#we really fucked ourselves over. the musical revolution we had

[ribcagewolf]

buckley was right

[uelden]

Vanity Fair interview translated

Just a side note before the actual translation; I don't know why, but instead of reporting the full questions and answers in full as she should, the journalist decided to report only summarized fragments of what Måneskin said and patch these fragments up into messy clusters. She also worded a couple phrases in a very confusing way (and yes, she's fully Italian). In short, she did quite a poor job, so the final shape of the interview is not that good. I didn't expect top-tier journalism from Vanity Fair but ffs. You'll see what I mean.

I translated it as it is, adding just a couple footnotes to give you insight on Italian pop culture references.

Translation under the cut

Måneskin: "Different from whom?"

by Lavinia Farnese, 09 June 2021

"True justice is being judged for what you do and not for what you are." The ones who are convinced of this are Damiano, Victoria, Ethan and Thomas who, by being the emblem of a generation that is finally free, refuse labels and conformism. In life, in love and on the stage. Where, maybe precisely because of this, they're winning everything

With the still unexpected (first place at Sanremo Festival) and the incredible (triumph at Eurovision) in their eyes, Måneskin are on the sofa of the house-studio they rented - to resume writing songs and rehearsing them - like you are after a won battle: lying in a calm and unreal silence, alert and a bit irreverent, happy.

In the garden there's the tennis table and the pool, the light of summer when it's starting and calming the country all around, and it filters inside from the large windows, and it goes onto the shining black of Ethan's hair, which blends with Thomas' eye shadow and the butterfly he has tattooed oh his naked forearm, which completes the picture of Victoria's golden crucifix hanging between neck and tank top and ends on the black nail polish of Damiano's stretched hands.

It's a human fresco, a Theatre of wrath [translator's note: "Teatro d'ira"] - to call it with the title of their latest album, a platinum record already - where their flaunted 20 years of age, their irregular femininity and virility are grown into proud and challenging custom, a pop glam rock generational manifesto of hard-earned liberties in a finally-unconditional expression of the self.

To watch them from any angle and from another age is to think that a great love will be born in those who'll understand: this new way of being in the world, the true and sovereign realm they hold where "diversity=exceptionality", the power of the artistic and cultural revolution of which they are healthy carriers in establishing in all lyrics and gestures the right to live according to one's own nature past the "people (who) talk, the people (who) unfortunately talk, and don't know what the fuck they're talking about." [tn: "Zitti e buoni" lyrics]

We go where we're afloat, where the air isn't gone. [tn: journalist's own variation on "Zitti e buoni" lyrics]

Miley Cyrus says hi – The numbers of a phenomenon

"The streams of Zitti e buoni are growing by the second, and they bring us above Muse, at the top of English charts, twelfth in the Spotify Global Chart. Followers almost tripled, in the post-Rotterdam period (from 1,4 to 3,3 millions, ed.) Contagious and universal folly: t-shirts and merchandising sold out in 10 minutes. Like the records, the tickets for a tour that keeps adding dates and expanding over geographic maps. They're contacting us even from some festivals were The Rolling Stones went." Thomas

"After the pretextual controversy over cocaine that France built against us, later disproven by my drug test, some graffiti popped up in Spain depicting me as a “No drugs” poster guy. Some tweets made us laugh: "Congratulations, Italy! I've never been more certain that four people have had sex with each other." Miley Cyrus started following us -You're great. -You guys are greater." Damiano

From the garage to the stars – Story of a flight

"It was only 2016, and we played in restaurants, in the streets, in via del Corso. Damiano without even a microphone, Thomas' guitar with wonky strings, Ethan was drumming on a cajón. During Rome highschools' sit-ins (Kennedy, Virgilio, Mamiani) we had our first confirmations and half-hours of celebrity, playing among those who criticized us and those who went "wow they're really cool." One of the rare times when they would have paid us – 50 euros each – we gave the money to the next band in the lineup so that they would make us play in their spot, later in the day, when there would have been more people. We had already realized how things worked. Visibility mattered more than money. And we still think that." Victoria

The intimacy of rock – Choice of a genre

"Music allows us the miracle of extending to others some very personal and private topics, sometimes even difficult and thorny ones. They are and they remain deeply your own, but at the same time they become a confession that reaches a wider audience, and in this passage that is alike a delivery, they find a place in you as well, a processing of them. You overcome them, you accept them. One second it's something aggressive, the next it's a ballad. Cathartic». Damiano

Against panic – The stage as therapy

"I've suffered a lot from anxiety and panic attacks, it's an issue I've worked on thanks to a psychotherapy course, my friends and my family. Playing helped me in not letting myself be paralyzed by my fears, not making myself limited in my private and professional life. I've learned to accept, to live with this side of myself. I don't hide it. I don't feel ashamed of it." Victoria

Analysis as necessity – Relying on someone saves you

"This belief that only madmen go to the psychologist is a widespread ignorance. No-one's born learned. [tn: common Italian saying] And it's often hard to understand the very reason why we're here, let alone the origin and direction of our desires. It's a long and legitimate journey towards lucidity, a kind of backing to become transparent." Damiano

Being out of our minds – But different from them [tn: "Zitti e buoni" lyrics]

"When you feel a strong passion towards something that is not a canonical job but an artistic language, that already puts you on a level of anomaly, which is not superior or inferior to other people, but it puts you in the position of the one who breaks the mold and also works at a loss, the one who sustains great risks while trying to do something that who knows if it will take you anywhere. "Why do it if it doesn't pay?". You want to give this dream of yours an aesthetic, but it becomes "You're dressing so weird! You must be gay!" - now that I'm 22 I laugh about it, but when I was 17 it had an effect on me, too." Damiano

The beauty of uniqueness – Of believing in it and defending it

"And I mean, at the end of the day if we're all different it's not because we want be alternative but because, really, no-one is the same. Justice is being judged on what you do and not what you are. Justice is equality, respect, beauty." Ethan

Fluid sexuality – Pride is freedom

"Heels for men that like themselves in them, kisses among ourselves, we have an open, extended mind, and we're proud of it. The horizons become vast, past the oppression of conservative families. With the information on the web knowledge becomes greater and with it the possibility that minorities will be less and less minorities, because the majority will be less of a majority. This way we'll make insults and bullying grow quieter. If social media get to a village of 50 souls and reveal to a girl who's afraid of the dark that someone has felt her same fear, then there's no reason to give a name to that fear, to mark it with labels which also limit and restrict. Definitions always had this effect on me. You shouldn't even consider the gender when judging someone, let alone their orientation." Victoria

Sexism – A culture to be dismantled

"Emma [tn: Emma Marrone, Italian singer] drops the bomb: “At Eurovision when I was there they massacred me for a pair of shorts, while they said nothing to Damiano – bare-chested and in heels.” The easy judgment against women is more fierce, constant, debasing (if I have a lot of sex I'm cool while Vic is a whore, where I show myself strong I'm a leader while Vic is despotic and a pain in the ass who reached success because she's hot.) As a male I'm privileged, the abuse I get is not comparable to those a woman has to live through, the comments over my aesthetic are centered only on my aesthetic and don't insinuate anything about my professionalism and my competence, while women are victims of this kind of thought in a systematic way. It happened though to find myself standing with a woman who while pulling me to herself to take a selfie, started licking my face out of the blue... I mean, what the hell do you want? Who asked you? Consent exists, and it's due." Damiano

Grow yourself – The only commandment

"To me conformism is the opposite of education [tn: could also mean "politeness"] and is the asphyxia of expression. I fortunately never endured heavy bullying, heavy enough for the the judgement of others to change me. But the mold of the small crumbs of bullying I got and of the kind of aggression that scars is the same. If I'm a kid who dances and likes dolls you have to let me do what I like. I was a kid who wanted to keep his hair long and played with Barbie. As a teen, my friends looked at my hair: " You have to find a girl with short hair to be at your side." My grandparents took away my dolls: "Stop it, they're not for you." Ethan

"When I was six I was already sick of them, the distinctions between masculine and feminine. I've always had strong ideas about how I wanted to be. I refused things that were typically defined as girly, and all around me they mocked me because I went skateboarding, I played soccer, I didn't wear skirts, I was giving myself the chance to be as I wished. I endured it a little, I suffered a little, but I had courage, and now thanks to that courage I know that I could have gotten even much more hurt, otherwise I would have left to others the most important choice: the one about myself." Victoria

Love in progress – Music, girlfriends

"I've been married to music for the last 20 years. I can't wait to celebrate our golden wedding anniversary." Ethan

"Everyone makes their own experiences, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes wrong, but it's always not anybody's business." Thomas

"When I first felt feelings and attraction towards a girl it was a bit disorienting because I had never had the courage of going beyond the limitations I had put for myself. For society being heterosexual is the norm and so you often define yourself in that way automatically, depriving yourself of the freedom to live many shades and faces of love. Once I overcame the initial insecurity of having to call into question my certainties I've lived my sexuality in a very natural and free way, as it should be for everyone." Victoria

"I had paparazzi at my door every day and night. So, after four years of relationship, I revealed her name. I still have paparazzi at my door every day and nigh, but at least I don't have to hide anything anymore." Damiano

The worth of the group – Phenomenology of protection

"The true engagement though, the true family is among ourselves, our band. We've believed in it since day zero, even before we called ourselves Måneskin (Moonlight in Danish), even before Ethan drew a giant moon on the flier for the first concert we ever did. We share everything, even the pain for the tragedy of Seid Visin, who committed suicide at 20 because of racism. [tn: I think the journalist asked them their opinion about Seid Visin's death, which was a current events topic in Italy, and then pasted it syntaxically in the middle of Thomas' answer, which was not a great move] A group is what we all should be: stay united and not back down an inch in the face of oppression that is generated by a distorted view of diversity." Thomas

I'm not of the right age – Like Gigliola [tn: Gigliola Cinquetti won Eurovision with her song "Non ho l'età", which means "I'm not of the right age"]

"Before you the only one who won both Sanremo and Eurovision on the same year was Cinquetti (1964). If there's anything I feel I'm not of the right age for? No, honestly no. Maybe having children. Regarding children I'll be honest: I'm not of the right age." Damiano

Having touched the sky – The fears that remain

"We're more than inside the dream, we're in the conquered dream. When you fly high there's the risk of plummeting and hurting yourself, but we'll work hard not to end up like Icarus, who burns his wings with the sun. Everything is in our hands. And this - a bit pretentiously - reassures us rather than scaring us." Damiano

[scarlettaagni]

left on read

“Oh,” Zola exclaimed aloud. “that reminds me,” she continues in signs.

