#i think I also was into rainbow six when i listened to this music mainly 😭😭 so now ofc theyre popping into my head

[skitskatdacat63]

During the 2020 shut-in era, I basically only listened to Coldplay and god the amnt of emotional nostalgia I get from listening to their music is so

[velvette-hussle]

Ranking The Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss Songs (because I can)

Before I even start I’ll say right off the bat that HH has much stronger and rememberable/catchier songs than HB (at least to me).

Like, outside of House of Asmodeus (and Moxxie and Millie’s song that’s mixed into it), Cotton Candy, & Stolas’ song to Via in - I think - the Loo Loo Land episode I can’t even think about any of the other HB songs off the top of my head. And I only really remember Stolas’ song technically, but really I don’t remember the beat or the lyrics or anything, I just remember the visuals and that it was sung like a lullaby. Show wise I do like HB more than HH though.

I’ll say this too, I don’t like how a lot of HH’s songs lead in. The entrances just feel very fucking jarring to me sometimes.

ALSO, I’m only ranking series songs for now, anything released outside of the explicit show canons means nothing to me in this ranking. I’ll include Pilot songs though. Ha, never mind I ended up doing some of the out of show songs too.

TOP FIVE

Hell is Forever: Has a nice snappy entrance and it makes sense, loved it. I sing this one all the damn time and I know it word for word at this point I can’t even lie. Alex Brightman, enough said (though I do like him as Fizz more than as Adam).

House of Asmodeus: Best HB song in my opinion, but it looses points because there’s not actually an end to the song. I sing this one frequently. Plus, there’s a snappy entrance.

I’ll count Moxie’s song to Millie as a part of this song as well, and while I wouldn’t rate it separately in my top five (it’d probably be right above More Than Anything) as a part of House of Asmodeus I like the contrast 👍🏾. This is just such a sweet song it makes me smile every time I hear it.

Respectless: Another song with a jarring and snappy entrance and I love it. Velvette’s character is showcased well here, and this is really the last we get of her characterization in season one. I love the argument aspect of this song and Velvette’s “Ugh” too, it’s just such an expressive sound of disgust. Lilli Cooper’s voice is just great. I sing this one (both parts) frequently too.

I’m Always Chasing Rainbows: This shit was too good, what the fuck? I get lost in this song it’s so lovely to listen to. It’s just so melodic and whimsical and beautiful.🩷

Stayed Gone: I enjoy Vox’s part the most (mainly from a character standpoint) but Alastor caps the shit off wonderfully and brings a sense of menace that I just don’t tend to feel from his character throughout a lot of the show (outside of when he made Husk cower on the floor of course). Alastor’s laugh at the end is also my favorite of his and his most chilling to me. I sing this one relatively frequently compared to the ones below it but still a good bit less than the others above it.

_

SIX-FORTY FIVE(?)

You Didn’t Know: Especially love Lute’s first part that leads into her and Adam singing together (ie: “Did you forget that Hell is forever?”) because Jessica Vosk ate that, and Emily and Charlie’s lil duet together. The way the song drops off after Vaggie’s revealed to be a former Exorcist also reminds me of the musical cue in POTO when Christine rips Erik’s mask off during Don Juan Triumphant which I also enjoy. I sing this bitch (all parts) all the fucking time. I listen to this one more than I do Stayed Gone, but both songs are fairly even to me ranking wise.

Poison: I like the song from a technical standpoint but I don’t revisit it, I don’t even really think about revisiting it all that much actually. We all know this song does a good job of conveying story no matter how you personally feel about it so I don’t have much to say. Though I will say that I like how this song sounds far more than I like how Addict sounds. Honestly if it wasn’t for the subject matter this song would be right below Crooked, I can’t even lie; like, forget the lyrics and visuals for a second, I just don’t like the music very much.

Finale: The Vees’ part is specifically why this song is placed where it is, and the animation that accompanies the song as a whole as well. Outside of that though while I think Lucifer’s part where he’s holding his hand out for Charlie is sweet and Alastor’s solo part is interesting, musically it’s just not doing very much for me so….yeah. I actually like this song a bit more than Poison, but Poison’s thematic relevance is just greater. Overall the song’s a nice callback and cute enough. Also, if all the Vees had gotten to sing I would’ve ranked this higher.

"Crashin' a Muthaf***n' Wedding" by “Until Further Notice” - Wrath’s #1 “Fuck You Up” Hits: I think this song is better than it has any right to fucking be, but I love it. It just sounds good and fits the atmosphere of Millie’s fight scene so well. Would un-ironically put into a playlist.

The Ballad Of Striker: It’s fun, what else is a woman to say? I’m a sucker for wild west themes and how much Striker hates the song is also a bonus. The song also reminds me of the Old Yeller theme song (ie: “Best doggone dog in the west”). Idk.

I.M.P Commercial Jingle: Apparently I’m also a sucker for a quick little song, but whatever.

Loser, Baby: Roughly the same as my reasoning for Poison, just that this song hits hard with the mixed messaging and just isn’t as poignant at Poison is. I enjoy what the song is trying to say more than what the song seems like it’s saying when you actually listen to or read the lyrics, but it’s also just a fun song to sing along to (I do revisit it more than Poison though). Plus Keith David; what else is there to say after that?

More Than Anything: One of those I felt didn’t lead in smoothly so it felt awkward at the start. The song itself is sweet though and sounds great as it keeps going. Jeremy Jordan is always a pleasure to hear also.

Inside Of Every Demon is a Rainbow: Is fun. Definitely gives Phineas and Ferb vibes to me. I like it. This and Happy Day In Hell are actually mostly at even ranks to me.

Happy Day In Hell: The song’s cute but I hardly think about it, let alone give it multiple listens. The comedic “please tell me she’s not singing again” type part at the beginning was funny too, now that I’m listening to it again. Erika Henningsen (I believe) is singing though don’t get me wrong and I love the change from minutes 1:47 to 2:16.

Oh Millie: I think this one’s just adorable and I love Mox and Mill so *shrugs*. No but seriously even though the pilot isn’t canon anymore this song still captured their relationship nicely.

Till The Day We Die: I like how Moxxie and Millie’s voices mix here, they both sound great, but I don’t love the lyrics or the delivery on some words.

Crooked: I don’t like how some of the lines are sung (I do like most of the song though) but the song itself is far too precious for me to put it any lower than this. Ozzie and Fizz are just too sweet.

Klown Bitch: Sounds like an actual pop song you’d hear on the radio, catchy, and fun so it gets hella points.

Cotton Candy: It’s a fun song to listen back to even if I don’t take much from it otherwise. I think it showcases Beelzebub being the manifestation of Gluttony in a creative way with her being an attentive party host who keeps reminding/encouraging her guests to indulge and drink and eat more and more and to keep having fun.

More Than Anything (Reprise): The song sounds beautiful but I feel like Charlie and Vaggie (the main pairing/ship) deserved a love song that wasn’t just a reprise of the song Charlie sang with her father, and just a longer song in general. I digress though, the song is fine.

Ready For This: I like a good march, but other than that I don’t have very strong feelings about this song. I technically like how supportive Alastor is here, but him actually giving a shit about Charlie is something that feels so forced to me that it doesn’t enhance the song for me that much. Also, I know it’s just the genre of music being the same but this song really reminds me of Star Spangled Man With A Plan from Captain America: The First Avenger.

Out For Love: I’ll say this, it is catchy. I just don’t care about it very much.

Inside Of Every Demon is a Lost Cause: I don’t dislike this song but I like so many other songs more so it kind of gets tossed to the side. I like the execution and delivery though.

You Got The Power: Some of y’all already know what this song will remind me of (The Touch by Stan Bush from Transformers the movie), but either way it’s pretty good.

Monster’s Ball: I’ll be honest I hadn’t even listened to this song until I started making this list, but it’s nice.

Loo Loo Land: I’m so sorry, this song is just so funny to me. Plus Alex Brightman.

Addict: Um….I disliked this way more than I expected to. It’s the music style. Characterization wise I like it I guess, though it doesn’t all translate over to the Amazon series (mostly with Cherri).

Whatever it Takes: I like this song in theory. This song just…starts though, no prep, which I didn’t like, and while the voices involved sound wonderful and the story the song is presenting is useful the song itself is pretty ‘meh’ and doesn’t flow pleasantly to me. I’m sorry. I do like the message though and the “I’ll be your keeper/ I’ll be your armor” lines that Vaggie and Carmine sung back to back were good as hell.

It Starts With Sorry: The song doesn’t do anything for me outside of how it moves the storyline along. Sir Pentious is an absolute drama queen and I love him for that though.

Regular Joe: This is Millie’s first solo song so I hate to put it this low but I just don’t feel very strongly about it. The singing is lovely though.

Look At This: It’s a fun song so I won’t put it too low, but it’s not very catchy and I don’t listen to it more than I have to.

Vacay to Bonetown: Actually a surprisingly nice and chill song considering the subject matter. Pleasant on the ear musically.

2 Minutes Notice: The story is fine but the song just doesn’t do anything for me. However, I do like the triumphant horns that play at the end, so there’s that.

Welcome To Heaven: Shit. Just about forgot about this one entirely. I think that says enough, yeah? It’s fine, I simply just don’t care about it. Everyone sounds good though and Sera singing “I’m sorry you can’t stay” was beautiful and in the context of her character a very sweetly sinister and backhanded thing for her to say that really fits.

Juggling Iz Cool: It’s got some nice rhymes. Fun.

Hell’s Greatest Dad: It’s okay, I think the story it’s supposed to be conveying is stupid though (and just not well set up). When I first watched it I thought Alastor was posturing and pretending to be “like a father” and feeling paternal towards Charlie because he has a superiority complex and wanted to “best” Lucifer or something, and it took until other people mentioned it for me to realize that Alastor’s feelings were actually supposed to be sincere, leading up to this song that is not apparent though, so yeah.

“Gilded Jail” (Stolas’ Song | s2ep1): It’s fine. I like it a little more than You Will Be Okay.

