blocked by perennial clouds.

We stopped in Londigo for lunch, where we had plain sandwiches, unseasoned fried chicken and some bottled Coke.

Behind the town was Mount Longido, a very prominent peak which I would like to climb some other day.

From Longido we followed dirt roads to the village of Gelai. Not more than 15 minutes after leaving Longido we encountered our first animals. I was surprised to see so many large animals so far away of the Serengeti.

There were giraffes, zebras, antelope and even a kori bustard. About 40 miles away from Longido, Gelai Volcano came into view. It probably could have been visible from much further away if the air quality had been more clear.

After hours of driving we arrived at Gelai Village. It was a small town with only several buildings. We dropped off our luggage in our very small room which contained 3 bunk beds. There was still plenty of time before dinner, and with nothing to do, we decided to take a walk up the nearby hill.

As we approached, we wondered if the peak had at least 100 meters (or 300 ft) of prominence, so we took an elevation measurement at the key saddle and planned to compare this with the summit reading.

We reached the base of the mountain after fifteen minutes and started the uphill portion. I did not have on proper shoes so my pace was limited. There were many thorny plants along the way which really did a good job of catching my clothes and even skin. The thorns were quite painful. The locals call this peak Peridot Hill because the canyon below is full of the precious stones. Tanzanite, another precious gem, is only found in Tanzania, showing how mineral rich the land is.

The summit was surrounded by a circular man made wall a brush. I’ve seen similar structures on television; Maasi warriors make these for protection from predators at night. Even a hungry lion doesn’t want to go through these painful thorns.

To the north was Gelai Volcano.

To the west were Ol Doinyo Lengai and Ker Massi, two prominent volcanoes which I badly want to climb in the future.

We took another elevation reading and found that the peak indeed has over 100 meters of prominence. I was happy we made the effort, and we descended back down towards the town below.

Our guide Jeff took us on a detour. We stopped by a Maasai dwelling where we met a small family.

They appeared to be goat herders, and welcomed us into their home.

They showed us the precious minerals from the nearby canyon. I know nothing about precious stones so I declined purchasing anything.

Staying with the famous Maasai warriors was a very amazing experience, and everything felt very authentic until they pulled out the bracelets from Arusha and began trying to sell this to us. Rob had too much of a heart and ended up buying one. We walked back to the main part of town before dusk, leaving Peridot Hill behind.

Jeff prepared dinner back at the house. He did a very good job preparing food with the ingredients he had available.

The Englishmen were crazy about their tea and couldn’t stop drinking it. It was 85 degrees even after dark, but drinking boiling water didn’t seem to bother them. There was a bathroom in a separate building, and every time I used it a new friend would join; whether it be a lizard, toad, spider or cockroach. As I walked to and from the bathroom, a Maasai child would sit quietly in the dark. This caught me by surprise and frightened me several times. When it was bed time it was hard to sleep. I put the mosquito net over my body which made me feel constricted. The temperature never cooled off, and I spent the whole night sweating, tossing and turning in the dampened sheets. The others made many noises in their sleep and their smell was amplified in the small quarters. Jet-lag also didn’t help my situation; I did everything I could to mentally get through the night.

The next morning it was time to finally hike. We had breakfast and of course more tea, then jumped in the Land Cruiser and began our drive up the 4x4 road.

The road was extremely rough and deeply rutted in places. I definitely couldn't manage this road with my Jeep back home, but the Land Cruiser had few challenges. We passed by several dik-diks, which are the smallest species of antelope. They are one of the few monogamous creatures in the animal kingdom, and if their significant other dies, they will commit suicide by giving themselves up to one of the carnivorous predators. 

We ran into a little bit of a traffic jam along the way.

We drove so far up the mountain that I became concerned we would have nothing left to hike. As we approached our starting point, two hyenas sprinted across the road. No one told me that there would be hyenas in the area. I was aware of the Cape buffalo, which are considered the most dangerous animal in the area, but I was not okay with the carnivores. While the road continued, the Land Cruiser could not make it up a slippery, steep portion of the road. We reversed back down the road and parked at a flat spot. In addition to Jeff, our local guide from Gelai named Khalifa planned to join us.

Prior to the trip, Rob confirmed that our guides would be armed. When we started hiking, I found Khalifa to be armed with nothing more than a walking stick. I felt sick to my stomach. Jeff pointed down at the partial print of one of the hyenas. Khalifa and Jeff explained that the hyenas would most likely not bother us. The only animal of concern was buffalo.

Down below to our northwest was Lake Natron.

We followed the main road as it continued through the shrubs. I felt that as long as I stayed in the middle of the pack, I would have the highest chance of surviving a hyena attack. The golden rule is you don’t have to outrun the hyena; you just have to outrun the slowest person in the group.

We heard something large moving through the vegetation up the hill. Khalifa turned to me and with a very concerned look on his face he whispered “boo-fa-low.” The locals treat the Cape buffalo with a great deal of respect.

They were a good distance away, but we could clearly see buffalo stampeding through the brush.

We cautiously watched as they ran across the road, seemingly unaware of our presence. Once the coast was clear, we continued following the road. Khalifa and I took the lead, and I was surprised when a Maasai warrior caught up to us from behind. 

He had a spear, so I felt it was in my best interest to hike with him. He didn’t speak English, but seemed very friendly. I offered him some extra water and he gladly accepted.

We could see the very young volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai through the haze to the southwest.

To the south was Ketumbeine Volcano, which we planned to climb the following day.

Gelai is a shield volcano, so the ascent was very gradual. The western crater rim stood ahead of us.

We reached a flat spot and across a shallow valley was a herd of wildebeest. 

Further up the ridge from the wildebeests, Jeff pointed out a hunting structure. It seems that hunting expeditions in this area are more popular than hiking expeditions.

