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strangledeggs · 5 years

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The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

Who’s comparing this to OK Computer? Who’s calling it “political”? If you want politics, Parquet Courts released a whole concept album about being “woke” earlier this year. No, this album is about one subject over all: Matt Healy. Everything else, all the quoted tweets, the internet “critique”, the so-called “politics” - it’s all just a backdrop, a stage on which Matt Healy can dramatically perform at his Healy-est for us, the audience/internet.

Needless to say, if the title didn’t give it away, there’s a lot of conceptual fuckery going on here. Or is there? Are we to believe that all the open-heartedness of the grandiose production is inviting us to believe that we’re getting some kind of confessional affair here, getting to hear the “real Matt Healy”?

The answer is obviously “no”, or he wouldn’t need all the conceptual smoke-and-mirrors. So that means this album is primarily a formal exercise, one in which Healy performs some version of what he thinks we want to think of him and hopes that we’ll focus on the performance rather than the man behind the curtain. The play’s the thing. It’s actually a bit reminiscent of David Foster Wallace’s unfinished posthumous novel, “The Pale King,” which I happen to have been in the midst of reading when I decided to take a break to give this album a first listen; both writers employ similar techniques of “decoy” autobiographical details, “false selves” displayed to psych the audience out by luring them into a false sense of familiarity with what they believe to be the artist. Very “meta”.

Except unlike Wallace, Healy has chosen to stage his play in a medium that people actually expect to be enjoyable - pop music, rather than a novel. So the question that’s on all our minds isn’t so much “How clever is it?” as it is “How does it sound?” And the answer to that question is no more easily determinate than the answer to the former.

For one thing, it’s a general truth that a strong singer is often what marks the dividing lines between the territories of “upstart punks” and full-on “pop music” for a band with the 1975’s ambition. But Healy’s not exactly a “strong” singer - he’s got two modes: breathy to the point of intangible, and belting it out in his best Bono impression (which, I’ll add, isn’t nearly as dynamic). He seems to catch on to this himself and piles on the vocal production, auto-tune, choral backups and everything to disguise his weakness.

Or is this part of the “meta-performance”, another “false self” by way of obscured vocals? This kind of thing was annoying enough in “The Pale King”, and it’s not necessarily alleviated by Healy’s tastes in production, which are...intriguing, to put it politely. For one thing, it sounds like he picked up the band from Chance The Rapper’s Donnie Trumpet sessions, particularly on the trumpet-heavy “Sincerity Is Scary”. Everything’s drenched in a sort of “lite”-sounding production, drawing from soft rock, the more bombastic end of new wave and ‘’’the 80s’’’ (as filtered through the 2010s’ increasingly warped understanding of what that means). This could bore quickly, slipping into “easy listening” or “muzak”, except for the fact that Healy’s written some really killer hooks in here; I wish Prince were alive to cover “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)”, which has a Purple Rain-worthy riff, and “Love It If We Made It” makes a convincing bid for song-of-the-year with an excellent chorus interpretable from at least three different angles. “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME” (yeah, I know) manages to make an impression over its artless dancehall-lite groove on its sheer playfulness.

But Healy doesn’t know where to stop, and the album is at least four songs longer than it needs to be. Paradoxically, as the production is stripped away on some of the (ugh) “ballads” and we hear more of the “real” Healy (“Healy Unplugged”), the hooks disappear and the music becomes forgettable; “Be My Mistake”, “Surrounded By Heads And Bodies” and “Mine” are all total wastes. On the other hand, the album’s weirdest experiment, a two-part electronic Burial/Radiohead-impersonation called “How To Draw / Petrichor”, is mostly memorable for its weirdness rather than for any substantial songcraft or sonic flourishes; it was probably Healy’s idea of something to “challenge” listeners, but it ends up more like a chance for them to space out.

Even if we forgive these mis-steps, not everything that works is as successful as the aforementioned earworms. The dramatic closer “I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)” (again - I know) veers a little too close to Coldplay for my comfort. Opener “Give Yourself A Try” has some obnoxiously inconsistent phrasing and a riff stolen note-for-note from Joy Division’s “Disorder”, which is again one of those things that’s almost clever, but more annoying the more you think about it. Not to mention cloying lyrics that cast Healy as a “man who’s been there and knows what’s up” in the most self-deprecating postmodern way he’ll later mock in the opening lines of “Sincerity Is Scary”.

About those lyrics: there are spots where they really shine. “Love It If We Made It”’s headline-pastiche is one obvious spot, even if it also comprises a vague nod toward “We Didn’t Start The Fire”. But “I Like America & America Likes Me” also has some of the most genuine-sounding lines on the album in its chorus, begging listeners to “please listen” and “believe in saying something”, even when it doesn’t know what exactly to say itself. Likewise, “It’s Not Living” is an honest account of addiction that manages to tie Healy’s romantic drama into it as well. “I Always Wanna Die Sometimes” has one of my favourite lines on the whole album: “Am I me through geography?”

But it also has the lines “You win you lose, you sing the blues”, and this reminds me of the fact that lines like the ones I was so impressed by comprise maybe only 30% of the album. The other 70% is partly smoke-and-mirrors, but largely worse: it’s just plain filler and cliche. So the real best line on the album goes to “I Couldn’t Be More In Love”, the best ballad on the whole thing, in which Healy temporarily transcends his vocal limitations to deliver an emotionally charged chorus: “What about THESE FEEEEEEEEELINGS I’ve got?” No, that’s not the best line; the best line is in the second verse, when Healy sings “I could’ve been a great line, I could’ve been a sign, / Overstayed my time, say what’s on your mind”, because I’ll be damned if that isn’t the whole album in a nutshell. Until he learns to edit down some of his pretentious impulses and filler-y dreck, I can’t see myself re-visiting this album in full anytime soon.

That being said, it’s the streaming age, albums have never meant less, and I’m not above distilling this unwieldy thing down to a fully-listenable playlist. So skip the intro, skip the ambient electronica, skip the ballads, and maybe leave in that joke-y Her/Radiohead parody in the middle if you still find it funny after a few plays and Give This Tracklist A Try:

1. Give Yourself A Try

2. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME

3. Love It If We Made It

4. Sincerity Is Scary

5. I Like America & America Likes Me

6. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme

7. Inside Your Mind

8. It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)

9. I Couldn’t Be More In Love

10. I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5hp63LWKr3Kfkdwvq9pCrw

#Music #Music Criticism #A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships #The 1975

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bluewatsons · 6 years

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Galen Strawson, I am not a story, Aeon (September 3, 2015)

Some find it comforting to think of life as a story. Others find that absurd. So are you a Narrative or a non-Narrative?

Each of us constructs and lives a “narrative”,’ wrote the British neurologist Oliver Sacks, ‘this narrative is us’. Likewise the American cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner: ‘Self is a perpetually rewritten story.’ And: ‘In the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we “tell about” our lives.’ Or a fellow American psychologist, Dan P McAdams: ‘We are all storytellers, and we are the stories we tell.’ And here’s the American moral philosopher J David Velleman: ‘We invent ourselves… but we really are the characters we invent.’ And, for good measure, another American philosopher, Daniel Dennett: ‘we are all virtuoso novelists, who find ourselves engaged in all sorts of behaviour… and we always put the best “faces” on it we can. We try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional character at the centre of that autobiography is one’s self.’

So say the narrativists. We story ourselves and we are our stories. There’s a remarkably robust consensus about this claim, not only in the humanities but also in psychotherapy. It’s standardly linked with the idea that self-narration is a good thing, necessary for a full human life.

I think it’s false – false that everyone stories themselves, and false that it’s always a good thing. These are not universal human truths – even when we confine our attention to human beings who count as psychologically normal, as I will here. They’re not universal human truths even if they’re true of some people, or even many, or most. The narrativists are, at best, generalising from their own case, in an all-too-human way. At best: I doubt that what they say is an accurate description even of themselves.

What exactly do they mean? It’s extremely unclear. Nevertheless, it does seem that there are some deeply Narrative types among us, where to be Narrative with a capital ‘N’ is (here I offer a definition) to be naturally disposed to experience or conceive of one’s life, one’s existence in time, oneself, in a narrative way, as having the form of a story, or perhaps a collection of stories, and – in some manner – to live in and through this conception. The popularity of the narrativist view is prima facie evidence that there are such people.

Perhaps. But many of us aren’t Narrative in this sense. We’re naturally – deeply – non-Narrative. We’re anti-Narrative by fundamental constitution. It’s not just that the deliverances of memory are, for us, hopelessly piecemeal and disordered, even when we’re trying to remember a temporally extended sequence of events. The point is more general. It concerns all parts of life, life’s ‘great shambles’, in the American novelist Henry James’s expression. This seems a much better characterisation of the large-scale structure of human existence as we find it. Life simply never assumes a story-like shape for us. And neither, from a moral point of view, should it.

The tendency to attribute control to self is, as the American social psychologist Dan Wegner says, a personality trait, possessed by some and not others. There’s an experimentally well-attested distinction between human beings who have what he calls the ‘emotion of authorship’ with respect to their thoughts, and those who, like myself, have no such emotion, and feel that their thoughts are things that just happen. This could track the distinction between those who experience themselves as self-constituting and those who don’t but, whether it does or not, the experience of self-constituting self-authorship seems real enough. When it comes to the actual existence of self-authorship, however – the reality of some process of self-determination in or through life as life-writing – I’m skeptical.

In the past 20 years, the American philosopher Marya Schechtman has given increasingly sophisticated accounts of what it is to be Narrative and to ‘constitute one’s identity’ through self-narration. She now stresses the point that one’s self-narration can be very largely implicit and unconscious. That’s an important concession. According to her original view, one ‘must be in possession of a full and explicit narrative [of one’s life] to develop fully as a person’. The new version seems more defensible. And it puts her in a position to say that people like myself might be Narrative and just not know it or admit it.