You Will Be Okay (Stolas’ song to Via): Similar vibes to More Than Anything because Medrano loves father daughter pairings. It’s cute but I’m not attached to it and I certainly hadn’t listened to it a second time since watching the episode until I was making this list.

“Teacher Song”: It’s got a nice lil rhyming scheme but that’s pretty much it.

Moxxie’s Bad Trip song: Thoroughly enjoy the Phantom of the Opera-esq visuals and musical nods but that’s largely it. Everything else about the song is just okay. Also the cussing and sex jokes are so excessive it takes away from the song and makes it far less enjoyable (for me at least). Honestly the song just makes me cringe so hard. The story’s nice though.

Just Look My Way: I guess the story it’s telling is nice, but I don’t really feel any type of way about it in any direction. Pretty basic, but it is filled with plenty of yearning.

C.H.E.R.U.B Jingle: It’s fine.

Sweet Victory: Also fine, and just as fast as the Cherub Jingle just less catchy. Striker sounds alright. This song does showcase how much off an asshole he is well.

Everybody Look At Me: It’s annoying (and it’s supposed to be) but I still don’t like it.

Chaz Time: I really dislike this song so...

All in all, I’m glad there’s been so many songs written that I can make such a long list ranking them like this. So thanks to everyone who made the music for both shows even if I didn’t like all of it.

[boeswhore]

Hi s! Congrats again on 1.7k! May I please have a ship? Tbh idk how to consolidate a description of myself. I’m apologizing now. This is as consolidated as I can be. I’m a sun june born Gemini and moon and rising scorpio so I’m all the crazy and chaos.

I’m 5’4” ish. Dark brown curly hair but I have bleached highlights so I’m fake blonde withy natural roots. Green eyes. Eyebrow game strong ish. Pretty light skin despite living in Arizona lol. Very expressive face. I hated my hair growing up but I learned to love it and properly take care of it. Reasons I’m a sucker for curls.

Also a fruit cocktail according to my grandma since I’m mixed with a whole lotta stuff. Reasons I relate to turning red more than expected. Also why I screamed when Raya was announced since Southeast Asia doesn’t get a whole lotta representation. A giant family on all sides I know of. Also family in 13 states. They’re crazy but I love them. I’m the self proclaimed black and rainbow sheep.

My style isn’t very consistent tbh. Like one day I could be in my pop punk/emo clothes but the next in super bright and colorful east coast prep vibes clothes. But then I have a variety of clothes to disneybound in. And Disney and other pop culture shirts and such. I wear pretty much whatever I want. My sweatshirt collection hit 50 finally. I think. I live in my Birkenstock’s during the summer and my various boots in the winter. Also for games. I collect loungefly and similar fandom purses. Mostly tangled and Disney.

Hobbies besides hockey: arts and crafts (so many mainly - watercolor, stamping and embossing, printmaking (making stamps and stencils and such), drawing, cricut machine, card making, etc), bullet journal (art/junk/mindfulness journal and planner), music (will elaborate), Disney (tangled and turning red), crime and medial and first responder shows (greys, station 19, castle, the 9-1-1s), horror, coffee and tea, self care, writing (duh), milkshakes, and traveling.

Main hockey teams: flames, kraken, Canucks, devils, avs, canes. But I love various players on teams throughout the league. The sh*t list: Pittsburgh, Edmonton, TB, Boston, chi town.

My music tastes gives me whiplash. Disney, pop punk, show tunes (selective but six is queen), metalcore, pop, emo and other similar genres, bimbocore, alt, indie, more subgenres than even I can remember. I have a record player and my vinyls are only albums I’m willing to listen all the way through. I love(d) going to concerts. I’m a flower princess. Glitter, sequins, flower crown. Top artists: set it off, grayscale, ice nine kills, Taylor swift, scene queen, as it is, with confidence, the summer set, and softcult.

24 almost 25. Seattle native, uni outside Philly, currently a desert queen in AZ. Energetic ball of chaos. Unhinged. Vibes of: Mabel pines, rapunzel, like half of the castle cast, dug form up, april and Amelia and Meredith with a dash of Arizona from greys, mei and Abby and Miriam from turning red. Sarcastic and slightly dark and definitely self deprecating sense of humor. Chronic migraines with anxiety, adhd, and insomnia thrown in. I put my heart and soul into everything I love and do.

Thank you again and I am very sorry for how long this is but anything shorter won’t capture my true self. You can ask ally lol. You are absolutely amazing for reading all of this and for hosting this event. 😘 stay fabulous

hihi m, i love you so much always 💗

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ─── ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ─���─

i ship you with matthew tkachuk !

i read that you love curls hair part and my mind immediately went to him once i saw you like the flames ! the style you have goes so well with matthew. this guy has no solid outfit plan, he’ll be dressed up so sophisticated one day and literally look like he just rolled out of bed the next day but i can see you both having complimentary outfits ! i can see him living in sweatshirts so that makes the two of you as well ! when it comes to hobbies; he would love that you know the rules of hockey and would love for you to come root for him during each game he plays !also i know he would be so supportive and sweet over any art make ! omg i can also see him crafting with you and both of you having like little competitions on whose work is better (obviously yours duh) but it will legit become his favourite past time hobby as well, just creating all of these art works (you’re so freaking creative it’s insane) he would also love that you don’t like oilers since the battle of alberta and all so that’s also a plus side ;) definitely lots of concerts together, i can see him belting to disney music with you ! when it comes to ur migraines i just know he’s super caring and will try his best to comfort you and get you anything you need ! overall, the cutest couple in my eyes <3

[path-of-my-childhood]

CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle

The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.

Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.

In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.

Good Timing

Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."

Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."

Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.

"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."

On The Move

As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."

Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."

Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.

"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."

Keeping Secrets

Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.

"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."

Drums & Guitars

For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."

Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.

"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."

Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.

"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."

Orchestra Of Nowhere

Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."

On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.

"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."

Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."

Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.

"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."

Soft Piano

Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.

"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."

When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."

Keeping Warm

On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."

Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."

In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.

"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."

The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."

Rubber & Vinyl

Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.

"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."

Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.

"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."

The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."

Meet At The Pond

Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.

"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.

"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."

One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”

National Unity

One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.

"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."

Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."

No Compromise

folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.

"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."

INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Pond Life

The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.

“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”

Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.

Sketching Sessions

The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.

"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.

"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.

"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."

The Low Down

"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.

"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.

"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."

The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."

A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."

In & Out The Box

According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.

"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.

"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."

Across The Rubber Bridge

The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.

"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.

"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.

"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."

Growing Pains

"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.

"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.

"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.

"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."

[cloudyempress]

Storge || K. Muzan + Upper moons

✦ Fluff, comedy, manga spoilers, child!reader, reader is Muzan's daughter. 

- This was originally published in wattpad.

Storge (noun); familial love, the love of a parent towards offspring and vice versa.

                                   •❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

They called you Little Misfortune. Spending time with you was a nightmare worse than disagreeing with Muzan. Your seven year old self could only think of their faces as a canvas to use the paint your father regularly buys you. A few minutes babysitting you was the equivalent of being in rainbow land and hell at the same time. And if you had a single, microscopic scratch at the end of the day, they would suffer severe consequences.

Kokushibo hated how much you'd tug his hair and make fun of his eyes, along with your hideous loudness. Hantengu ran away from you when he realized how deadly adorable you could be, forcing him to become tiny so you could put him inside your dollhouse. Gyokko had to put up with you breaking his pots and making disgusting faces whenever you saw him, also having to praise your artwork even if he disliked it. Gyutaro found you incredibly annoying, but loves when you disagree with him being ugly and laughs when you prank Daki. Talking about her, she's the upper moon that hates you the most since you gained all the attention from Muzan and you generally bothered her. Akaza was the nicest out of them, so you'd crawl onto his arms whenever you were scared or feeling tired. Finally, Douma loved you, finding it funny when you blushed at how cute he was or how much you adored playing with him.

Being born a demon, which was a extremely rare case (specially being born from a human and having a lot of human features like aging), you had gained your demon blood art early. This meant more trouble for the Upper moons, you could make them lose control over their arts and breaths (in the case of Kokushibo and other demon slayers).

It was a chaos when you first used it. Hantengu's turn of babysitting you turned into you getting lost in the Dimensional Infinity Fortress, Nakime not being able to know where you were and the rooms moving and shifting randomly. Once Muzan found out, he rushed the other upper moons into an emergency meeting.

"Why are you so incompetent? First the lower moons, and now you as well? Can't you just guard a fucking child?"

Everyone was in complete silence. They knew better than to mess with Muzan when he got angry about something happening to his dear daughter.

"I'm going to say this once. Find (Name) before I disband you. Now."

Not wasting time in saying 'yes', they all left to find you. As the fort was chaos, most of them got smashed into a wall or pushed to the ground. Luckily, Kokushibo had enough instinct to avoid those, quickly finding you eating a giant jar of your favorite ice cream with lots of oreos and sprinkles. You were stuffing your face with it and humming songs, until you noticed that his towering figure was standing next to you, his accusatory six eyes piercing through your soul. You stopped everything you were doing, standing up and taking a defensive pose.

"Come, (Name). Muzan-sama is..."

Before he could continue, you took out pieces of a flute from your dress' pocket and waved them in the air high enough for him to see. Kokushibo frowned in anger and confusion, wondering how you got your hands on his brother's flute, which he usually keeps on him.

"No! I won't give in to a hairy spider like you! I used to have nightmares about you, but now I am not scared!"

"Spiders have eight eyes, (Name)."

But you didn't listen, sticking out your tongue and throwing the pieces in the air, running away the second he shifted his gaze to them instead of you.

The fort was filled with your giggles, sounding like a music only two people liked but the others had to endure it. They just didn't stop until you found Gyokko's freshly painted pots, his colors begging you to smash them into the ground. You climbed the table and shoved them to the edges, then began jumping to see if they would fall or resist the vibrations of your weight against the table. They didn't, falling into the floor and becoming tiny pieces of what they once were.

"DAMN CHILD! HOW DARE YOU DESTROY THE GREAT GYOKKO'S ART?"