“Did you ever get our messages?”

Missy paused in using their knives as whetting stones for one another and glanced at her.

“What messages?” they signed back.

“We sent messages out to deep space decades ago in search of intelligent life.” Zola’s eyes sparkled with wonder as she leaned forward.

“How long ago was this?”

“We’ve been doing it for a while... since the 60s?”

“Those numbers mean nothing to me. How many Earth revolutions ago was this?”

“Over 40 of those ago.”

Missy stroked their chin in thought, still clutching the knife.

“What did it contain?”

“Lots of different messages, some are signals, some are physical records on spacecraft. Those records had photos of human experiences, math, maps, science... Human music from all over the globe, and a dozen human languages telling whoever received it that we wanted them to visit, to say something back, that we mean well.”

She sat back on her knees.

“Did your kind ever get them?”

Missy raised her head up in a near-recognition, as if to recall from faint memory.

“Those messages. Yes, we did get them.”

Zola sat even further backwards in incredulity.

“Why didn’t you ever send something back to us?”

Missy scraped one of their knives against the other, creating a spark. They paused again, draping a hand over their bent knee.

“Because humans wouldn’t care to get to know us.”

“Don’t say that. We’re getting along just fine.”

The Young Blood scraped their knives aggressively yet again, seemingly out of contempt.

“We keep our existence hidden from humans. For good reasons. I don’t imagine they would like the planet of human-Hunters to respond to pleas of goodwill and companionship. Not that we would want it, anyways.”

They looked up in thought, tapped their fingers upon their knee, then signed again.

“The history between you and I, is different than the history between our peoples.”

Zola couldn’t muster a quick response, twisting her mouth in awkward silence.

“Well... did you guys at least learn something from it?”

Missy once again looked up, but inhaled and exhaled deeply, out of annoyance.

“It would have been useful information... 300,000 of your human years ago. We’ve known most, if not all, of what could be considered ‘useful’ on those discs long before they were sent out. The rest was considered irrelevant.”

Zola sank, and looked down in agreed disappointment.

“Such as the music?”

Missy looked at her.

“Yes. Irrelevant. The fauna and human voice samples were appreciated, as were the brainwaves. Good references for language, fauna identification, and living human vitals. If not in a very primitive format, and potentially outdated.”

Zola barely looked up, continuing a downcast glance to a random spot on her bed.

“Are you the only other intelligent species in the galaxy?”

“No,” Missy signed frankly. “but you all are in quite a dead zone. We’re the only ones nearby because we travel to you frequently. We are always on or by Earth. We have been for over 300,000 years.”

“So, we’re not alone, but we are lonely.”

“That is a contradiction. I do not understand.”

Zola extended her arms grandly, rolling her wrists dramatically, purposefully near Missy’s face.

“We’re just calling out into empty space, and the only people who can hear us don’t care. If we call and someone nearby doesn’t respond, they might as well not be there. There are others nearby, but we don’t know they’re there. So we aren’t alone, but we feel lonely.”

She tucked her arms back to her side, splayed out.

In the ensuing silence, Missy put their knives down onto the bedsheets beside them and leaned over ever so slightly, staring at Zola. Quietly, they raised their hands, the sign version of inhaling in preparation of speech.

“...I was young when we received those messages. Only a little older when got our hands on those records. They were broadcast planet-wide.”

Zola perked up.

“Really?”

Missy leaned back, their head contacting the wall as if relaxing, idly glancing into space with nostalgia.

“Humans hadn’t perfected interstellar travel yet—you still haven’t—and we knew you were not aware of extraterrestrial life, so when all of a sudden humans managed to send a message we could pick up, it was a commotion.”

They glanced over at Zola with what almost seemed a sympathetic look.

“It was like a joke. Patronizing, if you will. We all knew those messages asking for us to respond and come to Earth would not be met with the promised goodwill. Humans were not ready for a third party to reveal themselves. Humans can barely handle other humans. Some saw it as an insult. Or a threat, a trick. Most found it amusing.”

Before Zola’s rekindled joy could escape, Missy planted it down with a hand on her shoulder.

“But I thought it was delightful. It is very one-half of human behavior to send such messages.”

“One-half?”

“The other half is what my kind see when we reveal ourselves.”

“Ah.” Zola vocalized aloud. She looked aside awkwardly, but looked back with a good-natured smile. “What did you do with the records?”

“Saved their contents, and put them back. If you want to send messages into deep space where no one can read it, who were we to stop you?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Zola sat straight up. “You just have a copy of the entire thing, ready to view?”

“I could request access to our copy, but... do humans not...?”

“See, for a long time it wasn’t available to the public, but a few years ago, the audio was made so. But can you do the...”

Zola mimed typing over her left forearm, pinching her fingers together, then expanding them as she lifted her hand up, sound effects provided with her mouth.

“... that? It was audio and visual. Oh, I know you said you all already know what the contents were, but I could explain them better!”

She clapped her hands and cupped them around her face.

“I’m having movie night with an alien...” she sighed with wonder.

Missy hesitantly opened their wristcom and input the request.

“It needs to be approved for access first. If I am denied, we can listen to the human copy instead.”

“That’s not as fun.”

For several minutes, Zola awaited with bated breath as Missy stared at the REQUEST PENDING notification in her biomask vision.

“Will it be, like, hours until it reaches your planet?”

“It should be quicker than that, if not instantaneous.”

Suddenly, the display blinked from PENDING, to a flashing APPROVED banner with an OVERRIDE COMMAND subtitle before disappearing.

“He... said yes?” they clicked aloud, blinking their eyes and shaking their head to regain their bearings. Noticing their surprise, Zola placed a hand on Missy’s arm and leaned in, beaming.

“You got it? They said yes?!”

Missy silently nodded their head, furrowing their brow in confusion as they slowly opened the recording.

“Why did he say yes? It was so superfluous...”

They closed the analog display on their wristcom and activated the holo-projector, shooting a light construct visualization of the audio pattern of English speech, the accompanying audio emanating from Missy’s biomask.

Zola leapt across the room to dim her lights, then dived back onto her bed, and yanked her phone from her dresser.

As she scrolled, Missy carefully slipped the gauntlet off, and placed it between the two of them.

“Okay, so,” Zola began to sign, thumbing over the Wikipedia page of the Voyager’s contents. “This is the Secretary-General of the United Nations... from over 40 years ago. Like their leader, an overseer.”

“Was he defeated in combat?”

“... no. I wish he was, he sounds like a fucking tool. Oh, oh! This is the greeting track! This one is Sumerian...”

Zola looked up at the holograms, a quick second of eye contact with Missy past it, and back down at the phone for information which she interpreted to ASL.

Missy listened closely to her voice past the message, and only looked past the holograms, at Zola’s delighted smile, framed by warm cheeks.

[imagesofthegreatgull]

Hybrid Rainbow

Joy has always been a rare and precious commodity. I would argue, though, that in the developed world (Wherever, exactly, that is), it has become somewhat less rare in recent times, as standards of living and education continue to go up. That’s an absurdly privileged thing to say, I realize, but I’m trying to start this thing as evenhandedly as I can. I understand about suffering and poverty; I’m reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn right now, even! Okay, saying we’re closer now than ever to utopia is going to smack of ignorance no matter how you phrase it, but it also strikes me as undeniably true, in the grand scheme of things. I think most people--aside from the fascists--would refuse a one-way trip in a time machine to any previous era, or at the very least, would recognize that it wouldn’t improve much of anything for them. As unruly as our age is, it’s still probably the best one we’ve gotten thus far, and as the boot-heel of oppression starts to ever so slowly ease up its pressure on the necks of the long-suffering masses, the question has begun to enter into the collective consciousness: what is to be done with joy when it begins to fall, unbidden, into your life with something like abundance? What is to be done if moments of joy no longer must be pried with great effort and sacrifice from the rockface of life, but lie strewn liberally throughout our days, needing only the will and lack of embarrassment to seize them?

