#she will always ultimately choose madison square

[dylanlila]

eve didn't get bitten... taylor chose this career... try and come for my job...

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

On the Outside Looking In: Growing Up in the Moonies

Flore Singer Aaslid, Ph.D. (2007)

Abstract The author recounts her experiences as a child and young adult in the Unification Church (“the Moonies”). She discusses the enduring sense of not fitting in, which arose from her many years of travelling and being taken care of by people other than her parents (who were usually busy with missionary work) and stigmatized for being an “unblessed” child (not born to Moonie parents). During this prolonged conflict situation she vacillated between trying to “buy it” and rebelling. Leaving the group proved to be difficult because she discovered that she did not fit in “outside” either. Ultimately, however, she left the group permanently and began to build a new life.

____________________________________________

There is a saying that if something doesn’t kill you it will only make you stronger. A spiritual perspective might interpret this statement as meaning that most challenges in life, however unpleasant or inconvenient, are like trials laid out by some Grand Master Plan for the sole purpose of adding some muscle to one’s otherwise weak disposition. Perceived from such a perspective, being raised in an environment such as that of the Moonies is really a blessing in disguise, with a vast array of potentials and possibilities to grow and expand in every conceivable manner. In my case, I can see how the whole experience has toughened me up in many respects. Nevertheless, for me, the most enduring and overwhelming side effect of growing up as a cult kid (having been set apart from society at large and carefully protected in a dogmatic cocoon for most of my formative years) is the relentless, almost haunting, yet mostly exasperating feeling of never quite fitting in—anywhere. I have yet to discover whether this is a blessing or a curse, but it’s probably a little of both.

Like that of many of my peers also raised in “the church,” as we called the whole ordeal, my childhood was somewhat turbulent. From the age of two, I never lived more than two years at a time in any one place. By the time I was eight, I had already lived in four different countries and learned three different languages (two of which, unfortunately, I forgot as I no longer used them). The number of “caretakers” I had during those years is beyond my recollection (probably more than 20 and fewer than 50), for both of my parents were missionaries, busying themselves with the very important task of saving the world. I was a sacrifice for the sake of a greater good, my mother used to tell me. I was put into God’s Hands, and with the help of a lot of faith and a seemingly endless number of dedicated prayers, He would protect me (sort of like paying holy instalments toward some kind of sacred life insurance). This might have worked, for all I know; I was an almost abnormally healthy child, and even today the most serious illness to fall upon me has been the flu and some nasty stomach problems in India.

Still, it is as if all this moving about, learning new languages, making new friends, adapting to different environments, only to be torn away from it all and repeat the process all over again (and again, and again, ad infinitum), somehow turned me into a weird little muddled misfit. I was doomed to feel like a perpetual stranger, forever the foreigner, like some bizarre product of shoddy enculturation, sloppy socialization, or whatever one wishes to call that process through which young children experience a sense of belonging, and identify with their nearest and dearest. I wasn’t, of course, consciously aware of my predicament at such a young age. I just felt exceedingly lonely, and of course being an only child didn’t help matters. Children, as a rule, don’t like to stand out, and lord knows I did my best to fit in. I made friends easily, was unusually outgoing, learned languages and dialects in record time, joined the Girl Scouts, the swim club, the ski club, and even a glee club (chorus). I wore the right clothes and probably liked the right things, but to no avail; that lonely feeling just never left me. And all this, by the way, relates purely to my experiences with the Outside World (that is how we Moonies referred to what other people might perceive as “normal society”). Children growing up in cults, or in any kind of fundamentalist movement for that matter, always get stuck between (at least) two worlds.

Things probably would have been slightly different, although not necessarily better, had I felt some sense of belonging in the Inside World (my own personal term for the Moonies, or “the family,” as we insiders referred to ourselves). This fate was not to be mine, however, for one big reason that I can explain only by examining the Moonie Belief System (B S). This “family” came complete with a set of True Parents (Sun Myung Moon, also founder and self-proclaimed messiah, and his wife) and True Children (their 14 children). All the other members lovingly referred to each other as True Brothers and Sisters to complete the Holy Metaphor, but also, I suspect, to linguistically prevent any kind of sexual activity from occurring between these “Brothers and Sisters.” Premarital sex was regarded as an almost unforgivable mortal sin. Sex was so terrible that any children born from this impure act were blemished forever with the stain of Original Sin, passed on through generations all the way back to when Adam and Eve had premarital sex. This is “the fall” according to the Moonie bible (otherwise known as “The Principle”)—which, incidentally, was Eve’s fault because she had sex with Satan first and then felt guilty because she remembered that it was Adam she was supposed to have sex with, whereby she seduced him, but, alas, too late or too early, or both, and so women became the inferior sex and suffer childbirth and menstruation and all sorts of womanly misfortunes as a consequence of this badly timed and somewhat bungled-up sex act.

To remedy this calamity, all lowly mortals (both men and women) must pay Indemnity. Any kind of personal misfortune could be seen as one form of paying Indemnity, but most members supplemented this payment with additional suffering, just to make sure that Indemnity was indeed being paid. There was fasting (often for [7] days with absolutely no food whatsoever); getting up very early and praying hysterically for days, weeks, or months on end; as well as fundraising (practically all the members fundraised at some point or another; many did nothing but fundraise) and witnessing (getting other unsuspecting outsiders to join the happy family). The only other activity that could remove the stain of Original Sin was The Blessing. Here, several hundred (sometimes several thousand) couples, whom True Father himself picked out from pictures or in a great big gathering called “The Matching,” would all get married at the same time by True Parents, in some very big place, like a football stadium, or Madison Square Garden. 

▲ Sun Myung Moon “matching” couples in the 1980s.

Not only the Blessed Couple, but all the future children born from this holy matrimony, would then be freed of Original Sin (which explains why it was so popular; I think the Moonies are even in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest mass weddings in history). The offspring of these decontaminated couples were then subsequently called the Blessed Children since these lucky little cherubs were born into the world unblemished and completely free of Original Sin. In all metaphysical respects, as perfect as can be.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view), I was no such child. Born to an unwed mother before she joined the church, I was doomed to carry the burden of Original Sin. I and others like me were continually reminded of this disgraceful state of affairs by simply being given the rather unflattering designation of Unblessed Children [“Jacob children”]. 

As an Unblessed Child, I was excluded in several different ways: Ritually during Sunday morning prayers (which always took place at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m.), for example, where I was consistently prohibited from saying the Pledge of the Families (not belonging to a Blessed Family myself). Socially, during big Moonie celebrations such as God’s Day, where special seats were always reserved for Blessed Children (I was allowed to sit there on many occasions, but hardly ever without first being solemnly informed that these seats were really for Blessed Children). Then there was the obligatory trip to Korea ( [usually for 40 days, but possibly] lasting several years), which was an absolute must for most Blessed Children, but not for me (although from what I’ve heard, I think I was blessed to have missed it). And of course, as opposed to most of the Blessed Children, I was in no way exempt from the fundraising and witnessing. After all, Indemnity must be paid, and I have many (not so very fond) memories of myself standing on street corners selling flowers with my mother, usually for some worthy “Christian” cause (we hardly ever said it was for the Moonies, unless we happened to be in the mood for some rather unpleasant “persecution,” as we called the stone throwing, name calling, and other mostly verbal abuse).

Understandably, after many years of this kind of treatment, one is always in danger of feeling vaguely inadequate and prone to a slight sense of inferiority with respect to those Holier Than Thou. So, to finally make my point, even in the Inside World, amidst my own True Brothers and Sisters, I felt like an outcast, a recluse, a misfit, and once again, the freak in the group.

Psychologically speaking, there are probably several ways to deal with this type of dilemma. I have ascertained two primary methods: Either you buy the crap (pardon my French), or you don’t. Choosing the first method would have been highly destructive to my fragile psyche. No complex psychological analysis needed here; I simply state what to me seems obvious: believing that one is fundamentally inferior to most of one’s peers, for whatever reason, can dangerously stagnate one’s own personal growth and development. (However, believing that their superiority is due to a somewhat more elaborate mating ritual between their parents than that of one’s own does make it all the more absurd, even though some 50-odd years back, the majority of our God-fearing citizens adopted this view regarding unwed mothers and their “bastard” children. But this just goes to show how cruel and easily duped we humans can be.) Therefore, probably to protect myself and spare myself serious damage in the long run, somewhere in the depths of my psyche (possibly even subconsciously), I decided at a relatively early age that I was surrounded by a group of gibbering morons.

This was, perhaps, not the most sophisticated strategy, but it was effective, and it worked wonders when it came to ignoring and shutting out most of the ranting and raving that appeared to compose the greater part of my conceptual reality tunnel (the Inside World), although, admittedly, many times the two worlds collided. The resulting clash was so straining that I did my best to convince myself that this plump little Korean guy jumping about on a stage, flailing his arms energetically and barking loudly in gibberish (Korean), really was the Messiah, here to save the world and populate the planet with little Blessed Children. Fortunately, this phase was usually fleeting, and then I was back to my familiar miserable, cynical self. Ironically, I strongly believe today that had I been a Blessed Child, this strategy (deciding that I was surrounded by a group of gibbering morons) would have been very difficult to adopt. This is because Blessed Children had, for the most part, been told all their lives how very special, important, and unique they were, sort of like Holy Super Kids. The whole world depended on them, and if there is still widespread misery and suffering today, it is because they haven’t taken their role and mission seriously enough (what a burden, poor kids). Basically, my guess is that it is much harder to disregard and block out positive affirmations that build self-esteem and make one feel like a Very Important Person than it is to ignore a Belief System that ultimately makes one feel like a little piece of poop. In other words, I think I was blessed to have been unblessed (life is funny that way).

Another factor worth mentioning here is that many of the Blessed Children, in addition to being conveniently Blessed to one another, later became very economically dependent on the church, which mediated and sponsored both jobs and higher education, making it hard for a recipient to break free on any level, even if one did start developing a mind of one’s own. Put slightly differently, where subtle and sophisticated mind-controlling techniques fail, hard economic facts still tend to win out in the end (I, of course, was never worth sponsoring and have had to make do with a combination of student loans and welfare, sigh). Finally, I do believe that all that moving about during my early years, and the fact that I never really managed to “bond” successfully with my mother, made it much easier for me to break out later on. Filial piety (playing the role of obedient and devoted daughter) just didn’t seem to be in my nature; and as for my father, he drifted out when I was 12 and later helped me do the same.