I asked Jeff what animal was hunted from that hut, and he replied lion. At first I thought that was interesting, but then my brain started functioning; that meant lions must live in the immediate area. I then remembered that no one in our group was armed, which led me to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I asked Jeff if he was scared of lions. He responded no, and told me that the only large cat that he was afraid of was jaguars because they like to hide out of sight and ambush their prey. I asked Jeff if Jaguars lived on Gelai, and he said of course. What I once envisioned as an alpine mountaineering trip had turned into a fate tempting stroll of peril. With big cats on the mind, we approached an overgrown section of the road. This was the perfect place for a lurking jaguar.

I tiptoed through the thick brush, wondering what defense mechanism evolution had gifted me with to protect me from an untamed beast. As we reached the end of the dense region, a large animal exploded out of the brush and ran in front of us. To our relief, it was only a dik-dik.

We continued along the two-track towards the gap in the crater ridge above.

Rob, who is also a birder, took the opportunity to view several species unique to Africa through his binoculars, verifying each sighting with his birding book.

We were greeted with a grassy pasture upon entering the crater. Here Khalifa expressed his concern for buffalo. They typically like to graze in this area, but there were none today. It was clear that the cape buffalo is the most feared animal in the bush, even more than the king of the jungle.

We walked around the contour of the crater, eventually hitting a patch of of washa washa, also known as the Maasai Stinging Nettle (urtica massaica). The nettle induced a sharp, painful stinging sensation, followed by an intense tingling sensation, just from lightly brushing up against the plant. I had to carefully watch my step. Meanwhile, our Maasai warrior waltzed right through the washa washa as if it was nothing. At a fork in the road, he took a right and continued towards a high camp, while we veered to the left towards the summit.

There was no washa washa in this grassy meadow, but we were on high alert for buffalo. Just off the path was a bull carcass.

Rather than worry about what killed the bovine, we took this as a photo opportunity.

I would learn later on in the trip that the cattle in this region are very different than the ones back home. Even the females have large horns. There are also other species of cattle with large humps. We continued along the grassy section toward the northern edge of the crater.

The road continued back down the northern side of the mountain. We left the road here and headed towards the summit tower up above.

We only had 300 feet remaining, however much of the remaining off road portion was through washa washa. I had gaiters protecting my lower legs, but my bare knees suffered a direct assault from thousands of stinging hairs. We used a maze of buffalo trails to navigate through the flora, hoping the trail’s architects weren’t lying around the corner.

The washa washa seemed to never end. Every few minutes I would check my GPS, dismayed to see almost zero progress. All things come to an end, and eventually we were out of the washa washa and into a forest.

We exited the forest and entered a clearing with the radio tower.

Only a few meters away back in the forest lay the high point.

Within a minute we were standing on top of the true summit. The summit was completely forested and there wasn’t even a good place to sit. Regardless, we were happy to be standing on top, alive.

There was one opening through the branches and vines, but the sky was too hazy to make out any landmarks.

We ate our packed lunches in the shade. Even though the hike was short, I was tired from the humidity and jet lag. Hoping to get a view, I climbed up the radio tower in the summit clearing. 

I could have climbed higher, but the tower didn’t feel very stable. Also, if I were to fall, I would definitely break several bones, and I wasn’t sure if this region had the proper infrastructure or medical expertise to properly treat me. Again, the views were limited due to the poor air quality. The only other peak I could make out was Ketumbeine.

I was eager to get back to the village before any apex predators could become aware of my presence. We walked back through the forest and at a clearing we could see Lake Natron below.

We again had to walk though the minefield of washa washa. Upon closer inspection, the true weapons can be seen on the stems. Jeff told me that the buffalo eat the washa washa and go crazy, which is a good enough explanation for why they are so mean and aggressive.

Once through the agonizing stretch, we were back on friendlier grasses. Scouting ahead, we could see no buffalo in the field below.

Returning was a simple task; we just had to follow the road back down to the car.

The hike took only 5 hours and was not so difficult. The total elevation gain was only about 2,300 ft and the round trip distance was 7 miles. Upon reaching the car, the day was still not over. The drive down to the village was very slow, and we stopped several times to talk with the locals. Our guides were speaking in Swahili, so it was impossible for us to know what they were talking about, but the length of each conversation seemed unnecessary and our group became impatient, especially those in the back without windows.

We finally got to the outskirts of Gelai Village, where we were stopped by a police officer. I felt very nervous because I wasn’t sure if this cop was legit, and there was nowhere to run and hide if things went south. What ended up happening was an hour long argument between our guides and the officer. Apparently, we failed to check in at the office the day before, but our guides couldn’t do so since the offices were closed on Sunday. Our guides had to bribe the officer with cash (luckily none of ours) just so he would leave us be. By the time we got back to the village, I was even more exhausted, but with all the humidity, creepy crawlies and lack of comforts that I am used to back home, I could not recover that evening. Our guides decided to spend another night at Gelai Village, which was good news because the original plan was to camp. This decision was made for safety reasons. We were not so far from Serengeti National Park, and animals don’t abide by human borders. I would not have felt comfortable sleeping with so many nocturnal predators nearby. The primary danger seemed to be hyenas, so we slept again in our small, smelly room, with our sights now set on our second Tanzanian objective; Ketumbeine.

[tanya-ali]

Interview: Gang of Youths

It seems just yesterday that we were celebrating Gang of Youths as a recently discovered band destined for success – yet here we are at the release of their sophomore record, Go Farther in Lightness. I caught up with frontman Dave Le’aupepe and lead guitarist Joji Malani about how Go Farther in Lightness came together, racism in the Australian music industry and their shift from Sydney to big-city New York and London.

When I heard “What Can I Do When The Fire Goes Out?” for the first time earlier this year, I was stopped in my tracks. The introduction is one of the most powerful openings to a rock song that I’ve ever heard. The song is a driving force, simultaneously strong and unashamedly vulnerable – and this seems a great way to describe Gang of Youths’ entire sophomore record, Go Farther in Lightness. The album is luminous, inspired and bold. It is long, yet measured; loud in parts, tender in moments. Dave Le’aupepe and Joji Malani are the embodiment of two musicians who have just finished an album: they are exhausted, but proud smiles rarely leave the corners of their mouths.

