#my first post yepee

[trpaslicek-pumprlicek]

[0fl0wer]

- Yepee My first drawing posted on Tumblr , maybe I arrive quite late .

[miroslavcloset]

The day Thomas Muller became a national hero in Colombia (South America)

Because of my husband Thomas Muller's NT retirement, I decided to remember that time when he became an icon in this unknown third-world country~

Storytime~

Get something to eat because here comes my longest post ever and one of my favorite things to ever happen in this hellhole <3

No introduction is needed for the 2014 World Cup. So let's just skip to the good part. One of the breakthrough teams was Colombia, a humble but passionate team, they were having their best run so far, and literally everyone in the country wanted them to go as far as possible.

In a country where literally every day the government makes you hate every part of living here, the NT is always a beacon of joy to make us feel proud of being Colombian. And even more now, that we had the Best goal of the match and the Top scorer of the whole tournament.

After an amazing run against teams like Uruguay and Ivory Coast, the day came, when we had to play against Brazil. I don't know how it was perceived in the rest of the world, but here in South America, almost everyone knew Brazil was winning the whole thing, even with rumors of the WC being fixed to favor them (ofc rumors or not but still).

In the Colombia V Brazil match, 3 important things happened.

Neymar was Injured

Thiago Silva was suspended via accumulation of yellow cards

And the catalyst of this story

3. An equalizer Goal from Mario Yepes was mistakenly determined as offside and annulled.

Due to this last event, Colombia was automatically eliminated without the chance of going to penalties.

THIS is Colombia's Trauma™, you can ask any of us. We even have a popular saying we use to this day because of this 'Era gol de Yepes' (Like saying that goal was always legit). But we weren't sad. We were infuriated. We demanded vengeance, we wanted vengeance (We're way too passionate about this, what do you want me to say).

After that, yeah, there were the other quarterfinals, whatever, we didn't care. All of us were waiting for the Germany V Brazil and due to the rumors I spoke about before, we were very scared of Germany losing.

As an important note here, while we were very angry, a very good portion of the Colombians just dropped the whole thing due to idk post-elimination depression. On a personal note, never in my life did I see my country in such silence. I went out to visit my family and the capital had the most depressing silence I've ever experienced. When I tell you this WC meant the world to us I was very serious, a lot of Colombians went to Brazil in buses or walking to see the matches, and some even slept on the streets or stuff like that to keep on supporting.

So, the day of the Germany V Brazil match arrived, and oh boy we didn't have an idea.

At this point, very few of us were still watching the tournament. In the beginning, they were very balanced... And then the game started.

We already knew what happened in that legendary game so let me just tell you the story from our point of view. All of Colombia was rooting for Germany, we wanted, no, we needed Germany to win. Brazil started attacking first so we were quite nervous.

Then a certain player bested Brazil's clueless defenses and scored the first one for Germany.

Everyone was celebrating as if it was our own country, we started calling other people to turn on the TV, our family, neighbors, everyone. The stores and cafeterias tuned the match to see the ones that (in our eyes) did us so wrong, get humiliated by such a great team.

Of course, almost no one knew who this guy was, but Javier Hernández (the most popular commentator here) felt exactly the same as everyone else and loved every second of that first goal, making sure every single Colombian heard this player's name loud and clear, the one that avenged us. Thomas Muller.

Here you can hear what all of us heard that day: (Turn on audio to witness the insanity)

(Sorry for the quality of the video, I know it's ass but this was a recording from a fan from a TV 10 years ago lol)

Then the goals came one after another, and the rest is history. But to us it was special, we celebrated as if it was our own country. Here are some comments from Colombians:

T: Thanks for avenging us Germany

T: Forbidden to forget this match, when all of us were German for 90Min, Thanks! (Germany x4 Trophies) I'll never get over him and neither any colombian, Thomas Muller 7-1 / 8-2

T: Muller 2014: 7-1 Muller 2020: 8-2 He's always in every historic scoring in football

T: In that match All of Colombia was Germany

And like those you can find hundreds and hundreds. The day after the match we kept on celebrating, the memes were everywhere, especially one where James (our star player) called Thomas and asked him to score against Brazil (ofc that never happened, was a silly meme that reflected the general feeling). Also, I clearly remember the news and variety shows on national channels opening their broadcast greeting in German (or at least trying lol). It was so funny and at the end, we received our NT and celebrated their progress and Germany won the cup.

Pretty much a happy ending for everyone.

[startanewdream]

I love Sirius shipping Hinny so much I need more my heart need it

[Not exactly how I imagined happening if Sirius lived, but this was too fun to pass and I always love mixing canon with AU ;)]

"Dear Sirius,

Hope everything is all right. Did you remember to water the foxtail lilies? Don't forget they will flourish soon.

Served detention with Snape yesterday; he made me lose all the Quidditch match on purpose, but I know, I know, I deserve it, no more Dark Magic ever.

I missed the match, but Gryffindor won anyway! 450x140 so we got the Quidditch Cup! We had the most perfect celebration party ever. I heard I am a very good captain.

I spend the afternoon discussing the match, it was great [follows seven paragraphs describing all three hours of the match in details]

(...)

(...)

(...)

(...)

(...)

(...)

(...)

I can't believe I missed it, but I can tell you I'm more than happy that Ginny caught the snitch. She is amazing—but you already know what I think of her.

She told me to send you a hug, by the way. And now I have to go, she is waiting me for breakfast.

Oh, why is she waiting for me? Ops, forget to tell you. Remember that post-match euphoria you mentioned as a good moment for me to gather my Gryffindor courage and snog her? Turns out it was a great idea.

Turns out Ginny agrees with you.

Yepe, in front of the whole Common Room. We got whistles. We got applauses. Hermione may have cried. Ron actually approved!

We are dating now!

Say hello to Buckbeak for me. Say hello to our plants. Say hello to everyone!

Harry".

_________

They are at lunch when Hedwig flies back, holding a red envelope that she delivers in front of him before flying away hurriedly. Harry can't blame her. The envelope is trembling.

'Oh, no,' he sighes. Next to him, Ginny squeezes his hand in a comfort gesture, even as there is a smirk on her face.

'Uh, oh, first time, Harry? Don't worry, I'll guide you.'

He laughs, flushing and knowing it's because of her innocent tone more than because of what he has just received. He takes a deep breath, lamenting the fact that the letter couldn't have found him alone, and opens it.

"FIVE PAGES OF QUIDDITCH MATCH WHILE YOU UPHELD THE FACT YOU FINALLY SNOGGED HER? MERLIN, YOU ARE REALLY YOUR FATHER'S SON. PRIORITIES, HARRY, PRIORITIES. No, I am not exaggerating, Moony, stop it. I AM SO MAD AND SO HAPPY FOR YOU, BUT NEXT TIME SKIP TO THE IMPORTANT THINGS LIKE THE FACT YOU TWO ADORABLE DORKS ARE FINALLY DATING. I WANT DETAILS IN THE NEXT LETTER OR GOD HELP ME I'M BREAKING INTO THIS CASTLE *AGAIN*'!"

As the letter bursts into flames, Harry pretends to ignore the redness creeping over his neck. 'So—do you reckon there is someone at Hogwarts that doesn't know we are dating now?'

[my18thcenturysource]

After ALL that has been happening... tomorrow my late Medieval fashion talk will be streamed as part of the First International Meeting of Dances of the Past, and then I’ll be there (via Zoom, of course) for a short Q&A session.

So, the big event is finally here! I’m pretty sure the Spanish talks will be only available in Spanish (maybe later will be a translation in the website or something, but I have not been asked to translate mine, so I don’t really know), but there are also some talks in English, and SO MANY themes to pick your interest!