"Oops!" you turned around with a cheeky grin adorning your face.

Gyokko launched at you, gritting his teeth.

"I did you a favor! Now you'll have to throw them out in the trash, were they belong"

Before his hands could reach you, a wall as fast as lightning hit him so hard he ended up in another room altogether. You shrugged and kept running around.

Meanwhile, Gyutaro and Daki walked together, both complaining about the situation. He mainly listened to her whine while she rambled on how pointless looking for you was.

"Can't somebody shut up that horrying child laughter?" she screamed at the ceiling.

Gyutaro crossed his arms, he lacked the energy to explain to her how an annoying child worked. He knew it too well from taking care of her.

"I don't get why Muzan-sama wants her when he has me." Daki spread her hand in front of her face and started counting with her fingers. "I'm gorgeous, strong, loyal... and I'm not an stupid, loud-as-fuck child!"

"Ume" Gyutaro called, as the both of them kept walking straight.

"She's a pain! She takes all of Muzan-sama's precious time away."

"Ume" he stopped walking, Daki kept her pace as she was fixated on finding things to hate you for.

"She couldn't even speak properly when we first met her. All she does is cause trouble for us, that's why nobody likes her!"

"Ume!"

She turned around to face him, a vein popping out of her forehead.

"What?!"

"At least I'm not as stupid as you, miss whore! Daddy told me you were annoying yesterday."

All her hairs perked up when she heard your voice. She turned around to find you a few meters away from her, a bit shocked from hearing you insult her that way.

"Who taught you that word?" she placed her hand above her chest, surprise evident in her expression.

"I did" Gyutaro said, a smirk appearing in his face. He waved at you ignoring his sister's terrifying anger. "Hi there, little misfortune. Everybody's looking for you"

"You're not going to stop me?"

He shrugged, going back to his usual annoyed expression.

"Not me, but my sister is"

Daki jumped at you, almost not giving you time to react properly. You spit the gum you were chewing to put it on her hair. Her eyes widened in horror as she tried to take it off, letting you off her hands.

"Fuck you, (Name)! Come back here you damn brat!"

Gyutaro helped Daki take off the gum, you running away from them. The last thing you heard as you escaped was Gyutaro offering to cut off the damaged part of her beautiful long hair.

Your legs were short and you got tired of running after a few minutes. You collapsed on the ground to take in some air.

"Oh~ Are you tired, (Name)-chan?" Douma's playful tone made your eyes shine at the realization that he was there.

You nodded, tears rolling down your cheeks. You were not only exhausted, but also feeling guilty of accidentally stepping on tiny Hantengu on your way there. It wasn't your fault he was terrified of your childishness and Muzan's rage, but you didn't notice he was in the way and stepped on him.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry for causing all of this! Is just that Hantengu didn't want to play with me and I felt lonely! I don't want to be alone! Now everyone hates me!"

"Shhh... It's ok. You're an adorable little princess, nobody hates you."

He ruffled your hair as your teary eyes stare at his rainbow colored ones. They were both beautiful and calming for you, those colors made you think pretty things when you were sad.

"You don't hate me?"

"Of course I don't!"

"Then, will you marry me when I grow up?"

He chuckled, ruffling your hair again. Your cheeks were burning from embarrassment.

"Yes, su—"

Half of his head was suddenly cut off by a hand. You frown at Akaza, who seemed very angry at seeing Douma that close to you. Douma's head regenerated fast, his charismatic smile never leaving his features.

"Why are you proposing her marriage?"

"I'm not—"

"Yes, you are. What the hell is your problem? I'm not going to let you put strange ideas into her innocent mind."

Akaza opened his arms at you so you could climb into him, letting you rest your head on his shoulder.

"Little misfortune was feeling lonely and hated, so I simply made her feel happier. Now let me hold her" Douma tried to take you to him, but Akaza's grip on you was stronger.

"You try to make her feel happier by proposing? Also, you only eat women, why would I let you near (Name)?"

"Well, she's not human!"

"Can I marry you too?" you ask above the discussion, your voice silencing the both of them. You pulled away a little bit from Akaza's hold to look at him in the eye. "When I grow up, can I marry you too?"

Akaza's concerned look grew bigger by the second. Douma had an amused expression, holding in laugher. Akaza's gaze shifted from Douma to you, not knowing what to say. His face told a different story than you had intended. You leaped away from them, tears floading down your face again.

"Then I'll be alone my entire life!"

You started escaping again, covering your face with your hands. The upper moons attempted to use their arts to get you back, but failed as yours contradicted their use.

Douma sighed, then turned towards Akaza with a smile from ear to ear.

"You're not a great liar, are you?"

After running around all day, your energy was so low that you could barely walk without dragging your feet. Loneliness was the strongest and most shocking feeling you'd gotten in the seven years you had been alive. No mother, no siblings, only a father who'd mostly be working and babysitters who hated your guts. Facing the ground, lips curved downwards, you clearly weren't expecting crashing with something. Or more accurately, someone's legs.

It was Muzan, his stern expression changing into a softer one when he saw your defeated state. He opened his arms to engulf you into a hug, so you jumped at him with the strength you had left.

"I'm sorry, I felt lonely!"

"Why is that? You always have an upper moon to take care of you" he walked towards your room as he caressed your hair.

"But they hate me!"

"They don't hate you. Kokushibo's always worried about your health and safety. Gyokko and Hantengu try to enhance your talents in art since they know how much you love it. Gyutaro likes to make you laugh, and while Daki acts as if she hates you, she sew you a stuffed animal for your birthday by herself knowing that other stores didn't buy the plush you wanted. Douma plays with you all the time, of course he loves you. And Akaza is always there to keep him from crossing the line. They don't hate you, they are your family." he tucked you in your bed, a smile reaching his lips before you closed your eyes in order to sleep.

He leaned in to place a soft kiss on your forehead.

"As I love you too."

                                 •❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

[r6shippingdelivery]

headcannons for hobbies? Like what they do on their off time?

Hi nonnie! I actually did a Hobbies HC for “all” ops a long time ago. But seeing that was before the expanded bios, and it only reached up to Gridlock and Mozzie, I’d say it’s time for an updated version, don’t you say? 

Some of the answers are unchanged from the old post, because I already nailed it or the new info didn’t disprove my ideas. But I had to revise a lot of the answers I gave the first time around! In order to find their hobbies and/or get a glimpse of their lives beyond Rainbow and what they might like, I read all the bios, and looked up concept art, and elites, and past battlepass content, etc. And when none of that was enough, I just went with my gut instinct 😂 Thank you to @grain-crain-drain, @dagoth-menthol & @todragonsart for bouncing ideas with me when I was stuck! 💕

Hobbies Headcanons for ALL ops (up to Neon Dawn)

FBI

- Ash: According to her savta, shooting things is not a hobby, but Ash disagrees. And since according to her expanded bio she knows Hebrew, Arabic, English, French and Greek, I’m willing to bet she enjoys learning languages as well. - Thermite: He grew up on a ranch and loves riding. He’s also taken an interest in improving gadgets it seems, so my old proposal that he dabbles in forging/smithing stuff seems plausible. And based on this concept art, demolition derbies attending and maybe even competing himself too? - Pulse: He’s interested in a variety of topics and goes through phases of intense, nearly obsessive focus, until something else captures his attention. He still has a lingering fondness for building muscle cars, since it was something he used to do with his father. And like Thermite and Hibana, it seems he might enjoy demolition derbies. - Castle: He’s a language nerd, studying/reading/practicing new languages is his hobby for sure. Since the expanded bio says he rescues abused dogs, I don’t think it would be far fetched he volunteered at animal shelters too.

SAS

- Thatcher: Aside from repairing his boat, The Iron Maggie, he also enjoys fishing. He used to do that with his dad & brothers, and tried to take the rest of the SAS fishing as a bonding experience. It didn’t go very well - Sledge: He plays rugby, and has an inexplicable fondness of trying the wildest ideas that tend to end with something broken, be it one of his bones or a structure or wall (just read his extended psychological profile and you’ll see, lmao) - Smoke: Boxing, it helps him focus all his chaotic energy. And chemistry in general, it’s not just a hobby but a passion of his. - Mute: he enjoys tinkering with stuff, taking it apart and then putting it back together in a different way, just to see if he can improve it or make it work in his own way. Flying drones plays perfectly into that, with the added bonus of being able to do the flying part just for fun too.

GIGN

- Montagne: His main passion is working with people, teaching and mentoring others, and therefore when he’s not on duty, his main passtime still is mingling with people and getting to know them. I could see him making overtures with Castle, interested in the American and fascinated by his knowledge of various languages, an area Monty feels insecure about due to only knowing French and English.  - Twitch: Engineering, robotics and developing an empathic AI is her life.Twitch is a workaholic passionate about those topics. She also greatly enjoys traveling and, according to her expanded bio, people watching.  - Doc: He surely had some hobby at one point, but he can’t remember it, or the last time he had free time for it. Doc is also a workaholic, although one that loves to complain about it.  - Rook: Apparently he’s passionate about cycling, auto racing, and rock concerts. Mainly cycling though, since he dropped out of university to cycle around France.

Spetsnaz

- Tachanka: He collects and repairs old weapons. Mostly soviet, but he has some interesting pieces from other countries too. And he dances surprisingly well.  - Kapkan: Aside from a certain interest in psychology, his main hobby is hunting, of course. But he also whittles and carves wooden figurines.  - Glaz: Quite obviously, painting. He’s an artist, and quite a good one. He also likes playing cards, especially poker. - Fuze: He builds new weapon prototypes for fun. And tests them, if he can convince Six of it. He also likes to bake from time to time, a skill he learnt thanks to his grandma - and because he has a sweet tooth.

GSG9

- Jäger: Planes. Model planes, repairing old WWI & II planes, you name it. And watching copious amounts of documentaries.  - Bandit: His bike is his main hobby, both taking care of it and riding it. He also likes playing pool; and, if pranking people counts as a hobby, that’s his oldest one, dating from when he was a kid. - Blitz: He was and still is an athlete at heart, and Blitz loves running. - IQ: In order to disconnect from engineering pursuits, she indulges in rock climbing, spelunking, and writing science fiction stories.