Le’aupepe and Malani’s comfort with each other speaks volumes about the band as a whole. Le’aupepe has previously referred to them as “family,” and looking at these two this sentiment could not feel more genuine. It also speaks to the stage in their career Gang of Youths are at now – a little less fresh-faced, a little more world-weary, but with more to say every day.

It has been two years since Gang of Youths’ debut album The Positions was released, and just over a year since their follow up EP, Let Me Be Clear. Yet Go Farther in Lightness is about healing, and fittingly, this release process sees the band refreshed, with a shifted philosophy this time around. “It feels different because I found things that I care about more than work. One of them is sitting right next to me,” Le’aupepe says, whacking Malani’s knee. “I realise more and more that I need to care less about what strangers think of my work and what strangers think about me and that’s a pretty significant thing. I love what The Positions was but also it turned me into a really anxious, shitty person, and so I’m trying to reduce the amount of time I spend unhappy because of work, and this sort of process is good.”

This shift in mentality can perhaps be seen in the way the songs for this record came together. The last time The AU Review caught up with Le’aupepe, in 2016, it was revealed that the band already had the title for this sophomore LP. But at the time, they had only written two songs that made it onto Go Farther in Lightness: ‘Deepest Sighs’ and ‘Fear and Trembling’. The rest of the album was written in the second half of last year, a far cry from the way The Positions came together. “The Positions was sort of written over a really long period of time and it was pretty disjointed, I think. There wasn’t a whole lot of reflection I was doing on the songs – I’d write them, we’d play them, and that would be it. I think this whole process has been significantly different because we wanted to have a whole block of time – the reflection process took a lot longer in this regard, and the chronology was more meticulously planned. Honestly, to even talk about The Positions requires so much energy, thinking about like, what was I doing in 2012, 2011 and 2012 when I started writing the songs, like five fucking years ago,” Le’aupepe shakes his head. “I was a kid.”

“The Positions really reflected Dave’s life and our lives at the time,” Malani elaborates. “Over the course of that recording, from when we started to when it came out, Dave’s life changed dramatically. Because everything Dave writes is a reflection of his life and our life… obviously, the story changes. So, different songs come out, and then different songs got scrapped because they just don’t fit with the storyline anymore.” This created difficulty when it came to the extensive touring the band did for The Positions – “we had…not grown tired of those songs before it came out, but just – the meaning wasn’t the same,” Malani explains. In contrast, Go Farther in Lightness feels a lot newer, and Le’aupepe suggests the record is “going to have a slightly longer shelf life to us, because the song are still relatively fresh; they’re not packed with trauma and meaning.”

This by no means suggests the songs are any less emotive than the music we’ve come to love from Gang of Youths. A particular thing that jumps out on first listen to the new LP is a number of beautifully scored string interludes. “Since The Positions I always wanted string interludes cause I love classical music,” Le’aupepe explains. “It’s my father, his spirit, his influence…he loved classical music, still does.” These interludes also have a deliberate, musical function: “There’s so much context and information that is very unsubtly projected into listeners’ ears, and I wanted to be able to break up all the information with something peaceful, enjoyable, that also had a vast litany of the musical motifs and harmonic motifs scattered throughout the record. So the interludes themselves serve a few purposes: to give the listener a breather, but also to reinforce some melodic information.”

The way Le’aupepe speaks about these instrumental tracks, eyes alight, it’s clear that he’s very proud of them – and rightly so. They add a beautiful dimension to a gorgeous, lush record. But they didn’t come easy. “I had been scoring the thing over the course of about three or four months, and then I spent three days downstairs in the writing studio at Sony, scoring the motherfucker. It’s 450 pages or some shit. The scores were vaguely printed out, and then I’d just handwritten all the incidentals for a quartet of two cellos and two violins. I believe in the idea of trying to encase the power of a raw string quartet… I think that it’s more emotional and more human than using a whole bunch of fucking software. I think we’re finding that out a lot more now, we want to become a lot more reliant on our performance and playing than production tricks.”

Erhu, a Chinese string instrument with a distinctive tone, also makes a few appearances on Go Farther in Lightness. “We’ve always loved erhu,” Le’aupepe says. “I grew up in Strathfield, walking through the tunnel through Strathfield to Raw Square there’d always be a man playing erhu, it’s the sound of my childhood. I think it’s the most beautiful instrument – there’s something beautiful about Asian instrumentation that always feels peaceful, feels rich.”

Go Farther in Lightness is full to the brim with influences, both musical and otherwise. Art music inextricably peeks through the album’s melodic basslines, thrashing guitars and Le’aupepe’s brooding voice, with Le’aupepe “mainly listening to Philip Glass… Lemonte Young, John Adams, Max Richter, Nils Frahm as well.”

Malani recalls Primavera Sound, a festival in Barcelona where the band played last year, as a pivotal moment. “Radiohead was there, it was their second performance since they’d stopped touring for a while, and the album hadn’t come out yet. So they played a lot of the stuff from that–“ Malani says, as Le’aupepe interjects, excited: “I predicted every song on the set list!”

Malani continues, “I think that definitely sparked something in Dave. I know when we were in LA, listening to Broken Social Scene ‘cause they had just started touring; I remember I felt like there was something about that energy, watching them play live. Felt inspiring, and then Dave like ran back into his room and started writing.”

As the album came together, it was often music first, as opposed to lyrics – something that Le’aupepe had never really done before. “The Positions was all lyrics first. But I think all this stuff built up, and there was something stopping me from getting it out. And I think being forced to do so with a time constraint helped me to remove any kind of inhibitions and just kind of regurgitating. So we would record an actual fucking song and I had melodic ideas and I would like babble gibberish and a few lyrical ideas. But I would often take home recordings, and I would walk back to where I was living in Surry Hills through a park, and I’d write [lyrics] on my phone,” he remembers.