Thus far, the latter-day generations have faced up to this problem with decidedly mixed success. The idea that expecting anything other than the very worst leaves one vulnerable to the universe’s cruel whims has been stamped upon the human brain for centuries, and has left many sadly unable to recognize their own privilege (Which, by the way, is a big part of why a whole lotta white folks refuse to admit they have it better than anyone else and continue to dig their heels in against progress because to them it looks like cutting in line). It is still widely accepted that constantly finding joy and peace and purpose in one’s own life is the purview of children and children alone, that it is a naivete to be grown out of. We have the impulse always within us to be hard, to be warlike, to show the world that we’re not weak and frivolous but monsters to be feared, without emotions to be appealed to or ideals to be fallen short of.

Remedying this problem has turned out to be one of the primary functions of counterculture. If it is often unhelpful to simply look at the entire value system of one’s parents and say “Fuck that”, as it tends to foster a rather negative self-definition, still, if part of that value system is a deeply entrenched distrust of happiness, “Fuck that” may be exactly the response called for. The beauty of “Fuck that” is that it leaps past the slow loss of faith in something and arrives immediately at a flat rejection of it, and since much of the history of civilization has been bound up with blind faith in arbitrary and harmful things, the ability and the courage to flatly reject something, to give it no credit for however widely accepted it is but to dismiss it as bullshit from the ground up, is a step forward in human consciousness tantamount to the reinvention of the wheel.

The great irony of the end of the sixties is that all the hippies were miserable for no reason: they won. Rock n’ roll did change the world, it just didn’t immediately transform it on every level into an unrecognizable nirvana. For all the apparent emptiness of its utopian dreams, the basic thrust of the thing worked out just fine: that particular cat will never be put back into its bag, and those ideas are now out in the ether forever, always waiting for someone to find them and be inspired to change their own life and the lives of those around them for the better. The same goes for the punk rock revolution a few years later: they may not have brought the bastards down, but they did successfully bring personal liberation to a lot of people, and poured exactly as much gas on the fires of populism as they intended to. Culture, and in particular art and in particular music, cannot, unassisted, change the world, but it can change your world, and has been changing small worlds all over the frigging place at least since those mop-topped Brits set foot on American shores and probably since Johnny B. Goode learned to play guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell. 

The thread can get lost, however. Culture is always a reflection of the people, and the people still spend a lot of their time bored, frustrated, and terrified of letting on that they have feelings about stuff. Young people especially, formerly the eternal pirate crew waving high the flags of “Liberty” and “Up Yours”, in recent times have often capitulated and resigned themselves to no more than a few stray moments of fun pilfered from the fortresses of the almighty Money Man-Kings, usually in the form of drugs, sex, and reckless self-endangerment. The cost of the hippies and the punks giving up their battles is that the counterculture lost its intellectual leadership, at least until the resurgence in political literacy in the 2010s. In the wasteland following the 70s, there were no John Lennons or Joe Strummers to look to for guidance; even the people who were elected to speak for their generation seemed adamant that there was fuck-all they could really say. Yeah, it’s nice to know that someone else feels stupid and contagious, but that’s not really a direction, is it? The generation-defining message Kurt Cobain and his peers sent out was “We’re all way too fucked up to do anything about anything”, and that introspective moodiness pervaded American underground rock music from the invention of hardcore at least all the way up to the moment Craig Finn watched The Last Waltz with Tad Kubler and said “Why aren’t there bands like this anymore?” and set out with rest of the Steadies in tow to remind everyone that music can save your immortal soul and that hey, that Springsteen guy was really onto something, headband and all, and together they all successfully ushered in the New Uncool and now we’ve got Patrick Stickles wailing that “If the weather’s as bad as the weatherman says, we’re in for a real mean storm!” and Brian Fallon admitting “I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis” and everything’s great, except it’s not, everything’s fucked, but rock n’ roll is here to stay, come inside now it’s okay, and I’ll shake you, ooo-ooo-ooo.

The point of all this is my belief that even with the responsibility rock music has to provide cathartic outlets for dissatisfaction, is has an equal or greater responsibility to provide heroes. I think it’s time we all got over pretending that we’re better than the need for heroes, because we all insist on having them anyway, imperfect roses by any other name, and we’d do a hell of a lot better selecting them if we just admitted what we were after. We don’t just want particularly talented comrades, we want King Arthur, Robin Hood, Superman, Malcolm Reynolds. Damn it all, they don’t need to be perfect, they don’t even need to be all that great really, and yeah, Arthur dies, and Robin never gets Prince John, and Superman can’t save everyone, and the war’s over, we’re all just folk now, and John Lennon beat women and Van Morrison is a grumpy old fart and John Lydon’s a disgrace, but it’s the faith that counts. The faith that there’s something greater than ourselves that some people are more keyed into than others, and that whatever they can relay from that other side is what’ll see us through. All the best prophets are madmen, and madmen aren’t always romantic fools; sometimes they hurt people, or fail at crucial moments due to a compulsion they can’t control. Let he who is without sin etcetera, right? Why not cast aside realism and sincerely believe in something or someone, huh? 

I believe in the Pillows. I don’t know hardly anything about them; my expertise of Japanese culture and history extends to the anime I’ve seen and that “History of Japan” YouTube video that made the rounds a while back. I can’t locate them within the Japanese music scene; all their western influences seem obvious to me, and the rest I know nothing about. They’re the only rock band from their country I’ve listened to any great amount of, I don’t speak the language they mostly sing in, I don’t even know their career very well. The particulars of any experiences they might have had that motivated them to make the art they make are not ones I could possibly share in, so, saying that I “Relate” to their work sounds a little preposterous. They ought to be a novelty to me, a band that clearly likes a lot of the same bands I do despite hailing from a foreign shore, marrying that shared music taste with a cultural identity I have nothing to do with, a small, nice upswing of globalism pleasing to my sense of universalism but not having any kind of quantifiable impact on me.

Yet I, like a good many other westerners, believe in the Pillows. I’m a little buster, and my eyes just watered as I wrote that. In fact, it’s likely because of the barriers of language and culture that exist between us that my belief in the Pillows is so strong. Pete Townshend, someone else I believe in, once opened a show by saying “You are very far away...but we will fucking reach you”, and though the Pillows are both geographically (At the moment) and culturally miles away from me, Lord strike me down if they don’t fucking reach me. They reach me in a way many of their American college rock peers, many of their biggest influences in fact, never have. Dinosaur Jr, Bob Mould, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Nirvana--all these artists speak directly to the American adolescent experience, but though they have all moved me to one degree or another, none of them have produced a body of work I can so readily see myself in as that of the Pillows. Maybe it is the novelty of it, maybe I’m fooling myself and it is just my sense of universalism carrying me away, but there’s something I hear in the Pillows that I don’t hear in those bands, and though the obvious candidate for that thing would be the foreign tongue the majority of the lyrics are written in, when it comes down to it, I think that thing is joy.

Joy, to me, is the possibility glimpsed by rock n’ roll. Not hedonistic pleasure, not a sadistic glee over the outrage of authority figures, but real, true, open-hearted, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium”--type joy. Buddy Holly had joy. The Beatles, The Who, the pre-fall Rod Stewart, they had joy. Springsteen’s got joy to spare. Those people have such profound love for their art and their audience that just the continual recognition of the fact that they have a guitar in their hands and they’re being allowed to play it is enough to make them ecstatic, and whenever they want to actually express something serious they have to get themselves under control to do it. Yet, whether it’s the unfashionability of those utopian dreams, or the simple fact that rock music has become accepted by mainstream culture and is now a commonplace, unremarkable thing, but half the people who have picked up an electric guitar for the past few decades don’t seem all that excited about it. From Kim Gordon snarling about how people go down to the store to buy some more and more and more and more, to Thom Yorke moaning about how he’s let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground, even up to Courtney Barnett asking how’s that for first impressions, this place seems depressing, it’s not really a given anymore, if it ever was, that people who make rock music are very joyful in what they do. 

Of course, I’m not demanding that our artists be empty-headed fluff-factories; far from it. The Pillows write sad songs and angry songs same as everybody else. But the important thing is this: every song the Pillows play is played with an exuberance and abandon that is immediately striking, regardless of the emotional content of each song. Channelling that kind of revelry into rock music is both to my mind the initial purpose of the genre in the first place and something which has become so rare as to be remarkable. A veneer of detached cool, a howling ferocity, a whimpering woundedness--these have become the hallmarks of American rock music, and they are nowhere to be found in the Pillows.

At the same time, the Pillows are the very antithesis of artlessness. Joy of the caliber they deal in is more commonly found in folky rave-ups, a lack of musicianship giving way to trancelike festivity. But the Pillows are skilled song craftsmen like few others; their sound has evolved throughout the years, but they tend to settle in the neighborhood of power-pop, abounding in glorious hooks and surprising structures. A hundred unnecessary, perfect touches seem to exist in every song; a pause, a solo, a bassline, all deftly elevating the song into a perfect expression of something sublime, something that always--always--takes ahold of the musicians themselves and imbues their performances with power and purpose the likes of which most little busters can only dream of feeling. It should be testament enough to their brilliance that upon first listen to a song I never know what most of the lyrics mean, but whenever I look up a translation, they always turn out to be exactly what I felt they must be; their songs are so musically communicative that they all but lack the need for lyrics. 