The event will start with a welcome and then an homage to Alan Stark, who was a historiccal dance teacher, and basically the person who began teaching this in Mexico (he was my teacher’s teacher, and he also taught one of my dancer friends at school before he retired), se we all love him. Then the legendary Ana Yepes talking about el Siglo de Oro Español on Wednesday 11 am Mexico City (5 pm London, 12 pm New York, 9 am L.A.,6 pm Paris and Madrid, 2 pm Santiago de Chile), then you’ll see one of my costumes in action because David Serna will dance wearing an Ángel Arcabucero outfit I made (very baroque, much Viceroyalty of the Peru, so feathers, many brocade). I swear I’ll made a whole post about it!. I’ll dance there too (actually we taped that like 2 weeks ago, so they’ll stream the two dances).

Then at 12 pm ( 10 am L.A, 1 pm NY, 3 pm Santiago de Chile, 6 pm London, 7 pm Madrid and Paris). I’ll be part of the first table, where you’ll listen about Mexica dances, Medieval dance, Medieval fashion and the danse macabre (that’s me!), and Moors and Christians.

On Thursday I fully recommend you catch Hubert Hazebroucq talking about ornamentation and improvisation in Baroque dance, Ann Hutchinson talking the importance of the registering dance, and Lynn Matluck talking about the process of publishing in a scholarly journal (useful information!).

On Friday you can catch Christopher Scott Winslow talking about Country Dances, and Rafael Pérez Enríquez and Magdalena Villagrán (that’s my Baroque dance teacher!) talking about 18th century dance in Mexico, and Rebecca Harris-Warrick talking about the musicology research in French Baroque dance.

Now, the best part of all of this is that it is FREE (there are kids like me, but there also are heavyweights and legends in the historical dance community), and you can stream all that from anywhere via:

Centro Nacional de las Artes México, Faceebook Page

interfaz.cenart.gob.mx here you just scroll down ‘till you see “transmisiones en vivo” and there you’ll see “Primer encuentro internacional de danzas del pasado”.

[your-dietician]

2021 MBAs To Watch: Christina Gohl, IE Business School

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/business/2021-mbas-to-watch-christina-gohl-ie-business-school/

2021 MBAs To Watch: Christina Gohl, IE Business School

“I’m a results-oriented, people-oriented, ex-scientist turned business development professional who loves skiing in the Rockies.”

Hometown: Vancouver, BC

Fun fact about yourself: I met my husband on an airplane!

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Alberta, Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Santevia Water Systems, Role: Director of Sales

Where did you intern during the summer of 2020? There’s no summer break in a one-year MBA – we go 11 months straight – so nowhere!

Where will you be working after graduation? Great question! One-year MBAs are a unique breed, so given that I don’t graduate until the end of July I haven’t accepted an offer yet.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

Awards:

Forte Fellowship

Community Work and Leadership Roles

IE Consulting Club Leadership Team. Role: Vice President

The club had slipped in the IE club rankings (a measure of value and effectiveness). I identified the need for a turnaround. I led and implemented a strategy and vision building process with the leadership team which included setting simple but powerful key metrics to measure success. In four weeks, we increased the club’s score by over 100 points, moving from 4th to 1st place.

IE Ambassador – Women4Women Program

Women continue to be underrepresented in MBA programs and through IE’s Women4Women program I aim to change that. Once paired with a prospective female student, I developed a connection and then we explored their needs and goals. My aim is to reduce anxiety by answering their questions but also to act as an advisor. Together we find the right fit, both for them and for IE.

Mentor

Junior profiles in my network have asked for mentorship from me in three areas: sales/business development, team management, and networking. I am currently working with a Masters in Management student to advance his networking skills with a goal to increase his chance of success in consulting applications.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Being published in IE’s Finance Talks. I’m a sales and marketing profile with a Bachelor in Science, so while I’m right at home in data analysis, all the finance I know I learned in a boardroom. As a result, when I came to business school I expected to struggle amongst peers with significantly more experience. I had been following the Game Stop short squeeze in the news, so when it came time to pick a topic for my Financial Markets final paper, GME seemed both interesting and relevant. I’m a good writer, but by no means a financial expert. As a result, I was shocked when my professor reached out saying that not only had I gotten 100% on the paper, but that he wanted to publish it. Since then, it has been reprinted in IE’s student newspaper at the request of the IE Investment Club and I got a 4.0 in Financial Markets to boot.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I always hit sales targets. This started in my first role as a Management Trainee at Enterprise, where I was in the top 1% of sales people province-wide every month I worked there. When I moved to Santevia, I repeated the same pattern. The business was young when I joined, so we had aggressive growth targets: double digits every year. I never missed an annual target. As the business grew, so did my level of responsibility and the size of my team. This meant hitting sales targets was now a function of my ability to lead and motivate 75 others instead of a result of my own direct work. This was a learning curve for me, but a challenge where I excelled. My team never missed an annual sales target in my 7-year tenure at the company.

Why did you choose this business school? I had progressed to the senior leadership team at Santevia and I remember sitting at the boardroom table realizing that while I understood the sales vertical very well, I couldn’t always predict with accuracy the impact my sales strategies would have on other areas of the business. I was a highly competent middle manager, but I needed to up-skill to become an executive. I came to IE Business School to improve my business strategy skills. For me, IE was the right choice because the institution is very forward looking.

The world had just undergone the quickest technical adoption I’ve seen in my lifetime as a result of COVID. Businesses are thus demanding technology savvy, entrepreneurial thinkers now more than ever before. This is IE’s specialty. At this school, I’m building an exam automation start-up called Examind and in two weeks I start a business challenge helping SMEs implement technology accelerators with Microsoft. Without the support and guidance of the professors and administrators at IE, I would never have dreamed of these accomplishments and opportunities.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school?

COVID has affected almost every event or tradition this year. However, one thing that it did not change was the value of diversity at IE. IE ensures that every MBA class hails from all over the globe (our class has 70 different nationalities). While this prompts truly interesting class discussions, it also challenges us to question norms. Sometimes it’s simple things: yesterday, I learned that Italians break a candle from their birthday cake to make a wish instead of doing it when they blow out the candles. And sometimes it’s big, such as how working with multicultural teams presents both challenges and opportunities. Learning to do this well is a skill that I will take with me and I sincerely believe will set me up for success in a world that becomes more diverse by the day. The fact that IE not only understands the value of diverse teams but also has implemented recruiting practices that make it a reality is a testament to their belief in the power of diversity.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I would have focused less on the job hunt in my first semester. The one-year MBA is short, so there is pressure throughout to consider what’s next. While there is a definite benefit in being clear on your next steps and strategy to get there, I struggled with the transition from a career in Canada to academia in Spain. I think I could have been a little easier on myself in those first months and allowed myself more space to make the transition.

What is the biggest myth about your school? You’ll learn a ton of Spanish while you’re here. While it is possible to learn Spanish (and IE provides us ample opportunity), the reality is that you spend most of your time immersed in English. In addition, the demands of a one-year MBA mean that it’s difficult to find time to practice. As such, I’ve found my language skills progressing more slowly than I’d like.