“Oh, the roughs, they were funny,” Malani laughs. “Just like, gibberish. Sounded like Sims!” Le’aupepe laughs too, but in seriousness changes tack: “I think people often underestimate, though, how much Joji just being literally around me has an effect on what happens with the record. So I write the songs, but Joji’s there when I’m writing the songs. I think that’s the reality there.” While Le’aupepe is the primary songwriter, it is clear that the band is extremely tight-knit, and it is the Gang of Youths voice that comes through on Go Farther in Lightness – not simply the Le’aupepe voice and story.

In an accompanying statement to the record, Le’aupepe writes that Go Farther in Lightness is his “attempt to make the lessons I learned from my heroes, my favourite texts, my friends and from my short time on earth readily accessible and available to you”. It’s a regenerative record, and the lyrics are meditative, simple yet often profound. It comes as no real surprise, then, that Le’aupepe was surrounded by almost exclusively philosophical reading material as he wrote for the album. “There’s so many books that I was reading and had around me that influenced me. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard, The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Anxiety by Jacques Lacan, it’s a bunch of seminars he gave on the topic in the 60s. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, most of Nietzsche’s catalogue… I’m not going to say Atlas Shrugged because I wrote a song about how much I hate that book and the philosophy surrounding it. But yeah, lots of shit.”

The aforementioned track that doubles down on Atlas Shrugged, aptly titled “Atlas Drowned”, is the third song on Go Farther in Lightness, and arguably Gang of Youths’ most explicitly political single to date. Accompanied by crunchy guitar, Le’aupepe croons a wake-up call: “The whole institution is rigged and the ship’s going down”. The final lines of the song are nothing short of blistering: “And these chosen whites are anaemic and small / And are truly the lowliest sheep of them all / And their eminence is fixed upon things we could burn in one go / I’mma let Atlas fall, I’mma watch Atlas fall”.

“Atlas Drowned” may be one of the only Gang of Youths songs in which these topics come up, but throughout Gang of Youths’ career, Le’aupepe has been consistently outspoken about issues surrounding race, in music and more broadly. Over the past few years, there has been a very gradually increasing conversation about the pervasive whiteness of Australian music. Have things in the industry changed since The Positions came out in 2015?

“No. No! You serious?” Le’aupepe looks incredulous. “I don’t think the problem is necessarily in our scene, that there’s not enough people of colour, I think it’s [in] fucking music writing. The fact is that intelligent women of colour, for example, in music writing are still… how many are there? Very few. Can you think of many?”

It’s true – I can’t. As surprised as I am that this question has caused us to turn our gaze back to the industry I’m representing, I really can’t think of more than a handful, myself included.

“Whiteness isn’t foreign to Australia,” Le’aupepe continues. “So, it’s not unusual that there’d be statistically more white middle-class people making music. But I think the real issue is how much we like to pretend that we’re making progress and changing. The ideology remains the same. There are so many self-hating guys trying to repurpose our colour, repurpose our culture, repurpose our position and experience in society to make themselves appear to be more sympathetic. There’s such a patronising external layer of “Oh yeah, we get it, we get you people”. That’s the real problem. I don’t need to be lectured by white middle-class private-school educated people about oppression, thank you very much.”

It’s a topic that evokes a visceral reaction in both Le’aupepe and Malani. Being Samoan-Jewish and Fijian respectively, in a scene as white as Australia’s rock scene, they’ve both had their share of ignorance and then some. “I think the more that people try to engineer narratives around our race and our socio-economic background, the less progress we’re really making. It’s frustrating in rock music, because it’s interesting how much of the tastemaker intelligentsia is predominantly made up of white, upper middle-class, private school educated people, making constant taste judgements based on their preconceived values. You know? There’s a reason why we don’t fit in, it’s ‘cause we were never feigning to make stare-at-your-shoes garage rock for lo-fi kids with backwards caps. Low fidelity music to us was always a necessity.”

Malani chuckles at this: “It’s hilarious to me how that can be, like a sound that’s pursued. You know that’s funny, Dave, you use the same stuff to make music now that you did when we were 15. Literally the exact same computer, the same audio interface that was like $30.”

This riles Le’aupepe up further. “When we’re talking about fucking posturing, posturing artistic credibility: mostly kids who criticised us were from the inner-city and aren’t fucking from where we’re from, where I’m from? It’s like, how much bullshit vinyl-fetishism and music snobbery do you have to maintain to be part of that crew? And a lot of that is centred around whiteness. There’s nothing wrong with being white, but there is something wrong with trying to repurpose the plight of the working-class Pacific Islander kids to reinforce your fucking privilege. “Oh, I understand oppression because I’m–” you know, fuck off mate! You don’t! You don’t know what my mum and my sister and my dad and I’ve been through, you don’t. Being Pacific Islanders, we were brought here on fucking slave ships. Fucking – Joji’s a political refugee, you don’t know what the fuck he’s been through. It’s patronising, and so I get really angry about it.”

“You know, the greatest hypocrisies I see are people marching saying “Let Them Stay,” but they don’t give a flying fuck about the overrepresentation of Indigenous and Pacific Islander people in our prison system. They don’t give a fuck about the fact that most people of Middle Eastern origin in Australia can’t get fucking jobs because of their last name. Do you know how hard it is to get a fucking phone interview when your name’s um, Mohammed? White leftism has a fucking identity problem. They’re trying to repress conversations that seem offensive when they really need to be talked about and they’re trying to make big deals about stuff that they shouldn’t be, and then they ignore stuff that they shouldn’t.”

The band is currently based between London and New York, and when I ask them if it’s different in this respect, living there, Le’aupepe blows a raspberry. They both nod. “London is a place where it’s like, right near Europe, there’s a lot of immigration, it’s a place where it’s just way more culturally diverse,” Malani offers. “When we talk to even our white English friends… this whole other colour, it’s just not a thing. It’s weird to them that these issues exist, like what happens here and what happens in America, because it’s just – literally every third person is not white. Every second person is a female. So it’s very different.”