This dual nature is why I believe in the Pillows: by so utterly failing to neglect both the highest possibilities of musical composition as an unparalleled tool for capturing emotional nuance and the unrestrained id-like rush that is the province of rock n’ roll, they successfully attain the lofty realm that is--or ought to be--the goal of music in the first place. Never once is there a hint of straying into the realm of primitivism nor into overthought seriousness, and instead they locate themselves somehow exactly center on the scale between punk and prog, lacking the weaknesses and gaining the strengths of both. They make rock whole again by finally disproving the tenet initially laid out by their heroes, your heroes, and mine, The Beatles: the notion that growing up means having less fun. The viscerally exciting early work of The Beatles lacks any of the depth and vision displayed by their later records, but those records are so carefully and expertly crafted that they tend to lose spontaneity, and constantly second-guess themselves where the juvenilia they followed forged unselfconsciously ahead. That legendary career path has laid out a false dichotomy that every proceeding generation of kids with guitars has chosen between, save for the few who could see past it, the ones who heard the wildness in “Revolution” and the wisdom in “Twist and Shout” and realized that they were of a piece, were one and the same, not to be chosen between but embraced fully. Pete Townshend. Bruce Springsteen. Joe Strummer. David Byrne. Paul Westerberg. The Pillows. The real heroes are not those who champion one side or another but fight all their lives for peace between them, knowing that we have not yet begun to imagine what could be accomplished if that were made possible.

Just as they bypass the divide between what Patrick Stickles termed the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies of rock (I prefer to think of the usual battle as being between the Dionysians and the Athenians, with the true devotees of Apollo being most of those heroes I keep referring to, except Dylan, who might be a Hermesian), so too do the Pillows bypass the Pacific frigging ocean. And the Atlantic, to boot. Their music quotes the Pixies and The Beatles directly, and obviously owes much to Nirvana and all their college rock predecessors who spent the entire 80s desperately stacking themselves until the doomed power trio could finally vault over the wall. Their first record is practically a tribute to XTC. They do speak a lot of English, too. I’m informed that much of western culture is seen as the epitome of coolness in Japan, which might explain their obsession with Baseball, and apparently sprinkling a bit of the Saxon tongue into the mix is far from uncommon in the music scene(s). Regardless, there is something ineffably touching to a distant fan in a foreign land about hearing Sawao Yamanaka spit “No surrender!” or exclaim “Just runner’s high!” It looks from here like a show of mutual effort to understand me as much as I’m trying to understand them. They’re generous enough to have already walked to the middle where they’re asking me to meet them, a middle where it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a suffix attached to my name or that they don’t wear shoes in houses. The invisible continent that all forward-thinking and sensitive people come to long for is where the Pillows are broadcasting from, because they’ve realized that its golden shores and spiraling cities are attainable. They’re attainable with joy, with the fundamentally rebellious act of refusing to let the fascists bring down even your globdamn day, because who the hell gave them that power other than us? I know enough about Japan and America to know that either one accusing the other of being imperialist and socially conservative to a fault is a fucking joke, and to know that we’ve done a lot more wrong to them than they’ll ever do to us and the presence of the Pillows amounts to a “We forgive you”, not an “I’m sorry”. Having watched a decent amount of anime, which is basically the result of Japan’s mind being blown by western media and then proceeding to show their love by often almost inadvertently surpassing their inspirations, I know that the only way to save our respective national souls and everybody else’s too is to put our knuckles down, have Jesus and Buddha shake hands like Kerouac tried to explain that they would anyway, and embrace each other’s dreams and passions and adopt them into our own. 

It takes better people to inhabit that better world, and in case that sounds like fascist talk, I mean we’ve got to do better, not be better. It’s no physical imperfection that holds us back, nor a mental imperfection exactly, as we all have our own neuroses and if we expunge those then we’ll be kissing art and lot of other vital stuff goodbye. No, it’s our discomfort with ourselves, our world, our neighbors, our aliens, that keep us from seeing that crazy sunshine. If we can’t even acknowledge the greatness around us, that surplus of joy I mentioned a while back that we just seem to have no idea what to do with, then we have no hope of ever achieving further greatness, of ever quelling man’s inhumanity to man down to an inevitable fringe rather than the basic order of the world. 

There was always more to do 

Than just eat and work and screw

But now that there’s time at last to do those things, we’re still afraid to, afraid that we’ll come up empty, that the search for fulfillment leads only to disappointment, better to hang back and play it safe, better not to risk becoming one of those people I shake my head at and pity and will secretly envy until I die. It’s a new world, and we must learn to be new people. I believe in the Pillows because I believe they make excellent models for that new kind of person. The way they behave in the studio and on the stage is the way people behave when they’re truly free, and we’ve all been set free already or will be soon, so if we’re going to try and learn what the fuck is next from anyone, I think we might as well learn from the Pillows. At least, that’s one of the places we could get that insight. There’s a lot of art and a lot of philosophy and political theory to sift through to in order to put together a workable 21st century identity, and the Pillows are hardly the only people to have begun making the leap. But because of a silly thing like the size of the earth, the infinitesimal size of the earth even compared to the distance between us and the next rock we’re gonna try and get to, not everybody is getting their particular brand of free thought and action, and I happen to think that’s regrettable, and it’s my will as a free individual to rectify it as much as I can.

Writing about music really is worthless, isn’t it? I haven’t said jackshit about what the Pillows actually do other than to vaguely qualify their genre and temperament, and the only more useless thing I could do than not describing their songs would be to describe their songs. If you don’t hear the bracing weightlessness in “Blues Drive Monster”, or the aching nostalgia in “Patricia”, or the soul-bearing cry in “Hybrid Rainbow” then nothing I could write about those would be more effective than “Little Busters is a really good album.” The better primer might be Happy Bivouac, from a few years later; it has the melancholic rush of “Last Dinosaur”, the ascended teenybopper “Whoa, whoa, yeah” chorus in “Backseat Dog”, and the intro that should make it obvious immediately that you’re listening to one of the best songs ever recorded which opens “Funny Bunny”. Those two, Runners High, and Please, Mr. Lostman are the classic era, selections from the former three immortalized in their biggest claim to western fame, the FLCL soundtrack, a brilliant use of their music that could warrant an equally long piece. Before and after those four are periods of experimentation and discovery equally worth your time, not all of which I’m familiar with yet. See, now I’m just an incomplete Wikipedia article; it’d be equally worthless to expound upon the individual bandmates, on the pure yawp of Yamanaka’s vocals, on the passionate drumming of Yoshiaki Manabe and the supernaturally faultless lead guitar of Shinichiro Sato, or the contribution of founding bassist Kenji Ueda, which was so valued by the others that when he left he was never officially replaced (They’re so sweet). I’m not here to write an advertisement or a press-release, I don’t really even know why I’m here writing this, but I know that I believe in the Pillows, that they’re important, and that people should write about them. I’m being the change I want to see in the world, get it? That’s all we can be asked to do.

It occurs to me that people believed in Harvey Dent too, and that didn’t turn out so well. Hell, let’s leave the comic book pages behind, people believe in Donald Trump, they think he’s a hero, and that’s all going down in flames as I write this. Having heroes can be dangerous, but I still believe it’s not as dangerous as not having heroes. “Lesser of two evils” sounds an awful lot like one of those false dichotomies between fun and intelligence or between misery and foolishness I mentioned earlier, so, let’s call it a qualified good. I’m not much of a responsible world-citizen if my only effort towards bringing the planet together is spinning some sweet Japanese alt-rock tunes and bragging about how open-minded I am, but if I do ever end up doing anyone any good, then I’d consider it paying forward the good done to me by the Pillows, among others. They helped me form my identity as an artist (Read: functional human being) and they made my adolescence a lot easier. Actually, that’s a lie: my adolescence was (And continues to be) pretty easy already, and the Pillows reassured me that I wasn’t avoiding reality by feeling that. While American bands sang about the downsides of being a mallrat or a non-mallrat, the Pillows offered a vision of teenagedome much like my own, one that was grandly romantic, in which suffering wasn’t a cosmic stupidity but a trial with pathos and merit, and joy was not an occasional indulgence but a constant presence, whether it was lived in or lost and needing recovery. 

That’s the old idea of youth, the youth of John Keats, the youth that makes the old miss it, makes it required that we explain to them that it’s still there, it never left, it’s a dream, a momentary affirmation, an attitude, a muttered curse word. So many of my peers, now no longer engaged in a constant race to stay out of the grave as their ancestors were, seemed intent on beating each other into their tombs, as if reaching walking death before their parents was the only way to outgrow them. There’s so much life just lying around and it’s just plain wasteful to let it lie in the sun and rust in the rain. There’s space enough to stretch, to not keep who you are awkwardly curled up inside yourself, to breathe the air and taste the wine and dig the brains of your fellow travelers in this loosely-defined circus. I found that space in the Pillows, having often suspected it was there, and while everyone is going to find that space in their own way--or not, still, tragically not--I have to think that experience was due in part  to some innate and unique quality of the music itself, not just a complimentary sensibility contained within myself. The Pillows are free, and that makes them freeing, it’s easy as that. Their liberation is plain as day; it rings in every chord, every snare-hit, every harmony; it’s up to us ascertain what we can do in our own limited capacity to hoist ourselves up to their level and give some other folks a boost along the way and a hand to grab afterwards. It’s the gift that art gives us, and the Pillows just give it more freely than most is all, which is why I think the suggestion to listen to them is more than just a solid recommendation. Like the insistence on listening to The Beatles, or The Clash, or any of the others, it’s a plea to save your soul, to learn the language of tomorrow and drink the lifeblood of peace and love and piss and vinegar, or else you’ll be lost, lost, lost. 