In her most recent book, Staying Alive (2014), Schechtman maintains that ‘persons experience their lives as unified wholes’ in some way that goes far beyond their basic awareness of themselves as single finite biological individuals with a certain curriculum vitae. She still thinks that ‘we constitute ourselves as persons… by developing and operating with a (mostly implicit) autobiographical narrative which acts as the lens through which we experience the world’.

I still doubt that this is true. I doubt that it’s a universal human condition – universal among people who count as normal. I doubt this even after she writes that ‘“having an autobiographical narrative” doesn’t amount to consciously retelling one’s life story always (or ever) to oneself or to anyone else’. I don’t think an ‘autobiographical narrative’ plays any significant role in how I experience the world, although I know that my present overall outlook and behaviour is deeply conditioned by my genetic inheritance and sociocultural place and time, including, in particular, my early upbringing. And I also know, on a smaller scale, that my experience of this bus journey is affected both by the talk I’ve been having with A in Notting Hill and the fact that I’m on my way to meet B in Kentish Town.

Like Schechtman, I am (to take John Locke’s definition of a person) a creature who can ‘consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places’. Like Schechtman, I know what it’s like when ‘anticipated trouble already tempers present joy’. In spite of my poor memory, I have a perfectly respectable degree of knowledge of many of the events of my life. I don’t live ecstatically ‘in the moment’ in any enlightened or pathological manner.

But I do, like the American novelist John Updike and many others, ‘have the persistent sensation, in my life…, that I am just beginning’. The Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’s ‘heteronym’ Alberto Caeiro (one of 75 alter egos under which he wrote) is a strange man, but he captures an experience common to many when he says that: ‘Each moment I feel as if I’ve just been born/Into an endlessly new world.’ Some will immediately understand this. Others will be puzzled, and perhaps skeptical. The general lesson is of human difference.

According to McAdams, a leading narrativist among social psychologists, writing in The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (2006):

Beginning in late adolescence and young adulthood, we construct integrative narratives of the self that selectively recall the past and wishfully anticipate the future to provide our lives with some semblance of unity, purpose, and identity. Personal identity is the internalised and evolving life story that each of us is working on as we move through our adult lives… I… do not really know who I am until I have a good understanding of my narrative identity.

If this is true, we must worry not only about the non-Narratives – unless they are happy to lack personal identity – but also about the people described by the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson in Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968):

various selves… make up our composite Self. There are constant and often shocklike transitions between these selves… It takes, indeed, a healthy personality for the ‘I’ to be able to speak out of all these conditions in such a way that at any moment it can testify to a reasonably coherent Self.

And the English moral philosopher Mary Midgley, writing in Wickedness (1984):

[Doctor Jekyll] was partly right: we are each not only one but also many… Some of us have to hold a meeting every time we want to do something only slightly difficult, in order to find the self who is capable of undertaking it… We spend a lot of time and ingenuity on developing ways of organising the inner crowd, securing consent among it, and arranging for it to act as a whole. Literature shows that the condition is not rare.

Erikson and Midgley suggest, astonishingly, that we’re all like this, and many agree – presumably those who fit the pattern. This makes me grateful to Midgley when she adds that ‘others, of course, obviously do not feel like this at all, hear such descriptions with amazement, and are inclined to regard those who give them as dotty’. At the same time, we shouldn’t adopt a theory that puts these people’s claim to be genuine persons in question. We don’t want to shut out the painter Paul Klee, writing in his diaries in the first years of the 20th century:

My self… is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Here papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my hand. A pregnant mother wants to join the fun. ‘Pshtt!’ I cry, ‘You don’t belong here. You are divisible.’ And she fades out.

Or the British author W Somerset Maugham, reflecting in A Writer’s Notebook (1949):

I recognise that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?

What are these people to do, if the advocates of narrative unity are right? I think they should continue as they are. Their inner crowds can perhaps share some kind of rollicking self-narrative. But there seems to be no clear provision for them in the leading philosophies of personal unity of our time as propounded by (among others) Schechtman, Harry Frankfurt, and Christine Korsgaard. I think the American novelist F Scott Fitzgerald is wrong when he says in his Notebooks (1978) that: ‘There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people if he’s any good.’ But one can see what he has in mind.

There is, furthermore, a vast difference between people who regularly and actively remember their past, and people who almost never do. In his autobiography What Little I Remember (1979), the Austrian-born physicist Otto Frisch writes: ‘I have always lived very much in the present, remembering only what seemed to be worth retelling.’ And: ‘I have always, as I already said, lived in the here and now, and seen little of the wider views.’ I’m in the Frisch camp, on the whole, although I don’t remember things in order to retell them.

More generally, and putting aside pathological memory loss, I’m in the camp with the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, when it comes to specifically autobiographical memory: ‘I can find hardly a trace of [memory] in myself,’ he writes in his essay ‘Of Liars’ (1580). ‘I doubt if there is any other memory in the world as grotesquely faulty as mine is!’ Montaigne knows this can lead to misunderstanding. He is, for example, ‘better at friendship than at anything else, yet the very words used to acknowledge that I have this affliction [poor memory] are taken to signify ingratitude; they judge my affection by my memory’ – quite wrongly. ‘However, I derive comfort from my infirmity.’

Poor memory protects him from a disagreeable form of ambition, stops him babbling, and forces him to think through things for himself because he can’t remember what others have said. Another advantage, he says, ‘is that… I remember less any insults received’.

To this we can add the point that poor memory and a non-Narrative disposition aren’t hindrances when it comes to autobiography in the literal sense – actually writing things down about one’s own life. Montaigne is the proof of this, for he is perhaps the greatest autobiographer, the greatest human self-recorder, in spite of the fact that:

nothing is so foreign to my mode of writing than extended narration [narration estendue]. I have to break off so often from shortness of wind that neither the structure of my works nor their development is worth anything at all.

Montaigne writes the unstoried life – the only life that matters, I’m inclined to think. He has no ‘side’, in the colloquial English sense of this term. His honesty, although extreme, is devoid of exhibitionism or sentimentality (St Augustine and Rousseau compare unfavourably). He seeks self-knowledge in radically unpremeditated life-writing, addressing his writing-paper ‘exactly as I do the first person I meet’. He knows his memory is hopelessly untrustworthy, and he concludes that the fundamental lesson of self-knowledge is knowledge of self-ignorance.

Once one is on the lookout for comments on memory, one finds them everywhere. There is a constant discord of opinion. I think the British writer James Meek is accurate when he describes Light Years(1975) by the American novelist James Salter:

Salter strips out the narrative transitions and explanations and contextualisations, the novelistic linkages that don’t exist in our actual memories, to leave us with a set of remembered fragments, some bright, some ugly, some bafflingly trivial, that don’t easily connect and can’t be put together as a whole, except in the sense of chronology, and in the sense that they are all that remains.

Meek takes it that this is true of everyone, and it is perhaps the most common case. Salter in Light Years finds a matching disconnection in life itself: ‘There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.’

And this, again, is a common experience:

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

It’s hard to work out the full consequences of this passage from the essay‘Modern Fiction’ (1921) by Virginia Woolf. What is certain is that there are rehearsers and composers among us, people who not only naturally story their recollections, but also their lives as they are happening. But when the English dramatist Sir Henry Taylor observed in 1836 that ‘an imaginative man is apt to see, in his life, the story of his life; and is thereby led to conduct himself in such a manner as to make a good story of it rather than a good life’, he’s identifying a fault, a moral danger. This is a recipe for inauthenticity. And if the narrativists are right and such self-storying impulses are in fact universal, we should worry.

Fortunately, they’re not right. There are people who are wonderfully and movingly plodding and factual in their grasp of their pasts. It’s an ancient view that people always remember their own pasts in a way that puts them in a good light, but it’s just not true. The Dutch psychologist Willem Wagenaar makes the point in his paper ‘Is Memory Self-Serving?’ (1994), as does Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich on his deathbed.

In his poem ‘Continuing to Live’ (1954), Philip Larkin claims that ‘in time/We half-identify the blind impress/All our behavings bear’. The narrativists think that this is an essentially narrative matter, an essentially narrative construal of the form of our lives. But many of us don’t get even as far as Larkinian half-identification, and we have at best bits and pieces, rather than a story.

We’re startled by Larkin’s further claim that ‘once you have walked the length of your mind, what/You command is clear as a lading-list’, for we find, even in advanced age, that we still have no clear idea of what we command. I for one have no clear sense of who or what I am. This is not because I want to be like Montaigne, or because I’ve read Socrates on ignorance, or Nietzsche on skins in Untimely Meditations (1876):

How can man know himself? He is a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven skins, the human being can shed seven times 70 skins and still not be able to say: ‘This is really you, this is no longer an outer shell.’ (translation modified)

The passage continues:

Besides, it is an agonizing, dangerous undertaking to dig down into yourself in this way, to force your way by the shortest route down the shaft of your own being. How easy it is to do damage to yourself that no doctor can heal. And moreover, why should it be necessary, since everything – our friendships and hatreds, the way we look, our handshakes, the things we remember and forget, our books, our handwriting – bears witness to our being.

I can’t, however, cut off this quotation here, because it continues in a way that raises a doubt about my position:

But there is a means by which this absolutely crucial enquiry can be carried out. Let the young soul look back upon its life and ask itself: what until now have you truly loved, what has drawn out your soul, what has commanded it and at the same time made it happy? Line up these objects of reverence before you, and perhaps by what they are and by their sequence, they will yield you a law, the fundamental law of your true self.

‘Perhaps by what they are… they will yield the fundamental law of your true self.’ This claim is easy to endorse. It’s Marcel Proust’s greatest insight. Albert Camus sees it, too. But Nietzsche is more specific: ‘perhaps by what they are and by their sequence, they will yield… the fundamental law of your true self.’ Here it seems I must either disagree with Nietzsche or concede something to the narrativists: the possible importance of grasping the sequence in progressing towards self-understanding.