I have often wondered why it was so easy for me to turn my back on my True Family, and (almost) never look back. I left to live with my father in California when I was 14 (although mentally I was long gone way before then). About two years later, I decided to re-join, and become a missionary myself in France (the Outside World was too much for me at such a vulnerable age, and I had to escape before it gobbled me up—“from the frying pan into the fire,” as they say). Being a missionary in France was probably the most serious attempt I made at “buying it” my whole life. Growing up in the Moonies was due to unfortunate circumstances way beyond my control, but becoming a missionary at the age of 16 was a desperate and conscious choice. It was, in many ways, a matter of survival, at least existentially. The loneliness and emptiness I felt in the Outside World at the age of 14 was so intense that I’m really quite surprised I emerged from it all as relatively unscathed as I did (my mother was almost certainly paying holy instalments to my sacred life insurance more than ever at that point).

The best illustration I can think of to illustrate this feeling is that of a small animal, locked up in a cage most of its life, and then suddenly set free to manage as best as it can in the jungle. Or, as another cult kid I read about in a Norwegian newspaper described it, being raised in a sect is like growing up in a spaceship, protected and confined, and then one day leaping out into space. Compared to the chaos, the overwhelming freedom and the incredible loneliness I encountered out in the big cruel world, being an Unblessed Child in the Moonies seemed like peanuts. After all, here at least I was part of something, even if it was the lesser part of an otherwise perfect family. Orbiting the Outside World, having cut all ties linking me to the Mother Moonie Spaceship, I felt utterly and completely alone. Therefore, I quit high school and set off to become a missionary and sell flowers (more out of necessity than conviction). A stranger in yet another strange land, but, as fate would have it that was probably one of my wisest and most courageous decisions. Sunny California would have been the death of me, and even though I ended up staying in France only for a year (after which I fell in love with a young Norwegian and moved to Norway), I knew instinctively that I had to get away, no matter where, no matter how.

The Moonies (or whatever they call themselves today) are not the Ku Klux Klan, as one of my childhood friends has already pointed out in a previous article. They do have some positive values, and they do mean well (yes, I know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions). On the whole, my experiences have taught me a lot about society, human nature, and this very bizarre and sometimes unpleasant state called life. The feeling of being a misfit, a social freak, doomed to dwell forever on the outside looking in, still haunts me wherever I go. However, I do have a new “family,” I have my friends, and I have my son (and I can rest assured knowing that when it comes to child rearing, I certainly know what NOT to do). I also have my sense of humor to chase away any new devils (traumas and tragedies) that might happen to fly my way. I have noticed that fanaticism (in its many forms and guises) and humor are unhappy bedfellows; they just don’t mix very well. So for those of you who find this article somewhat offensive in any way, my sincere apologies; but when it comes down to a conflict between preserving other peoples’ Belief System and my own mental health, I tend to get a little selfish.

In many respects, I suppose that growing up the way I have has made me stronger and wiser. But I certainly didn’t choose the easy way out, and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if things might have been less problematic if I’d just stayed on the inside, content with looking out. But then, I seem to attract adversity; and besides, I was never really on the inside, just like I’ll never really be on the outside. You’ll find me floating in those fuzzy grey zones in between.

____________________________________________

This material was originally prepared for a presentation at the AFF [now known as ICSA] annual conference, June 14-15, 2002, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Orlando (FL) Airport.

It was published in Cultic Studies Review, 2(1), 2003, 1-8

http://www.icsahome.com/articles/on-the-outside-looking-in-growing-up-in-the-moonies

____________________________________________

Flore Singer Aaslid was born 12 October 1972 in Rosenheim, Germany. She was raised as a “non-blessed” child [a “Jacob child”] in the Unification Church and grew up in Germany, England, USA, France, and Norway, respectively.

She was about 8 when her mother was ‘blessed’ to her father at a Unification Church mass wedding at Madison Square Gardens in 1982.

Currently, she is a social anthropologist based in Trondheim, Norway, where she lives with her son.

____________________________________________

Wise Mind – A Case for the Integration of Subjective Experience with Objective Reality in the Age of Fragmentation written by Flore Singer Aaslid

Introducing ‘Ethnography and Self-Exploration’ — Sjaak van der Geest, Trudie Gerrits, Flore Singer Aaslid

Marginal groups, marginal minds Reflections on ethnographic drug research and other traumatic experiences by Flore Singer Aaslid

Flore Singer Aaslid Thesis: Facing the Dragon: Exploring a conscious phenomenology of intoxication

Flore Singer Aaslid Book: Facing the Dragon: Exploring a conscious phenomenology of intoxication  Paperback – 23 Feb 2010

Do you see it? Adam and Eve were husband and wife before the Fall, not brother and sister.

In the 1952 Divine Principle, Jesus was married.

Sun Myung Moon’s explanation of the Fall of Man is based on his Confucian ideas of lineage, and his belief in shaman sex rituals.

Hooked on the “true lineage” rhetoric

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe

Writings of former FFWPU members Many recount their experiences in the organization or their journeys out of it

Ashamed to be Korean

[drunklander]

The last season of Outlander saw Jamie and Claire tragically separated for twenty years, which feels like just about the same length of time we've all been waiting for new episodes. Truly, the Droughtlander has been painful, but it's almost over, and judging from what I learned about the series' fourth season at New York Comic-Con's Outlander panel over the weekend, it's going to be worth the wait.

Inside the buzzy, crowded Madison Square Garden in New York City, stars Sam Heughan and Catriona Balfe joined series creator Ronald D. Moore to chat about the new season, which will find Jamie and Claire both physically and emotionally settled in a way we haven't seen before.

“They’ve been through a lot,” said Heughan in what may be the understatement of the any decade. “Their relationship has really evolved, and at the core of it is this great love and understanding. They’re soulmates, and they’ve been fighting to be together, and finally in this season, they are. It’s what Jamie, certainly, has always yearned for.” Same, tbh.

Balfe added that having spent so many years apart, the pair have now overcome their "initial getting-to-know-each-other-again period." "This season, there’s such a contentment with the two of them being together, and you see them building a life together, building this home together," Bale said. "It’s a more settled, content place than we’ve ever got to before.”

Listen, we shouldn’t get too comfortable–you know, this being Outlander and all–but we can at least trust that Jamie and Claire’s relationship is not at risk. “There’s always going to be external forces, but I don’t think there’s any cliffhangers about whether this couple will stay together. They’re pretty solid. We got this.”

Though the show is still filmed in Scotland, season four transports Jamie and Claire to North Carolina, where they’ve landed after the season three finale left them shipwrecked on a Georgia beach.

“It’s the classic story of immigrants coming to the new world,” said Moore. “There was a wave of people coming in the 18th century, and Claire and Jamie are just two more of them, along with the family and friends they bring with them. It’s a great retelling of the American foundational myth, as they come to North Carolina and put down stakes and decide this is the place they will call home.”

Diana Gabaldon, the author of the Outlander series of novels on which the show is based, made a surprise appearance at the panel and noted that this choice of location is historically accurate. “The Scots had to go somewhere, and where a lot of them went was the New World," she explained. "A whole lot went up the Cape Fear river and into the mountains because it looked like home.” She added, “one of every three colonists was from Scotland” at the time.

While everyone on the panel was pretty tight-lipped about spoilers, Moore did let slip that the new season will feature more time travel.

The final question of the night came from a fan who asked about the show’s frequent depiction of sexual assault–which is discussed explicitly during a scene in the season premiere–and whether our current nightmare of a political climate had any impact on how those storytelling choices.

“Ultimately, the show is about these characters and this story, so we don’t choose to look at it as a platform for political ideas,” Moore replied. “But at the same time, all of us live in the world. We all live in this culture, we all live in this society, and we have to be cognizant of the world, so we try to talk about it through the show, but not preach to the audience.”

[sedonalace]

a dream is just a dream until it becomes all too real

This is another mess that I made I guess. yeah, that’s all I’m gonna say about that. just here to say I hope you all have a great day and I hope this doesn’t seem too confusing that’s all lmao. 

Also, follow me on twitter @ mirisxoxo bc self-promo, I have no shame and I am very bored.

❤ ❤ ❤

This doesn't seem too out of the ordinary for him. Although he usually never dreams about it, it makes sense that it appears right now because of the last competition he was in. And although he won, all of the hours of skating practice, day and night, almost 8 hours a day consecutively at times. It might have caught up all at once. And now skating was invading his paradise escape.

Matteo was in the park, just doing a few tricks for a bit. Drawing in a small crowd of people walking by. After that short sequence ended, he decided to venture off on his own to roam around in the fresh air. It was something he never got to do too often. But it was a dream, even if he didn't know it. Literally, there were no bounds as to what could happen in a dream. It's an odd thing to think about.

Along the way, he sees a girl in the distance. Way too far out to even be noticed by the other. But she was the only other one in the park that was skating as well. The thing is though, she looked very out of place though, not necessarily in the bad way.

She wore these brightly colored clothes that could be seen from space, with the neons so blinding. Also the fact that she wore a tank top and short shorts, even though it was getting pretty chilly in Buenos Aires as Autumn quickly approached. As if she just walked straight off a beach.

This may be due to the fact that she seemed so young, youthful even. Very petite. Despite these things, this isn't what even stood out the most to Matteo. Her hair was so dark and long. It very much imitated waves washing over her shoulders delicately. So soft and calming. She stumbled a bit from point to point. But ultimately, would get back up right away and carry on.

He didn't choose his favorite standout point, however, until she noticed him.

As he watched her in the distance, her mostly back-facing side view turned the slightest bit to see behind her. When she spotted someone staring, she made a stop and completely turned around, where they were facing one another eye for eye. In those stares, there was such a strong feeling, so hard to describe. Something like it want to pull closer to her. However, he stayed put letting everything sink in.

Her eyes recognized every inch of him from her standpoint. And as she pierced her green eyes through his, her lips turned up the tiniest bit, moving slowly up. Into the form of a complete grin.

She smiled. She smiled. She smiled.