What is one thing you did during the application process that gave you an edge at the school you chose? I focused my time on what I was world-class at. I had to make a choice mid-application: spend more time devoted to studying and re-writing the GMAT to score in the upper ranks of the quant section or focus on my strengths (strong interpersonal skills that allow me to interview well and strong writing skills to write great entrance essays). I decided to do the latter and it paid off: I got into every school I applied to, with generous scholarships.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Luis Fernando Marcos Yepes. Luis is a part of my workgroup (an assigned group with which we do all our group projects for core academic classes). The people in your workgroup are always a bit of a gamble. Will we have similar goals? How do our workstyles differ? Coming together as a team is an art and it can be incredibly difficult. Specifically, at the end of a semester, when a mountain of projects are due, the stress increases and groups tend to struggle, our group included. However, Luis never backed away from hard work or difficult conversations. Not only was he a high performer — excelling at and taking the lead in finance projects as a result of his background as an auditor at EY — he also never shied away from the difficult times. His consistency and dependability was something I really counted on in the midst of some stressful days in the MBA. On top of that, he has been very conscious about growing his team leadership skills. He had natural people skills that he has refined in just a few months into persuasion and motivation abilities. He is constantly seeking out advice and feedback to improve as a leader and I truly admire his growth mindset.

How disruptive was it to shift to an online or hybrid environment after COVID hit? Very smooth. A key reason I chose IE Business School was because of the thought they had put into the post-COVID class experience. IE is the only top business school (to my knowledge) that maintained an in-class experience throughout the entirety of my degree (September 2020 start). This came with some restrictions (mask wearing, class size reductions, COVID tests) but the limitations were far outweighed by the benefit of an in-class experience. My classmates and I frequently discuss how fortunate we are to have benefitted from IE’s planning and dedication to preserving our in-class experience.

Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? I didn’t pursue business in college (my undergrad), but pursuing my MBA has been a dream of mine since 25. However the push to do it, at 30, came from my mother. She came from a blue collar family in Ontario and was the only one of her four siblings who graduated from university. She pursued her Master’s degree as a single mother when I was young and now she is a successful business owner. She always instilled in me the power of hard work and perseverance. She also taught me that unlike material things, education is something that always stays with you. She showed me the value of investing in yourself.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

I want to be in a position to significantly impact the availability of senior leadership roles for women.

I want to own my own business.

What made Christina such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2021?

“My subject is sometimes completely new for the students. In addition, it is very quantitative and full of very specific terms typical of the financial world. So, it is very easy that, at some point in class, communication is “lost”. The truth is that the lack of interaction with the students, causes a certain feeling of helplessness in myself as a teacher. Precisely when I was having the worst time, Christina began her interventions in class, summarizing difficult topics out loud, giving them her own interpretation, obviously much more within the reach of the rest of the classmates. Through her words, concepts were clarified for the rest. And so, it was throughout the course. I found in Christina a total, unique support that made me feel more comfortable when teaching. That’s because I knew that in a natural way, her intervention would allow us to adequately complete the topic, “round it up”. After more than thirty years teaching, on very few occasions I have had such special students and Christina has undoubtedly been one of them.

In the evaluation process of my subject, it is necessary to present an individual work on a topic associated. I suggest some and the students are free to choose another as long as it has to do with the subject. Christina surprised me again by choosing a current issue, related to the behavior of the GameStop stock. She brilliantly described the functioning of “securities lending” and the establishment of short positions in the market, posing unavoidable questions about the concept of market efficiency and the possible gaps in regulation in a world where the importance of social networks is increasing. I think it has been one of the best-written articles I have read on a current topic. When I finished reading it, I felt that I had something very special on my hands. For this reason, and with the approval of the IMBA management, her article was published on a blog of the Institute. The person in charge defined it as a Top Tier item.

In conclusion, Christina has been an exemplary contributor to the course, she has shown passion towards a subject that was completely new to her and not only has she obtained the highest possible grade with an incredible final work but has left an indelible mark on an old professor who is no longer used to seeing so much talent and humanity.”

Rodrigo Manero IE Business School Professor

DON’T MISS: THE FULL LIST OF MBAS TO WATCH IN 2021

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[dailyhealthpostbc]

Minor Stroke Captured on ‘Selfie’ Video: Watch as it Happens

While driving home from work, Stacey Yepes, 49, could sense she was beginning to have a stroke.

To ensure others could see what was happening to her, she pulled over, took out her smartphone and began recording.

The CBC reports:

“The sensation is happening again,” the Thornhill, Ont., woman says at the beginning of the video posted on YouTube by Toronto’s University Health Network. “It’s all tingling on left side,” as she points to her lower lip, trying to smile.

Yepes remembers that doctors said to breathe in and out and to try to manage stress, and she says she’s trying.

“I don’t know why this is happening to me.”

About a minute later, she shows that it’s hard to lift up her hand.

“I think it was just to show somebody, because I knew it was not stress-related,” she said in an interview. “And I thought if I could show somebody what was happening, they would have a better understanding.”

After going to Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto, Yepes was referred to Toronto Western Hospital’s stroke centre.

“In all my years treating stroke patients, we’ve never seen anyone tape themselves before,” said Dr. Cheryl Jaigobin, the stroke neurologist at the hospital’s Krembil Neuroscience Centre. “Her symptoms were compelling, and the fact she stopped and found a way to portray them in such a visual fashion, we were all touched by it.”

Watch to see what a minor stroke looks like as it happens.

The video eventually convinced the doctors that she was having a transient ischemic attack (TIA), also called a mini-stroke. What’s more, physicians are now using the video as a tool to help them better recognize mini-strokes when they’re happening.

In the meantime, if you suspect a stroke, remember the following acronym F.A.S.T.

The post Minor Stroke Captured on ‘Selfie’ Video: Watch as it Happens appeared first on Daily Health Post.

[juliayepes]