I concede it. Consideration of the sequence – the ‘narrative’, if you like – might be important for some people in some cases. For most of us, however, I think self-knowledge comes best in bits and pieces. Nor does this concession yield anything to the sweeping view with which I began, the view – in Sacks’s words – that all human life is life-writing, that ‘each of us constructs and lives a “narrative”, and that ‘this narrative is us’.

#narrative #identity #critique #The Self #self-perception

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doumekiss · 6 years

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Rules: Write the first 10 songs that come up on shuffle (no skipping) and quote your favorite lyrics from each song, then tag 10 people.

I was tagged by @extremeliking

1. Disorder - Joy Division I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand, Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?

2. Sister - Kate Nash It's not fair to watch you walk away like this I just wish that I could get one more kiss But you gave it, you gave it to another And it's not fair of me to judge that, Being ripped away from you, is like being ripped out of a womb I'm sorry, is that too dramatic? I should just be far more plastic Well blah-blah, blah-blah, me myself and I I'm so funny, oh my god, ha ha

3. Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush Ooh, it gets dark, It gets lonely On the other side from you I pine a lot. I find the lot Falls through without you

4. All the right moves - One Republic Do you think I'm special? Do you think I'm nice? Am I bright enough to shine in your spaces? Between the noise you hear, and the sounds you like Are we just sinking in an ocean of faces? It can't be possible that rain could fall Only when it's over our heads. The sun is shining every day, but it's far away. Over the world instead.

5. I Don't want to fall in love - She wants revenge I would like to tell you, I would like to say That I knew that this would happen That things would go this way But I cannot deceive you, this was never planned I know that you're the right girl but do you think that I am the right man?

6. Sugar We're going down - Fall Out Boy I've been dying to tell you anything you want to hear 'Cause that's just who I am this week

7. All you need is me - Morrissey You don't like me, but you love me Either way you're wrong You're gonna miss me when I'm gone You're gonna miss me when I'm gone

8. Stronger than you - Estelle Go ahead and try to hit me if you're able. Can't you see that my relationship is stable? I know you think I'm not somethin' you're afraid of. 'Cause you think that you've seen what I'm made of. But I am even more than the two of them. Everything they care about is what I am. I am their fury. I am their patience. I am a conversation.

9. Oh No - Marina and The Diamonds TV taught me how to feel Now real life has no appeal

10. Patron Saint - Regina Spektor She's the kind of girl who'll smash herself down in a night She's the kind of girl who'll fracture her mind 'til it's light She'll break her own heart, and you know That she'll break your heart too So darling, let go of her hand

I tag @mikkel-nielsen, @stardustandseas, @lordnatalie, @ladybingley, @matrya, @copperforakiss, @leavethesky, @muggleriddle, @mybigcastle, @landserene

#tumblr #music

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oneweekoneband · 7 years

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As I get older I have less resistance to certain strains of starry-eyed woo. Some of it comes from observing over time that the division into woo and non-woo camps correlates less with lived experience than I’d once smugly assumed; there are, actually, people with what anyone would agree are Real Problems that believe, for example, that everything happens for a reason, and there are plenty of easy cynics manufacturing bitterness out of a thoroughly average existence. Mostly, though, it’s that I’ve begun to accept that the mind does not rule the heart, and the heart follows its own laws, and I get further, easier, trying to learn the laws of my heart than I do trying to force it to submit to my mind. There are many important and beautiful realms where the mind can have its kingdom; I’m a teacher, I love and admire several of these domains. But then: I’m a teacher, I know reason has no curative powers for a wounded heart. Mostly I am learning to need things less to be smart and more to be useful.

Kesha wrote this song in rehab. Of its origin, she wrote:

This is how the song “Rainbow” came to be. The whole album idea and tour and everything, came from me crying and singing and playing and dreaming until my hour was up and they took the keyboard away again. Every day I would just cry and play that song because I knew I had to get through that incredibly hard time. I knew I had to change and learn to take care of and love myself, and I had no idea how to even begin.

“Rainbow” was the beginning. That song and the lyrics were a letter to myself promising that I was going to take care of myself going forward and that I was going to be okay.

I’m only rarely interested in the biographical backstories of creation as more than entertaining curiosities for my fannish side, but I think about this a lot: Kesha in rehab for an eating disorder, making music for an hour at a time, writing a song about seeing the beauty in the world. Kesha beginning to fight to save her own life, writing a song about what it looks like on the other side of survival. Rainbow is the album about living a free life Kesha made while she was not free; Rainbow is the song about joy Kesha wrote from the epicenter of her pain. A promise she couldn’t know yet she would be able to fulfill. A shooting-star wish she would be the one to grant herself.

She wrote I used to live in the darkness, still waiting for the sun to rise; she wrote been lookin’ for a star-sent sign that I’ll be alright, but she crafted her own omen, her own promise of redemption. I turn this over and over: how brave it is to choose to hope for something you don’t yet know how to do. To welcome in a love you can’t yet feel. To look at your sad, sorry self and decide she is worth believing in.

Belief is a hard thing for me. I say belief, but I mean useful belief. I still think about stumbling across David Foster Wallace’s famous Kenyon College commencement address as a depressed twenty-year-old who had never heard his name and being transfixed less by his exhortation to stay aware and awake than by this idea: that everyone worships, and we only get a say in the question of what. I never decorated my room that year or any other that I spent in a dorm, never bought anything for the sake of ornament, not because I couldn’t but because I thought it wasn’t worth the effort. It was only temporary, it was just my room—logic that expands too easily into it’s only temporary, it’s just my life. Or maybe that’s backwards; maybe all along it was my self I couldn’t see the point of, and the bare walls were just a reflection that deeper emptiness. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn’t. Being wrong isn’t helpful, being right hasn’t once saved me yet.

Now I see that colors are everything Got kaleidoscopes in my hairdo Got back the stars in my eyes too Yeah now I see the magic inside of me

Inside, outside. Marie Kondo says Tidying is a confrontation with the self, that the heart of making a home you love is understanding the person you are. I wanted to believe there was no connection, I wanted to believe I could outsmart them both, I wanted to believe that if I understood the parameters of what had happened to me I would somehow be inoculated from the hurt. I own a turquoise couch now, a peacock-colored shag rug, some days everything is still hard—hard because it’s pointless, pointless because I’m hopeless. It’s so seductive, still, the story that feels like truth because it will never succumb to being proven wrong. I read about astrology, I pull tarot cards in the mornings, ways to circumvent the endless rational-sounding explanations my brain creates automatically for giving up, talismans of my tentative faith in the importance of faith. The most insufferable hippie belief I’ve been forced to make peace with is the idea that happiness is a choice, not because you choose it and then it comes but because if you don’t choose it it never comes.

This song is a penny in a fountain, a stray eyelash, blown-out birthday candles: little rituals that acknowledge what we want, that acknowledge that we want. I forgot how to daydream. Little kids are great at this: wanting things, wishing, understanding themselves as creatures that dream. Deep down I’m still a child / playful eyes wide and wild she sings, right before I can’t lose hope—like the two are connected, like she owes it to that little girl dancing in the sun. Like that girl is still inside her, and deserves to live as the person she might yet become. How do you develop that kind of faith, that kind of love? How do you find it in yourself to look at all the places you have rotted away and say what’s left of my heart’s still made of gold? How do you decide that you can become the person who lives in a life you love—that in fact you are that person already, contrary to all perceivable evidence?

Trust me, I know life is scary. We know she knows, and I wish we didn’t need to know why to take her at her word; some of us have always trusted that she knew how to see the darkness. Put those colors on, girl / come and paint the world with me tonight, singing to us the song that she sang herself. I turn this over and over: how gentle she is with her terrified self. How in making something beautiful and soft, she gave herself the language to begin rewriting the voice in her head, the story she was telling herself about herself. I’m feeling right back in love with being alive / dreaming in lights. Some days, walking home through light like amber, I do look to the sky, and it does seem magical, and the part of me that can see that feels like the truest part of me.

In The Goldfinch Donna Tartt wrote: “Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important; whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair.” Kesha has been that for me for a long, long time. I love the words to this song I couldn’t have believed in years ago, but the best part comes in the middle, in the wordless, soaring bridge. The orchestra fills the space like light spilling across floorboards, a warm swelling glow, led by Kesha’s voice, fluttering and playful, loose and lovely, arcing across the sky on a melody like the flight of morning birds, like the sparkle of a meteor shower. You can see in her voice what you hear in her voice: the delight of creation, the sheer delight of making something beautiful. No words, no arguments, no justifications. Joy is enough. She is enough.

My favorite use of a rainbow, lodged in me permanently through the wonder of childhood discovery, is still The Muppet Movie. Not the beginning, although I do love Kermit, alone, singing about wanting magic, about trusting that it’s there, waiting to be found. But the end, the big sentimental figurative and literal mess, the outlandishly happy ending collapsing into cheerful disarray for a moment of wonder, of something like awe: the crack in the ceiling letting in the light, the rainbow saying what a rainbow always says—you’ve made it this far: Life’s like a movie, write your own ending / keep believing, keep pretending. Write your own ending not because you write it and it comes true, but because it ends whether you write it or not: in the dark I realized that life is short. Choose what you worship, which is sometimes not so firmly after all on the other side of maturity from that idiom of childhood, make believe. In rehab, in the dark, Kesha made belief of out music, made beauty out of survival. A kind of magic, an alchemy of hope. Now it’s hers and ours too, the lovers and the dreamers and those of us trying to remember how to do both, to take from it what we need, to fashion it into something we can use. To sing ourselves out of despair. To believe in, until we can choose to believe that we’re enough.

—Isabel

#rainbow

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dunntown · 7 years

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SuperUnKnown - R.I.P. Chris Cornell

“I woke the same as any other day

except a voice was in my head

it said, “Seize the day, pull the trigger

Drop the blade and watch the rolling heads.”

A BiPolar perspective to Chris Cornell’s death.