And then it shut down.

~~~~~

Matteo opened his eyes, shaken up. Returned back to his room, lying comfortably in his bed, in the early hours of the morning with the orange rising sun peeking through the blinds, making a painting on the walls. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as best as he could before reaching for his phone. 6:34 A.M. it read. With only 23% battery left, having a crappy broken phone charger, and not having the time to buy a new one. He groaned into his pillow not only because he has to be at the university in 45 minutes or that he'll have a mostly dead phone throughout the day, but because of the dream. This weird, unexpected, and destructive dream. It really came out of nowhere. The strangest it's been in a while.

He can only hope that nothing comes of it, and he can get through this already rough day without setting anything else off.

•

This one doesn't seem so far off from most of his dreams. Singing in front of a crowd is always the goal he chases after. Most of the time it takes place in the places impossible to get to, like Madison Square Garden or the Rose Bowl or something like that and with a big band behind him and colorful lights all around.

Except here, he's in the Jam and Roller during another Open Music. He wakes up from his drifted off state and realizes he is in the dressing room, waiting to go up. He recognizes voices and turns around to find Jim and Yam at the vanity fighting over which lip color to go with. And Ramiro trying to get them to shut up. Luckily that part is already settled for them as they hear Juliana's voice announcing them to go up and they abandon their previous argument, leaving Matteo alone with his thoughts.

Matteo grabs his guitar that stood beside him on the rack and lightly strummed the strings for sound. Time has apparently vanished in a blink as he hears the sound of quiet clapping from outside and his name being called to go on stage. He takes a breath and goes up, passing by the three who went before him, too busy gushing over how well they think they did to even bother looking at him.

He sits on the stool and looks out. The atmosphere has changed tremendously for this one. He can barely see out into the crowd now. But he could tell it was a bit more thinned out. The tables looked prettier for some reason with some fancy tables clothes and flowers in pretty arrangements. And several candles placed on the tables to emit the room with dimmed lights. It was a very romantic scenery he just wasn't used to seeing at Jam and Roller where everything is full of fun and color and pop.

As he randomly starts playing apparently a song he doesn't recall even writing, as he has no control over this dream, he looks into this crowd and he doesn't recognize a face. None of his friends or classmates or Ambar, or even the regular spectators who come to these things. They were new faces who he couldn't even distinguish. That is until he looks at the very last table at the corner of the room in the far, far back. It's the girl from the other dream. Sitting with the candle illuminating her face just enough that he could distinguish who she was.

He almost felt himself stop playing not being able to believe it. He couldn't figure out how the hell she could appear again. It did make sense that it actually is possible to have someone or something to appear more than once. But it was never really believable. Not in this much detail, or in such a pattern in his best settings. But she was there, her smile growing bigger the more he played. Her cheeks growing pinker, and her hair falling more often in her face as a chance to tuck it away in that soft and shy way that he deemed charming. And that made him smile too.

As he finished singing the last lyrics, strumming the last chords hearing it fade away, his attention was only focused on her. Staring intently at one another, feeling her eyes burn into him again. And when it was over, it all went black.

~~~~~

Matteo woke up in a frenzy, hitting his head on something very hard. He was at his desk in his room, with open textbooks and papers all around him, had fallen asleep very late in the night from studying.

He rubbed his head and tried to blink the sleep away from his eyes. He saw the girl again in his dream he remembered, which was very odd. He had never seen her in his life before, never knew her name or anything. But he remembered her and had no idea why. Everything was so unexplainable. Maybe its been the past few weeks of his strenuous schedule. Between the competitions and recovery, studying for finals, or whatever. Maybe it all just caught up to him and this was the result he thought.

He checked his phone for the time. It was 11 A.M. Very late to be waking up on his terms, but it was Saturday and he didn't have any plans for the day so it was sort of acceptable. However, there were millions of texts it seemed from Ambar. Checking up on him, asking about finals, checking for vacation preparations, asking to see if he was even alive. And then finally her giving up on him. He groaned as he laid his head back on the desk again, his head pounding from all the thoughts.

Deciding to just go back to sleep for a few minutes to avoid dealing with his life problems and hopefully to forget these imaginations or whatever was happening to him.

•

He's back in the dressing room again, except there's no Jim or Yam or Ramiro there. Just him by himself. There doesn't seem to be anyone outside of the room either he thinks. He can't tell if he's reliving the same dream over again. He found himself but in the same place. It's never happened before.

Matteo rules out that he's alone when he hears music starting up coming from the stage. He turns around confused and peaks through the side curtain wing. The girl starring in his most recent dreams center stage with a microphone in hand, swallowing herself in the light and music playing. No one is in the crowd as he suspected, but she continues to float in her own presence, as the beginning of the song plays on.

The girl starts to sing, a song unfamiliar to Matteo once before, but now he's capturing every lyric in his brain to not let it pass by him. Her voice sounds so delicate and fragile, but carries a powerful weight of the lyrics, giving them such emphasis with a feathery feeling, is the only way he could describe it. Her voice was mesmerizing, she was mesmerizing.

For all of this time, she hadn't noticed Matteo standing off to the side. But once she did, her eyes somehow glowed for a second into an even brighter iridescent green, as if she was an enchantress casting a spell.

Her free hand raises a bit and motions for him to step closer to her while continuing to sing. He hesitates at first, but when she keeps suggesting it, he slowly walks over to her. She keeps nodding more excitedly as she lets him come even closer to her. There he is only a foot away in distance.

Finally, he is able to see every essence, every feature, every detail of her face. He notices that her cheekbones are very high and prominent as she smiles. They become a very rosy color as they look at one another. The curve of her nose, the color of her lips, the dark and long length of her lashes. And he knew that her eyes were a beautiful and incredible green, but from up close the purity of them took his breath away, but he refused to look anywhere else besides her eyes. And he was hook, line, and sinkered right into them.

There was a feeling in the air about the song almost coming to an end. This one enthralling song with her voice that he just couldn't seem to get over. But he felt the build up as she sings to him so magically. Her hand starts reaching over to his. And so they touch.

Her fingers gracefully sliding up to his in this very soft pattern that seems so real and chilling. And his fingers naturally come apart, allowing hers to fit through his, and they interlace as if they were made to fit into one another. He beams at their hands and back to her as she sings the last notes, returning the smile in an even wider gesture.

And the last note plays, making everything go back to reality once more.

~~~~~

Matteo feels his shoulders being shaken a little too violently as he is waking up in a shock. He finds himself on an airplane, first class to be exact. With his girlfriend Ambar having seemed to be the one with a bit of a harsh wake-up.

"Babe, babe," she pesters softly as he grumbles a bit slowly trying to wake back up. "What?" he manages to mumble a bit frustrated, then proceeding to yawn. "We're almost in Cancun so you should get ready, I guess," she whispers, trying to avoid awakening any of the other passengers. He nods a bit while shrugging. He's in an airplane, how is he really supposed to get ready? Or maybe she meant that in a different context he guesses.

Instead, he just rests his head on Ambar's shoulder, who seems uncomfortable with it at first, but lets him rest there for the remaining minutes of their flight.

As they are waiting in the baggage claim after their flight, Matteo sees something. He swears that he sees her. He's 99.9% sure it's his own imagination coming up with this imagery, but he swears he sees her in the distance of the airport, walking off into a hall, with such familiar dark long locks swishing behind her. He blinks a few times trying to regain any sense of functionality.

Maybe it was just another girl he thought. There are millions of young girls out there with dark long hair like hers. And there's probably like 30 at least in this extremely busy airport today. And he didn't even get a good look at her face. The hair was mostly the thing he saw. So he has no solid evidence for this.

And that's what he convinces himself. He doesn't go any further than that. He just does his best at forgetting it as he helps get Ambar's suitcases off of the conveyor belt and carries them outside trailing behind her and leaving them with the chauffeur to put them in the trunk.

While they drive off in their limo, Ambar checking for new messages on her phone, Matteo sits completely still, not moving a single muscle. Every time it's getting weirder and weirder and all of this is becoming way too realistic he doesn't even see them as dreams. There's no way he could be able to explain this to anyone of this weird reoccurrence. It can't be coincidental anymore at this point. There has to be something behind it. But he doesn't know what. Whatever or whoever is behind whatever the hell this is is causing a big hurricane.

•

Now he is at the entrance of the rink. Unsurprisingly empty at first. But then in the blink of an eye, he can hear the sound of giggling coming closer from behind as he is being pulled by his hand and brought to the rink by the same girl. She drags him behind her as they go around in circles. She turns to face him as they skate and her contagious laugh never fades away letting his smile. He takes her hand and spins her around almost falling but catching her in time, her laughter becoming even heavier.

He wants to know who she is he wants to talk to her and know what's behind all of this. But he can't. When opens his mouth, no words come out. As if they're frozen or stuck. His throat allows nothing to flow but laughter from his mouth. It kills him and makes him a bit anxious that he can't communicate with her in that way. But he goes forth with smiling and spinning and laughing all around, as long as she is in his presence.

Everything is caused by perfect harmony. They may not be able to talk with words, but it almost seems as if they can read each other's minds. When Matteo gets the idea in his mind to do a lift, she is already prepared, letting him lift her into the air, lifting her arms all the way to touch the sky.

And when he puts her down, she turns to face him again. With a calmer face, still keeping the warmth of her smile in essence. She wraps her hands around either side of his waist and lifts her leg from the back in an elegant leg lift, his hand supporting her ankle. But her eyes ever leave is. Her smile growing soft and delicate.

He wants to take lead this time so he wraps his arm around her waist and picks her legs up with his other and carries her in his arms letting her giggles fill the air. He can feel her becoming more relaxed the longer she is in his arms. She leans her body back a bit, letting herself float with her arms out and eyes closed. It looked as if she were flying and made Matteo glow in awe.

When he sets her down, the music that he hadn't recognized was playing the entire time in the background changed into something a bit familiar too. He just couldn't recognize it at the moment. He was too busy getting lost to let it be found.

Matteo holds their hands together just as before. It was a feeling that made him such at peace while at that same time made him feel like he was running full speed. It was pretty indescribable, to say the least. It was a feeling that he never felt before. Not even in real life, and not even with Ambar. The realism of it all was too scary for his own thoughts, but let himself be deeply consumed in it not caring about the consequences or whatever it may bring.

The petite girl kept her stare at Matteo as she rolled the slightest bit over closer to be right under his chin. Resting her hands on his shoulders and lifting her heels off the ground. His instinct is to pull her even closer from her hips and so he does. His face still leans down a bit because of her height, but they're at the perfect level. Their noses just barely touching and the urging of his lips just begging to kiss hers. Without even thinking, his lips land on hers in a soft, swift motion, only letting them linger for one second.

When they pull away, he feels a change. Something different but ultimately at ease. He feels something magical and blissful and overall he feels his heart racing at a million miles an hour, bursting at the seams.

She must think the same, he can sense it. Because now she has her hand caressed at the back base of his head as she smashes her mouth against his taking power into her own hands. He does nothing but responds with the same amount of fierceness as he holds her tightly. If he was lost before, he has no sense of anything else then. He can't think or speak or breathe. He doesn't want anything else than to be kissing her like this forever. That's all his mind is at, just his lips on hers.

The feeling in his heart somehow keeps growing faster and stronger, pounding against his head and his chest as they kiss. And once the pounding gets to the loudest point, she's gone once again.

~~~~~

Matteo shoots up straight out of bed with his breathing out of control. It's the earliest hours of the morning, the sun barely rising from under the ocean view. But Ambar hears his commotion anyways and wakes up from beside him as well. "Matteo, what's going on? Are you okay?" She asks him with worry in her morning voice. He only shakes his head ferociously as he buries his head in his hands.

"Oh God," he breathes into his hands. "Nothing. It's nothing, I swear. Just- go back to bed," he directs Ambar as he lays back down, pulling the sheets up over his shoulders. She still sits up, confused. "That wasn't nothing, what were you dreaming about that made you frightened like that?" she asks. "Nothing! I told you to go back to sleep, forget it," he says harshly.