The Unexplainable Energy of David Lowery

DAVID LOWERY IN NEW YORK, JUNE 2017. PORTRAIT: TESS MAYER. Filmmaker David Lowery has an intriguing conception of what a ghost is: In his words, it’s “a spirit that refuses to move on.” His understanding of the term—more figurative than it is literal—may be a key part of why his odd new movie, A Ghost Story, works so well. Considering that he himself was the inspiration for the namesake phantom in the film, it’s funny, too. Lowery’s breakthrough film, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), paired Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as Bonnie and Clyde-style Texan outlaws. The 36-year-old’s new movie, which he also wrote and edited, reunites Affleck and Mara as a young couple whose shared life we glimpse only briefly. Affleck’s character dies in a car accident, and A Ghost Story chronicles his existence after he becomes a ghost. Mara gives a soulful and volatile performance as his widow and Affleck deftly manages the tricky task of embodying a haunted spirit. Unable to communicate with Mara’s character, Affleck’s ghost can only observe her grief and watch her slowly move on, spurring him to journey through memory and history and to meditate on time, meaning, and existence. We recently met with the dynamic filmmaker—who also adapted the Disney movie Pete’s Dragon (2016), and who recently wrapped production on a movie starring Robert Redford that was adapted from a New Yorker story—at an office in New York. A Ghost Story, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, is decidedly different in spirit and form from the more commercial Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Lowery, who made his name as a film editor before developing the script for Saints at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, sounds curious and a little wistful about the possibility of watching the two movies for the first time, back-to-back. Then he tells us about the genesis of his unconventional new film. DAVID LOWERY: In terms of the script, the movie spontaneously combusted in one sitting. It was a bunch of ideas that had been circling my subconscious or conscious mind for years in some cases, but I’d never done anything with them until I sat down to write this. One of those ideas was a haunted house movie starring a ghost with a sheet. I’d always loved that idea, and I wanted to use it. I’d seen it elsewhere and wanted to do my own spin on it. Then, on a personal level, the root of it came from a move I made from Texas to L.A., and the house I’d left behind, which I’d grown incredibly attached to, even though it was just a shabby old farmhouse that we were renting. It was the first house my wife and I lived in after we got married. I’d, for better or worse, laid down many roots there, emotional and otherwise—I actually planted a garden for the first time in my life—and I didn’t want to leave it when we had to leave. I was really upset and kind of heartbroken to move out of it, and I wasn’t sure why because, on a pragmatic level, it made no sense to stay there. I had suggested that we just kept paying rent there, so we had it as a place to go back to, and that made zero sense whatsoever. So that was a lingering thing throughout the latter half of 2015 as we laid down new roots in Los Angeles. That Christmas, I went home to visit my family for the holidays, and my wife and I got into a huge argument while we were there because I suggested we move back to Texas when our Disney movie [Pete’s Dragon] was done. She had a very vehement reaction to that. She was done with Texas. It was one of those arguments where, in the moment, I felt like I could see a potential end to our relationship, and the idea that our relationship could come to an end over something as trivial as where we were living, was very strange to me.  Also, I recognized that I was the problem in that situation—because I was the one holding onto something and not wanting to let go. That tendency that I have—that unwillingness to let go, that obsession with sentimentality and nostalgia and attachment to physical things in my past were all to blame for that problem we were having. That was where a lot of this movie came from. JULIA YEPES: It’s interesting that you mention your attachment to physical things from your past and your sentimentality toward them, because you have letter-writing in both Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and this movie. Is there something that’s poignant to you about the act of letter-writing or even that of people simply trying to document their feelings? LOWERY: Completely. My wife and I, we knew each other back in 2001 but had fallen out of touch. One day I had a dream about her and wrote her a note on Facebook—I was living in L.A. at the time—and that turned into six months of just letter-writing. It started off with Facebook messages and turned into emails and eventually became actual hand-written letters. We got to know each other very well through that, and when we finally met up in person, we were basically already in a relationship, and six months later we were engaged. I attribute a great deal of it to the tactile and patient qualities that letter-writing demands, and the degree to which it’s a personal act. It’s almost one of the ultimate personal expressions because you’re doing it by hand. I take a great deal of value in things that are done by hand, or executed by hand. The act itself is something that fascinates me, almost more than what the contents might say, which is why you don’t see what’s on the note in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. There was the scene where she’s writing the letter, and it wasn’t until the final stages of post-production, I finally gave in and said, “Okay, let’s hear what she’s writing.” Up until that point, I was always going to just leave it a secret, not because I wanted to keep it a secret, but just because I felt it was unnecessary to show it. YEPES: Harvey Weinstein gave you notes for that movie. Was that something he suggested? LOWERY: No. We’d done some test screenings and people were like, “What does it say?” It was a long dolly shot pushing in on her writing. And people were like, “What does it say? We should know what it says.” And I was like, “You know what, you’re right. Let’s hear what it says.” So I wrote a letter and people loved hearing it, and it was a very emotional moment for the movie and probably was the right thing to do. YEPES: It’s a release for the audience. LOWERY: Yeah, exactly. It was probably a week before we showed it at Sundance that I added that in. Rooney went to a studio and we just recorded it over the phone and dropped it in, so it was literally last minute. YEPES: The argument that you had with your wife is interesting because the movie is pretty spare with the dialogue between Casey’s character and Rooney’s character, and it feels consequential when she says, “What is it you like about this place?” And he says, “History.” And when she says, “We’re supposed to be making decisions together.” Both of those exchanges felt really real and I think the audience connects with those snippets of conversation immediately. LOWERY: Those were literally things my wife and I said to each other. Casey and Rooney, in those scenes, are playing us, and my wife was there when we were shooting them, and I remember her rolling her eyes. She thought it was really cool, but at the same time very strange, and knowing me, she felt it was probably just a little too on the nose and obvious for me to literally put our entire discussion into a movie. YEPES: It’s also funny when you see Casey Affleck who looks a little bit like you… LOWERY: Yeah. We have vaguely similar cheekbones. Every now and then, it’s just so obvious— YEPES: It’s comical, some of the images of the two of you standing side-by-side. LOWERY: Yeah. If only he shaved his head. YEPES: I want to hear about how you worked with ghost iconography and ghost mythology in this movie. I read on your blog how you really liked the title of this children’s book, Gus Was A Friendly Ghost (1962)—you liked that the title referred to the ghost in the past tense. LOWERY: I’ve always loved ghosts, ever since reading those books. That might have been my first introduction to ghosts as a child because my parents had those books on our bookshelf. It was one of my earliest memories, them reading them to us. And they were never a scary thing to me—until I got a little older and understood the potential for them to be scary—and I never dressed up as a ghost for Halloween because it was too simple and I always took Halloween way too seriously, but my brother did, so that image is something that is deeply rooted in my childhood. I liked the idea now of taking what is basically the universal symbol for a spirit who refuses to move on from this realm of existence and unpacking it. Because it is a common symbol—it’s Snapchat. Snapchat’s logo is a sheet ghost. YEPES: Oh yeah, that’s funny. LOWERY: And if you write the word ‘ghost’ on your iPhone, the emoji pops up of a little ghost with a sheet. It’s an image that is very commonplace, and one which we take for granted, and one which has a lot of potential to be charming and goofy and childlike, but which also packs a great deal of meaning into its very simple form. I wanted to tap into that a little bit. My fascination with tactile objects and handmade materials comes into play as well because I love the idea of taking something that is very ethereal and meant to be phantasmagoric but rendering it with the most handmade approach possible. I also have to admit that I liked the challenge of trying to take what is an inherently silly concept and imbuing it with some degree of gravitas. YEPES: Right. The line between the supernatural and the mundane is blurred in the movie in an interesting way. There was a scene where it seems like somethingsupernatural is happening inside the house, and it’s actually a bulldozer coming through the roof. LOWERY: Exactly. YEPES: But you think it’s something spiritual— LOWERY: You think it’s the Rapture. Later in the movie, there’s a giant bang on the door, but it’s just Rooney scaring Casey. YEPES: Yes, you play with stock moments that we’re familiar with from scary movies. LOWERY: Exactly. I love horror films. I love ghost movies and haunted house movies. I wanted to be able to use those tropes, not to turn them on their head, but to use them in a different way than one would anticipate, so it’s a haunted house movie that’s not scary, except at times when it is—but it’s not the ghost that makes it scary. YEPES: How did you figure out that you needed the scene where Rooney eats the better part of a whole pie as a way to show grief? LOWERY: When I initially conceived of the idea of this movie, I wanted the whole thing to be a series of tableaux—one tableau for each scene that would represent the entirety of what that scene was about, and for that one I knew that it was about her grieving for a lost loved one. I wanted it to be very physical because I find that grief is very physical. You feel it in your stomach and you feel it through your whole body and you can show someone burying their head in a pillow and crying, which we do one scene later, but that doesn’t convey the depths to which grief reaches. So I wanted there to be a physicality to it, and I wanted it to be a very private moment that was almost uncomfortable to watch, and so eating seemed like the natural thing. I’d read Joan Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)—I shared it with Rooney too—because I thought it was a really good window as to what goes through someone’s mind when they’ve lost a partner, and she describes the ways in which grief manifests itself the most profoundly in the most mundane activities, and the most unexpected, everyday, quotidian activities are the source of some of the deepest sorrow she felt after her husband passed away. Eating is about as mundane as it gets, and I felt that that was something that would be powerful and uncomfortable and also incredibly relatable, and it was also something that I knew would be memorable because I knew that Rooney doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the movie. After that scene, I think she has one line in the whole film, aside from some of the flashbacks, and it needed to convey quite a bit. I felt that that was an appropriate vehicle to do that. YEPES: Right. And it’s very expressive in a way that actually registers, whereas if she was just hysterically crying, we’ve seen that so many times that— LOWERY: You sort of check out. YEPES: Yeah. Why did you choose to have the Spanish speaking family inhabit the house and not to have subtitles for those scenes? LOWERY: I love the Spanish language. I don’t speak it very well—I don’t speak it at all, really, but I can get by if I go somewhere and I need to—but as a language, I just think it’s absolutely beautiful, and I found while we were shooting that scene, that I could understand like every fifth word. I’d written all the dialogue in English and had it translated into Spanish, so I knew what was going on, but it was easier for me to just tap into the emotion of the scene and direct it on an emotional level rather than to articulate what I wanted for a certain line of dialogue. I just loved that experience. It was a really profound experience for me. It made me realize that even though all the dialogue was written with a great degree of originality and what she’s saying in every scene matters, to some extent, it’s more of an emotional sequence than it is a literal sequence. So removing subtitles allowed audiences to participate with it on a purely emotional level, similar to how I was participating with it as a director. At that point in the movie, I wanted to have a classic ghost story sequence that was similar to Poltergeist (1982) or The Haunting (1963), and to work with a lot of traditional haunted house material. If I really wanted to go all the way with Poltergeist, I could have had another suburban family move in and really riff on that, but I thought it would be really cool for it to be more reflective of society, especially in Texas where it’s so multi-cultural, and every other person does speak Spanish, and that gave me the opportunity to have part of the movie in another language that I love listening to. YEPES:  I love that the kids can see the ghost. LOWERY: Yeah. It’s just like classic Spielberg. We’d do those shots of them gazing at the ghost and be like, “That’s us ripping off Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).”  I love also that the ghost throws his temper tantrum and tries to scare them out, and they don’t leave. She picks up the plates and looks at the ghost with the same kind of maternal gaze that she looks at her kids—even though she can’t really see him, there’s that moment where they appear to be looking at each other that was just really beautiful to me as well. It put Casey’s character in his place after throwing that ridiculous temper tantrum. YEPES: I know that you are an atheist and you say you don’t believe in the afterlife. Have you ever seen a ghost? Also, you have the scene where the ghost seems to commit suicide, but then you’re like, “Is it a dream?” Can the ghost die, or maybe he can’t because he’s haunted? LOWERY: The idea there is he’s trying to find a way out, but it’s not time for him to move on yet, so he just winds up unstuck in time, and having to relive certain events to get back to where he needs to be. But I do believe in ghosts, even though I don’t believe in an afterlife, and there’s an inherent paradox there, which I can only explain as the result of my faith in the mysteries of the universe. I think that there are things we can’t explain, there’s energy around us that we haven’t been able to quantify, and within those mysteries lies my ability to believe in ghosts. I’ve never seen anything, but I’ve had circumstances occur that are strange—noises, lights turning on, rooms that feel like they’re the wrong temperature. I’ve had phenomena that I could technically explain logically, but I allow myself not to, because I’d rather believe that maybe there’s something supernatural afoot. YEPES: With A Ghost Story, did the actors come up with any good ideas that helped shape the movie? Did they have the instincts to do that, or was it too hard to do because the movie is so experimental? LOWERY: There was a little bit of that because we shot a lot more with Casey and Rooney prior to his character’s death than is in the film. We spent two days—which really isn’t that much time—just filming them in domestic situations and digging into their characters. I’d written 10 pages of material that we filmed almost like a stage play, and we spent a day doing that, and there’s a little bit of that in the movie. I wrote ideas for a bunch of other scenes, and the next day, we just jumped in and out of the house, and some of it was recapitulations of dialogue they had done the previous day, but just in a new context. Other things were brand new pieces of information or brand new ideas or just moments for them to share together. Within that exploration, they were able to come up with a lot of material on their own. The scene that opens the movie, where Casey and Rooney are lying on the couch together, that was an idea he had, and we didn’t know what he was going to do. He said, “Hey, I want to shoot a scene where the two of us are on the couch together and we just finished watching a movie, and I’ll take it from there.” And so the first line of the movie is Rooney saying, “I’m scared,” and she’s laughing, and the reason she’s saying that is we’re about to start shooting and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. That was 100 percent just her anticipating whatever curveball Casey was about to throw at her. Ultimately, we used a lot of that. Yet if I hadn’t let Casey have enough creative input to propose a scene, we wouldn’t have had that opening scene and I don’t think the opening of the movie would have been as strong, so I did let them bring a lot to it, but obviously the movie was much more rigid and much more formal than Saints, and much less narrative. And of course without dialogue, it often comes down to body language and that is a much more rigorous thing. YEPES: Right. And then there are these stationary shots in this movie. LOWERY: But even in that, when Rooney comes home from the funeral and is eating pie, she had the idea to sit down on the floor. That was all her. We had planned the scene differently and intended to shoot the scene differently. But when she suggested that, that redefined the scene in terms of how we were going to block it out and how we were going to execute it, and it made it a million times better. And that was all her. So even in those very restrained and minimalist scenes, I did count on and court their input, and I value that. But I am also learning to value my original instincts more and to give myself a little bit of credit for the amount of time I spend writing dialogue, so I’m not changing gears so much. There are times I’m less willing than I used to be to just throw everything out the window for any random reason—because sometimes I’ve realized it’s more important for me to convince an actor why I wrote a thing a certain way than to just let them change it. YEPES: You also kind of suggest in the film that there are ghosts all around us. LOWERY: I don’t know if it’s ghosts or what it is, but I do believe in the burnt toast theory, as elucidated in The Shining (1980), which is that when you leave a room, you leave a little bit of yourself behind, and I don’t know what that is, I don’t know if it’s quantifiable or not, but I do subscribe to that idea. Out of that subscription, I am able to believe in… well, let’s call them ghosts. But whether they’re presences, whether it’s just leftover energy, whether it’s an actual spirit that is stuck in the space, I think they are all around us, whatever “they” may be. Beyond that, I have no idea. Beyond that, I don’t pretend to have any clue how these things work or what the rules might be or whether it’s actually real or not, but I like to believe it is. A GHOST STORY OPENS TOMORROW, JULY 7.