“The wars that people fight in Sydney are deeply entrenched in the fact that we’re an incredibly wealthy, well off, not-as-diverse-as-we-wish-that-we-were city. That’s it,” Le’aupepe says. “You can tell – we’re a young city, we’re a young country, and I think that the relative oldness of places like New York City and London… it feels a little bit easier to cohabit with people and exist. That’s all it really is, I think. Culturally, the disconnect we experience in Australia, growing up, we can sort of start fresh. And that’s okay. I’m still fucking hella proud of living in Australia. I love my country, I fucking love my country. In my opinion this is the greatest country in the history of mankind. But being away from it gives us perspective on it.”

Through our conversation, Le’aupepe and Malani voice many of what feel like the universal concerns of young people of colour living in Australia. And this is what is so exciting – not only does Gang of Youths’ musicality feel so one-of-a-kind, with their catalogue of songs firmly cemented in the modern Australian rock hall of fame – but they are also so inherently honest and articulate. It feels so important to have voices like these – young, bright, brown voices – circulating in today’s whitewashed Australian music industry. Despite their frustration at the stagnant state of our industry, it is precisely people like Le’aupepe and Malani and bands like Gang of Youths that are making it certain that things will change for the better, sooner than later.

Originally published on The AU Review:  http://music.theaureview.com/interviews/interview-david-leaupepe-joji-malani-on-gang-of-youths-continued-strides-forward-into-the-light/

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Houstonian Tales: Lauren Eddy

Lauren Eddy. Photo: Hanna Gonzales

  Twenty years ago in this town, you wouldn’t have seen too many people champion the efforts of women in the music industry. It’s pretty vile when you think about it, but that’s just the way things were, unfortunately. However, unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, it’s pretty hard not to notice all that women have been doing for the music scene in Houston and throughout the country. You also wouldn’t have given much thought to Galveston having much of a thriving music community twenty years ago, either. In fact, you probably wouldn’t have given it much thought a decade ago. While Lauren Eddy isn’t the only person booking shows on the island, her efforts through Wake The Zine shouldn’t go unnoticed. The monthly zine, which can be found at various shops like Deep End Records, Insomnia, and Wired Up, is a calling card to DIY culture and making the most of wherever you live. Through the zine and her band EL LAGO, she’s proving that she can not only write about music, but make some of the most intriguing music coming out of our area today. On the heels of finishing their debut album, Free Press Houston caught up with one of the strongest scene builders and artists you ought to get acquainted with.

  Free Press Houston:  Where are you from? You weren’t born in Galveston, correct?

Lauren Eddy: I’m originally from Texas City, right across the Bay, but the Irish side of my family has old roots in Galveston. I’ve lived here for five years now.

  FPH:  You co-produce the DIY zine, Wake The Zine for the Galveston area. What made you decide to start doing the zine and how long have you been making it for?

Eddy: It was a solo project at first, but a small team coalesced around it. My good friend Jorja Montgomery became the co-editor and did layout for a solid year, but she is currently on break. Grant Loomis and Lisa Gulesserian will be working on layout and editorial duties with me now.

I started making the zine because the shows here felt so underground. Only this small social circle knew or cared, and I was hoping to broaden that circle and bring people out to shows. I made the first issue in October 2015. That was before I met Dan Schmahl, who runs Super Hit Press in Galveston. It’s more fun now with the Risograph printing process.

  FPH:  You’ve gotten to land some pretty strong interviews, especially for the zine world. Have there ever been times when you couldn’t get someone you wanted to interview, or has there ever been a time when you landed an interview that you didn’t think you would?

Eddy: We did have an interview declined for the first time! Julian Jimenez, who is a longtime contributor, is a go-getter and tried to interview Clem Burke, the drummer from Blondie. We were hosting the Split Squad and Dressy Bessy at the local VFW Hall, but Julian said he just couldn’t seem to engage Burke in a conversation. Honestly, I can only begin to imagine how that rewires your brain socially — you know, to have that level of celebrity. I don’t blame him one bit. I think it could happen to anyone. Or maybe he isn’t supposed to do interviews unless they go through certain channels. I have no idea! I didn’t assign that one though. I think I’m really most interested in up-and-coming bands and local bands.

  FPH:  The zine also produces shows in Galveston. What was the catalyst in putting shows together and about how many have you done now?

Eddy: The collective has hosted about 20 shows now, the majority of which I’ve had the pleasure of booking. I love putting lineups together! There’s a lot of room for intuition and imagining how things might go together. And I tend to book gender diverse lineups because it feels so much more natural to me.

Before the zine, I was trying to bring in bands through EL LAGO. Starting out, Galveston was the only scene we felt like we had access to, although Houston feels like such a welcoming place now! It means so much to be included. I never thought that anyone in Houston would care about the zine or the band at all, you know?

  FPH:  Is there ever a time when it feels like people on the island don’t get what you’re trying to do down there with the zine and the shows, or have they been pretty receptive?

Eddy: The first year blew me away! I was shocked to move 300 copies every month, even if they are free. People don’t have to pick it up, but they do. And I’d never had a sparsely attended show until very, very recently — which is pretty wild!

It’s been a little more trying for me personally this year. With any project, it’s all about the chemistry and momentum, and that will kind of ebb and flow. I had to discuss a values issue with one guy who I was working with, and that wasn’t fun. He couldn’t really dialogue about it. Sometimes people don’t understand why things like that are so important to me.

I still appreciate Galveston so much. I’m muscling through for now with the amazing friends who still give a lot of their time and energy to make the zine and the shows happen. Every single person who comes out, I appreciate so much. I try not to “expect” anything or take it for granted.  

  FPH:  For people who don’t know, where can people grab a copy of Wake The Zine, and how often does it come out?