Thursday, May 18th, 2017 - It was around 7:45 in the morning. I silenced the alarm on my phone, hushing the soothing sounds of Fat Mike from NoFx’s voice as he wakes me most mornings lately with the lyrics “One morning I woke up, scratched my balls and eyes..” This being the opening lines to the song “I don’t like me anymore.”, It’s sort of appropriate for a guy who struggles with bipolar disorder and depression. I decided to go about my morning routine of scrolling through and deleting the massive amounts of spam mail I seem to get while I sleep. The first thing I saw, however, was a newsletter from my local rock station. “BREAKING: Chris Cornell Dead”. I just sort of sat there for a moment, wondering what kind of dead celebrity hoax this was. Chris Cornell, the guy who was a monstrous part of my musical adventure as a teen was dead. It was so strange, he seemed so healthy. He didn’t seem to have any real drug or alcohol problems that I ever recall reading or hearing about. It was a bit jarring.

I proceeded to flip through the various news sites, sort of exposing myself to as much input as possible into how one of my favorite songwriters had met his demise at the age of 52. It’s important to note something to those reading this who may not realize what it was like for those of us on April 8th, 1994. I was in 6th grade. My childhood friend Lonzo Jones, a guy who sadly is no longer with us, rushed up to me as I left a class and said “Dude, did you hear? Kurt Cobain is dead!” I was really confused then, and I had to wait all day to hear more when MTV delivered updates via the broadcasting of Kurt Loder. I think it’s important to explain why that moment is so memorable because I feel like May 18th will always be the day that Chris Cornell died for me. (I’m aware Joy Division’s Ian Curtis lost his battle with depression on this day 37-years ago as well).

Chris Cornell, the powerful, dynamic singer whose band Soundgarden was one of the architects of grunge music, died on Wednesday night in Detroit hours after the band had performed there. He was 52.

The death was a suicide by hanging, the Wayne County medical examiner’s office said in a statement released on Thursday afternoon. It said a full autopsy had not yet been completed.

Mr. Cornell’s representative, Brian Bumbery, said in a statement that the death was “sudden and unexpected.”

I read this and many other write-ups like it. “Suicide” and “Sudden and Unexpected” are the two things that stand out to a guy like me the most. I haven’t been one to shy away from the fact I suffer from mental illness. (more on this in a moment.) The stories kept coming in that Chris had hung himself and almost immediately the internet was awash with more commentary and the gushing of fans. I wasn’t aware I knew so many fans of his work. It’s strange how that happens. It’s even stranger than that as I sat and went over some comic work I am trying to catch up on, the one person I kept thinking about was a friend I had in middle school named Gary Gilbert. Gary was without a doubt the biggest Soundgarden fan. We used to have weird “grunge rock wars” about who was better as I was a devout Nirvana fan and he was all Soundgarden. I almost immediately thought about “I wonder how Gary is taking it?”. This led me to do something I haven’t ever done in my life. I searched for him and sent him a friend request on facebook. So, here I am, wondering about how a guy I haven’t spoken to in 20-years at least is feeling about the death of Chris Cornell.

I guess this history lesson wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t explain one of the things about why I loved and adored the grunge scene so much. I missed the punk scene. However, I totally would never have known about punk music if not for bands like Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden. I didn’t learn about the Sex Pistols until I heard Kurt Cobain talk about them in an interview in 1992. Grunge was my gateway drug backward into my obsession with Punk and Hardcore.

So, I now come to the first real part of this blog. Grief is weird. I believe a big part of the process is trying to reconcile to yourself that this is a permanent fixture in your life. You go your whole life taking advantage of these artists and actors and musicians... Then, poof!

I loved Chris Cornell’s work. I personally believe out of every grunge era musician, he was probably the most well rounded of all of them. His voice is capable of giving me goosebumps and some songs will forever resonate with me. Soundgarden was the middle man of Grunge. It bridged the gap between Punk/Sludge/Noise rock from bands like The Melvins and Sonic Youth to the more commercially recognized bands of Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. Soundgarden plays loud, hard, yet poetic rock. Their music was built on Led Zeppelin, Hardcore Punk, and Black Sabbath. They defied the expectation of what a “Grunge” band was and stood out among their Seattle scene as the toughest machine in town. Chris Cornell’s thunderous, multi-octave vocals pierced the souls of all of the angst-ridden and angry youth who also weren’t finding solace in the nonsensical poetries of other bands at that time. Cornell’s lyricism is some of the most well-versed poetry I’ve ever heard. Cornell spoke to kids with depression through experience, and told stories of sardonic nihilism, inner torment and defined the battles of depression as beautifully catatonic waves of torment.

Cornell spoke to me...

"Whatsoever I've feared has come to life. Whatsoever I've fought off became my life. Just when every day seemed to greet me with a smile sunspots have faded. And now I'm doing time 'cause I fell on black days."

When I was in high school, I thought there was something wrong with me. It was always a roller coaster ride of emotion. I’d always suppress it and I got really good at it. In 10th grade, a good friend of mine named Robert Patton killed himself. It really shook our school, and today, when I read the report about Chris Cornell’s suicide. I immediately remembered what our Principal had said to us about Robert’s death.

“sudden and unexpected.”

Robert was a fun kid. We laughed and talked about all kinds of crap. I never saw it coming. He seemed so happy... He didn’t seem damaged or broken, not like how I felt. However, I bet you not many of my friends knew I was depressed back then either. I am bipolar and suffer from bouts of depression and mania. I also suffer from clinical anxiety and have ADHD. I’m a cocktail of neuroticism and to this day can’t believe my current and/or ex Wife/Girlfriends haven’t murdered me in my sleep.

One of the things I decided this morning was that if the facts came out and they said he had indeed committed suicide, I’d write this version of the blog. I wanted to make sure it held a clear message about mental illness and hopefully could help someone.

I always get asked, “What’s it like?”

So, here is the best way to explain how it all works. Mania is sort of this awesome high. You have energy and motivation, and you just don’t want to stop. Couple that up with ADHD and sometimes it creates severe problems. You’ve now lost your impulse control, so for example. I wanted to find a particular record. (Led Zeppelin 4) I decided to hit a pawn shop and a couple thrift shops. Waste a couple hours and get home for dinner. I was severely manic that day though and my ADHD coupled with it made me hit every thrift shop, pawnshop, and anywhere else I thought I might find it. I searched for 6-hours before Aly (wife) made me buy it offline.

The best part of mania is the optimism, you could literally burn down your home and just go “We can rebuild it and make it better too!”. I’m also much more on point creatively. I get so many ideas, so many great moments of artistic expression. Sometimes being manic is like a comic creator's super power. When Mania strikes, I do as much as possible to capitalize on it.

I feel more outgoing, charismatic, secure in who I am and what I am doing. I feel like I can do anything. I wake up with a drive and determination to get things done, and I just go and go and GO. I am way more sociable, I talk too much, I dominate conversations, I interject when I don’t need to. I can’t keep on topic cause my brain is working faster than the conversation that is happening. I sometimes depress myself thinking back on these times as well. Sometimes, you just can't recognize when you’re being “TOO MUCH” for some people. During manic spells, I feel like Superman. I can do anything, my self-esteem is up, I can conquer the world. However, the major dread of anyone who recognizes their mania is that we know it’s only a matter of time before we crash. The thing about mania that is so appealing is that without the highs of manic episodes, I don’t think I could tolerate the lows of depression.

I've givin' everything I need. I'd give you everything I own. I'd give in if it could at least be ours alone. I've given everything I could to blow it to hell and gone. Burrow down and blow up the outside world."

The point of this is to discuss why Chris Cornell could have been suicidal, depressed, and mentally ill... and no one would have known. In the song “Fell on Black Days” he basically defines what it feels like to fall into depression from a manic episode.

When my depression kicks in, I am just intolerable. I want to be left alone, but not too alone. I want to not exist, but I fear not being remembered. I don’t want to go anywhere, but I don’t want to be here. When people talk to me, I feel they are judging me, chastising me, making me feel like I am incapable of doing anything right. It becomes really easy to hide. Seeing people be happy is the worst, It annoys me and makes me angry. It reminds me that I am broken and that my bipolar disorder is always there. I’ll always have instability and the most annoying part is the people who tell me “Cheer up!” as if it was that easy. The nuances of daily life also begin to start dragging my mood deeper into the void. This is where suicide becomes... endearing. I’ve contemplated suicide pretty much during every depressive state. I have tricks, mechanisms to break my thought process. My kids. Music. Art. Comics. Writing. Sex. All of these are ways I trick my brain into walking away from the ledge. If I feel I am not able to do it alone, I’ll sometimes text, message or call a friend. This is that exposing my own personal life part. If any of my friends read this and you ever complain to yourself. “Why does Martin call me and just not have anything to say?” It’s because if I'm on the phone with you, I'm not self-harming. I am very cognitive of my mental state and I am very good at keeping it in check. Sadly, some are not. Some fight for a very long time and some give up. Robin Williams comes to mind.

"Boiling heat, summer stench 'neath the black. The sky looks dead. Call my name through the cream. And I'll hear you. Scream again. Black hole sun won't you come and wash away the rain? Black hole sun won't you come? Won't you come?"

I sometimes imagine what it’s like for normal people. I imagine they deal with stress and anger and anxiety in a much different way. If I told you that I sometimes have gotten so angry I’ve punched myself in the face, causing damage to my teeth... Would that make sense? I have bad teeth, and some people have asked me why. Why are they chipped? Why are you missing one? They don’t look unbrushed. It’s because I used to punch myself in the face. It was reactionary and really destructive and thankfully, I’ve not done that in a very long time. Don’t get me wrong, I totally do have my “normal” days. I get to have them every so often. I think it’s why I take so much pleasure in the little things. I think Chris Cornell gave into his depression. I think he let go of his fight because like anyone who suffers from clinical depression will tell you. Sometimes, when you look into the future, you can’t see anything but a cold, dead, blackness.