Normally, she wouldn't be scared of when Matteo yells. She's not the type to be intimidated by it. But like this, as if he was defending something for his dear life, she just followed his orders and tried to forget everything, trying back to go to sleep, even if it seemed impossible.

That afternoon, when they are shopping and Matteo follows around to hold Ambar's bags, it happens again. But this time. It seemed far too real to ignore. She was passing by through the outside window of the store they were in. The hair that he could never forget. No matter if there were so many of the same, he just knew.

When Ambar attempted to give him a hanger with a dress on it for him to hold, he shakes his head and drops her bags on the floor and goes out of the store to find her. "Matteo! Where the fuck are you going?" She yells at him completely pissed off. He sprints down the sidewalk, pushing people passing by and following the hair.

He's running and running and running, but he can't seem to catch her. She turns a corner, losing his place on her, but he still runs anyways. And when he reaches the corner, she's gone. He stands there so confused and frustrated, hands over his eyes, thinking he let her get away. Meanwhile, he can finally hear Ambar running to him as fast as she can in those heels of hers. He knows better not to look, but he does. Ambar's face furiously red with rage, hands fisted and nodding her head. He lets out a breath in preparation, praying to the sky to not let her murder him right then and there.

"Why the fuck did you run off, you asshole?" she spits at him as she arrives. "You just dropped all my shit there and took off running and leaving me there, what the hell is wrong with you?"  He tries to focus on the rush of blood pumping through his ears, hoping her voice would be drowned out, but there was no such luck.

Coming up with some excuse was a total failure for him as well. "I saw someone carrying a bag from my favorite stop and I wanted to ask them where it was?" he tried to convince her. She didn't though. "That was excessively dramatic for such a thing," she crosses her arms. "Why didn't you just google it like a normal person?" He scratches behind his neck nervously. "Uh, google lies a lot, can't always trust them."

Ambar rolls her eyes, grabbing his wrist to pull him back. "well now you know or whatever, let's just get back and carry my stuff alright?" He nods in agreement, his mind half there. And he lets himself be dragged back with his head in the clouds, and he wonders if it's ever possible if he'll think the same of anything again.

•

After a few nights, he thought the dreams with her would've stopped by now. They've been gone since he ran away from Ambar while they were shopping the other day trying to forget about it, and it seemed like it worked for the most part. However, even if he was in a new location this time, some flat or whatever, he knew they weren't over. Because instead of her popping out from somewhere, she was already sitting right in front of him the moment it began.

She sat only inches away from him on a couch, her hands resting on her denim knees, fingers outstretched, wanting to touch his knee too. She seemed a bit darker and casual in this oddly intimate setting. Her hair was a blondish orangish color this time. It seemed to be a weird feature for a change but he still fell in love with her the same. Because they were the very same green eyes that had always been there, always kept him trapped in place.

He had his guitar resting on his lap, and she was waiting for him to play presumably. So without much control, he did. Except he knows this song. This one wasn't finished yet because he was still writing it. But somehow the melody and lyrics flowed out so smoothly, never in the way it was while he wrote it. It was as if he was writing the song all here and now. A dream completed it for him.

As he sang to her, her smile grew as bright as ever, gently swaying along with the chords. Matteo tried and tried again to break out of this trance or routine that was going on to try and talk to her. But nothing. His voice would not let him, it only let him keep singing. It hurt even harder than before. Because how can he even be sure he in love with a girl he can't have a conversation with? He knows for a fact that no matter what he does, she'll never be able to leave his mind. He knows that everything about her makes him always gravitate in her direction, pulling him in like a magnet. He knows completely that this sensation and connection for a girl he doesn't even know, that he has only ever stood by in these dreams has made him feel something even stronger than he feels with Ambar than he has felt at any point in his life.

His voice became softer as the song wound down, the strumming becoming looser and quieter. His gaze never shifting. It spiraled away in one quick motion after that. He took the strap off of his guitar and pushed it to the side, swiftly brushing her hair behind her ear and yanked her to his side in a kiss. That's what he was brought here for in the first place. The moment he opened his eyes he knew, that he wanted to taste her lips once more.

She responds automatically by pulling at the collar of his shirt, slowly dragging her body into his lap while deepening the kiss. Matteo let himself tangle his fingers in her long and colored hair, at last feeling the softness, burying himself in it. She gripped onto his collar so tightly, one button undid itself at the top. She was in no hurry to for anything. So she slowly trailed her fingers down his chest, agonizingly undoing one after another. It drove him absolutely wild at the pace she went, but he didn't interject. He only kissed her harder, asking to let his tongue through her mouth, and she let him as she pleased.

He was feeling that thing again. The feeling that everything was speeding up, his heart beating faster, the adrenaline rushing through his veins building up the intensity. Everything was about to be woken up, he had realized for the first time. That within a matter of seconds he won't be kissing her anymore and that he'll come back down to Earth and continue on doing whatever. He had no ways of stopping it. Kissing harder only made the time go faster. Holding her tighter did nothing but raise the volume on the blood rushing.