Eddy: We’re trying to get back on schedule with a combined June/July issue, so we hope to get it out the first week of each month for the rest of 2017. Most of the zines stay in Galveston at MOD Coffeehouse, but I also take some over to Deep End Records and I send some to the Miss Champagne online distro. I also need to upload some past issues to our website soon.

  EL LAGO. Photo: Jordan Asinas

  FPH:  You also front the band EL LAGO, who has had quite the year since this time last year. Is it hard coming up for shows so frequently when you have to make the drive back to Galveston each time?

Eddy: It can be pretty brutal! The roads do feel dangerous late at night. One time we pulled up to our building in Galveston, and Charlie and I heard this truck come screeching down Market Street. There was some kind of drunken fight at Buckshot. We heard this sound like a gunshot, so we dropped our gear on the sidewalk, left the car door wide open into the street, and ran inside to duck for cover like it was a drive-by. I heard afterward that it was the sound of a rock being thrown at the man’s windshield. That will make more sense if you’ve seen some of the crumbling sidewalks here! He hit a pole and left his bumper on our curb, so I’m glad we dropped everything and ran.

Funny, there was a similar place my grandpa told us about. When he was growing up, there was this place downtown called the Imperial Club, and it was modeled after a saloon. They called it “The Blood Bucket.” Thankfully, there are cops outside Buckshot just waiting for it now.

  FPH:  El Lago has been in the studio working with Austin Sepulvado of Buxton and Dollie Barnes, as well as with Steve Christensen. How did that come about and was it difficult working with two seasoned veterans as them?

Eddy: I met Austin at one of our early Houston shows. I believe you had told him to check us out, so thank you! I had fallen out-of-touch with Houston music, so I was so happy to discover this new wave of incredible artists like Dollie Barnes, VODI, Rose Ette, Ruiners, Black Kite and so many more! Austin has worked with Steve a lot and we talked about working together on our first release. He did production and added perfect, subtle synth parts.

Steve and Austin are both a total pleasure to work with! I’ve only been playing electric guitar for about three years now, and some guitarists will try to pick holes in your playing or push their ego at you, but I never have to be defensive with Austin. I ask him lots of questions, and he recommended a guitar tech, James Love, who set up the tremolo piece on my Mustang. I’ve really enjoyed that.

Steve is the best imaginable person to work with, and I also adore his cats, Black Cat and Other Cat, even though I am allergic and was on meds the whole time! He’s such an ace! And he has his workflow down so smoothly! It’s to the point where you might not know how much of the weight he is carrying because it’s so seamless.

  FPH:  I know that the album is pretty much done already, do you guys have a release date and a title or are you still working that out?

Eddy: It’s our first time to go through this process, so I really need to do my homework. We’re talking with Jessica at Miss Champagne about doing the tape release, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather go through! We love Jessica, and it would be really special to us to be on the same label as so many local bands we love. We’re not sure about the title yet. Maybe Colors?

  Lauren Eddy. Photo: Hanna Gonzales

  FPH:  As a woman in the music industry, who fronts a band, who writes music, who produces shows and your own publication, do you ever feel like it’s tougher to get respect than it is for a guy to get it who maybe does less than you do?

Eddy: There was some initial skepticism toward me, but it got better from there. I got the most skepticism as an electric guitarist, because there weren’t any women doing that in Galveston at the time, that I knew of. It really hasn’t been an issue since. No one has asked me if I’m a roadie or a girlfriend lately.

The same with the shows I managed. There was some concern early on that I should have a man work the door instead. I was assumed to be “too nice.” Now people are used to seeing me around, and I do have peers like Melanie Stone (India Tigers In Texas) and Sara Sims (Kink Shame) and Catherine Stroud.

I’m still trying to push for change beyond myself. I’ve had a few tough conversations with male friends and peers in my scene regarding language used on stage or in conversations, and some of them have been really understanding and willing to hear a different perspective. I appreciate that so much. Others have been maybe too fragile or too proud to dialogue. I guess it’s a good way to tell who your real friends are! They may not be the most cosmopolitan and they may not always choose the right words… but that they can handle an honest conversation about it and not resent you for challenging them in a heartfelt way.

  FPH:  You’ve kind of created your own world down in Galveston with everything that you do. Do you ever get overwhelmed with it all or is it just what you do?

Eddy: Oh, for sure! Charlie knows how overwhelmed I get. I think I am a little too private, and my friends don’t always know what I’m feeling or thinking. I strongly need an outside perspective sometimes though! I also want to tell you that you are doing such an essential thing, David, by connecting the Houston area music scene. You work so hard and I think it inspires all of us to keep pushing it forward. Thank you so much for this interview.

  It’s definitely inspiring to see one person push so hard for their city to be considered part of the Texas music landscape. Through EL LAGO, Wake, and the shows Eddy is hosting on the island, she’s definitely helping to cement Galveston as a spot for people to catch touring and local bands on the regular. You can read the latest issues of Wake The Zine, here, you can listen to EL LAGO here, and you can see EL LAGO June 30 at the Birthday Club Tour Kickoff show. The all ages event has sets from Holly Halls and Ether Wave as well, with doors at 9 pm and a pay what you want cover, with more information here.