JTF2

- Buck: He crafts mechanical puzzles, and enjoys all kinds of physical activity that can take place outdoors. - Frost: She just loves being surrounded by nature, and often goes mountain climbing or diving.

SEAL

- Valkyrie: Swimming and diving, of course! She wanted to be a professional swimmer, but now it’s just a hobby. And apparently she enrolled for a helicopter pilot license, and language classes. - Blackbeard: According to the expanded bios, he likes sailing and even participated in a championship. And since he climbed Mount Everest, it’s safe to say he also likes mountain climbing.

BOPE

- Capitao: He loves football, playing or watching it, doesn’t matter, he’s all for it. - Caveira: Spends a lot of time practicing Jiu Jitsu, in the gym and also on unofficial tournaments.

SAT

- Hibana: For her it’s traditional Japanese archery (Kyūdō). And probably demolition derbies too accounting that concept art from before with Thermite and Pulse. - Echo: According to the expanded bio, he has few interests outside work, but I always imagined he’d be into gaming and e-sports. Hacking too, and that’s a direct influence from Dokkaebi.

GEO

- Jackal: He plays the acoustic guitar/spanish guitar, and sings too. And now we also know he volunteers with at-risk youth. - Mira: Fixing cars is second nature to her, and thanks to her expanded bio we know she also does metal sculptures that incorporate used mechanical parts.

SDU

- Ying: Extreme driving, which can sometimes trigger her PTSD, and traveling. Especially exploring cities by randomly jumping in public transport and just going anywhere. - Lesion: He is also one to volunteer in underprivileged areas (like Junk Bay, where he grew up), and clearing mines and other unexploded devices. I also imagine him with a certain gusto for playing blackjack.

GROM

- Zofia: If obsessing about her father’s supposed suicide and the oddities surrounding it, and desperately trying to reconnect with her sister count as hobbies, sure, she has those. - Ela: She’s also an artist, one with a very particular vision that some have called narcissistic. Apparently she also does some “freelance” volunteer work, roaming the streets at night and offering help/comfort, or a willing ear to the people she meets.

707SMB

- Vigil: He likes to take walks around the forest, just aimless exploring and marvelling at nature and any animals he might come across. Often listens to relaxing music while doing so, and he might pick a pretty rock here and there to bring home. - Dokkaebi: Hacking is her hobby, of course. She also has several social media profiles and is an active member in a couple of hacking forums. As per a previous battlepass, I believe she enjoys mountain trekking too. And dancing to electro beat, due to her elite.

CBRN

- Lion: His rebel years left him with an appreciation for rock music and a dream to be in a group. Lion still plays the electric guitar, when he’s not off volunteering at the local church. - Finka: Pushed by her parents from a young age to try different sports, just like her siblings, she eventually discovered a strong love for fencing and ice-skating.

GIS

- Maestro: Cooking, and boxing, an interest he shares with Smoke. But mostly cooking. - Alibi: She’s also a marksman, engages Ash in friendly shooting competitions.

GSUTR

- Clash: She’s very involved in different activist causes, mostly surrounding racial issues and inequality. - Maverick: Photography, mostly nature or candid shots of his fellow operators. I also think he likes horses and riding. And Buzkashi of course, but he hasn’t played since he left Kabul.

GIGR

- Kaid: Playing chess, he’s a good strategist and it shows. And  while dozing off with a cat on his lap is not a hobby, he also loves that. - Nomad: Traveling to all sorts of remote locations, she’s an explorer with a thirst to prove herself. She also keeps a travel journal, which includes maps and some drawings of the places she’s seen.

SASR

- Mozzie: Dirt biking, of course. The more dangerous the jumps and stunts are, the more he likes it. He knows his limits and works to surpass them. - Gridlock: Robotics. She still wants to compete again in robot championships, just like she and Mozzie did so many years ago. She would consider that fixing cars and vehicles has become more part of her job than a hobby, but still loves it too.

Phantom Sight

- Nokk: Fencing, as evidenced by some of her concept art, she participated in fencing tournaments. - Warden: He knows appearances are important, and he cultivated a very specific image, so he likes to take care of that, be it by buying luxury or antique cars, or designer suits, etc.

Ember Rise

- Amaru: Archeology and exploring the Amazon jungle is her passion. It used to be her whole life and job, but since she joined Rainbow, she’s been busy with training and missions, yet she never lost her love for adventure, history and protecting her country’s cultural artifacts. - Goyo: He’s a really good chess player, and enjoys other games where he either has to think, or his usual poker face and calm demeanor can throw his opponents off.

Shifting Tides

- Kali: When she’s not writing reports about her underlings progress, or making lists about who should be ascended/rewarded, who needs to be punished or chastised, etc, she’ll be doing yoga, since it helps her focus. Or hardcore pilates when she needs to burn away some frustration first. - Wamai: Diving and being underwater in general, be it on his special immersion tanks or on the actual sea, it doesn’t matter. He finds it calming (and he’s addicted to the anoxia sensation)

Void Edge

- Iana: Space exploration fascinates her, and she’s always trying to learn everything she can about the cosmos, watching documentaries and conducting her own in-depth research. - Oryx: Wrestling helps him hone his physical prowess, and it’s also a measured outlet for his deep seated rage. He also greatly enjoys reading poetry.

Steel Wave

- Melusi: She’s committed to the conservation cause, which stems from both her love of wildlife and nature, and her protective instincts. She likes to explore too, although she’s not driven by a will to prove herself or reach certain goals, but simply for the joy of seeing natural spaces. - Ace: Social Media. He’s obsessed with his public image and popularity. While he travels quite a bit, it seems he does it more to share new and exciting selfies on Instagram than for the pleasure of visiting new places.

Shadow Legacy

- Zero: He knits and crochets, it’s an engaging hobby that helps him clear his mind, plus he enjoys making stuff too. Not many people know about this side of him though. 

Neon Dawn

- Aruni: She and Hero, her giant pouched rat, volunteer on landmine detection and removal efforts. She also likes to travel extensively, and has done so in the company of Twitch and Nomad.

[janusthesneakysnakeboi]

Florida Prep Host Club Part 1

(Ouran High School Host Club AU - but gayer)

Ships: Prinxiety mainly (for this part at least)

Warnings: Anxiety, panic attack, deceit mentions, self harm mentions (from a song)

Words: 1652

Note: This AU was based on a post @could-always-be-gayer-2 wrote and I jumped on it. Also I know Florida Prep Academy is a legit place, I didn’t realize that when I was writing this, and this has nothing to do with the actual school. This is also my first Sanders Sides fic so… yeah. (Song used (in bold) is Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued by Fall Out Boy). Enjoy! :)

Ok, first day was pretty good. I mean people stared at me, but what do you expect from these too happy rich kids who now share a school with someone poor, like me. I mean, I wouldn’t have been able to even come here had it not been for my academic scholarship. Speaking of, I should find a quieter place to study than that library - who knew, the place where you’re supposed to be quiet is probably the loudest place in the school. I didn’t know my way around Florida Prep Academy yet, but I guessed I’d be learning quickly. If this place is anything like my last school, I better start scoping out the hiding places now.

I put the hood of my hoodie over my head and turned on some music that always seemed to calm me. What can I say? It’s something about dark - aka “emo” - music that really kept my anxiety in check. I guess the screaming was it - too loud for any thoughts to enter.

I turned my music down as I got to what appeared to be a vacant hallway - I don’t even think I remember seeing any classes down here. I paused my music as I approached Theater Room 3, figuring if there were any theater clubs here, they’d be in the first 2 rooms. I pressed my ear up to the door, and couldn’t hear much of anything. So, I opened the door, and went to press play on my very old and outdated iPhone 5s - which was pretty much out of the 16GB of storage it came with in 2014, and only really good for music, messaging (not like I had anyone to message though) and internet occasionally - when I heard 6 masculine voices start to speak in sync, as if they rehearsed it millions of times already before I walked in. It took me a minute to process what they all just said, but when I did, I almost dropped my phone in shock.

“Welcome to the Florida Prep Host Club!” The six people I was faced with all said at once.

“Umm… What is this? This seems like a sad little club,” I mused, looking around and realizing it was just the 7 of us in this large theater room. The one wearing a crown - why? - looked really offended by what I had said, and I could tell I was going to get a dramatic introduction to this club or whatever I walked in on.

“I apologize, you must not be familiar with the concept of a host club. The basic premise of a host club is that lovely people, like me, who have way too much time on their hands volunteer to entertain even lovelier people, like yourself, who also have way too much time on their hands. This one in particular is rather special you see. As the prep school with the highest number of  LGBTQ students, we took it upon ourselves when making this club that we would be very accepting of that community, and find most of our hosts and guests are in some way part of the community themselves.”

I felt my eyes widen in shock. How did I not know this was a rainbow school? You probably just expected everywhere you go to be Transphobia City, located in the great state of Homophobia. I didn’t realize the crown guy was still talking, until he was introducing the club members to me.

“Take your pick. We have the hard on the outside, soft on the inside guy, who also happens to be very gay, and bigender, if either of those strike your fancy,” when the crown dude spoke, a guy wearing a sweater and a yellow tie - probably a code for their gender identity of the day - waved awkwardly. “Don’t worry though, they are much less awkward once you have a conversation with them.”

“Wha-”

“Well, if you’re not into them, maybe the lovable, childlike one? Or how about the mischievous twins? Or the calm, cool, and collected, organized nerd over there? They may be straight, but they are very kind.” As he spoke, various people greeted me, and I tried to associate personalities with faces, until I realized I knew 0 of the 7 names I needed.

“Who even are you people!” I shook with nervousness, and became even more on edge when I realized I shouted at all these rich people who could end me in one second. I saw the “calm” one with glasses walk towards me, his blank, unreadable expression setting me off even more, and I broke into a run away from all of them on the far side of the room. I shakily tried to open my phone to put some music on when the shorter, “childlike” member came running towards me, slipping underneath a cautionary hand to race toward me. I panicked and, without looking behind me, I backed up rather quickly, and tripped on a cord that was probably either not plugged in or connected to microphones or something. To my misery, I fell back into a little table that had one thing on it.