Can you feel? Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?

[shanie-the-toyaddict]

Shanie’s Dream Fic: A Masterpost

The following is a Masterpost of all my various finished, started, and sketched out dream stories. They are listed here as the dreams originally were, not as the stories the dreams became. Listings are by Saga/Series, Story Title, and Month/Year of original dream. Also listed are the fandoms of the dreams and any specific warnings the fics might carry. For the record, this isn’t a post really for anyone on here. It’s mostly for my own records. I do have a copy on my cloud storage but I’m putting it here as well on the off chance anyone is curious. BTW: I’m putting this here so that I don’t have to list it every time. As far as the WWE dreams go. Absolutely NONE of them are Kayfabe compliant. That’s the problem with not watching the shows regularly. I don’t dream about the TV side of it often. The Zowens dream is close though. It’s sort of a hybrid. The rest? Well, all of them are some level of NKC, but some are not only non-kayfabe, they are straight up AU.  BTW2: In every single one of these stories involving me I am some manner of queer. I’m pretty sure in all but maybe one or two. I’m either wlw, ace, or both. NOT ONE of the first person dreams contains romance between me and another character. The best you get is a single platonic fake-relationship story. (That one did have a smut scene in it but it isn’t romantic.)

Anyway, list behind the cut!

ADVENTURES IN DREAMLAND Master Post

SAGA   A Family Beyond Blood

Part 1 Darkness Fallen (August 2019) I find myself trapped in a world where I died as a child. Now as a spirit I must find a way to restore the universe to it’s proper order. (Somehow my young death caused the entire universe to splinter) *McMahon Family and MCU Dream* Part 2 Death and Life on Planet Earth (August 2019)

Having saved the universe but not ourselves, I vow to do whatever it takes to return Shane to his rightful place with his family. *McMahon Family and MCU Dream*

Part 3 A World Restored to Fall (August 2019)

The universe has been reset again, and I have been returned to my proper timeline. Or have I? There’re odd happenings in a local bookshop and it’s up to me to figure out how to stop them *Original Dream Featuring IRL People*

Part 4 World War Winter (August 2019)

Nuclear Holocaust has occurred. The world is at war with the machines. As a soldier in the CAMP forces, I must leave everything I know behind and face down the android army. But, maybe there’s a familiar face or two in CAMP after all... *McMahon Family Dream* *VIOLENT*

Part 5 Of Queens and Kingdoms (August 2019)

The world is reset. AGAIN. This time, it’s me, Shane and Marissa in a new land where the middle ages and modern times are happening simultaneously and women are the dominant gender. And, somehow, I’m the bloody queen. *McMahon Family and WWE Universe Dream*

Part 6 Titans Reign (August 2019)

Having ascended to the throne and filling the royal court with WWE superstars, I must now find a way to rule over a land I barely know. Meanwhile, a sinister plot is brewing to put the patriarchy back in power. *McMahon Family and WWE Universe Dream*

SAGA That’s What Friends Are For

Part 1 Death of a Fangirl (and Birth of a Friend) (October 2019) [Only Published Story on List]

I find myself being given the chance to meet Shane. Unfortunately, my mental illness turns the dream into a nightmare and my life unravels. But don’t worry. Shane will save the day. He always does. *Shane O Mac Dream*

Part 2 With A Song In Her Heart (October 2019)

Shane has been ignoring my texts, so I hunt him down. My search finds me at a pride festival where a spontaneous song catches his attention a little too well. *Shane O Mac Dream*

Part 3 One Last Birthday to Celebrate (November 2019)

It’s Christmastime in Squirrel Hill. For some dumb reason, Shane McMahon has decided to visit me the day before his birthday. Naturally I surprise him with a present. The other surprise (getting caught in a domestic dispute) is far less pleasant. *Shane O Mac Dream* *VIOLENT*

Part 4 The Pink Rose (Not a Dream)

I survived the shooting. Waking up in a hospital, I find my mother and a room full of flowers from the WWE Superstars. But one flower, a lone pink rose, is unlabeled. Wanna take a wild guess who sent that one? *WWE Universe Story NOT Based on A Dream*

Part 5 Dreams and Demons (December 2019)

So, it seems that watching your friend nearly die in a hail of bullets isn’t the best for your mental health. At WrestleMania 37, Shane is presented with a choice. Me, or TV. Of course he chooses me, this is my dream, what other choice   would there be? *WWE Universe Dream*

[Are you starting to see why I never publish any of these. They are painfully bad self inserts and woefully self-indulgent. But they are also therapy, hence the writing]

SERIES   Trippy Shorts

Story 1 A Little Fall of Acid Rain (August 2019)

The world is ending – but only in NYC. I’m there. So are the McMahons. Destruction and danger abound. *McMahon Family Dream*

Story 2 I Know Who I Am (September 2019)

All of my favorites from TV, movies, music, and wrestling are turning up murdered. Each time, a cryptic message is left behind, written in blood. Can I figure out the connection before everyone I like is killed? *General Pop Culture Dream* *EXTREMELY VIOLENT AND DISTURBING*

Story 3 Fixed Points and Fixed Pairings [An Unfinished Symphony] (September 2019)

One night, outside the bar, I am approached by an older version of myself. She brings a time machine and a mission – go back to the attitude era and change time so Shane remains the heir apparent. But some people are just meant to be together, and others just refuse to listen – even to an angel from the future. *WWE Universe Dream*

Story 4 A Song of Summer [A Snapshot] (October 2019)

As an Agent of SHIELD, it doesn’t take a genius to see that Black Widow and Hawkeye are in love. So, through the power of music, I decide to try and hook them up. *MCU Dream*

Story 5 Journeys Beginning [A Snapshot] (December 2019)

One day at school, I find myself amid an alien incursion. But don’t worry, the Doctor is on the case. Also, Shane is involved because of course he is. *Shane O Mac and Doctor Who Dream*

Story 6 Arson, Murder, and Revolution (January 2020)

At a Hollywood LGBTQ party, I find myself caught in a plot by the Trump administration to commit mass murder. When it goes awry, revolution stirs and it’s up to me and several other progressive celebrities to light the fuse *General Pop Culture Dream* *VIOLENT*

[See, they aren’t all about Shane. Just... most of them]

STAND ALONE STORIES

Once Upon a Dream (August 2019)

I black out drunk in an alley one night and awake to find myself in a dream. It’s 1990 and I’m somehow a middle-aged black woman. Also sharing the dream is a young and angry Shane McMahon. Together we use the circumstances of the dream to fuck shit up for the NYPD. *Shane O Mac Dream* *VIOLENT*

The Many Deaths of a Tabhead (August 2019)

Five years after getting hooked on a new drug called Tabs, I find myself in an endless loop of getting murdered. The only way out is to survive. Too bad I have no memory, and everyone wants me dead *Original Story Featuring IRL People* *VIOLENT AND DISTURBING*

Champion of the Faerie Queen (December 2019)

Did you know that Marissa McMahon is the Faerie Queen and Shane is her consort? Neither did I. And, it seems, when war comes a calling, it’s up to me to save the McMahons and the country. But I’ve got superpowers now, so that helps. *McMahon Family, MCU, and DC Universe Dream*

To Earthquakes, Lovers, and Newfound Friends (May 2020)

In lovely SoCal, I’m watching a movie when an earthquake strikes. I soon find myself both blind and badly burned. The only hope I have to survive is a certain pair of lovers who just happen to be in the area for some R&R. *Zowens Dream*

Penny and Kicks vs The World (June 2020)

As a longtime WWE employee, I’ve been best friends with Shane for years. But in the fallout of Coronavirus, the public is looking for a scapegoat. Vince is more than happy to offer up my father. Now, the entire wrestling world is in turmoil and Shane and I are just trying to weather the storm. *WWE Universe Dream* *VIOLENT*

Virginia Gothic (October 2019)

In a world where my highschool sweetheart and I never broke up, we must forge a path on our own through hardship and rejection. But what is the meaning of the mysterious Jesus statue? And why is Bacchus being so damn shifty? *Original Dream Featuring IRL People*

Uzil (January 2020)

An mystical being from the horsehead nebula takes up residence in a little boy’s guinea pig. The miracles come quickly and soon they are inseparable. *Original Third Person Dream* (I wasn’t in this one)

The E-Manual (February 2020)

The end of days is drawing near. I have been chosen as a prophet of the end times by the Almighty himself. I must go out into the world armed with only scripture and a mystical magazine, trying to convert as many people as possible before time runs out. *A Mostly Original Dream* (Shane’s in the last two pages)

Seraphina and the Seven Wishes (April 2020)

The world is a video game and the McMahon’s are the Addams family. It only gets weirder from there. *McMahon Family Dream*

A Matter of Science (And Opinion) (May 2020)

I accidentally set fire to my apartment during a spell. I’m promptly arrested and call The Doctor as my defense. Sadly, the call is rerouted to Stormcage and SpongeBob SquarePants ends up on the case instead. This one is every bit as absurd as it sounds. *Doctor Who and SpongeBob SquarePants Dream*