Houstonian Tales: Lauren Eddy this is a repost

[whosebody]

cardiologist visit two

Yesterday I went back to the cardiologist. I had an echocardiogram, which is a heart ultrasound, and did the treadmill stress test, which I have never done before--in fact I have never been on any treadmill before, ever. The only other time I ever took a stress test, they gave me an injection. The echo was no biggie. I lay on a table and a tech ran a probe over my chest to capture images of my heart. He told me up front that he was trying to have his car towed and if his phone rang he would need to answer it. I didn't mind this and said so. Heaven knows I have had plenty of car troubles in my life. Besides it gave us something to small talk about while he echo-ed me and on a topic I'm comfortable with. His phone rang twice, once being the tow truck. Still the entire process only took a few minutes. After the echo I went back to a special waiting room for another few minutes and then a woman came to take me to an ajoining room for the dreaded treadmill. I told her how nervous I was. "The doctor asked me if I could walk on a treadmill and I figured I can walk so I said yes! I don't know why I said that. I've never been on a treadmill. I don't want to shoot off the end like on The Sims!" It's ok, she told me. The only person I have ever seen fall off a treadmill was me, and I was trying to help a patient and forgot to keep walking. I'll start you off slow. Oh, goodie... So she hooked me up to yet another EKG and started me off slow, gradually increasing the speed to one I would describe as moderate. Then she added an incline. The goal was to get my heart up to some target rate. It didn't take long to hit the target rate, because I'm fat. I had to concentrate to keep going. I was quickly out of breath, but not so much so that I couldn't still speak. She asked if I was okay, and I said yes. She asked on a scale of 1 to 10 what level of exertion would I say I was at and I said 8. She asked if I needed to stop and I said no. And she asked what was my worst problem I was having and I said out of breath. She asked again if I would be okay while she checked my blood pressure and I said sure, I'm ok. I'm fat and I'm walking. I expect to huff and puff. So she took my blood pressure. My legs started to feel unsteady, and I wondered if my blood sugar was low because I wasn't supposed to eat right before the test. After I got off the treadmill I returned to normal within two or three minutes. The tech brought me cold water, which was delicious, and I ate an oatmeal and peanut butter protein bar from my purse, which was also delicious. I normally eat lunch around three anyway, because my husband's schedule puts our dinner time between seven and eight p.m. so all my meals are not held at "normal" times. After she was done taking my blood pressure some more and printing things off the big EKG monitor, she told me she had weight loss surgery fifteen years ago. This was cool, because she was not a stick person but she was pretty thin. She had some advice like don't forget to take your vitamins and don't let yourself fall back into old habits after the surgery. Then she went to get the doc, who came and told me the tests revealed nothing wrong with my heart and I am okay for surgery. I went home. I even drove past Burger King without stopping. Go, protein bar. I called the insurance liason at the gastric surgeon's office as she had previously instructed me and let her know. Now I just have to wait for all the doctors to communicate with each other and for someone to communicate with me.

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Houstonian Tales: Lauren Eddy

Lauren Eddy. Photo: Hanna Gonzales

  Twenty years ago in this town, you wouldn’t have seen too many people champion the efforts of women in the music industry. It’s pretty vile when you think about it, but that’s just the way things were, unfortunately. However, unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, it’s pretty hard not to notice all that women have been doing for the music scene in Houston and throughout the country. You also wouldn’t have given much thought to Galveston having much of a thriving music community twenty years ago, either. In fact, you probably wouldn’t have given it much thought a decade ago. While Lauren Eddy isn’t the only person booking shows on the island, her efforts through Wake The Zine shouldn’t go unnoticed. The monthly zine, which can be found at various shops like Deep End Records, Insomnia, and Wired Up, is a calling card to DIY culture and making the most of wherever you live. Through the zine and her band EL LAGO, she’s proving that she can not only write about music, but make some of the most intriguing music coming out of our area today. On the heels of finishing their debut album, Free Press Houston caught up with one of the strongest scene builders and artists you ought to get acquainted with.

  Free Press Houston:  Where are you from? You weren’t born in Galveston, correct?

Lauren Eddy: I’m originally from Texas City, right across the Bay, but the Irish side of my family has old roots in Galveston. I’ve lived here for five years now.

  FPH:  You co-produce the DIY zine, Wake The Zine for the Galveston area. What made you decide to start doing the zine and how long have you been making it for?

Eddy: It was a solo project at first, but a small team coalesced around it. My good friend Jorja Montgomery became the co-editor and did layout for a solid year, but she is currently on break. Grant Loomis and Lisa Gulesserian will be working on layout and editorial duties with me now.

I started making the zine because the shows here felt so underground. Only this small social circle knew or cared, and I was hoping to broaden that circle and bring people out to shows. I made the first issue in October 2015. That was before I met Dan Schmahl, who runs Super Hit Press in Galveston. It’s more fun now with the Risograph printing process.

  FPH:  You’ve gotten to land some pretty strong interviews, especially for the zine world. Have there ever been times when you couldn’t get someone you wanted to interview, or has there ever been a time when you landed an interview that you didn’t think you would?

Eddy: We did have an interview declined for the first time! Julian Jimenez, who is a longtime contributor, is a go-getter and tried to interview Clem Burke, the drummer from Blondie. We were hosting the Split Squad and Dressy Bessy at the local VFW Hall, but Julian said he just couldn’t seem to engage Burke in a conversation. Honestly, I can only begin to imagine how that rewires your brain socially — you know, to have that level of celebrity. I don’t blame him one bit. I think it could happen to anyone. Or maybe he isn’t supposed to do interviews unless they go through certain channels. I have no idea! I didn’t assign that one though. I think I’m really most interested in up-and-coming bands and local bands.

  FPH:  The zine also produces shows in Galveston. What was the catalyst in putting shows together and about how many have you done now?

Eddy: The collective has hosted about 20 shows now, the majority of which I’ve had the pleasure of booking. I love putting lineups together! There’s a lot of room for intuition and imagining how things might go together. And I tend to book gender diverse lineups because it feels so much more natural to me.

Before the zine, I was trying to bring in bands through EL LAGO. Starting out, Galveston was the only scene we felt like we had access to, although Houston feels like such a welcoming place now! It means so much to be included. I never thought that anyone in Houston would care about the zine or the band at all, you know?

  FPH:  Is there ever a time when it feels like people on the island don’t get what you’re trying to do down there with the zine and the shows, or have they been pretty receptive?

Eddy: The first year blew me away! I was shocked to move 300 copies every month, even if they are free. People don’t have to pick it up, but they do. And I’d never had a sparsely attended show until very, very recently — which is pretty wild!