—Julia Yepes Editor: Emma Brown

July 6, 2017

[startanewdream]

I has a question....so I recently made post about why I support Jily...Someone then said I was ignoring Snape's trauma as a seggs-ually assault survivor??? I am genuinely confused as to when did this happen? To me, I felt that Snape really was kinda stuck in time (when he still held grudges against children, miscommunicated info to Harry--> led to sirius's death {im not over that},etc.)... Yes he was bullied and pranked, James attacked him mercilessly, but like i feel like it would be discrediting Snape to say that he can't fight back? Like Snape smart smart ykyk? I feel like this really was a back and forth esp behind the scenes, it just that James was more of a big mouth type of bully if this makes sense? Anyways, I dont want to invalidate a trauma survivor's experience, bc ye my opinion of snape being "stuck in time" would be too harsh...but again...im genuinely confused as to when did this happen....really...really....really....confused...What do you think? Sorry for the 3AM thoughts

Ugh, first of all, why people come to a Jily post to defend Snape?

Now, to give you my 3pm thoughts about it. There is no evidence of assault against Snape. What we see and what's said in the books was that once James did turn Snape upside down and that showed his underwear (which I don't get it - where are his pants?). Was it nice? No, everyone agreed that it wasn't (later, at least, back then they were all stupid teenagers). Was it sexually? Not intended.