A Revolution In This Century (Enter Me) (November 2019) The year is 2027. Climate Change has decimated the globe and revolution has reduced the Ruling Elite to food reserves. However, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and soon the new ruling poor become as ruthless as the 1% had been. In this horrible dystopia, I am a powerful government official who has taken on the McMahons as consorts for the sole purpose of saving their skins. *McMahon Family Dream* *VIOLENT, DISTURBING, AND A BIT SMUTTY*

Crystal Vision – A Dozen Birthdays (December 2019)

After showing kindness to an enchantress, I am given my hearts greatest desire – a place in Shane’s life. I am sent back in time to 2005 as a WWE Makeup tech and given 12 years in the life of my childhood heroes. But a lot happened in the WWE from 2005 to 2017 and not all of it good. How much can and do I dare change? *WWE Universe Dream* *Painfully NKC. Disturbing subject matter involved because 2007 is a thing.*

Dr. Slime and the Wondernerds (August 2019)

Three high school nerds find themselves in possession of a mysterious green substance. When it explodes during an experiment, they find they have been given superpowers. However, this is the real world and super-powered “freaks” get picked apart, not celebrated. Can the teens resist using their powers? *Original Third Person Dream* (I’m not in this one)

Planeswalking Like A Grecian (October 2019)

After death, Xena finds herself on the Astral Plane. Promptly running into Joxer, they must find a way to survive the dangers of the afterlife. But don’t worry. Gabrielle has a plan. *Xenaverse Dream* (I’m not in this one)

The Foresight Curse (June 2020)

The problem with knowing the future is that you usually don’t have the ability to change it. So when Radar O’Reilly realizes Henry’s fate the day before it happens, he has to spend the next day trying to drown out the feelings of dread and sorrow, if only for the Colonel’s sake. Funny thing though, sometimes fate takes a left turn and you get a second chance to say goodbye. *M*A*S*H Universe Dream* (I’m not in this one) Vampires, Wraiths, and Shades, Oh My! (December 2019)

In the middle ages, I am orphaned at a very young age by vampires and taken in by Vampire Hunters (AU Shane and Stephanie). Now a teenager, I fight alongside them to protect the world from the dangers of the night. *McMahon Family Vampire AU Dream*

WHEW! I’m pretty sure that’s all of them! I have so dang many dreams it’s hard to keep track of them all! Anyway, out of all of these, only a handful are finished, ONE is published (Death of a Fangirl) and a ton of them aren’t far past the sketch stage. So, this is my list. Every story on here I at least have sketched out. I doubt I will ever even bother writing many of these, but the intent is present.

[wordsfromgrime]

One Night in Richmond

~Busted~

It never hurts to show up with a case of beer so I stop at Lombardy Kroger on my way to the Circle and pick up some Blue Moons and a box of popsicles -both alluding to the festive mood facing through the air. This morning the mayor announced the resignation of our only ten-day old police chief, and while many understood the dense socio-political tactics implied with the decision, most celebrated the occasion as well. A Friday night at the top of summer will always carry with it feelings of excitement and reward.

I pull my bike up to the normal spot at Marcus-David Peters Circle and recognize a few familiar faces in the soft afterglow of dusk’s light. The sun is just now setting, leaving only about 30 minutes until full darkness and the cover that comes with it. Now, the sun is still tightrope walking over the horizon, the sky shimmering with raspberry-lemonade tones and watermelon marshmallow clouds. Around the turn of the Circle a free concert is underway, made possible with just a microphone, a generator, and a few amps. We doodle with spray-paint, or attempt freestyle tricks on our fixed gears, as we sip beers and bust musings on the day.

We’re all rocking on the obvious cookout vibe, but we’re tentative as well; We aren’t completely relaxed. We’ve seen things turn from lax to chaos before, in only a second, for no reason at all, and we know it can happen again.  When you’re facing an enemy that has full control over the definitions of combat, it’s forgiven to feel nervous.

For now though, it’s good vibes and sunshine. And while our conversations dance around the protests, the police, police brutality, human rights, the mistakes of the generations before us, and our determination to fix those mistakes, mostly we just talk about Richmond. It’s hard to explain Richmond to someone who hasn’t stayed there for any amount of time. Richmond is like an oasis that’s also a black hole. Richmond is the place you’re trying to get out of, and also the place you can’t wait to be back in. Richmond is the place you think you deserve. Richmond is where a lot of us feel most at home, but it’s a home that needs sweeping renovations.

As we expound freely on the failures and accomplishments of the capitol city, more and more of our friends arrive, skidding to stops at the periphery of our claimed area and slowly increasing our settlement size. It’s easy to dominate a space when everyone arrives with a bicycle, and in our group it’s pretty much a necessity to show up with some wheels of a sort. Besides a general interest in protesting the state, bicycles have been the strongest conjoining factor throughout the ragtag group of friends that I’ve been meeting with near-daily since the brutal murder of George Floyd at the end of March.

Some of these friends, like Salad (our stoic, de facto captain of the group who’s got friends in every part of town) and Funky (our resident artist and Big Wheel extraordinaire), I’ve known for a while and originally met just by biking in the same parts of town. But others, like Sophia (badass girl with a Wide Bars/Big Heart combo) or Johnny (no fixie yet [just a road bike], but is well-loved for his reputation of generosity and hilarious braggadociousness) I’ve only spent real time with since the protests began. All in all, there’s about 12 of us that have formed a little posse of itinerant protestors. Every summer brings with it something new, but something about the revolution marching down the streets had this summer already feeling particularly seismic. And something about all that “newness” in the air made me feel more like a kid again.

Soon, a few men in assault rifles and military vests approach us, seemingly threatened by their own lack of acceptance and comradery now reflected against our group of laughing friends.  

“Is this your tent? This tent’s gotta go!” the man begins the conversation, unaware or unwilling to exchange pleasantries.

“It’s not our tent but we don’t think it should go”, a few people begin to say at once. “That tent is covering a free community library.”

“Well, when the cops get here this is going to make them upset, and they’re going to come in here and destroy it anyway,” the man says. “So I’m just saying y’all should take it down before I come back with a few other guys with rifles and take it down myself….cuz we don’t want the cops to come!”

“You can do whatever you want, man, but we’re not going to take down some tent that isn’t ours just because you think the cops might come,” our friend Amin (always good for a giant smile and a fat joint) says. “And also, that whole theory doesn’t make a lot of sense to me” He punctuates this last part with a tip of his head and a swig of his beer.

The man grumbles to himself and walks away, returning ten minutes later with his aforementioned rifled goons, as well as a lady that doesn’t really seem to fit in with them.

“This lady owns the library so we’re getting her to take it down,” the man says, directing his speech towards our group for no apparent reason other than to start a conflict. He was obviously oblivious to how his aggressive, commandeering attitude was completely antithetical to the entire idea of the community space that is Marcus-David Peters Circle…or maybe he was just an asshole. Regardless, he was a blatant intimidator, and unless we’re talking about Number 3 (RIP) there’s just no room for that inside the Circle.

We ignored whatever the guy was trying to serve to us and kicked back, but soon the man was back again with an even larger group, now forcefully encouraging everyone to exit the interior of the Circle under the assurance that “the cops can’t touch us if we aren’t in the Circle”. As one tends to notice, it’s hard to say “no” to a group of men with large guns in their hands, so the group was having large amounts of success with their attempts to incentive people out of the area. Our group, though still not understanding completely or agreeing with the logic of the move, followed suit, packing up our blankets, beers, and popsicles.

Not five minutes after the entire populace of the Circle had been cleared out of the area that lay surrounded by graffitied barriers, officers in riot gear began to arrive, just as the man earlier had “predicted”. Predicted! *Hmpf*! Predicted, or imprecated? Or better yet, foretold? Because I reckon it’s a hell of a lot easier to predict the future when you’ve got a direct line to the chain of commands. I also reckon that about the only person who would come up and complain about the tent covering up a free library was some bootlicking wannabe-cop snitch who knew, without a doubt, that the cops were coming that night, whether they had a reason to or not.

And, of course, there was no reason that any amount of police officers, let alone 50+ outfitted in full riot gear, should have appeared that night. No reason for a city to sic a militarized pack of baton-wielding goons on its own people. No reason why the citizens of Richmond could not have just been left to be: listening to music, drinking beers, talking with friends. These were the crimes we committed before being attacked.

As police announced to the crowd that the surrounding area had been declared an “unlawful assembly” by the state, tempers began to flare on both sides. Rampant rubber bullets and flash bang grenades sliced through the air, as chants and screams rose up from the civilians. Suddenly, the space felt like a warzone, a battle with what seemed like completely lopsided enemies. On one side stood line after line of grown men adorned in battle armor, helmets, and shields. Some held Assault Rifles or guns meant for firing rubber bullets and smoke canisters; all wore heavy, polished, steel-toed boots. On the other side stood men, women, children, and pets equipped with nothing more than their wallets, sunglasses, tank tops, and shorts. Some held bottles of water for extinguishing smoke, others had gloves on for tossing tear gas canisters away; all wore a sense of fear, anger, confusion, and determination on their face. These Richmonders, who had done nothing more than to enjoy the public space of their city, would not be deterred so easily. A feeling had spread through the crowd that we would not be punished unjustly tonight. If we were going to have to face the consequences of merely existing in the street, then we weren’t going down without a fight.  