Emphasis on had.

I heard a crash behind me and immediately curled into a ball, pressing play on a random Fall Out Boy album - the last thing I had open on my screen, and heard the title track to From Under the Cork Tree begin to play, and felt a cautionary hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see all the host club members looking on edge, but like this wasn’t unusual. They probably all pity you. Because they know you tr- written on my wrist says ‘Do not open before Christmas.’ We’re only liars- they are all lying to you. They just want you to have a false sense of security and hope. I mean it’s not like they have any pride flag- Then I saw it. The whole wall was covered in almost every pride flag imaginable. I look at the other wall, and noticed they are separated by gender identity and sexuality, so you wouldn’t be confused as to where your flag was. I looked to the left and right, and saw my flags. I smiled, and the person sitting in front of me smiled, realizing I had changed my expression from I imagine pure panic to a calmer one.

“Hi there. Are you okay? Are you feeling overwhelmed?” Patton’s voice was calm, trustworthy, nice. I smiled at him, and shook my head.

“I was before, but I think I’m better now. Thanks…” I bit my lip, looking away, embarrassed at myself for my actions. Patton helped me up off the ground, and when I stood up I remembered the crash, and looked behind me. “Oh no… was that valuable?” I turned around, and one of the twins was standing directly behind me.

“Oh no, it wasn’t extremely valuable at all. It was very inexpensive, barely cost us a penny. It also holds zero sentimental value.”

“Yo, don’t listen to them. They’re completely pulling your leg. But yeah sis, this was going to be auctioned off at the Grand Florida Auction for $420,000. That was just the starting bid.” The other twin with blue sunglasses on was now behind me, standing very close to the shattered porcelain. Seeing it all shattered and hearing the price for it made me wince a little.

“And, as you are so rich, we know you’ll have no problem paying us back. In fact, don’t even worry about it! I’m sure there’s no other way to repay us for that cheap glass you broke.”

“Hey, lay off! Give ‘em some time to get used to this all before confusing ‘im.” The sunglasses twin scolded.

“Now, if you would like my input, I would say that as we do not expect someone like you to have that kind of money, as you cannot seem to afford a school uniform. However, there are many ways one could repay debt.”

“Yes! Beautiful work my dear pocket protector! And I have just the idea. You are now officially the Host Club’s dog!”

Oh no, what did I just get myself into…

I nodded solemnly, and then the smallest one came running up to me again. “Yay!! I’m so glad you’re a host with us! Logan! We should all introduce ourselves!” And then I saw someone - Logan I would assume - nod.

“Ah yes. Maybe not all at once, as to not overwhelm our newest host more. However yes, I am Logan, they/them pronouns please. And yes, as mentioned I am a heterosexual, and feel attraction towards females. And-”

“- I’m Patton! He/Him pronouns kiddo, except on the rare days where I might ask you guys to use they/them, but those days don’t happen often.” Patton smiled at me, and I looked around to see everyone staring at me.

“Wh-what’s wrong?” Then, I saw the crown guy come next to Patton, and smirk. “What Princey?” I sneered. I didn’t know what it was about him, but something didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to- no, it wouldn’t make sense but of course, when does anything I think ever?

“Princey? I kinda like it. However, my official title is King of the Florida Prep Host Club, but you can call me Roman. He/him pronouns, por favor~” I would never admit that his wink had any affect on me at all. Never.

“So? What’s your name kiddo? At least tell us your pronouns, so we don’t upset you!” Patton spoke, and I shrunk into my hoodie, hoping I could disappear into the grey and black threads. “Oh, I’m sorry kiddo, are we overwhelming you again? Everyone, give the poor kiddo some space-”

“I’m not your kiddo. I’m no one’s kiddo.” I mumbled, turning to walk away. “I’ll be back tomorrow, only to repay my debt.”

Taglist: @could-always-be-gayer-2 @the-incedible-sulk @nymphaedoratonks @eatinglilies214 @side-for-sides

I’m probably gonna continue this, so let me know if you’d like to be tagged in the future!

[helenpowers]

25 Questions Tag

Tagged by @hklunethewriter Thank you!

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason? God, there are a lot.

I have a pirate story that is based around the story of King Midas that I’ve been putting off, mainly because I have other projects that I’m more interested in writing.

Then there is my fantasy Rapunzel retelling that still needs to be edited/revised, which of course is putting it on the back burner. I have to completely rework the magic system and work on my world building, which I’m a little too scared to dive into. 

I have a Lesbian Figure Skater story with elements of sleeping beauty that I started outlining last year, but I got super inspired to write Tattoos and Tiramisu so it got put on the back burner as well...

Not to mention the ideas that are still just... barely even ideas.

2. What work of yours, if any, are you embarrassed about existing? All of the fanfic I’ve ever written. Not because of the fact that it’s fanfic, but because it was from when I thought I was actually a really good writer, but in reality I was very mediocre at best.

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes first? Something else? I write in chronological order, front to back. I find that if I try to write out of order, I can’t keep the feelings straight in my head, and I have a harder time linking the events together.

4. Favorite character you’ve written? I have two that come immediately to mind. From Scarlett, I absolutely adore Derek. He’s such a sweetie and deserves better than what he gets. In Tattoos and Tiramisu, I love James like no other. My precious baby.

5. Character you were most surprised to end up writing? Scarlett, probably. I had never intended to write that novel, but something happened and it just flowed. Scarlett herself surprised me as well.

6. Something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now I just really need to work on my world building. It’s definitely my weakness as an author.

7. When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write? I love to tell people that I write, however when they ask me to explain my stories... that is when I clam up a bit. I’m always nervous that they are going to judge me based on my ideas.

8. Favorite genre to write Contemporary, usually. I love writing characters and their personal stories. Plus, seeing as world building is not my strength, contemporary allows me to not worry about it too much. 

9. What, if anything, do you do for inspiration? Inspiration comes to me a lot through music and other forms of media. I just do the things I love to do and inspiration comes to me through that. 

10. Write in silence or with background music? Alone or with others? Always with music. I have playlists for every project I work on, and I’ll listen to that playlist specifically while I am working on that project.

11. What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing? I have gotten significantly better at dialogue since I started writing. I still have trouble with it in the first draft, but usually I know how to make it better now, which is something I definitely didn’t understand back then.

12. Your weaknesses as an author? Worldbuilding. Like I’ve mentioned before. Being descriptive with my characters and settings, as well. I tend to write as if my characters are blank and they are standing in a blank space. That’s why my first drafts are always so bare.

13. Your strengths as an author? I think I’m pretty strong when it comes to character interactions. I’m also fairly good at making characters that people enjoy reading about, thank god.

14. Do you make playlists for your work? ALWAYS. Like I said, every project has it’s own playlist. I keep them on spotify and just listen to them on repeat while I’m writing. 

15. Why did you start writing? Honestly, I don’t know. I started writing stories when I was like... five or six years old. I loved reading and I think I just wanted to make more stories for myself and others to enjoy. 

16. Are there any characters who haunt you? Of my own? None that come immediately to mind. 

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be? Don’t stress about your first draft. That’s what revisions are for. And yes, by the way, you do have to revise AND edit.

18. Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they? I will always be amazed my The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It’s one of my favorite books of all time. Also anything by Rainbow Rowell. I aspire to write characters as well as she does.

19. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.? I use scrivener most of the time, and I keep separate docs for each of those things, then have the main manuscript that I work through while it’s broken into chapters and scenes.

20. Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts? In NaNoWriMo, then it’s usually longer sit downs. However, through the rest of the year it’s more like little spurts. An hour here or there, whenever I can fit it in.

21. What do you think when you read over your older work? I usually have a really hard time reading it because all I can think about is how it can be improved, but usually they aren’t projects that I want to work on anymore, so just thinking about how to fix them isn’t doing me any good.

22. Are there subjects that make you uncomfortable to write? Nah. I was raised in a family that wasn’t scared to talk about anything, and that kind of wore off on me. 

23. Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing? Nothing that comes to mind.

24. Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?  In the first draft of Scarlett, she used guitar string to behead her victims, so I became very well versed in murder cases that used similar methods.

25. Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of. I posted one of my favorite segments of Tattoos and Tiramisu recently, so I’m trying to go through some of it to find another section that I’m particularly proud of... 

This will do, I guess.

“No, not really. I knew it was you a bit further back, but I wanted to make sure you were okay. You looked lonely. Sad.”

         “Well, now you can see that I am neither of those things, so you can go.”

         “I don’t know. You still look pretty lonely to me.” He looks around, like he’s half expecting there to be someone else just out of his line of sight, but there is no one.

         I look behind him and I can see his crew watching us. They seem confused, unsure as to why their leader would be conversing with me of all people. Some of them shrug and continue back into the school, not willing to stay in the cold weather for longer than it takes for them to ruin their lungs. Others, however, continue to watch with frowns.

         With a huff James takes off his jacket and puts it on the ground, sitting cross legged on top of it. He keeps his back to the path, like he knows that the others are still there, watching.

         “You know, you don’t need to sit with me out in the cold.”

         “I know.”

         “Your friends look like they’re waiting for you.”

         “I can catch up with them later.”

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Gabriel Rosenstock,

according to Wikipedia,

 (born 1949) is an Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language. A member of Aosdána, he is poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish. Born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, he currently resides in Dublin.      

Rosenstock’s father George was a doctor and writer from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, who served as a German army doctor in World War II. His mother was a nurse from County Galway. Gabriel was the third of six children and the first born in Ireland. He was educated locally in Kilfinane, then in Mount Sackville, Co Dublin; exhibiting an early interest in anarchism he was expelled from Gormanston College, Co. Meath and exiled to Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary; then on to University College Cork.

His son Tristan Rosenstock is a member of the traditional Irish quintet Téada, and impressionist/actor Mario Rosenstock is his nephew.