Was Snape a victim? At that particular moment at SWM, yepe, I won't disagree - it was two to one. Other times? Not necessarily. It's said that Snape fought back, that he never lost an opportunity to hex James either, and the only spell that Snape used in SWM was clearly a dark spell. Sirius mentions that Snape knew a lot of spells in school, so yepe, Snape was smart enough to fight back; and even in OotP, he gives it back to Sirius just as he receives, so he isn't the crying boy sitting in the corner anymore. And people like to think of Snape as some sort of lonely guy, but he was "part of a gang of Slytherins" as Sirius notes, he walked with Avery and Mulciber as Lily mentions, and he was Lucius Malfoy's lapdog.

Was it easier to James to grow up and move on from his teenage days than it was for Snape? Yeah. Does that justify Snape getting bitter and uncapable of moving on? No.

The thing that I don't think Snape sees it until very late (and by late I always think 40 years later in that crazy apocalypse world in Cursed Child) was that he made all the wrong choices. He shares some similarities with the Marauders. He loves Lily as James does, but instead of being a better man, he pushes her away, lets his prejudice take over (and he is prejudiced - his problem with "mudblood" is because he called her that, not because he believes they are all equal, there's not a single canon proof of it). He has a horrible family as Sirius does, but he lets that bitterness against his father turn into a bitterness against all muggles, lets the misery of his life contaminate others; and the house - he sees Sirius trapped exactly as Snape once was in a house that he hates, and he torments Sirius for it! He isn't popular, the celebrity, as Remus isn't, but instead of appreciating the true friend he had in Lily, he pushes her away and is never selfless (his acts for her were based on his love, his guilt). And even Peter - they both betrayed their friends in a sense, but whereas Peter gets this one tiny moment of guilt, Snape's first instinct is ask for Lily's life because he wants her, regardless of what she wants (and Dumbledore is right when he says that Snape doesn't care for their lives as long as he has what he wants).

Now, what I can't really defend in Snape is that he was the underdog, he was bullied and what he does when he grows up is bully others even when he sees what happened to them. He sees how Neville is in the first years and he mocks him for it. He knows Hermione tries harder because she's a muggleborn and he calls her a know-it-all. And he sees Harry's memories, sees him as a little kid being laughed off, and that doesn't change anything. He can't see past Harry's look, he can't ignore the fact that Lily choose someone over him and that's not just him presenting a character. That's just Snape stuck in the time for me, really.

[juliayepes]

Blood of a Poet

Through fleeting glimpses and a studio visit, a portrait of a singular songwriter and musician emerges.

On the song "Supreme Being," Will Roan, singer and keyboardist of the Brooklyn band Amazing Baby, experiences a transcendental moment. It's an everything's-okay, no-one-ever-really-dies moment, in which everyone and everything in creation is revealed as mysteriously connected. Steeped in mysticism, tracks like "Supreme Being" (a trance song composed on the xylophone and a highlight of the group's self-released 2008 EP, Infinite Fucking Cross) convey a sense of wonder and a longing to return to paradise. Lyrics about "digging up the pearls from years gone by," returning to "salt of the earth," and a "big, black phantom love [that] floats over it all" contribute to the impression of a universe governed by some kind of cyclical, eternal return.

The group’s first tracks sound as joyful and cohesive as Led Zeppelin songs, only half the length, and recent songs are awash in a sweeping but pleasingly off-kilter grandeur. Their potency boils down to an inspired pairing of Roan, a literate preacher’s son, and Simon O'Connor, a virtuoso hard rock guitarist. The bands they had been in before Amazing Baby were good, but very true to a genre. But the project the pair formed together was a hybrid of influences (mutual favorites that included T. Rex and Queen), resulting in soaring melodies and full-bodied, boundary-pushing art-rock. In August 2008, a writer for the popular British music magazine NME raved about their first batch of songs, “Truly great rock bands don’t usually just fall out of the sky — they evolve slowly, meticulously and sometimes downright painfully over time. But don’t expect Amazing Baby to be paying any such dues... These Brookynites have been together since Christmas..., but somehow, they already sound like they could take on the world.” With the release of their first album Rewild due in the first half of 2009, Amazing Baby seemed on the precipice of a breakthrough after a near overnight success story.  

When I arrive at Electric Lady studios at 4pm on the first Sunday last February, the band is putting the finishing touches on their debut album. It's the second-to-last day of recording and a 15-piece orchestra is coming in today to record their parts individually. Bassist Don De Vore—pale blond, handsome, silent—sits in the recording booth nearly the whole afternoon, overseeing the recording of the string and brass parts. Matt Abeysekera, the drummer, pops into the booth and excitedly chats about the soundtrack to Polanski's horror movie The Fearless Vampire Killers. Shy, stringy-haired rhythm guitarist Rob Laasko hangs in the green room for a while, in between long spells in the recording booth. He seems like the mellowest member, but like De Vore, he has the air of a longtime studio musician, who is used to being ignored. Roan and his girlfriend arrive last, after a late night of DJing at a Greenpoint warehouse.

Confused, insulted, and dazzled by Will

With his self-assured manner and clean-cut features, Roan could easily pass for a cultured character in a Wes Anderson movie. Today, after weeks of nonstop recording for the band's debut album, the idiosyncratic singer-keyboardist seems to be running off of a streak of final-stretch adrenaline. In the green room, he drinks Sparks, a caffeinated alcoholic beverage, which keeps him on an even keel between seeming wiped out and alert, relaxed and lucid. He possesses a precise eye. During our interview, he’s polite but brisk, not finicky but quick to correct me when I’m wrong. When I ask him what the song "Headdress" is about, he tells me it’s about "holding onto somebody really tightly" and then tries to explain the title in visual terms. "It's supposed to evoke—I wish I could illustrate this better in words—a distraction, a trick of the eye, a false part of your body. A decoration."

While the teenage O’Connor was into hip-hop, graffiti, and punk music as a teenager, Roan immersed himself in art rock like David Bowie, John Cale, and T. Rex. He was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and his family moved four times before settling in Martha's Vineyard. Roan, who is also interested in design and visual art (he co-designed Rewild's cover art with a friend), majored in creative writing at Bard. After graduation, he moved to Brookyn, where he formed Lions & Tigers, a glam-rock/post-punk outfit that recorded arty, avant-garde songs, filled with images of oceans, fire, and blood. On the tracks, his characters are alienated and often remorseless, dwarfed by a surreal and desolate New York City. They're in precarious and desperate situations. But the songs have the surreal enchantment of a Cocteau movie. Singing about watching the green light die, his girl’s grey eyes, and how she’s “never gonna wake up,” Roan evokes an arresting vision of youth in limbo and casual peril.

He's a gracious host, happy to show me around, introduce me to his friends, and to answer questions. But as polite and friendly as he is, Roan remains inaccessible, even mysterious. Alone, he answers every question I ask. But if other bandmates are around, he lets them handle questions. He seems relieved when he’s surrounded by his friends, as if it’s only when he’s in their company that he can really be himself.

Most people can't be creative on command, but so far that hasn't been a problem for the scattershot singer or his songwriting partner. One reason the band has been so prolific is that they can be productive, and even thrive, in the midst of chaos. (One episode of the Village Voice’s Indie Cribz features a neatly dressed Roan giving viewers a tour of his horrifyingly messy apartment. In the video, he glances around his forsaken-looking bedroom. “I don’t spend a lot of time here,” he says mildly. “This is more like a storage space.”) If anything, he seems more comfortable in a hectic environment. As I interview Roan at Electric Lady studios, string players practice warm-up scales in the room next door. It nearly drives me out of my mind, but it doesn’t seem to distract Roan at all.