The ranks of G.I. Joe-pretenders slowly increased their perimeter, pushing citizens further and further from the reclaimed art space at the epicenter of the Circle. Soon, we stood in the middle of Park Avenue, a block from Monument Avenue, and still we were being told to “back up” and “get out of the street”, by both RPD and VSP. It seemed the boars with badges would not be content until they had claimed the whole neighborhood as their own Draconian hang-space.

When my friend Nick (The big love bully - The homie to ask you if you’re okay when you’ve got a down face) shines his flashlight toward a group of suspicious looking officers, he’s swarmed upon by a particularly dorky looking Virginia State officer who accosts him with a completely trivial question about the bike he’s riding.

“Whoah! Hey! You got lights for this bicycle here?” the officer asked, taking strides closer and closer to us, hand on his hip.

“Two, actually!” Came Nick’s response as we all flipped our bikes around to put some space between the officers and ourselves. “You’re not gunna get us on some shit like that!” He shouted over his shoulder as we pedaled up the street towards a safer space. “ya dumbass cop”

With some distance between the commotion and us, we regroup. Nick, Sophia, Salad, Ryan, Johnny, and I squad up at a park only a block away.

“Shit’s wild”

“What even started this?”

“Oh, they’re definitely mad about the chief resigning.”

“I saw someone get hit right in the face with a rubber bullet”

“Fuck!”

“I saw a couple kids with paint guns shooting at the cops, I think that’s what started it all”

“I mean, the cops started it all when they showed up…”

“AGREED!”

Looking behind him, Johnny says, “This car coming up is an unmarked cop car, anyone want to see where it’s going?”

“Let’s do it”, I say.

And we take off. The two of us darting after this beefy-looking tinted black SUV, keeping close but keeping our distance.

After a few blocks Johnny turns to me and says, “They aren’t going anywhere interesting, let’s head back.” and we reverse-course towards the way we came.

Coming back up towards the intersection where we left the rest of our friends, I can’t say that anything felt particularly off, though it did seem a little quiet, not a simple quiet but a stifled one.

As Johnny and I make our way through the shadow left in the space between two light posts, we hear a “GRAB HIM!” and a hidden mass springs from the darkness. I watch as Johnny’s bike finds the space between charging homunculus and a row of cards and skirts through it successfully, just as the same cop changes direction to tackle me off my bike (FUCK!). The goon leaps into the air as gracefully as an anemic hippopotamus, and tackles me off my bike with the ease of a drunken uncle at Thanksgiving.

“All right, big guy, you got me! You can chill out.” I say to the panting officer now shoving my arms in positions not familiar to them, restraining my non-resisting body with the help of 3 or 4 buddies. “I appreciate all the attention but it’s really not necessary”

“It’s for both of our safeties”, the stormtrooper says to me without looking at my face, instead holding his nose high with eyes darting around the perimeter like some cracked-out hound-dog.

“Oh yeah, I bet”, I say, laughing a little. “Hey man, you having any fun?”

The officer just grunts.

“Aw, c’mon man, what’s your name?”

“Officer Harris” Still no eye contact.

“Hey, officer Harris, you having any fun out here? It’s ok to have fun, I’m having some fun, are you having fun?”

Officer Harris shifts his weight from one foot to the other, rolls his tongue across his upper teeth, and says out of the side of his mouth, “Yeah, I’m having a little fun…but you guys are making it hard for us out here.”

“GROSSSSSSS!” I say laughing from the pit of my stomach, “Oh, Officer Harris, we’ve got real problems” And I continue to laugh as this confused cop looks down on me, still zip-tied at his feet. I was beyond affable at this point from the adrenaline and alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, and while the fear of this cop and his gang of buddies assaulting me crossed through my mind, I figured if I was in for a penny I was in for a pound. Being arrested for protesting the police force already put me in a vulnerable position, and I figured the policeman’s image of me couldn’t be altered much in the short time we were interacting with each other, but I wanted to say one more thing before Officer Harris cast me aside as some wanton rioter.

“I hope you don’t think I’m just some white punk, some revolutionary with no cause. I’m fighting for what I believe in, and I sleep well every night, Officer Harris, do you?”

“I try,” Khaleed Harris said with a sigh as he put me in a cage in the back of a van.

“Now, watch your head.”

[bizarre-alien]

What is ur fav gorillaz song from each album?

Bruh, this took me an hour or two... This is the best/worst question to ask me! Now, I have to decide on just one song per album! Lmao! 😂

I’m gonna go IN on this because I LOVE going in on music... Here we go!

Gorillaz: Sound Check (Gravity) 

I love the ambiance and urgency they put into the sound design. The building method of the instrumentation was also genius as hell... I love the strings, I love the drum pattern, and I just love the lyrical concept even though I’m not 100% clear (yet) on what the real meaning of the song is... I guess it’s up for interpretation. A part of me is thinking that it explains how depression feels, and another part of me feels like it’s about how reality breaks through your daydream life and tries to steal your hope of being okay... I guess it’s the same? I don’t know. But, I feel something deep with this.

Demon Days: Feel Good Inc.

For sure, it’s the classic bop. I like the sound design, I like the mv concept, but above all, the lyrics are gold. The concept is just amazing. Gorillaz wants revolution from how society has money, celebrities, and pleasure as their Shepard. De La Soul represents said false Shepard. It further proves my pov towards society as sheep being herded by a visible Shepard instead of the one true one. God. I say this because God is love. Gorillaz wants us to live by love, and, whether they know it or not, that’s who God is basically! (Note: This was a really hard choice because Dirty Harry and El Manana were fighting for the spot as well. I had to do a serious lyric study in order to choose.)

Plastic Beach: Cloud of Unknowing

This one makes me cry. I’m about to cry as I type this, um... Okay, so it’s simple yet super impacting. The sound design really keeps the track open causing you to wonder, Bobby’s vocals sound a little distant like it’s a memory... It’s a song of reflection for sure. To just open up and be vulnerable to your experiences, and just see what the next day will bring. It’s hard as hell to let go and let the chips fall because you’re scared and hopeful at the same time. You just don’t know what’s gonna happen. And, it’s extra personal right now because I had to learn this exact lesson this month. My God...

Humanz: Ticker Tape

Okay, this one was hard! I was gonna say Ascension because that was for me and my people... But, I went deeper (the shit that the black community go through is still deep but I wanted to go to the soul with my choice because... Well, I’ll just not go in. This post is already long.). Strobelite was another choice because it was something that hit like Feel Good Inc. did... But then, Ticker Tape kinda takes it one deeper. So you know how society is distracted based on the lyrics of Feel Good Inc., and yes that affects us as people... But, this blindness and distraction keeps us from saving the planet as well. So not only do we destroy our souls with social media distractions telling us what our lives are supposed to be (and if you don’t fulfill what this one successful bih did at your age... you ain’t shit, so die.), but since we’re so obsessed, we destroy wildlife and all habitats by using oil to create more flashy cars, deforesting to have more Gucci stores, and neglecting global warming because look at what this celebrity did over there! That’s more important! We work hard through the nightmare we put ourselves in just to live the life that social media tells us to. I hope that made sense, bruh. I just... There’s so much I want to unpack, but my sister is the English major. I just make beats.

The Now Now: (Help. This one is gonna hurt) Sorcererz

As much as I love The Now Now as a whole, Sorcererz really hits home as a reminder to stop and evaluate yourself and how you’re acting. I also like how the sound design is soothing and still a bop. Like, it makes you wanna just chill and think about where you are in life, man. And with all these distractions, it’s easy to get caught up and act out of character, too. Time to time, you’re gonna need to take a moment and mine out your true self from all the bullshit that you ingested on the internet and skull fucking politics... Also, I want to add a quick headcanon that Ace co-wrote this song because he’s on the visualizer a lot when they performed live (If I can remember clearly). It stemmed from a midnight conversation on the balcony of a hotel and neither him or 2D could sleep. They just ended up talking about life at a deep deep level.

I hope this wasn’t too much for you, anon. I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to ask me this question. I’m also really honored that you wanted my opinion. It means more than you know! I hope your day is great! Love you! 💖

[science-fiction-is-real]

In which i talk about joseph stalin for a long time and also about intersectionality

You know who i’ve been reading a lot about recently?

Joseph Stalin.

And I’ve been reading, and while i’m at work all day, working mostly alone, no music or distractions, i’ve been thinking about everything i’ve been reading.

and this fucker who died before my parents were even born has been on my mind, because i just don’t fucking get it.

This idiot was a revolutionary.  a god damn REVOLUTIONARY.  Did hard time in siberia as a political prisoner.  (I mean, probably also a prisoner for all the organized crime he was doing---to fund the REVOLUTION)  That’s not the sort of thing a grifter, who is only interested in power, gets into.  It’s an absolutely terrible grift.  It’s a lot of risk to take if you aren’t a true believer.

And in between all the bank robberies and what not, he edited a newspaper and did a lot of writing.  There’s a database online where you can read pretty much everything Stalin ever wrote (Along with pretty much every thing pretty much every other famous Marxist ever wrote).  I can’t really bring myself to read too much of his stuff.  Eww.  Why would I want to.  Gross.  But also I feel like i should in the name of fact checking, and understanding what I’m talking about before I talk about it.