Rosenstock worked for some time on the television series Anois is Arís on RTÉ, then on the weekly newspaper Anois. Until his retirement he worked with An Gúm, the publications branch of Foras na Gaeilge, the North-South body which promotes the Irish language.

Although he has worked in prose, drama and translation, Rosenstock is primarily known as a poet. He has written or translated over 180 books.

He has edited and contributed to books of haiku in Irish, English, Scots and Japanese. He is a prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (among others Ko Un, Seamus Heaney, K. Satchidanandan, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Hilde Domin, Peter Huchel), plays (Beckett, Frisch, Yeats) and songs (Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell). He also has singable Irish translations of Lieder and other art songs.[1]

He appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press).[2] He gave the keynote address to Haiku Canada in 2015.

His being named as Lineage Holder of Celtic Buddhism inspired the latest title in a rich output of haiku collections: Antlered Stag of Dawn (Onslaught Press, Oxford, 2015), haiku in Irish and English with translations into Japanese and Scots Lallans.

He also writes for children, in prose and verse. Haiku Más É Do Thoil É! (An Gúm) won the Children’s Books Judges’ Special Prize in 2015.

Links:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Rosenstock#Biography

http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=gabriel+rosenstock

The Interview

Q. 1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I think the Muse came a-courting a long, long time ago, in an age before Gutenberg, an age before papyrus, when the poet was what he always is – though the role is suppressed today – a shaman.

She keeps coming – trying to possess me fully – but she knows I’m elusive, elusive as she is. We are both Spirit, pretending to be flesh, to be real. It’s a divine play, a sport, a leela as they say in India. I also write and translate for children – mainly in Irish, or Gaelic, and this is also leelai, pure and simple!

Ireland and India have so much in common. The writings of Myles Dillon and Michael Dames are good starting points for anyone interested in exploring that connection.

Ireland herself takes her name from a tripartite goddess and I dedicated a year to her in a bilingual book inspired by the devotional poetry of India, bhakti:

https://www.overdrive.com/media/796797/bliain-an-bhande-year-of-the-goddess

I mentioned the poet-shaman. There are very few courses in Creative Writing today that teach you how to be a shaman: it can’t be taught! So they teach form iinstead, how to write a sonnet or a villanelle – five tercets and a quatrain, is it? Enjambment anybody? Poets daringly continue a phrase after a line break and expect applause.

Irish poets learn your trade, sing whatever is well made. Yeats (whom I love) has a lot to answer for. Learn your trade! Poets today are tradeswomen and tradesmen for the most part. All form, no spirit, no melody that breaks the heart.

No heart. So, the great challenge today, in my book, is to reconnect with Spirit. Otherwise, forget it.

The only way to write is to write – and read, of course. Trust the inner ear – not what the manuals tell you – trust the heart, trust language. It’s not a lifeless tool in your hands, you silly tradesman. It’s alive, it’s divine. May your poetry be a sacrifice to her!

Having said all that, I occasionally teach haiku. The way I teach haiku is simply to present the works of the grandmasters of haiku, hoping that their spirit will ”catch’ and inflame the acolyte. Many believe that Basho was the grandmaster of haibun – prose speckled with haiku – and that the greatest of the haiku masters was Buson. I cobbled together new versions of Buson, in Irish and English, a volume which also contains versions in Scots by John McDonald:

https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Over-Tagoto-Selected-Haiku-ebook/dp/B00WUXQZ54 

We need more multilingual books of poetry, tanka and haiku. We need to free ourselves from the dying clutches of the Anglosphere and listen to real poetry in languages which still cherish the divine music of the spheres: one can hear that sacred music in the voice of Scots-Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, even when he reads his masterpiece Hallaig in English translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzewXmgVzL4

***         ��  ***

Haiku Enlightenment and Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing are two introductions to haiku and I hope that their titles reflect the spiritual basis of haiku, something which many haikuists ignore at their peril, I regret to say;  for young readers (say, 8-12 years) there’s a book called Fluttering their Way into My Head:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1782010882/evertype-20

True haiku – Zen-haiku – is egoless and spontaneous and allows for ambiguity – the reader must make sense of it by drawing on her own experiences, dreams, memories and so on –  and yet it’s happening in the  Now (if there’s such a thing as the Now).. I’m fully aware of promoting a book such as Fluttering their Way into My Head and speaking at the same time about ego-lessness! But, you see, I don’t identify with ‘my’ books as ‘mine’. They are about as ‘mine’ as is the moon over Tagoto.

Q. 2.Ted Hughes would be glad you extol the shamanic. Who introduced you to the shamanic in poetry?

Does one need an introduction? I hold shamanism to be a vital part of my literary and cultural heritage.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/cg1/index.htm

I can identify with the world of Carmina Gadelica whilst the world of Philp Larkin is alien to me.

Interesting that you should mention Hughes. I advise aspiring poets to wean themselves from the dominance of English-language literature, especially when it expresses itself in WASPish terms. I know many American poets, some of whom I’ve met at literary festivals, others  with whom I have a friendly e-mail acquaintance. Many of them seem straitjacketed by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant way of walking, talking, eating, drinking, dressing – and writing! I translated a volume of poems, Cuerpo en llamas, by the late Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcon into Irish and invited him to Ireland for the launch. He turned  out to be a shaman-poet. The genuine article. We recorded the book on a cassette (built-in obsolescence?) and the opening invocation was in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the language of his grandmother. I had come across Aztec poetry before, via anthologies by the likes of Jerome Rothenberg, but didn’t realize until then that Nahuatl was a living language.

During his brief stay in Ireland, Francisco gave me an Aztec name, Xolotl. I wrote a long poem of that title –  in a kind of shamanic frenzy – and put it away, out of sight. Years later I looked at it again and it’s the longest poem in my selected poems translated from the Irish, The Flea Market in Valparaiso.  Here’s a link to the book and a review:

https://www.cic.ie/en/books/published-books/margadh-na-miol-in-valparaiso

I’ll let the review speak for itself. Expounding further on the role of the shaman poet is best left to others. But, I’ll say this much, Paul: artificial intelligence or AI has ‘advanced’ to such an extent that robots are now writing poetry – it would almost make you join the Luddites or inspire you to form your local branch of Anarcho-Primitivists!. I think we should be reading more of John Zerzan and Paul Cudenec to fully realize what kind of world we are creating for our grandchildren. Everybody says we can’t go back, we can’t stop the march of progress. Rubbish! Of course we can go back; I don’t like military metaphors but surely a wise general knows when to retreat?

Do we want poetry written by robots? Maybe it’s just science imitating life – so much poetry, especially in English, is artificial anyway. Futurologists talk of various possible disasters down the line – caused by our relentless ‘advancement’ such as shortage of energy supplies, of food and water, melting icecaps and so on and so forth. Overfishing will result in a shortage of fish. Nobody speaks of a shortage of poetry – it wouldn’t be disastrous enough, seemingly, nor would it bother mankind very much if we speeded up the death of languages, currently estimated at one language disappearing every fortnight. It’s the survival of the fittest, isn’t it?! Is it? Is that who we are, what we are?

So what if Irish dies, if Scottish Gaelic or Nahuatl dies, if Welsh dies, if Manx dies – again! If Beauty dies, so what? Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? Well, some of us are not willing to accept such a fatalistic scenario. The World Poetry Movement, for one, has sounded the alarm. Poets are not ‘joiners’ by nature but when the future of civilization is at stake, perhaps it’s time for all poets to become focused. Jack Hirschman, poet and social activist, describes the vision of the World Poetry Movement thus:

https://www.wpm2011.org/

‘an end to war world-wide, and the creation of a world government that shares and distributes the  wealth of the world generously and sensitively in the process of creating an equality that is nothing but the word Love in the eyes of everyone because it also recognizes E V E RY human being as a brother or sister. With no need of any wall separating an ‘I’ from a ‘You’, a ‘He’ from a ‘She’ …

This is a wise vision. Quixotic? Utopian? So what. We need to rekindle hope, we as citizens, we as poets.

I was fortunate enough in this my 69th year on earth, fortunate indeed to have a near-death  experience. After recovering from multi-organ failure, I became conscious of the love that poured in streams at my bedside from my wife Eithne, my daughters Heilean, Saffron and Eabha, my son Tristan and conscious, as well, of the wave of reciprocated love that streamed from me to them. I was conscious, too, of the love and concern that came from friends, relations and fellow scribes.

Hirschman, above, is speaking of Love, the ultimate reality. Left-wing theorists should speak more often to us of love; it would help their cause. The author of The Wretched of the Earth tells us that his criticism of the colonizer is inspired by love, not hate.

For a long while I could not read or write. Then I asked one of my daughters would she kindly order me a copy of Palgrave’s Treasury: you see, English-language poetry was my first love, before I ‘discovered’ Irish and its potential,just as the author of Decolonising the Mind decided that African literature need not be in the language of the colonizer, French, English or Portuguese. His own  outlawed language, Gikuyu, was best suited to express what he wanted to reveal. I also asked my daughter to bring me anything by my favourite author, Isaac Bashevis Singer? So, Mr Rosenstock, are you Jewish then? I used to think that my empathy for Singer’s work meant exactly that, but no, I’m not Jewish. It is the ancient art of storytelling, brought to perfection in his short stories, that makes me alive not to Jewishness as such but to humanity, in all its guises. And what of my attraction to Irish culture and to Indian philosophies, particularly Advaita and bhakti? Well, I once heard Ganesh playing Napoleon Crossing the Rhine on the uilleann pipes:

http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?t=44223

I jest. But I did have an out-of-body experience listening to piper Eoin Duignan in a pub in Dingle. Look, I don’t feel particularly Indian, German, Irish or Jewish – live Irish music and the ancient sounds of the Irish language can lift one and link one deeply to the universal spirit, the rich complexity that is the world of the senses, too; a deepening of a sense of place; a feeling for history. English carries imperial baggage with it. The scales fell from my eyes once I understood that through Irish, the literary medium of my choice, I could see and experience the world differently. Lucky Poet is a memoir by Scottish poet Hugh Mac Diarmid. It touches on some of these issues.