The night before his death, Cornell performed in front of a sold-out show in front of a legion of fans. He lasted longer than his grunge brethren like Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Shannon Hoon, and most recently Scott Weiland. Cornell experienced almost 2x the life as some of these tragic artists. He was very much alive to all that looked upon him that night as he played them out to a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying”. His haunting words catching me in the heart were “I feel bad for the next city.”. I would have bought every album as I always did of Cornell’s work until he hung it up. His future was to be that of an aged and grizzled rock vet, strumming an acoustic guitar and telling us more stories about his inner battle with his own demons. I always envisioned Chris Cornell being my generations Jonny Cash. That, sadly, will never be the case.

A lot of you, my fellow fans have been asking “why?”.

You will never truly understand the answers to that question if you do not grasp the silent killer that is mental illness. Chris Conell will go down in legend as one of the best singers and songwriters of Rock & Roll.

"I got up feeling so down. I got off being sold out. I've kept the movie rolling. But the story's getting old now. I just looked in the mirror. Things aren't looking so good. I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota. So now you know, who gets mystified. Show me the power child. I'd like to say that I'm down on my knees today. It gives me the butterflies, gives me away till I'm up on my feet again. I'm feeling outshined."

RIP

Chris Cornell

If you’re ever struggling emotionally or going through a tough time, you can always call Call 1-800-273-8255 Available 24 hours everyday! National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

- Martin Dunn

#chris cornell #soundgarden #music #punk #grunge #blog #depression #suicide #martin dunn #punkhouse #ripchriscornell

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lunapwrites · 3 years

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3 13 and 23!

3: a song that reminds me of summertime - I am digging real deep here. In all seriousness, this song gives me a vibe of city outskirts in sweltering heat. Riding my bike on hot pavement. Sweating all over my sunglasses. That kind of thing lmao. (I am not a huge fan of summer, but I do love this song.)

13: a song I love from the 80's - it was a tie between this and "Disorder" by Joy Division but I decided to go the more cheerful route. I literally cannot NOT dance to this song. I have danced to it IN PUBLIC. IN FRONT OF STRANGERS. I also can't dance worth a shit, the draw is just so strong I literally could not resist. So here you are.

23: a song I think everyone should listen to - I had to really think about this one honestly, because I like a lot of different genres and it's not really an apples to apples comparison. But this particular song is one that is very near and dear to my heart. (The video is really weird though so maybe just put it on in the background lol.) It's technically 2 songs, but one is just the intro to the other so it's... yeah. I am absolutely fascinated by the time signatures in it, the melody and the lyrics are beautiful... I can't really recommend it enough. Plus I have loved Tool since I was a kid, so I gotta rep a bit lol.

Thanks!! <3

#music tag #ask #answer #what is my music taste anyway #mystery flavor

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learningrendezvous · 4 years

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Issues in Education

DAY ONE

Directed by Lori Miller

Traumatized Middle Eastern and African teen refugees are guided through a program of healing by devoted educators at a unique St. Louis public school for refugees only.

DAY ONE follows a group of teenage refugees from war-torn countries who are enrolled at a unique public school for refugees and immigrants-only in St. Louis, MO, where they are guided through an inspirational program of education, healing and trauma intervention by devoted educators, some of whom have chosen to relocate to the inner city to support their students.

Over the course of a year, we watch the kids progress through layers of grief and loss as they attend school, forge new friendships, and prepare to be mainstreamed into local public high schools. Their triumphs and tribulations all unfold with St. Louis as the backdrop: a rust-belt city that has taken the bold step of welcoming immigrants as a solution for their growing socio-economic problems.

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adults) / 82 minutes

KOSHIEN: JAPAN'S FIELD OF DREAMS

Director: Ema Ryan Yamazaki

Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in the 100th annual Koshien, Japan's wildly popular national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include U.S. baseball star Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. But for Coach Mizutani and his players, cleaning the grounds and greeting their guests are equally important as honing their baseball skills. In director Ema Ryan Yamazaki's dramatic and intimate journey to the heart of the Japanese national character, will those acts add up to victory or prove a relic of the past?

DVD (English, Japanese, With English Subtitles) / 2019 / 94 minutes

LET THEM EAT DIRT: THE HUNT FOR OUR KIDS' MISSING MICROBES

Directed by Rivkah Beth Medow, Brad Marshland

Looks at the role microbes play in the development, physical and mental health of our children, and argues that good health begins with kids playing in the dirt.

Allergies, obesity, asthma, diabetes, auto-immune and intestinal disorders are all on the rise, with the incidence of some diseases doubling every ten years. New research points to changes in the ecosystem of microbes that live on and inside every one of us -- our microbiomes -- as a major cause. But how could one's gut microbes increase the odds of developing conditions as radically different as asthma and diabetes?

Hosted by Good Morning America's Becky Worley, and based on the book of the same name by B. Brett Finlay, PhD and Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD, LET THEM EAT DIRT features families, doctors, and researchers who are sleuthing out what's harming our microbes -- and what we can do to reverse this dangerous trend.

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 58 minutes

MONTESSORI: LET THE CHILD BE THE GUIDE

Director: Alexandre Mourot

"Education should not limit itself to seeking new methods for a mostly arid transmission of knowledge: its aim must be to give the necessary aid to human development." - Maria Montessori

Inherited from Maria Montessori in 1907, the Montessori Method is a child-centered educational philosophy that celebrates and nurtures each child's desire to learn - an approach valuing the human spirit and full development: physical, social, emotional and cognitive. The Montessori Method is increasing in popularity both in the U.S. and abroad.

Curious to see how the Method works first hand, filmmaker Alexandre Mourot sets his camera up in the oldest Montessori school in France (with kids from 3 to 6) and observes. He meets happy children, free to move around, working alone or in small groups. Some read, others make bread, do divisions, laugh or sleep. The teacher remains discreet. Children guide the filmmaker through the whole school year, helping him understand the magic of their autonomy and self-esteem - the seeds of a new society of peace and freedom, which Maria Montessori dedicated her life work to.

DVD (English & French w/English subtitles) / 2018 / 100 minutes

EARTH SEASONED, GAPYEAR

Directed by Molly Kreuzman

Diagnosed with learning difficulties, Tori finds her greatest teacher in nature, spending a "gap year" living semi-primitively with four other young women in Oregon's Cascade Mountains.

Earth Seasoned...#GapYear is the inspiring story of five young urban women who spend a gap year between high school and college living semi-primitively in a remote mountainside wilderness in Oregon. Told mainly through the story of Tori Davis, a teenager with learning difficulties, the film chronicles the group's four seasons in the woods as part of the Caretaker nature program. As the seasons succeed, the group has to adapt to what the wilderness provides and to what it withholds.

Through lyrical live action footage and smartly paced animation, the film reveals how separately and together the girls learn ancient skills of craftsmanship and teamwork and forge deep powers of resilience and self-reliance. Earth Seasoned has essential messages about talent, compassion and community and about the real conditions for human flourishing.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 75 minutes

G IS FOR GUN: THE ARMING OF TEACHERS IN AMERICA

Directed by Kate Way, Julie Akeret

Explores both sides of the highly controversial trend of arming teachers and staff in America's K-12 schools.

G IS FOR GUN explores the highly controversial trend of armed faculty and staff in K-12 schools. Only five years ago this practice was practically unheard of, but since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, it has spread to as many as a dozen states. Often without public knowledge, there are teachers, administrators, custodians, nurses, and bus drivers carrying guns in America's schools.

G IS FOR GUN documents a growing program in Ohio that is training school staff to respond to active shooter situations with guns, and follows the story of one Ohio community divided over arming its teachers.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 27 minutes

STILL WATERS

Directed by Peter Gordon

In his tiny, one-room, after hours, free school in Brooklyn, Stephen Haff teaches forty Hispanic kids reading, creative writing and Latin.

A remarkable one-room school in Brooklyn is facing a tough year. It's the run up to the US presidential election and anti-Latino rhetoric is ramped up--an extra source of tension for a hard-pressed Hispanic community already threatened by gentrification and eviction.

The school, Still Waters in a Storm, is the creation of Yale grad Stephen Haff. A passionate critic of mainstream education, he believes in the joy of learning without tests and the innate creativity of children and insists that the school is free. It survives precariously on the thinnest of shoestrings.

When regular school finishes, Still Waters starts working. Stephen and his group of children explore, with the help of illustrious guest writers like twice Booker Prizewinner Peter Carey, the power of storytelling, creativity and community. And along the way they discuss Donald Trump and gentrification with humor and passion.

Filmed over a year STILL WATERS follows this compelling man, his philosophy, the spirit of the children who attend, and the dreams and fears of their immigrant Hispanic community.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 79 minutes

CULTIVATING KIDS

Directed by Melissa Young, Mark Dworkin

On South Whidbey Island, WA, a school farm shows that a garden can be a valuable addition to the curriculum while encouraging a healthy diet.

On South Whidbey Island in the state of Washington, a school farm involves children from kindergarten through high school in every phase of raising organic vegetables as part of their school experience. Supported by local non-profits, community volunteers, and the school district, it shows that a garden can be a valuable addition to a school curriculum, while encouraging children to eat healthy food. The school farm sells local, organic produce to the school cafeterias and also supplies the local food bank and community nutrition programs with fresh organic produce throughout the growing season.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 4-12, College, Adults) / 23 minutes

DAUGHTERS OF THE FOREST

Directed by Samantha Grant

A group of girls in a remote forest in Paraguay are transformed at an experimental high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and build a future for themselves.

DAUGHTERS of the FOREST tells the powerful, uplifting story of a small group of girls in one of the most remote forests left on earth who attend a radical high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and forge a better future for themselves.

Set in the untamed wilds of the Mbaracayu Reserve in rural Paraguay, this intimate verite documentary offers a rare glimpse of a disappearing world where timid girls grow into brave young women even as they are transformed by their unlikely friendships with one another. Filmed over the course of five years, we follow the girls from their humble homes in indigenous villages through the year after their graduation to see exactly how their revolutionary education has and will continue to impact their future lives.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2016 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 56 minutes

MISS KIET'S CHILDREN

By Petra Lataster-Czisch and Peter Lataster

Kiet Engels is the kind of teacher one wishes every schoolchild could have. She is strict but never harsh. She is loving but never soft. Her patience in endless.