There was nothing he could do but linger in the lasting taste of her lips, the softness of her skin still felt on his fingertips. Nothing more than to grasp onto what he could feel left. Suddenly, there was no more.

~~~~~

The feeling of pounding inside his head made him groan in pain when trying to get up. Matteo touched his forehead feeling absolutely horrible. He definitely had drunken quite a bit last night. However, there was no explanation as to why he was on the living room couch in the mansion by himself, the room looking untouched and pristine as always.

Looking around him was useless, as probably the only three other people staying in the mansion were out at this time in the late morning. He looked for his phone which was on the corner edge of the coffee table and checked for messages. About four or five of them, and all from Ambar. Mostly about him trying to get his drunk ass up as he put it in her words. But the last one just said to meet her up for brunch at the beach restaurant, like they had planned for their last day in Cancun.

Matteo winced not only in pain but having to go to meet her and probably being extremely late. He knows that she'll get high key pissed. But he can't rewind the clock. He just has to face the music.

By the time he arrives, she is waiting outside of the entrance looking extremely bored on her phone. She raises her head when she sees him and rolls her eyes. "You finally bothered showing up, I see," she comments while crossing her arms. He begins to attempt an explanation but she doesn't let him. "I don't care, let's just go in." He rolls his eyes at her uptight attitude and follows her in.

When they are seated and reading the menu, he decides to ask her, "How did I end up on the couch last night?" she answers him bored while not bothering to look up, continuing to flip through the menu. "I don't know, I was still mad at you for the other day, so I left you by yourself at the bar when we went out to get drinks and you had more than I expected you to have. And when I got you back by a miracle, you couldn't walk up the stairs so I left you on the couch. The end,"

He glares at her with the most unbelieving look at how inconsiderate she was. But he didn't bother to fight back, not even caring at this point. So he goes back to flipping through the menu. He hates this entire vacation with all of his being, and couldn't wait any longer for it to be over.

Then the most unimaginable thing happened. She walked up to their table, as a waitress. And she introduced herself, talking. He could finally hear her voice, or at least what he thinks it is. As Ambar gives her the order, Matteo continues to stare dumbfounded at her not saying a word. The mix of reality and imagination crashing and colliding in his brain, overloading his system. Because when Ambar waves to him, snaps her fingers in front of his face, repeats his names so many times, he doesn't budge. Too stunned to function by any means. She looks slightly uncomfortable but at the same time blushes as his eyes follow her walking away as Ambar ordered for him in the end.

"Are you even on Earth, Matteo?" she asked him. He didn't look at Ambar until she fully disappeared into the kitchen and put his gaze back to her. "Huh?" he peeped. Ambar began rubbing her temples. "Okay, these past few days you have been acting anything but normal and I've tried to look past it, but it's getting too weird. So what the hell is up?" she asks, having enough with his bullshit.

He blinked once. Twice. Trying to process those very words in-between every other thing crammed inside his brain. But it wouldn't go through all that quickly. He knew she wasn't going to give up this time. And no matter how crazy he's been going, he decides to say fuck it and tells her.

"That girl, the one that's serving us, I've been seeing her in my dreams everywhere and I have no clue how the hell it started happening but it just has. She's everywhere I tell you and she won't leave my brain it's too hard to explain-" "What do you mean that girl? The person who's serving us is a guy, and his name's Simon," He's taken aback by this answer, having known that he saw her with his own two eyes. He was so sure it was real. "What are you talking about? I swear to you it's that girl, I have no idea what her name is but I'm telling you-" she holds her hand up to pause him in place.

"What girl do you keep seeing everywhere?" Then something hits her brain causing an eruption to boil inside of her. "Is this girl you're talking about, the one you chased the other day and left me? Are you cheating on me? Is that what this is?"

Matteo has officially screwed himself over this time. There's no way out of this now, no matter how hard he tried. "No, I'm not cheating on you. I'm just saying?" "How am I supposed to believe you when all you keep seeing is her even when you're with me. That's all you've been thinking about, and I'm not tolerating it."

Although relieved he knew what was coming, he didn't like the way it was ending. He shook his head being held in his hands. "Are you saying you're breaking up with me?" he breaks. Ambar can't even look at him. She turns her face slightly away, giving him an indirect cold stare. He knew his time and place was over, that she didn't want him near her. So he got up from his chair and began to walk out.

He turned around to look back at her and the waiter who she was right about, with a nametag with the name Simon printed on it and approached her table. He didn't want to see the rest, so he walked out and away from her.

He found himself at a park that had a familiar layout that the one in Buenos Aires had. Except this one was a lot closer to the beach, having the beautiful clear blue ocean view resting behind. So he went on a walk, passing by groups of kids and ice cream carts and lots and lots of birds. Just sinking in what has happened and what his brain has done to him.

After some time, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the actual waiter from the restaurant out of uniform and with skates on. He hears him laughing from the distance while shouting "Luna!" from behind him. And from afar, that same girl emerges to the waiter guy's side grabbing him along and skating through the park.

Matteo is sick of his mind playing horrible tricks on him, too tired of trying to decipher if it's real or not. But he can't help but look anyways with that tired expression of his.

They skate together through the park side by side and Matteo continues to walk by. But when he hears the loud humming of his unpublished song coming from her direction, his head shoots up in a flash. His head turns and although she is in front and afar, she looks back at him and winks, before skating back with the boy humming the song as she goes along.

[swimmingeaglestarlight]

Sarah Broom The Yellow House

Sarah Broom The Yellow House

Sarah Broom The Yellow House Award

Sarah M Broom The Yellow House

Wild Hog in The Woods Coffee House - Intimate, live performance venue in Madison, WI; Southern Wisconsin Bluegrass Music Association - Promoting Bluegrass music in Southern Wisconsin and beyond; Sam Bayard Collections. Hill Country Tunes - Historic 1944 collection of tunes from Western PA fiddlers, including Sarah Armstrong, compiled by Sam Bayard. Feb 4, 2021 - Explore LINDA's board 'Small farmhouse plans' on Pinterest. See more ideas about house design, farmhouse plans, small farmhouse plans.

Sarah M. Broom was writing long before Hurricane Katrina. What would ultimately become her memoir, The Yellow House, started as a collection of notes and essays on the house she grew up in, her family, her neighbors, and her local community in New Orleans. She began in the late 1990s after leaving home for college, and it eventually became impossible for her to see the work as anything other than a book project: a family portrait and a history of New Orleans, which would explore the larger social narrative of the United States.

‘The Yellow House’ by Sarah M. Broom is an absorbing debut that is both memoir and commentary about her New Orleans East family in a pre and post-Hurricane Katrina world. Broom’s writing style is inviting, filled with facts, and enough descriptive detail to keep me engaged.

Sarah Broom: The Yellow House May 28, 2020 by Michael Schulder • At Home With Authors • 66min If you hope to immerse yourself in our one-hour conversation with Sarah Broom but only have a moment to spare, please sample the first two minutes.

Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House is a memoir that is at once intensely personal and of wide and universal appeal. Broom brings her journalistic experience to bear in order to trace her family’s.

While it’s impossible to underscore Hurricane Katrina’s impact on her family and the city at large, Broom’s hope with The Yellow House is to reveal the ways in which Katrina was no singular catastrophe. “When we boil Katrina down to a weather event, we really miss the point,” Broom told me recently over the phone. “It’s so crucially important for me to put Katrina in context, to situate it as one in a long line of things that are literally baked into the soil of this place.”

Broom recognized these connections, but her aim was not so clear to publishers. “The main complaint was that I needed to choose,” Broom recalled. “That I was either going to write a book about New Orleans or a book about my family, but not both—which was so confounding to me that I couldn’t even process it.” While memoir is often pigeonholed as subjective and emotional, the genre is a genuine entry point for history: Collective historical narratives are drawn from individual experiences. Broom writes in her book, “The facts of the world before me inform, give shape and context to my own life. The Yellow House was witness to our lives. When it fell down, something in me burst. My mother is always saying, Begin as you want to end. But my beginning precedes me.”

Recommended Reading

The Atlantic Creating Podcast Examining Hurricane Katrina, Hosted by Vann Newkirk

The Books Briefing: The New Literature of Burnout

Kate Cray

Recommended Reading

The Atlantic Creating Podcast Examining Hurricane Katrina, Hosted by Vann Newkirk

The Books Briefing: The New Literature of Burnout

Kate Cray

In the book, Broom characterizes the events leading up to her mother’s purchase of the Yellow House in 1961, starting with the development of their New Orleans East neighborhood in the late 1950s. “From the beginning, no one could agree on what to call the place. But namelessness is a form of naming,” she writes. Broom notes that a pamphlet written by a local advertising agency promoting the area’s early development stated, “Here lies the opportunity for the city’s further expansion, toward the complete realization of its destiny.” She then offers periodicals and mayoral speeches that show how the area’s promise never came to pass. This scheme to drain the wetlands and get rich, Broom writes, was “not so different from the founding tale of New Orleans itself.”

Broom’s interest in her family’s neighborhood baffled others. Discovering archival photos of her father and fact-checking locations for a memoir was one thing, but researching the deterioration of residential zoning in New Orleans East to explore systematic disenfranchisement was another. No history had been written of the area; neither academics nor writers considered it essential to do so. After Broom pressed one city-records employee about zoning issues, his superior remarked to Broom, “We don’t have the liberty of going around and examining things the way we think makes sense.” It’s a telling statement, given that Broom’s book is an effort to take otherwise separate narratives and weave them together in order to construct a more expansive perspective on American history.

Before undertaking the creation of a heretofore unwritten social history, Broom returned to her earliest inspirations: her family and neighbors. The youngest of 12 siblings, Broom developed the habit of writing down conversations. This act of note-taking took root out of love, but over time it evolved into the motivation for her work as a writer. “For some reason, I had a very strong sense that everything [my family] said is critically important,” she told me. “I just love how they put words together.” In what could have been a simple exchange about what it was like for her mother to have a 12th child, Broom writes about the delicate nuance of managing the conversation.

When you told Dad you were pregnant again, did he say something?

No.

What did he say?

Nothing.

Not a single word?

Here we go again! You were born in seventy-niyen. They say you were in distress. All them children I had, ain’t none of them ever been in no distress. And you have been in it ever since.

Interviewing her mother required great care and boundaries. As Broom notes in the book, “Mom closes down passageways to memory when something doesn’t make sense or when the thing or person no longer exists, which is possibly the same thing.” Broom told me that she had to work to “move beyond hagiography … not think of her as a mother, but to think of her as just a woman who made a series of choices. I created a physical distance for myself.”

Sarah Broom The Yellow House

A hybrid project, The Yellow House required a lucid and thoughtful structure. “I made no distinction then or now between the house, my family, the street, New Orleans East, New Orleans, America. Those were all the same subject to me,” Broom told me. “And so how I did it structurally, first, I started with a family timeline: ‘In 1914, X happened.’ Then I layered on top of the family timeline the city timeline. Then I layered atop the city timeline, almost like a painting—there’s an actual file where this happens—I layered American history, and then I layered on top of that New Orleans East history. In that way, I could see very clearly the interstices where things met up. And then I could understand the story differently.”

Broom found that the absence of her home and the memories that collected there drove the framework of The Yellow House. “I knew when I started collecting evidence, so to speak, that I was trying to find the architecture of the book,” she said. “I needed to know where the beams were and what was the supporting wall. I literally thought of it as a house because I knew that I was trying to put a lot in it.” Using movement, not unlike sections of a piece of music, Broom found “a structure that felt a little malleable, where within each segment there could be differences in rhythm, and pace, and tone, and overall feeling, so that theoretically you could move the pieces around and still have a story.” The constant motion shares a double meaning with the themes of the book—migration and the threat of gentrification. “The book itself needed to feel and have this sense that this kind of displacement and scattering—inside the city and even now, just with people getting kicked out of neighborhoods and the rent being too high,” Broom said. “The book would contain this feeling that things were moving all over the place and needed to be gathered back together again.”

The Yellow House’s destruction, first by the flood and then by the city’s demolition of what remained, and the subsequent diaspora of her family, left Broom with an aching sense of absence. To confront this, she inserted herself more fully into the fabric of the book. As a teenager, she took two unreliable city buses from New Orleans East to the French Quarter to her job as a barista. As a successful adult, Broom returned to the city’s most historic district, a space that depends on the African American service workers who often cannot afford to live within its boundaries. Once behind the counter, Broom was now the local.