It’s been a little more trying for me personally this year. With any project, it’s all about the chemistry and momentum, and that will kind of ebb and flow. I had to discuss a values issue with one guy who I was working with, and that wasn’t fun. He couldn’t really dialogue about it. Sometimes people don’t understand why things like that are so important to me.

I still appreciate Galveston so much. I’m muscling through for now with the amazing friends who still give a lot of their time and energy to make the zine and the shows happen. Every single person who comes out, I appreciate so much. I try not to “expect” anything or take it for granted.  

  FPH:  For people who don’t know, where can people grab a copy of Wake The Zine, and how often does it come out?

Eddy: We’re trying to get back on schedule with a combined June/July issue, so we hope to get it out the first week of each month for the rest of 2017. Most of the zines stay in Galveston at MOD Coffeehouse, but I also take some over to Deep End Records and I send some to the Miss Champagne online distro. I also need to upload some past issues to our website soon.

  EL LAGO. Photo: Jordan Asinas

  FPH:  You also front the band EL LAGO, who has had quite the year since this time last year. Is it hard coming up for shows so frequently when you have to make the drive back to Galveston each time?

Eddy: It can be pretty brutal! The roads do feel dangerous late at night. One time we pulled up to our building in Galveston, and Charlie and I heard this truck come screeching down Market Street. There was some kind of drunken fight at Buckshot. We heard this sound like a gunshot, so we dropped our gear on the sidewalk, left the car door wide open into the street, and ran inside to duck for cover like it was a drive-by. I heard afterward that it was the sound of a rock being thrown at the man’s windshield. That will make more sense if you’ve seen some of the crumbling sidewalks here! He hit a pole and left his bumper on our curb, so I’m glad we dropped everything and ran.

Funny, there was a similar place my grandpa told us about. When he was growing up, there was this place downtown called the Imperial Club, and it was modeled after a saloon. They called it “The Blood Bucket.” Thankfully, there are cops outside Buckshot just waiting for it now.

  FPH:  El Lago has been in the studio working with Austin Sepulvado of Buxton and Dollie Barnes, as well as with Steve Christensen. How did that come about and was it difficult working with two seasoned veterans as them?

Eddy: I met Austin at one of our early Houston shows. I believe you had told him to check us out, so thank you! I had fallen out-of-touch with Houston music, so I was so happy to discover this new wave of incredible artists like Dollie Barnes, VODI, Rose Ette, Ruiners, Black Kite and so many more! Austin has worked with Steve a lot and we talked about working together on our first release. He did production and added perfect, subtle synth parts.

Steve and Austin are both a total pleasure to work with! I’ve only been playing electric guitar for about three years now, and some guitarists will try to pick holes in your playing or push their ego at you, but I never have to be defensive with Austin. I ask him lots of questions, and he recommended a guitar tech, James Love, who set up the tremolo piece on my Mustang. I’ve really enjoyed that.

Steve is the best imaginable person to work with, and I also adore his cats, Black Cat and Other Cat, even though I am allergic and was on meds the whole time! He’s such an ace! And he has his workflow down so smoothly! It’s to the point where you might not know how much of the weight he is carrying because it’s so seamless.

  FPH:  I know that the album is pretty much done already, do you guys have a release date and a title or are you still working that out?

Eddy: It’s our first time to go through this process, so I really need to do my homework. We’re talking with Jessica at Miss Champagne about doing the tape release, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather go through! We love Jessica, and it would be really special to us to be on the same label as so many local bands we love. We’re not sure about the title yet. Maybe Colors?

  Lauren Eddy. Photo: Hanna Gonzales

  FPH:  As a woman in the music industry, who fronts a band, who writes music, who produces shows and your own publication, do you ever feel like it’s tougher to get respect than it is for a guy to get it who maybe does less than you do?

Eddy: There was some initial skepticism toward me, but it got better from there. I got the most skepticism as an electric guitarist, because there weren’t any women doing that in Galveston at the time, that I knew of. It really hasn’t been an issue since. No one has asked me if I’m a roadie or a girlfriend lately.

The same with the shows I managed. There was some concern early on that I should have a man work the door instead. I was assumed to be “too nice.” Now people are used to seeing me around, and I do have peers like Melanie Stone (India Tigers In Texas) and Sara Sims (Kink Shame) and Catherine Stroud.

I’m still trying to push for change beyond myself. I’ve had a few tough conversations with male friends and peers in my scene regarding language used on stage or in conversations, and some of them have been really understanding and willing to hear a different perspective. I appreciate that so much. Others have been maybe too fragile or too proud to dialogue. I guess it’s a good way to tell who your real friends are! They may not be the most cosmopolitan and they may not always choose the right words… but that they can handle an honest conversation about it and not resent you for challenging them in a heartfelt way.

  FPH:  You’ve kind of created your own world down in Galveston with everything that you do. Do you ever get overwhelmed with it all or is it just what you do?

Eddy: Oh, for sure! Charlie knows how overwhelmed I get. I think I am a little too private, and my friends don’t always know what I’m feeling or thinking. I strongly need an outside perspective sometimes though! I also want to tell you that you are doing such an essential thing, David, by connecting the Houston area music scene. You work so hard and I think it inspires all of us to keep pushing it forward. Thank you so much for this interview.

  It’s definitely inspiring to see one person push so hard for their city to be considered part of the Texas music landscape. Through EL LAGO, Wake, and the shows Eddy is hosting on the island, she’s definitely helping to cement Galveston as a spot for people to catch touring and local bands on the regular. You can read the latest issues of Wake The Zine, here, you can listen to EL LAGO here, and you can see EL LAGO June 30 at the Birthday Club Tour Kickoff show. The all ages event has sets from Holly Halls and Ether Wave as well, with doors at 9 pm and a pay what you want cover, with more information here.

Houstonian Tales: Lauren Eddy this is a repost