Many of Miss Kiet's pupils are refugees who have just arrived in Holland. Everything is new and confusing. Some are quarrelsome and headstrong. But Miss Kiet's firm but loving hand brings calm and awakens interest. She not only teaches her pupils to read and write Dutch, but also helps them learn to solve problems together and respect one another. Slowly the children gain skills and confidence.

Haya is at first impetuous, yet fearful. Little by little, Miss Kiet helps her to find her friendly side. Leanne is quiet and lonely. But after a few months she able to tell everyone, in Dutch, that she loves Branche. Jorj has trouble sleeping and is unruly. His little brother Maksim has terrible nightmares. Miss Kiet's tenacity helps Jorj discover that learning can be worthwhile and even fun.

By observation alone, without interviews or voice-over, the film focuses on four refugee children of different nationalities. Pursuing their perspective, the camera follows at close hand their struggles to learn a new language, their fights, their friendships and their first loves.

By the end of the documentary, an affectionate community has grown-the fruit of a teacher's patience and dedication. A film of many touching moments, some of them hilarious, MISS KIET'S CHILDREN chronicles changes that are small yet at the same time immense.

DVD (English, Dutch, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 113 minutes

EAST OF SALINAS

Directed by Laura Pacheco, Jackie Mow

Jose Anzaldo is an excellent student with a bright future except that he is undocumented, the child of migrant farm laborers in California's Salinas Valley.

EAST OF SALINAS begins with 3rd grader Jose Anzaldo telling us what he wants to be when he grows up. His parents work from sun up to sun down in the heart of California's "Steinbeck Country," the Salinas Valley. With little support available at home, Jose often turns to his teacher, Oscar Ramos, once a migrant farm kid himself. In fourth grade his teacher told him if he worked hard he could have a different life. Oscar won a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. The day he earned his degree, he bought a car and drove home to the fields. He's been teaching ever since.

Jose is Oscar's most gifted student. But how do you teach students like Jose who have no place to do their homework? How do you teach a kid who moves every few months? This is what Oscar is up against every day. Oscar not only teaches his students reading, math and science, he gives them access to a world beyond their reach.

But Jose was born in Mexico--and he's on the cusp of understanding the implications of that. As we watch this play out over three years, we begin to understand the cruelty of circumstance--for Jose and the many millions of undocumented kids like him.

EAST OF SALINAS asks, What is lost when kids like Jose are denied opportunities?

DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 53 minutes

DIE BEFORE BLOSSOM

By Ariani Djalal

Almost 70 years after independence and 10 years after the installation of the first democratically elected president, the educational system in Indonesia is increasingly being influenced by Islamic values. This observational documentary follows two girls and their families during a crucial period in their school careers: their last year at public elementary school in the city of Jogyakarta in central Java.

Kiki and Dila are modern city girls from a middle-class background: they like to listen to pop music, are very interested in their appearance and giggle about girl stuff. At school, all the children wear uniforms, everyone prays together, the national anthem is sung and the girls learn how to behave now that they are approaching puberty. Although Islam isn't a state religion, its influence on the once secular school system is growing. The educational system is underpinned by three moral principles: piety, patriotism and discipline.

The strictness of the school regime doesn't seem so bad-for example, Kiki is able to talk her way out of studying the Koran. But once the final exams start to loom, things suddenly get very serious, both for the girls and for their parents. A lot is riding on their exam results, for the popular schools in the city only take those children who get the highest scores.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 89 minutes

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY

Directed by Helen De Michiel

Passion, creative energy and persistence come together when Berkeley advocates and educators tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and in the neighborhoods.

How are citizens transforming local food systems? How are innovators changing the way children eat in schools? How do we talk about culture, identity and responsibility through the lens of food and health?

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is a beautiful and engaging story of how a diverse group of pioneering parents and food advocates came together to tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and neighborhoods of Berkeley, CA.

Through a mosaic of twelve interconnecting short documentaries, the film explores food and education, children and health, and citizens making democratic change. This is a rich and multi-dimensional story of passion, creative energy, and idealism -- a project linking the ways we teach our children to eat and understand food to the traditional passing of powerful values from one generation to the next.

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is divided into three thematic programs - Heart, Body, Mind - each containing four short films.

DVD ( Closed Captioned) / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 78 minutes

NATIONAL DIPLOMA

By Dieudo Hamadi

Joel loads a stack of boxes onto a hand truck and weaves his way through a crowded outdoor market in Kisangani, one of the largest cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An orphan who lives with his aunt, Joel doesn't want to be a courier forever. But if he is to have any hope of a brighter future, he must first pass the national exam-the key to better employment and a post-secondary education. And to take the exam, he needs money.

NATIONAL DIPLOMA follows Joel and a group of his classmates in the two months leading up to their taking the national exam. Things start off badly, when the high school principal walks into a class full of students preparing to take a mock exam and expels Joel and more than a dozen others for unpaid school fees. Undaunted, the students rent an unfinished house across the river. The floors are covered in debris, there is no furniture, and live wires snake down interior walls. But the teens hammer a blackboard into a brick wall, set a cookstove on the floor, and set about teaching each other algebra, philosophy, and the other subjects they will need to pass.

What makes this verite documentary exceptional is its ability to capture telling details: the sign above the principal's desk saying anything is possible with hard work, just before he expels students over fees; girls brushing each other's hair in the downtime between studying sessions; the ecstatic and intimate moments in church and visiting a faith healer, as the students seek any help they can get.

As the exam date approaches, the principal visits the students and implores them to return so he can pay the school's staff. Meanwhile, the young scholars have discovered that the key to passing the exam may not lie in studying, but in finding a trusted source who can leak them the answers.

Director Dieudo Hamadi grew up in Kisangani and was one of the half a million Congolese students who took the national exam each year. NATIONAL DIPLOMA is a closely observed film that offers no overt political commentary as it chronicles the hypocrisy, anxiety and distortion in a deeply colonial system.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 92 minutes

SCHOOL OF BABEL

By Julie Bertuccelli

Welcome to a one-of-a-kind Paris education program for immigrant children from around the globe. In her feature documentary debut, director Julie Bertucelli (SINCE OTAR LEFT, THE TREE) follows one class of students ranging from 11 to 15 years of age as they begin life in a new land.

Hailing from countries across the globe including Ireland, Brazil, China, Ukraine, Tunisia, Venezuela, Guinea and Libya, many of the students at 'La Grange aux Belles,' a school in the diverse 10th district of Paris, are asylum seekers. They must learn French as they combat homesickness, juggle weighty familial responsibilities and recover from the trauma of previous lives of social and economic devastation.

Their teacher, Ms. Cervoni, must exercise as much patience and skill in instructing the students as in her interactions with their parents. As she guides them through a rigorous school year and attempts to prepare them for the transition to mainstream classes, she is a key negotiator in schoolyard conflicts and cultural clashes and navigating complicated dynamics both inside and outside the classroom.

DVD (Color) / 2013 / 89 minutes

SCHOOL'S OUT: LESSONS FROM A FOREST KINDERGARTEN

Directed by Lisa Molomot

A year in the life of a forest kindergarten in Switzerland where being outdoors and unstructured play are the main components.

No classroom for these kindergarteners. In Switzerland's Langnau am Albis, a suburb of Zurich, children 4 to 7 years of age, go to kindergarten in the woods every day, no matter what the weatherman says. This eye-opening film follows the forest kindergarten through the seasons of one school year and looks into the important question of what it is that children need at that age. There is laughter, beauty and amazement in the process of finding out.

The documentary is a combination of pure observational footage of the children at kindergarten in the forest, paired with interviews with parents, teachers, child development experts, and alumni, offering the viewers a genuine look into the forest kindergarten. There are also scenes of a traditional kindergarten in the United States to show the contrast between the different approaches.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades K-12, College, Adult) / 36 minutes

VALENTINE ROAD

Directed by Marta Cunningham

In 2008, eighth-grader Brandon McInerney shot classmate Larry King at point blank range. Unraveling this tragedy, the film reveals the heartbreaking circumstances that led to the shocking crime as well as the aftermath.

On February 12, 2008, in an Oxnard, California, classroom, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot classmate Larry King twice; Larry died of the wounds two days later. Larry (Leticia), a gender-variant youth of color, had liked to wear makeup and heels to school, and had publicly announced a crush on McInerney. For this reason, some of McInerney's defenders say the victim had "embarrassed" the shooter--and was therefore at least partly to blame for his own murder.

VALENTINE ROAD is about an outrageous crime and an even more outrageous defense of it, but the film goes much deeper than mere outrage. In the end, it's the story of two victims of homophobia. Larry was killed because of it, but Brandon's life was horribly twisted by it as well. And it's the story of a community's response--sometimes inspirational and sometimes cruel--to a terrible tragedy.

Filmmaker Marta Cunningham deftly looks beyond the sensational aspects of the murder, introducing us to Larry's friends, teachers and guardians, as well as Brandon's loved ones--both children had led difficult lives. In examining Brandon's prosecution and defense, the documentary poses difficult questions about punishing juveniles for serious crimes, while exposing society's pervasive and deadly intolerance of young people who don't conform to its gender "norms."

VALENTINE ROAD brilliantly focuses on how bigotry and prejudice are community-wide problems, rather than only the acts of individuals. It asks how schools can respond to the the full complexity of students' lives, and support students in crisis before tragedy strikes.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adult) / 88 minutes

EARLY LIFE 2: IN THE MAYOR'S FOOTSTEPS - BRAZIL

Directed by Steve Bradshaw

Mayor Amilcar Huancahuari visits Brazil to assess efforts to promote early childhood development there.

Every year, the Mina congregation in Sao Luis, Brazil, choose a child Emperor and Empress. Watching this year in the tropical heat is Mayor Amilcar Huancahuari. With the new Brazilian government emphasizing Early Child Development, Amilcar wants to know whether Latin America's richest country can follow the Mina example - or whether violence and poverty are still hindering children's chances of fulfilling their potential.