While O'Connor rallies me with his raucous energy, Roan is matter-of-fact, precise, guarded. He doesn't like to talk about his band, but he calls MGMT drummer Will Berman who helped write and produce Amazing Baby's first songs "one of the most talented people I've ever met" and predicts he'll put out "a brilliant solo album one day." He encourages me to check out his girlfriend's band (the spooky, shambolic Golden Triangle). And his face lights up with a quirky, genuine smile when he tells me that bassist Don De Vore was in Ink & Dagger "a really incredible, influential vampire-themed band from Philadelphia in the ‘90s." ("Don could do so much better," one diehard Ink & Dagger fan complained on Amazing Baby's Last.fm page.) I learn more about Roan when I'm not asking questions.

For one thing, he’s a good friend. A month earlier, when I run into him at Glasslands, a Brooklyn bar and performance space, I mention that I was surprised by the dizzying heights that MGMT-mania had reached. “Good for them, though,” Roan says pointedly. “Great for them,” I answer. Once he sees that I genuinely mean it, he lets down his guard. I’d seen Amazing Baby at the Mercury Lounge in November 2008 and had asked Roan if he could make me a CD of Lions & Tigers tracks, but he hadn’t had his phone on him. “I wanted to make you a CD, but I didn’t have your phone number,” he explains. He tells me Amazing Baby is recording the next week and that his old band, Lions & Tigers, is mixing an album. “Can I invite you to the studio? Can I invite you to a mixing session? How about if I e-mail you tomorrow?” he says, as he punches my contact info into his iPhone. I tell him that I thought the Lions & Tigers songs I'd heard were great. I love the post-punk sound, I say, and I love post-punk in general; Wire is my favorite band. He brightens. “I love Wire!" And then, in regard to Lions & Tigers, he laughs. "I thought we were good, but no one liked us!” he says.

The first time I saw Roan, he was wearing a shirt that declared “THIS SHIRT SAVES LIVES.” It was November 2008 and I was at the Mercury Lounge for my first Amazing Baby show. Onstage, an impish Roan pranced around the stage with the pomp and exuberance of Jarvis Cocker. After the show, I introduced myself and asked if he could make me a CD of his former band, Lions & Tigers. He cycled rapidly through an array of thoughts like only an overeducated man can. "Sure, I'd be happy to," he answered with a typically cheerful smile, but then he grilled me: “What do you want it for? You just want it? What’s the angle?” He asked me what I thought of the show, knowing it was imperfect. And before I left, he inquired whether this was my first time seeing Amazing Baby live. I told him it was. “You should have come last night!” he admonished me.

Needless to say, I left confused. I was taken aback, even offended, that he was dismissive of his older songs, which I adored. At the same time, I realized that if he didn’t want me to hear his old tracks, then that must mean his new songs sounded a lot different than Lions & Tigers—and that he thought they were really good. Later I realized that he wasn’t being combative because he was a control freak. He simply didn’t want Amazing Baby to be judged by his old band’s tracks. "That was more like a project than a band," he told me, gesticulating. "I was proud of it at the time, but I don't want that to represent me. I don’t want to make that kind of music anymore. That’s why—“ he smiled—“I’m not making it."

His fear of pretension, stutter, and religious connection

Roan cuts an imposing figure. I think twice before crossing a crowded room to talk to the singer—and even after being acquainted with him for months, I find it hard to know how to interpret his sunny, aristocratic charm. It's disconcerting to try to reconcile Roan's bold aura with what he actually says. He is rigorously style-oriented with keen, intelligent eyes that appraise everything. He cannot help but move with a flourish. But in conversation he never says anything remotely audacious or flamboyant. His speech is peppered with prefixes (They're "mega busy," Electric Lady is "super cool") and friendly surfer-stoner affirmations ("totally," "definitely," "rad").

But despite the swashbuckling aura, Roan also has a vulnerable quality. For one thing, his expressive face broadcasts his emotions. And for another thing, he stutters. Though his stutter seems mild (it doesn't surface til the third time I talk to him), one can imagine it’s a source of anxiety for the frontman, especially when he's expected to participate in video and radio interviews, which may catch him when he's tired or ill at ease. (Both states seem to exacerbate the speech disorder.) In one video interview, there's a moment when Roan realizes he's not going be able to get through his sentence without stuttering unless he skips some prepositions, so he starts stringing key words together. It's a heart-rending moment. His bandmates are silent, but it's clear they're in solidarity with the singer.

I would normally think it inappropriate or even disgraceful to ask a stranger personal questions, but Roan is so restrained that I am even less inclined to pry. When I mention that I've noticed a lot of images of eternity in his lyrics, the tone of his voice shifts slightly and there's a flicker in his eye like I'm on to something. "Yeah," he agrees. "Or infinity," I venture. "Yeah," he repeats, in the same tone. "There’s a lot of stony-baloney in there, too," he remarks. Then he lowers his voice and adds evenly, "They’re very personal, but they’re not super specific." I wonder if he means he'd rather not get super specific. (I'd speculate that he wrote "Supreme Being" for his first (or true) love—because on that song he sings "I would die for you,” but in other songs, it's "pump your brakes and leave me alone.") When I ask if Berman will be writing songs with Andrew and Ben in MGMT, he politely answers the question. Suddenly he looks weary. He sighs and shakes his head as if to rouse himself out of a daze. “What else is up?" he asks quickly. Then he corrects himself, as if that way of putting it sounded rude. "Anything else I can tell you?”

In conversation, Roan seems so afraid of coming off as pretentious, that, if anything, he overcompensates for his dandyish hauteur. The boldest statement I ever see him make is in a video interview from their tour of Japan, which took place shortly after Rewild’s release. He says he's proud of the album (though he looks disappointed)—it's been a learning experience (he looks very unhappy)—but it's definitely the best thing he's ever been involved in.

(In fact, I think his newer lyrics also reflect this desire not to seem pretentious. Rewild's new songs don't have big words, and in avoiding them, his lyrics turn absurd and playful. Roan's word play comes off like an inside joke with himself. The title of the album, for example, seems to be a composite of a line on "Kankra": "Turn off your mind/Relax a while." (Get it? Re-wild.))

Once you learn that Roan’s father was a preacher, suddenly everything about Amazing Baby makes sense: the singer's giddy stage persona (shades of a raving evangelical preacher), the Garden of Eden allusion, and the infinite cross imagery. But it also lends pathos to his story. Roan told FAQ Magazine that the first time he got high he had an internal dialogue with himself about how there was no going back, adding that he "continually thinks ... about things I told myself I'd never do." The debut album by San Francisco band Girls is touching because of its sincerity; when former Children of God member Christopher Owens sings that he doesn't want to cry for his whole life, it sounds genuine. There's a similar wistfulness about Roan's longing to return to innocence. Roan has characterized himself as "super emotional" and "messed up." But he seems like a conscientious guy who wants to believe in a higher power and tries to be a good person.

That’s the thing: He has a conscience. More than six months after sitting in with them at Electric Lady, I see Roan at a show at Webster Hall (his friend Max McDonald’s band, Psychic, is playing) and I tell him I'm sorry my story hasn't been published; I'm still going to do a story about the band. "It's okay, it's cool," he says, but he's a person who values honor, and as long as you try to do the right thing, he will be as personable as possible. Suddenly, he’s smiling.

—Julia Yepes

editor: Maura Whang

February 21, 2010

[juliayepes]

The Prism of Pete Doherty’s Lyrics

Babyshambles? More like shambles, judging by Pete Doherty’s public buffoonery and substance abuse. Yet beyond that façade lies a poet deliberately testing limits. 