A year or so ago I came across an editorial in Poetry Ireland Review that mentioned at least half a dozen English poets.(I couldn’t figure out why. Was this a special edition of the review dedicated to new voices in English poetry? No.) We are still ‘looking across the pond’, i.e. to England. There is ample evidence, if you look for it, that many Anglophone Irish writers are suffering from a kind of literary Stockholm syndrome, that phenomenon described in 1973 as an extraordinary love and regard of the captured for the captor.

As an Anarchist, as an Advaitist and as an Irish-language poet, I value freedom and independence. It is the life blood of art. It may set you on a collision course against the Establishment but unless you are a Daoist poet content with herb-picking on a mountain, such a collision seems inevitable.

Q. 3. What is your daily writing routine?

I write or translate from about 10.a.m until 8pm. I suppose, ‘poet-shaman-translator’ is an accurate enough label to describe my activity. I don’t distinguish between so-called original writing, such as poetry, and translation (which I prefer to call ‘transcreation’). I see the practice of these arts as coming from the same pool of universal creative intelligence. John Minford, Emeritus Professor of Chinese, Australian National University, said something that caught my attention in Words Without Borders (Dec 7, 2018): ‘Hermits of ancient days practiced Taoist yodeling, a form of music that emulated the music of the spheres. Translation itself, the transformation of ideas and words, whereby self and the other merge into one, can be a form of Taoist practice . . .’ So, others may have ‘a daily writing routine’ as you call it I have something resembling a Taoist or Zen-Buddhist practice… maybe ‘practice’ is enough; it’s a more honest description than defining it as Taoist or Zen. It would be slightly ridiculous to call me a Taoist or anything else. I’ve admitted to being both an Anarchist and an Advaitist but really, all labels are rubbish. To paraphrase the essence of the Tao in The Taoist Way, a beautiful lecture by Alan Watts, ‘The Tao that can be labelled is not the Tao.

I translate a vast array of material for a multicultural blog: http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/ I’m something of a technical dodo and must thank Aonghus O hAlmhain, blogmeister, for his work and patience. In recent years, my ‘practice’ has focused quite a lot on ekphrastic tanka and photo-haiku. The Culturium is a blog which is devoted to the arts as ‘practice’ in the meditative sense of the word: https://www.theculturium.com/?s=gabriel+rosenstock I have unsubscribed to various sites recently but two that remain are The Culturium and Poetry Chaikhana. A poet-friend, Cathal O Searcaigh, who writes mainly in Irish, gave me a volume of poems by a shaman-Taoist poet of the late Tan’g Dynasty, Li He. I began to write Taoist-flavoured poems in Irish and English, Conversations with Li He. When I get out of hospital (I’ve been hospitalized since September 2018) I’d love to continue with this project. I see a fellow-shaman in O Searcaigh and have translated him into English quite often over the years, most recently in a book called Out of the Wilderness: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Wilderness-Cathal-Searcaigh/dp/0995622523 It is not easy – in fact it is impossible – to convey the shamanic power of MacLean and O Searcaigh in English:

He is a lovely, lively conversationalist, as you can hear above. He and MacLean recite their poetry as though conscious of the fact that poetry was originally chant, the ecstatic chant – the trance – of the shaman. Alan Titley, in a discussion following the interview, joined by Frank Sewell and Art Hughes, speaks of Cathal’s work as an ‘act of reclamation’. Poetry lost its heart when it ditched chant, when the poet could no longer perform the role of shaman. Can we reclaim poetry? In the discussion, academic Art Hughes also talks about the disaster of the ‘printed page.’ Frank Sewell finds ‘strange echoes of home’ in Cathal’s references to the East. And Hughes talks about synthesis and the vision of Unity known to mystic of all traditions. It’s what Jack Hirschman alluded to previously when we touched on the World Poetry Movement. Is Jack a mystic?! We’re all closeted mystics if you ask me . . .

Q. 4. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

What’s young?! I was in my late teens when I read Speaking of Shiva, an anthology of bhakti verse edited by AK Ramanujan. I haven’t properly revisited the  titles that ravished my youth. That bhakti anthology opened my heart to the Universe.

I longed to write something in the bhakti or neo-bhakti style and when the conditions were right, it turned out to be a volume in English, Uttering Her Name, addressed to a Muse-Goddess directly: my first faltering attempts at using e-mail. English was the only language we had in common. She was a poet from Venezuela whom I met at a Kurt Schwitters festival in Germany. She was on her way to have darshan of Mother Meera. I didn’t formerly ask her, ‘Excuse me, I wonder would you kindly play the role of Muse-Goddess as I have some urgent bhakti poems to compose.’ I just went ahead and wrote them, 200 in all, eventually whittled down to half that size. It took a long time to find a publisher:

https://www.amazon.com/Uttering-Her-Name-Gabriel-Rosenstock/dp/190705619X

I don’t think Uttering Her Name would have come about without the influence of the Ramanujan anthology.

Was it he who said that he inhabited that no-man’s-land which is the hyphen in ‘Anglo-Indian!’? He wrote a very poignant poem about revisiting his home and calling out ‘Mother’ but, of course, she wasn’t there. I would have liked to have known him. Very much. He was a distinguished folklorist, among other things  and  also wrote in Kannada, one of India’s important literary languages.

I was fortunate to hear songs in Irish as a child – not at home, mind you – and the best of them are unforgettable. One could call the best of our songs folk poetry of the highest order, superior in texture and melody to much of the poetry of our time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? behv=8JjiLoD0ldc

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s voice in the opening track is very expressive, very tender and yet there’s a glorious defiance as an undercurrent to the song that says, ‘Try out your ethnic cleansing on us, again and again, your genocidal madness; we are a people of poetry and song, imperishable song.’

The second track is in Scottish Gaelic. The songs of Gaeldom are a link to a people’s struggle, songs of love (‘profane’ and divine), exile, loneliness, companionship, laments and lullabies, songs that sing the thirst for freedom. The words are music in themselves – when sung, they wrench the heart.

Q. 5. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

The most intimate form of reading is that which one does as a poet-translator. I have translated or transcreated many poets from India and all of them speak very highly of K. Satchidanandan from Kerala. He is closely involved in many festivals and last year, in Calicut, the theme was ‘No Democracy without Dissent’

https://issuu.com/gabrielrosenstock/docs/satchi_rich_text.rtf

The poet-shaman-translator in me experienced various degrees of ecstasy when transcreating the poems of the Korean genius Ko Un:

https://www.amazon.com/Ko-Rogha-Dánta-Gabriel-Rosenstock-ebook/dp/B01FRAYDX2

My love for Cathal O Searcaigh and his poetry is well known. All three are outside of the Anglosphere, if such a thing is possible. Apart from those three, the site Words without Borders can be interesting. I’m grateful to English as a global language which introduces literature in translation to us all. I like ‘aboriginal’ poetry – the more aboriginal the better.The late Michael Davitt, with whom I co-founded the journal INNTI, has a line which says, ‘Ma bheireann carbhat orm, tachtfaidh se me’ – ‘if a cravat (or tie) catches hold of me, it will choke me.’ This is Irish aboriginalism alive and kicking! It says NO to the WASP and again NO. No thanks.

Q. 6. What would you say to who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write

Q. 7. Tell me about any writing projects you’re involved in at the moment.

Current writing projects: some writers are superstitious about current projects, as though they can only breathe a sigh of relief when the book is actually printed and published. Others like to trumpet their work in progress or publish extracts here and there.

Insanely prolific as I am, I usually have a number of irons in the fire. Do you know the origin of the phrase? It alludes to a blacksmith working on several pieces of iron at the same time. I remember being in a blacksmith’s forge as a child. A magical place. Lots of superstitions associated with iron, nails, horseshoes and so on. In Tibet they speak of ‘sky iron’ and I wrote a poem once inspired by that lore when I discovered that certain Tibetan singing bowls contain material from this ‘sky iron’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFmtpeh9so

I posted the poem on a few YouTube sites that featured singing bowls. Scroll down a bit and you’ll find it, in Irish and English. That’s a rather roundabout way of saying I’m not going to reveal current projects. To be frank, I have a number of completed projects and I’d much prefer to see them published before embarking on fresh material, such as a volume of bilingual poems, in Irish and English, already mentioned, poems addressed to the Daoist poet-shaman Li He.

  Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Gabriel Rosenstock Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[gsmatthews95]

"Is it wrap o'clock yet?"