Outside Sao Luis, Amilcar finds the sons and daughters of shrimp fishermen learning ballet. In the hills beyond Fortaleza he learns how the playground can become a classroom. In the drug favelas of Rio, he sees the classroom turned into a playground for learning.

Mayor Amilcar also journeys to the Modernist capital, Brasilia, to discuss his trip with the Minister for Human Rights. Will he find enough exciting ideas to help the kids back home in Peru?

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes

EARLY LIFE 2: IN THE MAYOR'S FOOTSTEPS - PERU

Directed by Steve Bradshaw

Mayor Amilcar Huancahuari is trying to convert his native Peru to his optimistic philosophy of promoting early childhood development.

Warned that the child he's talked to will grow up poor and violent, Mayor Amilcar Huancahuari sighs. If only we could start young, he believes, we'd have a better chance of a peaceful and prosperous world. We need to keep young children away from violence, and develop their brains from birth.

But is that just the Mayor's dream? In this episode of Early Life, the Mayor tours his native Peru to discover how kids are being shortchanged: from the jungle city of Iquitos to the Andes mountains once wracked by political violence. Amilcar visits children who live in a floating favela - where he needs a police bodyguard - finds kids working city streets at midnight, and meets victims of a war over before they were born.

How much poverty, stress and violence can kids be exposed to without incurring real mental damage?

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes

ORIGINAL MINDS

Directed by Tom Weidlinger

Inspirational film that shows a way to bring out the individual talents of five teenagers normally classified as learning disabled.

Wounded by the stigma of being in "special ed" the five teenage protagonists of ORIGINAL MINDS struggle to articulate how their brains work.

Kerrigan is a deep thinker, often seeing connections between disparate ideas and concepts, but when it comes to telling you what you've just said he hasn't a clue.

When Nee Nee writes her fingers have a hard time keeping up with her thoughts.

People often get annoyed with Nattie because she doesn't know when to stop teasing and kidding around.

Marshall spends a lot of time in the bathroom, where his parents can't bug him about homework. He says he wants to "turn over a new leaf" but he's lost nine of his last fifteen math assignments.

Members of Deandre's family tell him he is not college material. He's determined to prove them wrong.

Parents, teachers, friends, therapists, and coaches all weigh in, sometimes with conflicting views, but it's the kids who become the experts in this film, as they work intensively with the filmmaker to tell their stories and discover that they are smarter than they thought. Their narratives reveal the unique approach to learning that each must discern and claim as his or her own if they are to succeed in the world. ORIGINAL MINDS eschews the confusing thicket of labels for learning disorders and reveals universal truths about how we all acquire and process information.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2011 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

PLAY AGAIN (NEW EDITION)

Directed by Tonje Hessen Schei

What are the consequences of a childhood removed from nature? Six screen-addicted teens take their first wilderness adventure.

One generation from now most people in the U.S. will have spent more time in the virtual world than in nature. New media technologies have improved our lives in countless ways. Information now appears with a click. Overseas friends are part of our daily lives. And even grandma loves Wii.

But what are we missing when we are behind screens? And how will this impact our children, our society, and eventually, our planet?

At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, PLAY AGAIN explores the changing balance between the virtual and natural worlds. Is our connection to nature disappearing down the digital rabbit hole?

This emotionally moving and humorous documentary follows six teenagers who, like the "average American child," spend five to fifteen hours a day behind screens. PLAY AGAIN unplugs these teens and takes them on their first wilderness adventure - no electricity, no cell phone coverage, no virtual reality.

Through the voices of children and leading experts including journalist Richard Louv, sociologist Juliet Schor, environmental writer Bill McKibben, educators Diane Levin and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, neuroscientist Gary Small, parks advocate Charles Jordan, and geneticist David Suzuki, PLAY AGAIN investigates the consequences of a childhood removed from nature and encourages action for a sustainable future.

DVD / 2010 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adult) / 80 minutes

EARLY LIFE: MY FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL

Three children prepare to enter primary school in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Thailand's Festival of Water: Songkran. A chance for adults to behave like kids. And for some kids a last chance to misbehave before the first day of school. The third program in the Early Life series follows three children preparing to enter primary school in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But are their lives already set on different courses? Scientists suggest that how the brain develops in the first years of life may affect a child's ability to prosper at school.

Sita is looking forward to her first day, Best is wary, and Tha Na Korn doesn't even have a school to go to yet. Their dilemmas reflect those of Thailand as a whole: how should a country with its own traditions of childhood prepare their kids for a new, globalized society? Thailand is now developing an education policy to meet the needs of a globalized economy.

Child rights might have guaranteed Tha Na Korn local schooling. But many experts who say culture should guide early child development don't like talk of "child rights". They say it could lead to the West imposing its own views of childhood on the world.

Can Thailand achieve child rights without sacrificing its culture? Child rights will mean more kids like Tha Na Korn go to school. But Tha's school has a different language and culture. He could become "unrecognizable to his parents." Child rights and respect for culture need to be combined.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 25 minutes

EARLY LIFE: THE MAYOR'S DREAM

The Mayor's dream is simple: a better world because every child gets a better start.

What goes on inside the brains of babies-and how much are we shaped by the first few years of our lives? Scientists have new insights into how children think, and some claim that by not acting on these discoveries, lives are being wasted.

We visit the Andes where Mayor Amilcar Huanchuari believes that stimulating children's brains early on can make for a more prosperous-and less violent-society. We visit the labs of Boston, MA, where Harvard scientists are trying to determine whether science really is on the Mayor's side. We see how some Kenyan mums have realized that their traditional parenting ways have to change in today's world. And we talk to a young architect in Turkey who believes that her own life proves the Mayor's dream can be a reality.

"I have a dream," says Amilcar Huanchuari. "We know that poverty is a product of malnutrition, poor education and poor stimulation. And from this we believe that investment in education, health and nutrition is important, and we believe in the early stimulation of our children. We're convinced we should work with children from the earliest age and we're going to form a new society of children. We'll build a new generation of children. They'll be more successful and prosperous children and they'll contribute effectively towards a peaceful future for our country."

The Mayor's dream is simple: a better world because every child gets a better start. But does science support his dream? Across the world, evidence on both sides of the debate is mounting up.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 25 minutes

STORYTELLING CLASS, THE

Directed by John Paskievich and John Whiteway

An after-school storytelling project in a diverse, but divided, city school breaks cultural boundaries and creates community.

Located in Winnipeg's downtown core, Gordon Bell High School is probably the most culturally varied school in the city, with 58 different languages spoken by the student body. Many students are children who have arrived as refugees from various war torn areas of the world.

In an effort to build bridges of friendship and belonging across cultures and histories, teacher Marc Kuly initiated an after-school storytelling project whereby the immigrant students would share stories with their Canadian peers.

The catalyst for this cross-cultural interaction was the students' reading of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, a memoir of Beah's horrific time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war.

These voluntary after-school meetings take dramatic turns and reach their climax when Ishmael Beah and professional storyteller Laura Simms travel from New York to work with them. With their help the students learn to listen to each other and find the commonality that so long eluded them.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 59 minutes

LIFE 5: SCHOOL'S OUT!

Directed by Dick Bower

The private school option in a Lagos shantytown.

Makoko is a shantytown on the edge of Lagos, the largest city in West Africa. Space is precious, so Makoko stretches out into the lagoon, where many of the houses are built on stilts. Average income in Makoko is about fifty dollars a month. In Nigeria ninety per cent of people live on less than two dollars a day. According to UNICEF, less than half the children of primary school age get an education, with school fees as high as ten dollars. However, new research reveals that parents here are prepared to pay to get their children educated.

The people of Makoko appear to have a choice: Children can go to the free state school, or they can pay at one of a growing number of small, private schools that have opened there. Research into how and why these private schools have emerged in such unlikely circumstances has been organized by a team from the University of Newcastle-upon- Tyne. Their research reveals that in communities like Makoko, parents are voting with their feet. They think the state system has failed, and a new and interesting grass roots movement in education seems to be the result.

DVD (Color) / 2005 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 23 minutes

LIFE 4: EDUCATING YAPRAK

Turkey's ambitious campaign to reduce poverty includes convincing reluctant parents to send their daughters to school.

At the crossroads of Asia and Europe, Turkey is a country with a large, young population. But literacy rates have traditionally lagged behind neighboring Greece and Bulgaria. With its sights firmly set on future EU membership, Turkey has identified education as key to reducing poverty. So Turkey has embarked on an ambitious campaign, targeting those most deprived of education-young teenage girls-especially from the poor rural areas. Life visits Turkey's eastern Province of Van and meets 13-year-old Yaprak, just one of the many targeted by this massive education drive. She, for one, is sure of the benefits. "I want to study until the end. I want to finish university. I want to have a job."

DVD (Color) / 2004 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes

LIFE: EDUCATING LUCIA

The odds are against girls getting an education in Zimbabwe and throughout much of Africa.

Twelve-year old Lucia's dream is to be able to graduate to secondary school, and stay there-to finish the 12th grade and go on to train as a pilot. Her older sister Barita wants to do computer studies. And Portia, the youngest in the family, wants to be a dressmaker.

But tragically for these three sisters from one of Zimbabwe's large scale commercial farms, in tobacco country 50 miles outside Harare, they're more likely to end up -- as their mothers before them -- with no formal education, working as seasonal laborers on the farm. The three sisters are AIDS orphans being brought up by their grandmother. She can only afford school fees for one girl, Lucia, to attend primary school.

Across Africa, the odds are dramatically against girls getting an education. And even if they do attend primary school, they're often withdrawn before they finish -- to work as unpaid laborers for their extended family, to be married off or to have children. Only one in four school age girls in Burkina Faso ever attends school.