Some people may neglect to take him seriously because of his antics, but Pete Doherty may be one of the best lyricists of his generation. For Doherty, who famously won a scholarship to study poetry in Russia while in his teens, songwriting is the primary form of expression. And it is his lyrics, good-natured but defiant, that should be regarded as his only real answer to his public. Even as his life grows increasingly hazy, Doherty’s lyrics remain simple, poetic, and clear.

With his first band, the Libertines, Doherty was half of a great songwriting pair with Carl Barat. Their songwriting process was precarious; the music was inspired by their power struggles and, to a large extent, contingent upon them. Doherty was the happy-go-lucky merry prankster to Barat’s more sober and structured older-brother figure, and the ongoing clash of their personalities invigorated their music. But even though their songs depended upon their own stormy relationship, they had a liberating effect on the listener. Doherty himself was a surprisingly sunny presence amid the gloomy, moody rock scene. He never went too far into petulance; instead, he played a kind of rock-and-roll Peter Pan, incorrigible but inspiring in his romanticism. On “Campaign of Hate,” from the second Libertines album, Doherty cheerfully proclaimed, “Don’t believe them when they say / That you don’t get nothing for free / It’s all for free / Follow me!”

From the beginning, Doherty insisted on freedom but beneath his willful defiance, he displayed a deep-seated yearning for approval. On “The Man Who Would Be King” from the Libertines’ self-titled second album, he sang, “I lived my dreams today / … I’ll be living yours tomorrow / So don’t look at me that way!” And while he often made the suggestion that he was just following his heart, on the earlier “Don’t Look Back Into the Sun”, he uncharacteristically suggested that other people were just jealous. On “Eight Dead Boys,” from the first Babyshambles record, Down in Albion, he sings, “I want love / I want it all”. And therein lies his particular frustration: He longs for total freedom, but total freedom can lead to chaos.

This tension creates pathos. A restless longing for freedom, coupled with the intimation that he knows he can’t handle it, is a lyrical theme that dates back to his earliest songs. His lyrics make it clear that his belief in personal freedom is what he holds most dear. When on “A’rebours” Doherty sings, “If you really cared for me / You’d let me be / Set me free”, freedom is a ringing affirmative but also a desperate necessity. In retrospect, his choruses of “Let me go” and “Set me free” seem a bit desperate. While in the Libertines, Doherty wanted to break free from Barat, but now it is less clear what he wants to get away from. Doherty is still “too polite to say / I defy you all!” as he sings on “A’rebours,” but on Down in Albion, he continues to plead for understanding and acceptance.

But acceptance was becoming harder to find, even as his public persona inflated. By the time Doherty formed Babyshambles, he had become noticeably unhinged. It’s clear Doherty has had trouble dealing with the freedom that large-scale success has brought him. The scene in these songs is bare: There’s almost no one around. Those that present are only too happy to serve him a wince-inducing dose of reality. “You look better now than last time / But you still look better from afar!” someone tells him on “Eight Dead Boys.” Then they get even harsher: “You look better now than last time / But you’re still no better than before / The life that you wanted was not in store / You’re going to be in the dark once again.” Many of these songs are composed of other people’s reproachful monologues, and the cumulative effect is convincing. When he sings, “There’s nothing nice about me / And almost everyone agrees” on “Back from the Dead”, he sounds truly sorry.

But the edge has always been there. Many of Doherty’s songs contain a variation on this kind of conditional statement:

I think I now understand what I misunderstood before, How your love gives me so much more. I’m free again I can see again But if I should fall…

Similarly, when he sings, “If I had to go / I would be thinking of your love” on “Last Post From the Bugle”, you know that it’s not a matter of if but when. Even when he’s reassuring someone, “We’ll meet again some day,” he knows that “there’s a price to pay” for every action or deferral he makes.

As a Libertine, Doherty wrote songs in which he dreamed of reaching Arcadia, a mythical, utopian place “without rules or authority.” But because of fame and the extra freedom that it brought, he became able to live a life that more closely resembled his utopian ideal. And what happened? Confusion led the once frolicsome singer astray. Like William Blake, the radical visionary poet, Doherty seemed powerfully gripped by his vision of heaven and hell.

But a flight of fancy is especially powerful when you can practically touch it. In Doherty’s case, he dreamed about a world (and a life) that was fanciful, but that could practically come true. But as he spiraled deeper into addiction, the ideal seemed more and more out of reach. On Down in Albion, Doherty seems helplessly caught between Heaven and Hell, Innocence and Experience. His experience of hell permeates his songs, but even more powerfully, they demonstrate his awareness that heaven still exists. Doherty’s adoption of the nickname “Baby Shambles” validates others’ opinion of him—he is the most striking contemporary example of a public figure as little-boy-lost.

Yet there’s no lingering bad taste for this scapegrace. Though his songs are often dark, they don’t seem bitter. Maybe it’s because the music is melodic and his voice is sweet that Down in Albion doesn’t leave an impression of spitefulness. Although there are certain injuries he can’t seem to forget—on “Eight Dead Boys” he sings, “When it suits you, you’re a friend of mine” eleven times in a row (!)—Doherty’s hopefulness doesn’t crumble. A perfect example is in “Eight Dead Boys” when Doherty first talks about disillusionment, then mentions love as a saving grace:

Promises, promises, promises I know: you’ve heard them all before Love is, love is, love is Love—oh well, it’s just around the corner.

This may be his defining lyric. Though he can’t believe anyone’s promises anymore, he can’t help but come back to his hope in love. Even when his intentions seem skewered and confused, he demonstrates his resolve to be true to his childhood dreams. Like another famously prodigious romantic, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Doherty knows it’s the dream itself that matters, not its fulfillment. The problem is he can’t remember exactly what the dream was in the first place. The best part of “Loyalty Song” (which deals with this issue) is during the chorus, when he starts clapping in an effort to keep his band’s accelerating tempo steady. The rhythm of his band is speeding up, and he’s clapping to keep time, just as his lyrics belie his confusion: “And there’s nothing gonna keep me from my… / What did I dream?”

Yes, it just might be that reality is too crude and vulgar for one of the UK’s most gifted songwriters. So why is Doherty such an affirming rock-and-roll presence in spite of all his escapades? The answer: his self-awareness. Doherty has always seemed to know exactly what people think of him. On “Don’t Look Back Into the Sun” he recognizes that his public, which remains both fascinated and dismissive of him, begrudges him his success. At the same time that he begs for liberty, he acknowledges that it’s killing him. Success may be the worst thing that ever happened to this singer. In “Loyalty Song” the line “I found solace in the flood / Every body knew that I would” runs like a punch line. And on “Fuck Forever,” one of Doherty’s personal favorites from Down in Albion, he ponders “how to choose between death and glory”:

I can’t tell between death and glory Happy endings don’t bore me They, they have a way A way to make you pay And to make you toe the line

Justice, he says here, has a humbling effect, but he seems willing to play by the rules if he’s allowed his happy ending. This willingness to give and take has been characteristic of Doherty’s relationship with his public as well. He has always been courteous. Though he hates to be scolded, the closest Doherty has ever gotten to an all-out rebuke of his public was on a live (and unrecorded) song, the still polite “Do You Know Me (I Don’t Think So).” Instead of turning hateful when others deny, condemn, and judge him, the singer, who on “East of Eden” likens himself to a wounded sparrow, becomes doleful; he just can’t understand why people aren’t nice. In “Fuck Forever” the only criticism Doherty offers is similarly soft: “You’re so clever / But you’re not very nice.” But then Doherty turns introspective and identifies the reason his own free-and-easy ways harm him: “I’m so clever / But clever ain’t wise.”

—Julia Yepes

June 3, 2007