She sought to upend the conventional wisdom about this tourist-heavy area at the port of New Orleans, once a site of slave trading but now a fantasy that thrives on hedonistic behavior, southern charm, and decadence. “I’m always trying to make it about me in the French Quarter, about the interactions I’m having and how I’m seeing it specifically so I could turn these very trotted-out ideas on their head,” she told me. “If you’re trying to sort of examine the underbelly of something, you have to be able to move with the discovery and be malleable, so to speak.”

Living in the French Quarter placed Broom squarely in the city’s mythological and cultural heart. Moving from the periphery to the city center, Broom laid claim to a place that she was always made to feel was out of her reach. Too often geographic displacement narrows the comprehensive record of a place, privileging certain people with the final word on what is deemed history. Broom had to return to the city’s gem, home to its greatest pleasures and its greatest shame, to write a story that would reconcile her losses with the losses of others. She expanded the collective understanding of American history in the process.

Sarah M. Broom’s debut book The Yellow Housereads like a multifaceted map, not just of a place but an expanse of time, marking both relationships and absences. Part scrapbook and part oral history, it is an expertly curated museum exhibit of Broom’s family history. It is also a portrait of New Orleans East across the last 100 years.

Broom expertly starts from a time before she was born, enabling her to narrate her own birth and her early years. Through archival research, interviews, and her memories, Broom weaves a story that is wholly hers, without neglecting the lives of the many characters around her, including her mother, siblings, neighbors, and friends.

The memories and family tales recounted range from small, deeply personal moments—rich sensory descriptions of her surroundings on the day she put on her first pair of glasses—to the highly public and politicized. On the fourteenth anniversary of Katrina, Broom’s book not only remembers the disaster, but challenges readers to reckon with social and political structures in New Orleans that predated Katrina by over a century. Of the news coverage of that storm, she writes: “Those of us who were born to New Orleans already knew its underbellies. Storms, of all sorts, were facts of our lives. Those images shown on the news of fellow citizens drowned, abandoned, and calling for help were not news to us, but still further evidence of what we long ago knew.”

Sarah Broom The Yellow House Award

The titular shotgun house in New Orleans East is one of the central characters in the book. Already sinking into the soft earth when Broom’s mother purchased it in 1961, the yellow house on Wilson Street was not in a glamorous enough part of the city to appear on maps, but it was sold with the promise of a bright future. Cleaved in two during the storm, the yellow house lives on in Broom’s search to determine who has a right to the property, raising questions of governance, jurisdiction, and inequality. This book is filled with questions. Most go unanswered, but they provide a thrumming energy. What do we mean when we say home? How does one find home beyond the physical? How do we create these sacred spaces and who do we hold tightly?

The memoir-historiography hybrid is largely successful at creating an intricate narrative of family and place, but the four parts of the book feel disparate. They are written in different modes and the naming conventions of the short chapters are not consistent. At times, these structural elements do not feel precise or intentionally lawless, which distracts from the momentum of the story.

Sarah M Broom The Yellow House

Early in the book, Broom writes what feels like a provocation, part promise and part warning: “When people tell you their stories, they can say whatever they want.” What seems to be an offhand axiom at the beginning of the book turns out to be a central tenet throughout. Her telling of her own story is a testament to what we have to hold onto after forces of nature destroy our lives: family lore, and the moments that hang in our memories.

[becomeawendybird]

23, or 84 i cant choose you pick!!

Hey! SO this drabble request is three months old, but today really sucks, so I’ve been doing this instead. This got really long, so the majority of it is under the cut.

“Show me what’s behind your back,” Harry demanded.

“No!” Louis yelled as he turned - carefully keeping the cloth bundle close to his chest so Harry couldn’t see it - and ran up the stairs to his apartment.

“LOU!” Harry called from the doorway of his own apartment on the second floor. He and Harry were slowly but surely taking over the small house in Cambridge that had been split into three units. Louis found, and rented out, the top floor straight out of his undergraduate program at BU. Two years later, when Harry finished his own program, Louis managed to convince the landlord to let him move into the vacated spot on the second floor. This was the Greater Boston Area’s Mildly Affordable Rental Market which was second only to the Hunger Games in ruthlessness and brutality.

Harry had moved in on September 1st, and had been there for a few months now. His birthday was coming up in February, and Louis had scored them tickets to the ultimate concert. Niall Horan, Harry’s favorite boybander-turned-solo-artist was playing a tiny show at the Orpheum downtown, and Louis had managed to grab two tickets together, while Harry had been among the masses of fans that didn’t get through.

The show was next week, and Louis had made sure that Harry didn’t make any plans for that night by scheduling a Very Important movie marathon. He bought a t-shirt for him from Niall’s online tour merchandise, and was going to put the whole present together in a little box.

With the shirt finally hidden away, Louis went back into the communal stairwell, but Harry wasn’t at his front door anymore. The door was ajar, so Louis went down and poked his head in to his apartment, but still couldn’t see him. It was then that he heard voices floating up from the down stairs apartment.

Madison.

Madison had designs on Harry the second she had parked her moving van next to his. She flirted with him constantly and was always wearing these little bitty shorts even though it was January. IN NEW ENGLAND. She would “just happen” to pop out of her apartment to “check her mail” as soon as she peeked through her front window and saw Harry coming in from work. Louis rolled his eyes. Some people were so stupid.

Louis resented her, but the truth was she had fallen for Harry’s adorable smile and naturally flirty demeanor the same way that Louis had.

He was trying to treat Harry’s birthday concert as much like a date as possible, and if it went well, he would finally tell him how he felt. So Madison had to go.

“HAROLD!” He yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Fucking hell, Lou, I’m right here,” Harry yelled back, coming out of Madison’s doorway and climbing the stairs with an envelope clutched in his hand. “Madison got this in her mailbox, said it was addressed to you, so she gave it to me.”

“What? It was too much effort to lift up the lid that says number three?” Louis grumbled.

“Be nice, Lou. She was just being neighborly.”

“Being neighborly, my ass,” he muttered. Harry swatted said ass with the envelope - making Louis’ cheeks heat up - before he pushed his way back into his apartment. He held the door open for Louis to follow him and Louis grabbed his box of Cheez-Its from Harry’s pantry before plopping down at the kitchen table.

“You know, if you like Cheez-Its so much, you could just buy your own box.”

“But why would I do that when you have a box for me here?”

Harry rolled his eyes, but couldn’t contain the fondness of his smile, no matter how hard he tried. “Do you want your piece of mail or not?” he asked, showing Louis the front of a standard, unmarked envelope.

“Nah, it’s probably junk,” he shrugged. There was a slight rustling as Harry ripped at the seal. “Harold! That is a federal offense!”

“Oh shut your- Lou?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Why are you receiving two tickets to Niall Horan at the Orpheum in the mail?”

Louis body went hot and then cold again. Fuck. Leave it to the USPS to ruin his surprise. There was only one way to handle this; “I’m not.”

“Yes you are Lou, I’m holding them in my hand right now.”

“Those aren’t mine.”

“LOUIS! They have your name printed on them! WHAT IS GOING ON?” Harry’s eyes were wide and he looked a little frantic.

The jig was up. Louis sighed before holding up a finger in the universal sign for ‘Wait one moment.’ And then he walked out Harry’s front door.

He could hear Harry’s protests coming from the open doorway as he climbed the stairs to his apartment once again. He grabbed the shirt from the hiding place it had occupied for all of ten minutes before returning to Harry’s kitchen and shoving the bundle into his hands.

“There. Happy Birthday,” he said petulantly, before going back to his Cheez-It’s. He knew he was being a brat about it, but the thing was, he had built up their whole night in his head for so many months, and it had just been ripped away from him.

He was going to surprise Harry with the shirt and the tickets, they would go to the tiny little Italian place that was Very Romantic where Louis made a reservation weeks ago to have dinner, and then they would go to the concert. If everything went well, on the way home, during the six minute walk from the Central Square station to their door, he would explain to Harry how he had developed feelings for him that were definitely more than platonic.

And now his plan was ruined. By fucking Ticketmaster.

Harry, clearly seeing that he was upset, knelt down on the floor in front of him and crossed his forearms over Louis’ lap. Jesus. Louis had to squeeze his eyes shut against the visual he had presented.

“Louis what’s wrong? Did you buy these tickets for me?”

Louis nodded, “Yeah. Well, for us. For your birthday.”

“But, Louis, that’s amazing! This is the best gift anyone has ever given me! Why are you so upset?”

“No reason. I just. I had a plan - a great plan - and now it’s a little ruined, and I’m just being a brat. Ignore me.”

“A plan? Weren’t we just going to the concert? Or was there more?”

Louis blushed, and hid his face in his hands. “Oh God.” There was no way out. Grotto, the restaurant, was easy enough to explain if Harry was still pumped with adrenaline and excitement, too focused on his surprise to really notice the atmosphere. But now, out of context? He would figure it out immediately. “We, um, have a reservation at Grotto, too.”

Harry’s eyes lit up at the mention of one of his favorite fancy restaurant that he never got to go to, but as the information processed, his brow furrowed. “But Lou, that’s like, a really nice place.”

Louis nodded, head still hidden in his hands.

“That’s like, a date place.” Louis didn’t answer, but after a few beats, he felt Harry’s hands tug on his forearms to disrupt Louis’ - frankly, very mature - coping strategy. “Were you going to take me on a date for my birthday?” he asked, voice hardly above a whisper.

Louis nodded again, but before he could run away and hide forever, Harry surged up on his knees and pulled Louis down by the back of the neck to meet him in a kiss.

[candylu0822-blog]

Twenty One Pilots

Tyler Joseph, Josh Dun, Chris Sahil, and Nick Thomas all made up the band Twenty One Pilots. The band currently consists of Tyler and Joseph since Chris and Nick left the band in 2015, too bad for them. The lead singer Tyler grew up in a Christian house hold and Josh Dun played the drums for his local youth group at Five 14 Church in Columbus, Ohio. Since these two were surrounded by Christianity since they were kids conversations with God happen quite often in their songs and throughout most of their albums, especially, in one of their most popular songs, “Car Radio”. Josh came up with the name for the band while studying All My Sons by Aurthur Miller, a play about a man who sends out faulty airplane parts for the good of his business and family which caused the death of twenty one pilots during World War II. Now, they have platinum records, top charts on the Billboards, multiple albums and tours, sang in Madison Square Garden more than once, even having some of their songs in huge movie productions like Suicide Squad. That’s not bad for a couple of guys that started off by begging to play for un-promoted shows. 

Josh explains that the story of All My Sons is about morals and dilemmas and choosing between the easy way and the right way, which is another main theme in most of their albums and songs like, “Stressed Out”, “Holding On To You”, “Jumpsuit”, and many more. For me and I’m sure many of you out there, this band is quite special to my heart. I grew up listening to them and believing that someday I would get better, that I was not the only person feeling at a loss with their own identity. This is a band for people who are sick and tired of hearing the same old shit on the radio, which is why they say, “We Are Twenty One Pilots and so are you” at the end of every interview. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5809539/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

“We are Twenty One Pilots and so are you.”

Their overall mission and goal when writing their music is, “Live on”, and is expressed with Christian notions like in “Car Radio” where they sing, “Faith is to be awake, And for us to think is to be alive, And I will try with every rhyme to come across like I am dying to let you know you need to try to think.” Most of their songs explain the battles the band has had with avoiding sin, dealing with depression, how to deal with losing someone you love, straying away from faith, the daily struggles with life and love, etc. “I think what makes them [Twenty One Pilots] successful is they don’t sound like anyone else,” Tom Poleman, the chief programming officer for the radio giant iHeartMedia, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/arts/music/twenty-one-pilots-trench.html who’s played the band’s songs on multiple formats. 

It’s no secret that behind every successful love song, there is a supportive girl backstage, and Tyler Joseph is the lucky man. He’s been married to his wife Jenna Black (aka Jenna Joseph) since 2015. We dont hear much about Jenna because she prefers to stay in the shadows when it comes to the fame that comes along with a celebrity relationship, but it’s not hard to see that she is the one for him, in and outside of his music life. She is the inspiration to many songs like “Tear In My Heart”. Now a days with celebrity couples people always assume that there is this epic love story on how they met and what made that love blossom, I mean after all he did write songs about her. With these two though, that’s not the case. Tyler himself told Rolling Stone that it “isn’t a great story or anything,” saying that Jenna was the sister-in-law of an acquaintance from his school in Ohio. While Jenna joins them on tour and will be on this new tour for their album Trench, she and Tyler also now own a home in Columbus. Their wedding was modest and took place in their home state. 