Across the continent only 24 percent of girls actually complete primary school, compared to 65-70% for boys. As Harry Sawyer, Minister for Education in Ghana, wrote in a recent UNICEF report, the obstacles to girls' education are the same as those that undermine economic and social development everywhere "but in the end, all the reasons add up to one: insufficient will."

DVD (Color) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 24 minutes

SMALL WONDERS

Director: Allan Miller

This inspirational documentary deservedly earned a 1995 Academy Award nomination. Divorced mother Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras taught music in the New York City school system until the budget ax eliminated her job. Dedicated to music and her students, she established a foundation and raised money to create her own violin program in three East Harlem schools. The film follows Guaspari-Tzavaras as she lugs her equipment from school to school, teaching students who range from young beginners to high-school students. The students' recitals include performing for an auditorium full of parents, playing the "Star-Spangled Banner" before a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, and finally making a Carnegie Hall appearance accompanied by world renown violinists Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman.

DVD / 1995 / 77 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Education_1911.html

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INTERVIEW: Ian James Christopher of Widow's Wail

Originally founded in Las Vegas, Widow’s Wail is one of the newest acts to hit the Los Angeles scene with a ferocious force. Established in 2015, Widow’s Wail has been through its trials and triumphs and is now hitting the music industry of Southern California- having just performed an incredible live show on October 26th. Rock Revolt Magazine had the pleasure of interviewing the front man and mastermind behind the project, a Mr. Ian James Christopher about his new project.

Rock Revolt: Let’s jump right in. Tell me about Widow’s Wail and the band’s sound. How would you describe your music?

Ian James Christopher: I’d say there’s a lot of heavier influence on my music, not necessarily coming from heavier bands, but more so from the desire to, well, sound heavy if that makes sense. I think there’s a good mix of angst, anxiety, aggression, depression, and the music is somewhat of an embodiment of these emotions along with others.

What image do you feel your music invokes?

For some songs, I write graphic, horror inspired lyrics, so I’d definitely look to inspire that same type of imagery. With other songs, I write from a personal perspective, so I’d like to inspire the listener to think of the passion behind the content.

If we’re talking about appearance, I’d say that I definitely pride myself in not looking like a random guy off the street. I feel like a huge aspect of performance art is your appearance, and that you could put on some incredible mind blowing performance but if you look like someone who’d blend in with a crowd then part of the “wow factor” could be lost.

What are you greatest influences in your musical career?

I feel like my music is the blended up result of all the music I listen to, from emotionally driven bands like H.I.M., Type O Negative, and From Autumn to Ashes, to heavier driven music like Whitechapel, Bleeding Through, Chimaira, and Shai Hulud. I listen to a ton of more conventional music too like Lana Del Rey and Ace of Base, and alternative “goth music” artists (like Joy Division and Siouxsie Sioux) and I feel like all of these influence me in some way, from wanting to sound heavy, to wanting to have sticky hooks in my choruses, to wanting to invoke darker imagery, and so on.

What has the writing and production process been like for you thus far?

I’ll get ideas at the most random times. I’ll be working out or hanging out with friends and some catchy line or cool riff or melody will randomly pop into my head; I’ll write ideas down and pull up word documents when working on a song in the studio to see if I can use some of those older ideas.

I love that my producer and engineer understand my creative mind well and we’ll be able to meet up, sit down for a few hours, and crank out an awesome track with little to no trouble. I’ve dealt with corrupt/greedy producers in the past who provided me with a subpar final product musically, but I feel very thankful to work with who I do now.

You were established in 2015, in Las Vegas- what pushed you to start this project?

I was living on and off in Vegas at the time but knew I was going back to college and unable to maintain regularly traveling from California to Vegas to keep up with poker and sports betting. I had previously quit playing instruments and writing music entirely around 2011 and I was missing music.

I also felt like I didn’t really give it my all when I was younger as it relates to music. I was playing guitar and bass with friends and their bands but I never really put forth an effort in succeeding, or even recording, and I wanted to make sure I got involved with music before it was too late and I ended up not having a chance to do so.

What about the metal genre attracts you? What is it about this particular niche of music that made you want to play it?

Community is a huge aspect for me. I’ve always felt like I was able to find somewhere I belong when I found music more related to an alternative lifestyle, specifically metal. People came to accept me as who I am and some even started to respect me, which was mind blowing as a youth, and helped to bolster my confidence so that I could stand up on my own both as an artist and as a person. I’m very fortunate and very thankful to have found the metal community.

I play metal both because it’s my favorite genre of music, but also because I feel like I need to leave a lasting artistic impression. To expand, I’d like to work hard in order to give back to the metal, alternative, gothic, etc. communities by being a part of something bigger than myself in music and art.

Your record is anticipated to be released in 2020. What can you tell us about it? What information can you divulge?

I pride myself on the fact that a majority of my songs don’t necessarily sound the same. Some will be quieter and more ambient with an emphasis on the instruments and accompaniment, while others will be very loud/fast paced/aggressive and prioritize the blast beats and screams to the listener’s ear, with so many other songs in-between. My producer, engineer, and I do a lot of experimenting and we like to think outside the box, while still implementing these fresh ideas in songs and working toward a goal of combining them with sounds and techniques that have been proven to be well-received, whether it be instrumentally, vocally, or composition wise.

Who are your live players? Can you tell me more about them?

My friends Dany Khouli (formerly of Blackcast, a San Diego based metalcore act) and Triston Cheshire (who plays in several deathcore/death metal/slam bands such as Angel Splitter, Harvested Existence, False Idol, Disorder, and Avarice, to name a few) are joining me on bass and guitar, respectively. I’m very happy we’re able to work together, as we’re all very passionate about music and translate it to showing on stage or in our music. I’ve seen how great of musicians they are, and if we end up working together long-term, I’d be very interested in working together on the songwriting process. I also highly suggest anyone interested listen to their bands and affiliated musical acts! These guys are legit and I’m very lucky to call them friends and musical peers.

Another good friend of mine is working behind the scenes on learning bass, and if he’s still able to work together, Dany would probably move to a second guitarist position. We’d also love to find a live drummer with the technical ability to keep up, and a potential live keyboardist as well in future. Fingers crossed!

What is your opinion on the music industry today? What is your ideology moving forward?

We’re living in a very interesting time. Thanks to the advent of the internet and social networking, we’re able to get our eyes and ears on so many bands and artists that would’ve most likely gone unnoticed 20, or even 5 years ago. However, because of this over saturation of music, some people aren’t impressed by anything anymore.

Sometimes, musicians aren’t really getting paid at all, and some people might even be signing contracts or may be working with people who don’t look out for their best interests and are essentially signing away their creative and even individual (i.e. hairstyles, wardrobe) freedoms to interest groups or other entities, etc. that get to take over their lives.

I love that I can go online and find tons of bands I’ve never heard of, but I also find that they’ve got no real following and aren’t able to establish any sort of momentum toward succeeding in getting their name out, sometimes because people will just click “next artist” if they aren’t impressed in the first 3 seconds by what they hear online and these great artists, while having their name essentially up on the world’s stage, may go unappreciated.

What does success mean to you?

I really want my MUSIC to be well known, but I don’t really have an interest in personal fame aside from maybe it being a means to an end of getting my music and my message out there. I’d definitely consider myself to not be an “I need attention” kind of guy, even if my appearance may suggest otherwise. I like the idea of being able to go to the grocery store and load up on olives at the olive bar while a song I write plays over the radio and the guy next to me has no clue that’s me (laughs).

Additionally, having some huge follower count online isn’t really a main goal of mine either. I feel like these numbers aren’t everything, and don’t want to get caught up focused on this over my product (e.g. the quality of the music).

What are your future goals and plans for Widow’s Wail?

I’d like to get Widow’s Wail established musically and built up to something successful while always being able to do things on my own terms and be my own musician and person. I have a laundry list of bands with whom I’d love to be able to say I’ve had the honor of sharing stages together. After that, I’d like to work toward putting out what fans, followers, friends, and myself would believe to be my magnum opus release, and proceeding to do one last big tour before I can call it quits on my own terms. I want to spend the next few years working to reach an apex of what I consider success and quit while I’m ahead. I graduated from business school at SDSU (go Aztecs!) and I’d like to parlay any musical success of mine toward a career as a manager, agent, songwriter, or something similar; to venture further into the business side of music is definitely a long term goal of mine.

Before then? Touring and creating incredible memories with my closest friends, making music I want to make and talking about the things either in my life or in my imagination that I’d like to talk about. I’d like to give all of my friends and musical acquaintances an opportunity to see what I’m all about musically and aesthetically, and I’d like to give back to my community.

I’d like to one day be able to sit and work to help out struggling young musicians get their voices heard, or even just help young people by being a positive influence and someone willing to lend a listening ear and a helping hand. If I can help one musician get established, or even just help one young person not end up going down a terrible path in life, I’ll feel like I was successful in that regard, though ideally I’d like to help as many people as I could.

I’ve always been very hands-on in various music scenes both in person and online. Sometimes I’ll drive hours to see bands play and be one of the only people there, but I’ll still make sure they know they’re supported and that someone genuinely enjoys their music, their band. Other times, I’ll be hard at work networking on facebook or other places online in order to get my friends in far away places’ bands noticed and help them build their names up as well, even if I can’t be there physically to help.

Any bands you’d ideally like to tour with?

I’d like to play shows or tour with all of my favorite bands, both local and big name.

A dream tour of mine would be for me to serve as a bridge between the local scene and the bigger names, something like two big bands that I admire and two smaller acts that I call friends along with myself and Widow’s Wail. I’ve been very lucky and honored to meet the minds behind Bleeding Through, Eighteen Visions, and Carnifex and I’d like to establish myself to a level where I could be seriously considered by them/their representative(s) in order to be an act on one of their tours. Some of my other favorite active bands are Motionless in White, Crystal Lake, Shadow of Intent, Jinjer, The Amity Affliction, and Fit For an Autopsy.

CLICK HERE TO CONNECT WITH WIDOW’S WAIL

INTERVIEW: Ian James Christopher of Widow’s Wail was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

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