Helloooo I am back and breaking my 4 day silence. Im on the bus down to noosa at the moment and I thought this is a good time to catch up with y'all on my comings and goings of the last few days. Also side note, I think I actually got frostbite last night. In a bed. In a hostel. Urgh. I was even wearing my sleeping bag onsie, it was bloody freezing. I just feel sorry for those poor unprepared souls who dont have a sleeping bag onesie. Ha I bet you thought oz would be warm didnt you? But no. Its pretty much arctic here at the moment. Lol. So where have I been these last few days? Oo good question Karen. I have been ticking oz travelling boxes by visiting Fraser island. Yaaaaay. Fraser island is a classic oz east coast stop, somewhere everyone goes for normally three days (dats what I did) on an organised tour, ew organised tour. But no. It was awesome one of the best tours I've done after the San vlas islands and the Lombok to Flores boat trip off the top of my head. Mainly because it was so chilled and fun, the guide was easy, the schedule was loose and we were driving oursrlves. So I think Fraser is the largest sand island in the world and has silica sand similar to Whitehaven beach, soft and white ooooo. Ergo George exfoliated and brushed his teeth again, yessss. But I jump the gun. So what happened was that we were in a group of 24 and one guide. We had three 4x4s with the guide driving the first and us driving the other two beasts. Yes I achieved my ambition of driving these bad boys. The island is famous because there are no roads. The highway is a 70 mile stretch of beach. Yes lots of beach and off road driving, well cool. #CarTwo4Lyf Ok the first day was an early kick off as we cruised to the island and over the ferry from rainbow beach. Then was our first experience of sand driving. Niamh (pronounced nieve. Irish, I know. Weird...) Was up as we skidded thru the deep and soft sand. This was actually the hardest driving as it was high tide and the wheels were going everywhere, a baptism of fire you may call it, well done niamh for getting us thru it all. I was up next as we went inland and off roaded. The moment I'd been waiting for. It was mint. We drove over craters, the car tipped over and the people in the back lost feeling in their bums... Not in a weird way... It was really bumpy I swear. The car smashed it though with its outrageous tires and suspension. It was all I imagined. AND MORE. This was when we came to lake Mackenzie. A rain water lake. Clear, clean and refreshing. With white sands. Idyllic. Kim kardashian actually just put up a photo there if you follow her, I reckon she was following us. We chilled there and swam a bit. Also got some nice snaps obvs. An enduring theme of this trip was Frisbee. Weird. I know. But very fun. So in car 2 (my car, the best car) we had 3, thats 3 out of 8 ultimate Frisbee players slash coaches. What are the chances? Consequentially, there was a lot of Frisbee chat and playing. Hugh and niamh are coaches and Ed plays at a national level (I'll leave it up to you to decide who's cooler me and my quidditch or Ed and his Frisbee). So every beach we got to the disk came out too culminating in a match when we got back to rainbow beach. A competitive yet relaxed affair. A very good game. Edged by team hugh, with yours truely playing centre back, a Sergio Ramos esque performance if I say so myself. It was well fun and is making me think I should have played at Leeds. I dont know if my friends would have stuck by me if I played that and quidditch though, it was hard enough to convince them to hang out with me when just played quidditch. Harry Buxton I'm looking at you. Also this is going to be a very long post, sorry. But a lot happened and I'm in the swing of writing now. The next stop on this adventure was lunch at a nice little creek with a board walk over it. Lunch. Let's discuss lunch. It quickly became the most exciting part of each day. It was the same meal each day but was heavenly anyway. Wraps. Lots of wraps with lots of fillings. It was so intrinsic to our days and necessary to our happiness that most conversations returned the wraps. "Is it wrap o'clock yet?", " I wonder if we're gonna get a new filling for the wraps today?", "im bloody excited about the wraps", "do you reckon dingo would taste good in a wrap?". Yep, wraps are life. I had nine in three days. We even had wrap battles, lol. Who had the best looking wrap?, the fullest wrap? Or even whether beatroot had a place in the wrap, were common lunchtime conversations. Basically we love wraps. The excitement culminated on our final day when Victor, part of our Swedish contingent, caught a fish with his bare hands (very alpha male i know) and proclaimed it was the newest filling for someone's wrap, yummy. Now it was off to camp for a little session. But only after we stopped at a ship wreck, which was quite cool. Nothing to write home about tho. Oh wait a second I suppose I'm writing home about it now. Hmm. Awkward. Well maybe is was worth It after all. We returned to camp, threw the disk, shock and drank goon, shock. We had a BBQ dinner and had some fun. A little trip to the beach for some stargazing and off to bed in my three man tent that i shared with my onesie, very cute. Day 2. An early kick off. Too early. I got up, got breaky and went back to sleep. I held up the group a wee bit, the previous nights antics had taken their toll, lesson learnt. Our first stop today was the champagne poolls. Basically some giant rock pools you can swim in with the waves crashing in. Not overly exciting but nice to see and swim in, obvs, nonetheless. I Just chatted to aido, our guide for a bit. Very funny man. A Bush baby. With a very different upbringing/life to me. Apparently he started a bush fire once, but did he do a fire dance around it while listening to dnb? I think not. Therefore I win. We cruised on Towards a big cliff With a wee little walk up it. We trooped up in true military fashion to get some nice views of the beach and sea. It was also a good sea creature viewing spot, we saw dolphins, a shark and lots of whales. Ok so the whales. There was a lot of them. So many so that the excitement of seeing them ebbed away towards the end. They'd all be chilling and swimming north along the beach. Usually quite far out tho. However, some gave us a show as the jumped out of the water and wagged their tales. One joker even did a workout for us as he repeatedly smashed his tale against the water, it was immense. Having never seen a whale I have now seen enough for a lifetime in 2 short weeks. It was all very impressive. More on day 2. I believe our next stop, after the wraps, was a trip to eli creek nicknamed the lazy river. A fresh water river leading to the sea, so clean you could drink it. It was a funny experience as our whole squad trooped Down the knee high river with only six tubes. There were scrambles for tubes as three would share one. I had a relatively regal experience compared to the rest as I sat on top of hugh, like a king. Then I was then shunted on to jabba's tube which we shared in very cute fashion. There was splashing, pushing and banter. It was all pretty jokes. I then went a second time with Rudy. Much more chilled as we floated down in true chiler fashion. We then played more frisbee and headed home for a sunset walk, with a twist.... What was this twist you ask? The twist was that we missed the sunset cause aido sent us off too late. Great. Luckily there was another group on the sand dunes with boogie boards. Ah, phew, we didnt waste our time after all. We were up and down the dunes standing, sitting and lying on the board. Lots of fun. Bloody tiring tho running up that hill so much and I had sand everywhere. I'm still covered now. A good activity tho, no thanks to aido. We headed back, I showered finally and we boozed. With another twist actually as we had neighbours in the next camp site. North camp. They were 26 strong. 23 girls and 3 guys, lol. 2 of the guys had girlfriends... Lol. So some of them came to join us as we had better banter and music, shock. The entertainment for the night was the excitement of a night at the horse racing. It got intense, especially when Winston pipped Adolf at the final hurdle. Adrenaline was flowing. Before I begin on day 3 I just want to give a little ode to the dingo. I was thinking they could get their own piece but I can't really be bothered. This has taken me like 1.5 hours I reckon already. Dingos are cute. Quite ratty but really they're just chillers. They stroll down the beach chat to humans and hang around with alpha males. There are lots of them on Fraser and people seem to be scared of them, im really not sure why tho cause they're super cute and lovely. They'll always have a place in my heart. I love you dingos. Day 3 started in similar fashion to day two. I hadn't learnt my lesson. We packed up camp and left for wobbi lake (I think). This was a stagnant lake (it was smelly and green) at the bottom of some steep sand dunes. This was the scene for the crumbed sausage. Something I will never forget. And as I have videos of it, I will always remember. Myself victor and jabba submerged ourselves in the festering water. We Got out and ran to the top of the dunes 3 times so we could try entering the water in different ways. We began by charging down at full speed. Easy. The second was the time of the crumbed sausage as we rolled down the hill, wet. This meant the sand clung to us. Hence the crumbed sausage. It was weird. Quite fun but quite painful, disorientating and sandy. This is the other reason im still covered in sand. We went for a third entrance into the water. Forward rolls, like a block of cheese rolling down the hill. This was most successful. As I hurtled down the slope at pace with a relatively smooth entrance to the water. Afterwards my head hurt and I couldn't see straight for about two minutes. If you go to Fraser, join the crumbed sausage crew, you won't regret it. Lol. But that was it as we went for lunch and bombed back to rainbow beach ending a smashing three days. We had a bangin group, lots of fun people in all three cars but seriously #CarTwo4lyf. Now I'm gonna go back to learning all the words to mans not hot and the bog in the valley-o. Maybe I should rename this blog the "blog down in the valley-o" although I do quite like "holidaying" I'll think about it. Anyhow I'll write again in maybe 3 days. Dont miss me too much. All my love. G

[gabemusc304-blog]

Listening Post #4

Messiaen

In the first movement is played by all four instrumentalists but the clarinet seems to stand out the most. It seems very haunting but also seems somewhat fluttered. This might be a representation of birds fluttering around. The second movement starts out very angry with all four instruments playing. It emphasizes large strikes on the piano and seems somewhat scattered. It also takes a break from being angry and scattered and the two string instruments (cello and violin) play together without the clarinet. The piano is also played in the background. “The Abyss of the Birds” is the third movements and it involves only the clarinet. This movements is a slow moving flowing piece with sudden fluctuations in speed. The fourth movement is only played by the violin, clarinet, and cello. It is uplifting and fun and seems to be the dance like movement. The Fifth movement is only played by cello and piano and is slow and sad. It is a series of odd phrases that don’t seems to fit together in a singular beat. Movement number six is played with all four of the instruments. They play in unison through most of the movement and is again very dance like and lively. In the seventh movement, we see the cello and the piano playing together again. However, towards the end of the movement, we see the other two instruments join in to play a kind of reoccurring feel of melody. The eighth movement is played by the violin and piano. It is a movement of slow moving lines and soft melody.

The chapter we read tells us that this movement is about birds and mimicking their sounds. In the beginning of the movement, the melody is really soft, almost inaudible. To me, this reminds me of the sun rising in the morning. Then the clarinet starts to play very fluttery, all over the place notes and melodies. This could be Messiaen trying to mimic the bird noises that he hears right after the sun rising in the morning. This conforms to the story in the chapter we read about Messiaen and his love to work the morning shift so he could see and hear the sun rise.

In this video the artist portrays Messiaen’s description of the rainbow that covers an angel very well. He paints a picture of a person is many different colors. The artist also paints a picture in black and red paint to symbolize the swords of fire. The other picture is hard to decipher but it also looks like it could depict swords of fire. However, this one has more bright colors whereas the other has mainly red and black. Something I think the author portrays very well is the clutter and appearance of disorganization, but somehow keenly organized, of the piece. As he paints he makes it seem that he is totally array and disorganized. However, when the final piece is finished, like say the first painting of the person, it shows that he was actually very organized and needed to be or else it would have looked a lot different. This is the same with Messiaen’s music. The second part to the video portrays a religious meaning. It shows how we can be wiped clean of our sin if we except Jesus into our lives. We can start a new life without sin in this way.

Overall this work is interesting yet dull in my mind. Although I do think there is a lot of meaning behind the music, I find the music quite boring. Also, the fact that it was created in a prisoner camp in Germany gives it some importance. But most of the music puts me to sleep and the rest just seeks our of place and erratic.