With these amazing albums comes fun and exciting tours, speaking from experience, their concerts are exhilarating. Most of the concerts start off with Tyler dressed up in a black suit and a ski mask, giving it his all. He jumps around the stage and sings his heart out. Josh wastes no time beating away at the drums with such passion it radiates from the back of the stage. The intensity stays high through the entire show. The energy is through the roof and thriving. Following the intense opener, they smoothly transitioned into cheery ukulele pop, “We Don’t Believe What’s On TV” and “The Judge.” Then the two rode into the reggae rock song “Lane Boy”, which itself transformed midway into a pulsating EDM. What I love most about their shows in that not only do they sing their amazing music, they do covers such as, The Beatles, The Goo Goo Dolls, and even AWOLNATION. Another thing I love that Twenty One Pilots has been an anthem for so many people and not just angsty teens, they relate to college kids, adults, and even families. They sing along with one another side by side, leaving all difference and struggles at the door, even if only for a few hours. 

Now it’s time to break down some of my personal favorite lyrics and the meaning behind the minds of Tyler and Josh when writing such inspirational songs. “Doubt” is a song off their album Blurryface, and the opening verses are, “Scared of my own image, Scared of my own immaturity, Scared of my own ceiling, Scared I’ll die of uncertanity , Fear might be the death of me, Fear leads to anxiety,” He doesn’t want to worry about how he presents himself to others, about how his limits, or about his lack of confidence. Because these fears consume him, he confesses that “fear might be the death of him” and tells his audience that “fear leads to anxiety”, a feeling the he along with many of us experience. He finishes the verse by admitting that he doesn’t know who he has become and doesn’t understand himself. The chorus says, “Don’t forget ab-b-b-b-bout me, Don’t forget ab-b-b-b-bout me, Even when I doubt you, I’m no good without you, no no”, It’s a prayer to God. He’s saying he can’t be his best self without him and that even when he doubts Him, he doesn’t want to be forgotten by Him. “Want the mark he’s made on my skin, To mean something to me again, Hope you haven’t left without me, Hope you haven’t left without me, please” I believe Tyler is speaking of the Mark of the Beast, which the Bible refers to as being made on the hand or forehead. The seal of God is biblical concept that represents faith, the mark he wants Him to give him. He fears that his doubt is going to ultimately put him in a state of being lost and without God he’s no good. 

The song “Trees” may not have many lyrics but to me, it has one of the deepest messages. This song is yet another prayer, I know it’s hard for non-Christians to accept but stay with me here. As Christians, we are taught that we are supposed to build a relationship with God. We are told that God hears all our prayers. However, it’s obvious that while he was writing this song, Tyler felt disconnected from God, leaving Tyler alone. “Silent, in the trees”. That’s how God is described in this song, Trees. Tyler’s lyrical metaphors are extraordinary. “And that’s where I am, silent, in the trees.” Tyler is alone and screams the knowledge from his other songs, especially “Car Radio”. He says two important things, “I ponder of something terrifying, cause this time there’s no sound to hide behind.” and “Oh dear, I don’t know if we know why were here; Oh my too deep please stop thinking.” These two lyrics mean that when Tyler is in the silence, his thoughts turn dark and he is scared by them. He’ll do anything to get rid of them, even stop thinking all together. It is likely that he would pray to God as an outlet for his emotions and source of comfort. He then begs Him to show Himself and screaming, “Hello” into the trees. 

Let’s go back to the song, “Tear In My Heart”. Tyler sings proudly, “She’s the tear in my heart, I’m alive, She’s the tear in my heart, Take me higher, Than I’ve ever been, The songs on the radio are okay, But my taste in music is your face, And it takes a song to come around, To show you how...” This song is easy to figure out the meaning. He’s got it bad for a girl, Jenna in this case. He talks about how he just can’t get over this girl, she takes him higher than he’s been been. He continues with one of my favorite verses, “You fell asleep in my car I drove the whole time, But that’s okay I’ll just avoid the holes so you sleep fine” I simply thing these lyrics just go to show how much he loves and cares for Jenna. He’d do anything to make sure she’s happy and comfortable. https://songmeanings.com/artist/view/songs/137438996898/ 

Whether or not you’re a die-hard fan or only know their top hits, Twenty One Pilots, is a band that all ages can relate to. Their punk-rock and EDM beats will keep us jamming in our cars until the end of time, Their sold out tours and platinum albums speak for themselves. This band is one of a kind and they stay that way by never allowing society to change the way they write their music. They never let the influence of others blind their morals. Their Christian faith helps guide them through all the tough times life has to throw at them, and in return they give us catchy songs that get us through the day. Thank you Twenty One Pilots, for helping me through the worst and best times of my life. Live on. 

[raystart]

Pentagram’s Natasha Jen on Pseudo Feminism, the Power of Passive Activism, and “Alien Stuff”

It’s peaceful to sit in the second floor waiting area of Pentagram’s New York City headquarters. Perhaps it’s due to the full-floor view of leafy Madison Square Park across Fifth Avenue. Or maybe it’s the nostalgic touches throughout the office*—an unplugged black rotary phone, for example, sits on a side table next to the comfy red couches. The most civilized touch could definitely be the The New York Times hanging from a metal rack on the wall. Sitting there in Pentagram’s elevated lobby, eyeing the Times, one feels a certain desire to chuck their always-on cellphone into the Fifth Avenue traffic, curl up with the inky newsprint, and spend the afternoon leisurely reading. But then the whole reason for this stop is to interview Natasha Jen. Her reputation precedes her. She was named one of Pentagram’s youngest partners ever, in 2012 at age 35.

Her far-reaching resume shows she can do just about anything: brand identities, multi-scale exhibitions, signage systems, print, motion, and interactive graphics, collaborations with universities, museums, fashion brands, and restaurants. There is even a rumor that she can fly.

Still, it leaves one question unanswered: Who is Natasha Jen? The impetus for having lunch was to hear about the life experiences that have shaped her perspective and contributed to her success.

Natasha Jen photographed in and around her home in downtown Brooklyn.

At the 2017 99U Conference, you gave a talk that argued that design thinking is bullshit, which hit on a topic many other designers also felt passionate about and sparked a constructive debate on the subject. Is there another topic on your mind these days that has you fired up?

Oh yeah. It started during the U.S Presidential election when Donald Trump said awful things about, and exhibited awful behaviors toward, women. Since then there has been this rise of renewed feminism in American culture. Since the election, there has been news about sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, one after another, from different industries. The idea of feminism is in women’s heads and in our daily conversation. But, I’ve been noticing brands, especially women’s brands, use this newfound popularity of feminism to gain profit. To me, this is not genuine feminism. Some brands are actually trying to create, I think, a lot of insecurity in women; to make women feel: “Oh, I’m not good. Therefore, I need that.” I’ve seen that kind of rhetoric in different ways, but they are under this disguise of empowerment. I’m sorry, but they are not about empowerment. They are about generating profit.

This is something I have noticed more and more in advertising; how people approach topics around women’s body types. It’s not anything new, but there is a problem when we’re still talking about a certain body type as a kind of “ideal” body type. For example, there is a trend towards celebrating plus-size women, which is wonderful, but it is also a fine line. So, okay, skinny is now no good. We need to actually be large-size, but then if you look at being large, which a lot of times is biological, there is a fine line between being large and being obese. Are we actually saying that it’s okay to be obese? It’s not, right? Alternatively, we used to idealize thin, shapeless bodies. Which is equally problematic, because we were not really saying being anorexic was good, either.

Currently, our society does not have the selective ability to question these topics because, the way that social media works is that when you respond to something, you like it. If you don’t like it, you can walk away. There is not any form of dialogue in-between. We lose our ability to question. And we end up in this situation where there’s this kind of pseudo feminism wrapped under capitalism and we don’t have a way to question these things that are important for the progress of women’s rights, body image and feminism.

Can branding or design do anything to impact this?

Yes. And it’s actually doing a lot of things to enable this kind of pseudo feminism. I don’t want to call out names, but branding and marketing contributes, which is sad.

What would you do in response to what you’re seeing?

This may sound passive on the surface – as we can’t un-involve ourselves from capitalism – but we can choose not to participate in the consumption and production of these brands and their products. I still believe that the choice of not participating is a kind of activism.

You grew up in Taiwan, and have lived in New York City ever since you moved here to attend the School of Visual Arts (SVA). As a teenager, were your peers traveling internationally for college, or was this unique?

The reason why I pursued my college outside of Taiwan was because I just didn’t fit into the education system there. It’s a highly competitive, exam-based culture. In order to go from junior high to high school, you have to take a national exam. It’s brutal. They only take the top 30% of students for these schools and for the rest of the people it’s: “Good luck!” I couldn’t fit into that system. I did poorly in high school. Therefore, we all knew that there was no chance for me in the college entrance exam.

Basically, there would be no colleges in Taiwan who would let me in because I would be automatically eliminated. Where else could I go? I wanted to pursue art. Really, I wanted to become a painter. New York is an obvious artistic hub. I was late in my applications, so I applied only to SVA. I got in surprisingly. That’s how I got to New York.

What was your first impression of New York City?

It was mesmerizing. The first place that I went to after I got off the plane was Coney Island. My father had two friends, a couple living there, and they took me in. There was, and still is, a very big Russian town there. That was amazing to me—before that I had no idea what Russian culture was like. School was another new thing to me. I had never seen so many different ethnicities all in the same class. That was eye-opening.

Growing up you had career ambitions of being an astronaut, a detective, or, literally, Indiana Jones. What was it about these lines of work?

A sense of adventure, discovery, getting into the unknown, solving a mystery. I think astronauts are very similar to Indiana Jones, in different domains, but I feel that the nature of their work is similar. And I’m still very much drawn to adventurous archeology type of stories.

Prior to Pentagram, you had your own studio, njenworks, and then you joined Pentagram in 2012. Joining Pentagram seems like a no-brainer for just about any designer, but did you ever have any self-doubt about it or question the decision?

It wasn’t a 100%-sure decision for me, to tell the truth, because I had no experience running a business. Even when I was doing my own studio, the scale was so small that I didn’t have any business professional mechanism set up, such as payroll—I was the payroll department. So, there was a lot of self-doubt when I was invited.

First of all, it was just like: “Can I actually live up to the standard of Pentagram?” It was also mysterious to me as to how business is done here. But my partners shared the preliminary revenue numbers that I had to deliver that first year and it was a reasonable number –I was already doing that at my own studio. I thought, “Okay. That’s all right.” That’s how I stepped in.

How does the partnership at Pentagram work?

The structure of the partnership is equal among the partners, and each partner is an independent business center when it comes to their staffing and team’s overhead. However, the entire partnership shares the office’s collective overhead—the rent, utilities, that kind of stuff. It creates this practical support to each business. On an intellectual and philosophical level, the benefit of this model is that it allows each partner the freedom to pursue what they want, while also being able to draw upon the collective experience and wisdom of the other partners. The partnership creates a self-disciplined culture where you understand that you are a part of a larger ecosystem, and that your business actually matters to the rest of your partners.

Why is it important for creatives to have a strong understanding of the business side of the design business?

Having experience with your own business helps you to better relate to your clients’ businesses. You can feel their pain points and see the struggles, and you may be able to contribute some thinking beyond the design that may help their business.

How much of your time today is spent designing and how much is spent on project management, client relations, and business operations?

Design-wise, actually I don’t design on a computer anymore. But I’m very involved with the design process alongside my designers. The majority of my time, say 70%, is dedicated to designing the business, how the team works, and client relationships. I see this as a kind of design, but it’s very different from thinking about typography, for example.

What criteria do you use to evaluate which clients you want to take on?

Two things: Our personal interest in a particular subject matter or the problem and budget; if we can actually meet our budget. Pentagram doesn’t have strict criteria regarding qualifying new business the way that a traditional agency does, so I tend to follow my gut.

Where do you look for stories, for ideas?

There are cult magazines or websites that I occasionally visit. Not at the office because people would be at my door wondering, “What is she looking at? Alien stuff again?” I’m on Netflix a lot. In recent years, we’ve had several thought-provoking sci-fi films, from Prometheus to the Alien remake and now the Blade Runner remake. Sci-fi touches on a lot of the issues—technological, moral, environmental, cultural, geo-political—that we’re facing today, but ultimately it’s about what makes humans human.

Are there any cardinal rules to the Natasha Jen school of design?

I can’t stand line breaks shorter than, every 4-5 words Like the way this sentence is designed.

A recent news article reported that the pastel-colored, minimalist packaging redesign you did for Brooklyn ice cream brand Van Leeuwen—which allows the pints to stand out in an aisle of pints that look similar—has contributed to a 200% uptick in sales. Can design really sell more ice cream?

Design can sell anything. Design can also destroy everything. Design is this double-edged sword.

To what degree does Taiwanese culture influence your design perspective and work?

It’s a very interesting question. I haven’t gotten that resolved yet. Taiwan is primarily Chinese culture; the language is Mandarin. And you’re constantly exposed to the 5,000-year-old history, always. Then Taiwan is also a former Japanese colony. Therefore, there’s a lot of residual Japanese stuff in the culture, from comic books to magazines to TV shows. I grew up with the intertwined nature of these two cultures. Taiwan is dense and has a lot of energy, but it’s not the most visually beautiful place. That environment does affect my sensibility because I gravitate toward something that has a vibrancy and density to it, but not necessarily visually busy.

Then I learned my entire design language and knowledge here in America—the knowledge I have about design is actually, primarily, a Western design thinking and philosophy. These two manifest in my work. I don’t know which one is influencing the other, but I think that on a surface level, you actually don’t see any kind of Chinese or Asian influence at all, unless there is a project that actually has that cultural background. Then you see that, Oh yeah, whoever designed this knows what she’s talking about.

What impact has New York City had on your work?

There is a kind of ambition that is unique to New York. You really have to want something in order to be here, and that has been a primary driver to our work. We’ve had experiences where we’ve been on the seventh round of a client revision, and we just keep going. That is a very New York characteristic—you just keep going.

Is there a New York landmark that most designers wouldn’t consider good design but that you love?

The NYC subway.

Wow, you’re taking a stand there. What makes it great in your eyes?

The MTA’s campaign posters and messaging are incredible, especially now that they have started to install digital screens in the cars. These posters for ‘If you see something, say something,’ ‘Do not breakdance in the cars,’ and ‘Don’t pick your phone up if you drop it on the tracks,’ with pictogram-style people. Now all these are becoming animations that I find hilarious, uniquely New York, and inspiring. The MTA deserves a lot more design credit.

I’ve noticed you have a tattoo of a fleuron on your wrist.

This was a kind of mindless and thoughtless decision when I first came to New York. It happened between my first year and second year at SVA. During that summer I got an internship at Eric Baker Design. Eric had a small but wonderful office on 23rd Street. It had an amazing library, but the library was a mess, so my first assignment was to help Eric organize the books. I literally had to go through every book, and categorize it as graphic design, typography, etc. At one point I found this old type specimen book, German Type Specimen Books (Schriftartexemplare), that has different typefaces, from Bodoni to gothic letters.

I was really drawn into the gothic letters, and I saw this one and thought, That’s such a pretty thing. Let me just put it on my body. So I Xeroxed the page and took it to a tattoo shop in the East Village. There’s no concept or meaning in it. It just marked a time that I was working with Eric, going through a library, and found this book. I got another one on my ankle of my initial “N,” from the same book. Growing up in Taiwan, I had never seen Gothic letters before and I started scanning a bunch of them and using them in my school assignments. Using this incredible library was the biggest benefit I got from working for Eric, and you will see a lot of stuff from the book everywhere in my life.

Including on your person.

Exactly.

You came to New York at a relatively young age, and you’ve built a strong career. Of course intellect, instinct, and ability all contribute to this, but what about on the personal character side of things? Was there a defining life moment that helped you develop the drive and perseverance necessary for success?

I remember one summer, my second summer in New York, where my father passed away, and I was broke. I had no kind of money or any skill whatsoever. And then a friend at school, who was also from Taiwan, said he knew about this city bus tour for Chinese tourists. It’s an all-day activity, and the tour company was looking for guides to describe the different New York landmarks—Wall Street, Central Park, the UN Building. He said I might get tips depending on how well I did. It sounded interesting, so I thought I would try it. Of course, I had no knowledge about any of these places; I hadn’t even been to most of them. So I went to Barnes & Noble the day before I started working and got two books on New York and memorized everything. The next day I got on the bus and guided tours for the whole summer. I actually made good money. You just figure it out.

*Pentagram has since moved to Park Avenue.

[enc1102-blog1]

Stakeholder Analysis pt 1/2

stakeholder/genre

Terrorism has deeply effected all aspects of the entertainment industry. The current

problem is how we, either as entertainment industry professionals or devoted fans, choose to handle these increasing threats. It affects the artists themselves, live event companies, investors, the areas surrounding the event, the employees hired to produce and build each event, the venue owners and operators, the attendants, and in this day and age with 24/7 social media coverage these terror attacks effect everyone who has access to the internet, or the news. I believe the two biggest stakeholders that stand to gain and also lose the most from these threats are the artists, venue owners.

As an artist it is your end goal and dream to create an experience for your fans where they can enjoy your performance and be able to share your artistry to these people. As an artist you never imagine that your performance would be a target for a terrorist attack. The reason the artists are such important stakeholders in the issue of terrorism in the entertainment industry is because every move they make after such a horrific attack sets the tone for how their management team will react, how other artists may react and how their fans will react. Artists have many ways they can respond in order to not only send a message that fear will not stop them or their fans but to actually help the victims of

these attacks. Take for example Ariana Grande, 13 days after the bombing at her show in Manchester she and her team created a benefit show in partner with the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund to help provide financial support to the victims of the attack. The benefit show raised $13 million dollars in one night. The night of and the few days following the attacks many reports came from Ariana Grande’s team that she would be canceling the rest of her tour, that she was too shaken up to continue. The reason these artists are such important stakeholders is that her choice to not only continue her tour but create a show to help benefit the victims showed that the entertainment industry would not be stopped easily. While artists aren’t ultimately the ones who make decisions about security and safety procedures, they can definitely become influencers for requiring a certain level of safety at their shows.

The second set of stakeholders that play an extremely important role in the safety of the entertainment industry are the venue owners and operators. Since as recent as the Las Vegas shooting at the Route 91 music festival, concert producers and organizers have taken to new levels to heighten their security measures. In a recent Rolling Stone article, Bob O’Neill who is the president of the Grant Park Conservancy which hosts Chicago’s Lollapalooza has said that “In the future...urban festivals may look like a presidential or papal visit, complete with rooftop snipers.”(Knopper, 2017). These people are the ones that we in the entertainment industry must rely on to provide as much security as humanly possible. They must look at every possibility and every threat and come up with possible solutions for each and every one. Without their vigilance and dedication to the

entertainment industry, I do not believe that we would still be able to have outdoor music festivals or see performers in smaller venues because it would be too unsafe. Rather than throw in the towel and say ‘its just too hard’ these people have buckled down to come up with solutions and procedures to help combat these attacks.

Genre Analysis: Part 2 With an increasing amount of threats to the entertainment industry, industry

leaders must look outside of the box for help with providing a safe environment for their attendees. Because of the nature of the entertainment industry being so public and in the spotlight they are also pressured to be the people who stand up to these heinous acts, who have to say “the show must go on”. A big question is where do these stakeholders, the artists and the venue owners and operators get their security procedures? Who tells them, the show can’t go on?

For an artist the decision to cancel a show or cancel an entire tour because of terror attacks either directly effecting them or other artists is not always their decision to make. If an artist does not feel safe or comfortable they do have the option to pull out of shows, unfortunately smaller acts may not feel like they have the choice to pull out of shows or tours due to the financial burden that comes with canceling. An artist will get the information to make their decision from their management team, personal security and global news broadcastings. Its difficult to pinpoint exactly which genre an artist uses most, as it differs from person to person, performance to performance. Often an artist will

use their personal website to communicate larger pieces of news or information, this will come as a blog post of sorts. Because of the ever increasing popularity of social media, Twitter, FaceBook, Tumblr and Instagram have also become platforms for an artist to voice information and news.

How a venue owner and operator, or O&O’s, makes decisions to deal with the ever increasing threat of terrorist attacks in the entertainment industry goes much further however. Almost all venue O&O’s use various sources to collect their information including following; Citadel Security Agency, which oversees security at New York shows and festivals, security consultants for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Prevent Advisors, a firm that advises on security for 28 arenas, including Madison Square Garden, and insurance firms that specialize in both the entertainment industry and terrorism. Once they have collected and analyzed their information they will often release press statements regarding increase of security, they will also use social media, such as Twitter, FaceBook, Tumblr and Instagram to alert other industry professionals, attendees and artists of their decisions relating to terrorism in the entertainment industry. Many O&O’s will also use industry magazines and news platforms to get their message across. These genres are made to be viewed by the public far and wide to let people know that the entertainment industry will not collapse because of these threats and attacks, they want everyone to know that the industry is strong and will do whatever it takes to try and ensure the publics safety.

The genre I believe will be most suitable for communicating ways of bringing to light the importance of safety within the entertainment industry and how it is changing the industry would be an article written for a entertainment publication read by professionals such as Billboard, Rolling Stone, or Variety. I have chosen an article for a industry publication because both emotional and logic play an important role in the drastically changing industry we are in. These industry publications are read and written by people who are deeply invested in the entertainment industry and want to keep it alive. These are also the people who wish to keep things simpler and not have certain freedoms taken away at festivals or performances. It is just as important to reach out to your critics as well as your supporters. Addressing people who think bag checks are a nuisance and having police at festivals is overbearing is what is most important right now. Having these people understand that these procedures will be created for their safety and comfort, so that they may be implanted smoothly, is what can help prevent horrible attacks from happening again. These articles are often 8-12 paragraphs long with direct quotes from reputable and relevant sources. They interview people who have had direct involvement with the issue at hand which gives a first person perspective and outlook on the problems. In Knopper’s Rolling Stone article from November 3rd, 2017, he had interviewed seven entertainment management professionals and three artists regarding the effects that the Las Vegas shooting had on the entertainment industry and how it will further affect it in the future. I believe using sources that relate so closely to the issue at hand is what will really help create a powerful article, using their experiences and their first hand reports of

what works and what doesn’t. Most if not all sources are directly cited in the article itself as they are mostly direct quotes, stating the persons name, profession or relationship to the issue and then their quote. The information these articles include definitely varies. Some articles play on emotion hard, while others go straight for the facts, leaving emotion out almost completely. I do not believe leaving emotion out of an article is the correct decision, especially for a problem as big and with such a global effect as terrorism in the entertainment industry. We are emotional beings and therefore make decisions often lead by emotion. While this may not always be the correct decision it is an option we must always explore. In the article I will be writing, I plan to try and find the balance between logic and emotion by trying to offer solutions based both on emotion and logic.

Because I have chosen to write an article on such a public platform as an industry professional platform, my audience surpasses the two stakeholders I have previously mentioned and affects each life involved in the entertainment industry. I will be focusing heavily on the venue O&O’s responsibility to safety and how in the upcoming years, possibly months security will be changing at all venues, how it will affect revenue, atmosphere and also how it will affect the other stakeholders. As the world we live in changes so quickly each part of life must adapt to it. My question to venue owners and operators is how they plan on adapting and moving forward past all of these horrific events have taken place. My answer to said question will be ideas I believe should be implicated to various concerts, festivals, performances, based on interviews with industry professionals, and my own experience in the industry as a professional as well.