But the stuff i did read, was...... not terrible....? Some of it was replying to other socialist writing (because what do lefties enjoy more than arguing with other lefties, amiright???), a lot of it was old fashioned marxist stuff talking about working class vs capitalists, and a lot of it was describing legitimate complaints about the Czarist government.  Expressing anger at the pogroms and the suppression of ethnic minorities and hunger and poverty.  Sounds like a good reason to have a revolution to me.

Of course, those were all the same sorts of atrocities he himself would go on to do.  again.  eww.

But, after all of this, it’s pretty clear to me that pre-revolutionary Stalin was a true fuckin believer.

And that kept me up at night.  Because how come that would change when he himself came into power?

Is it because once you’re handed power, the temptation to abuse it is just far too great?  Is it because when the revolution is over, and the complexities of the ‘’Real World,’’ are obvious, and it’s all to easy to abandon idealism in order to get things done?  Are all post-revolutionary periods destined to be violent and oppressive, because the new government wants to assert its power?  How much blame does he get personally, and how much goes to the other founders of the revolutionary movement--Lenin and Trotsky and the like-- who laid the groundwork for how things would function?  IS socialism itself just cursed to fail like my republican grandma told me?

Or is this just a classical example of the other thing our republican grandmas warned us about, radical idealists turning cranky and cruel and conservative in old age just like they did? I mean what sort of things did stalin do while in power?  A lot of pretty republican things.  LMAO.  Banning the gays and abortion, enforcing strict gender norms, getting TOUGH ON CRIME!  Beefing up the military on money that should be used to provide for people’s basic needs....

If the right gets to try and pass off Hitler as a socialist, the left gets to say that Stalin was a moderate republican.  (Not full republican.  I mean, he did actually react appropriately when he found out there were Nazis in his country.  Just moderate republican.)  LMAO!

But then i thought about it a little more.

No.  He was not a right winger.  No one who spends the first half of his adult life trying to overthrow a government that had been ruling for 300 years is a god damn fucking right winger.  He was left wing.  But.....  Old timy left wing.

Because he did make good on a lot of the socialist ideas while in office.  I’m pretty sure he set up a fairly solid welfare state, free housing and education and healthcare and whatnot.  That was pretty new and revolutionary for the time.

But... Old timy left wing.

and if you think about old timy left-wingers.  most of them are only left wing in SOME areas.  The right absolutely LOVES to point this out.  ‘’Sure Margaret Sanger was a radical feminist, but she was also a racist!’’  ‘’This person was a racist, this person was homophobic!  All your icons are fake frauds!’’  I mean, they probably were all racist and homophobic and whatnot, but that doesn’t actually deminish the radicality of the stuff they were ‘’woke’’ on.

And that’s true for the pre-marxist left too.  We can hate on Thomas Jefferson all day long for being a creepy rapy slave owner and rich asshole who should have been tarred and feathered and  (sorry, i brought up thomas jefferson, i have to go take 5 and cool down before i punch something)  But he still was..... left.  To say ‘’all men are created equal,’’ even if you just mean straight white men, was still kind of radical in the 18th century, when the world was still divided up between the gentry and the common men, and people were presumed to have class status that was bred into them and was part of their very inner nature.  The idea that you could just throw out the idea of a nobility ruling class, or the monarchy, and initiate some sort of meritocracy based system, was out of this fucking world at that point.

And you can say the say the same thing about the russian revolutionaries.  You can criticize them up and down and left and right for being undemocratic, but the idea that wealth should be something everyone has guaranteed access to, that no one should hold economic power over you, that working people deserve some sort of dignified recognition for what they do, that was--AND STILL IS--radical.

Lenin, who lived in monarchical empire, saw the western countries move away from monarchies and embrace our versions of Western Capitalist Democracy (TM).  He decided his revolution would go in a different direction, one of economic instead of political democracy.  The western style of revolution had been tried, and now it was time to try out an eastern style of revolution.

I think he would have said something like ‘’look, ya’ll in france and england can vote, and i’ve been to france and england.  Those places suck ass.  You’re poor and hungry and miserable and working 10 hours a day for shit pay and going home to your crammed tenement apartments before dying of cholera at the age of 12.  Hell of a lot a good DeMoCrAcY does.  We need ECONOMIC democracy instead.’’  

I do remember a quote from lenin, that said something along the lines of ‘’Yes, my system isn’t ‘democratic’ but if you think about it, it’s a hell of a lot more democratic than anything they’re doing in capitalist countries.’’

Of course, we modern folk who fancy ourselves so enlightened by hindsight will point out that you need BOTH economic and political democracy.  A democratic government being run alongside an undemocratic economy is oppression. Anyone who lives in the United States and has read more than three books in their life can see this.  It SUCKS.  Likewise.  An egalitarian economy being run by an undemocratic government is also oppression, because the government can do whatever it wants to the economy, like, say.... sell all the country’s food on the international market to fund various different 5-year-plan projects.  Had Stalin been subjected to democratic processes, he never would have been allowed to do that.

In the early 20th century, there wasn’t really much of a concept of INTERSECTIONALITY.  in the modern left, we pretty much agree that if you want to have freedom and equality in one sphere of life, you also need to pursue freedom and equality in other spheres.  Oppression is contagious.  If you allow discrimination against Gays for example, this leads to discrimination against the sexes because people are going to be forced into stricter and stricter gender norms.  And of course, if you want political equality under the law, you also need racial equality so that one group of people isn’t disenfranchised from voting or fair treatment by the courts.

Just like how political democracy has to happen alongside economic democracy.

So yeah, I guess after the end of all this long ranting and shit.  I think it makes sense why a serious revolutionary true believer like Stalin can grow into a tyrant.  Because Old timy left-wing politics was underdeveloped and had lots of blind spots.  People didn’t realize that it was important for movements to be led by people who were seriously committed to intersectional emancipation.  Young Stalin when he would go hang out with all of his socialist dude-bro friends, planning their bank heists, wearing their newsboys hats, trying not to die of cholera,  he probably wasn’t being called out on sexism or racism.  They were just an economic-left movement that didn’t care much about the other stuff.

But there isn’t really a whole lot to gain by doing a character analysis on some ass wipe who kicked the bucket before color television was even invented.  All the terrible things he did and all the good intentions, sincere or not, that he had, that is between him and whatever God is governing this bitch of a universe. We on the left know better than to look at individuals to answer important questions, we know to look at systems.  And gather lessons so that we can build better movements in the future.

Yeah, whatever, intersectionality.

Sorry this was so long and poorly written.  I shall cite no sources and do no editing.  Fuck you.  Thanks for reading.

[midnightiscoming-kasabian]

Kasabian's Serge Pizzorno: 'Being pretentious is my number one fear'

Tim Jonze - www.theguardian.com - Photo: Neil Bedford

2 Sep 2019

He’s the lairy lad rocker who scored one of the best ever goals on TV – in winklepickers. Now he is aiming to be music’s answer to David Lynch

Serge Pizzorno is looking back at the rise of his band Kasabian and trying to pinpoint when it all became a bit too much.

“You’d turn up at shows and there’d be 20-odd trucks there, a catering team, loads of people everywhere,” he says. “And you’d think, wow, this is actually a job for a lot of people, and it all rests on these four maniacs!”

This was in 2017: the band had just completed their sixth album, For Crying Out Loud, released to mixed reviews, and all was not well in camp. After 20 years together, Pizzorno was worried the band were getting stuck in a rut. And then there was the personal turmoil: not for songwriter Pizzorno, who had settled into family life in Leicester (he has two boys, Ennio and Lucio), but for Tom Meighan, the band’s wild-eyed frontman.

Mimicking their idols Noel and Liam Gallagher, Pizzorno wrote the songs while Meighan brought the stage presence, preposterous quotes (“Our songs sound like we’ve shit ourselves 10,000 feet in the air”) and ludicrous tales. Band legend had it that, whenever Meighan became too much to handle, the other members had to take him to the nearest Toys R Us store to calm him down. But following a split from his partner, the relentlessly upbeat singer was struggling. He cried in one interview at the time.

“Tom’s still figuring things out, but he’s in a much better place now,” says Pizzorno when we meet for coffee in London. But it’s no wonder they needed time out. “I was worried we would get stale. Sometimes you need to go down the rabbit hole to refresh things.”

The SLP is that rabbit hole. It’s his initials – his full name is Sergio Lorenzo Pizzorno – and the name of his forthcoming solo album, recorded at his home studio, the Sergery (yes, really). With its guest appearances from Little Simz and Slowthai, and wild eclecticism, it’s reminiscent of Gorillaz – a cartoonish world constructed as an escape from the pressures of being in an enormous band.

Pizzorno sees it less as a new direction and more a return to the way he started off making music. Back then he was using an old Atari and a Midi keyboard; these days he’s been recording on his phone, stealing snippets from 70s Italian horror movies, “weird Polish shit”, and whatever grabs his attention when he’s out and about.

“I’ll be in Tokyo, hear the buzz of the electricity running through the pylons, and be like...” he waves his phone in the air, as if frantically trying to record the sound. “All my mates will be taking the piss. And even in my own head I’m thinking, ‘I’m never gonna use this.’ But this time I did.”

Indeed, the buzzing pylons make it into The Wu, an incredibly odd song about wandering through hotel corridors in search of the afterparty. It’s a case study in Pizzorno’s esoteric influences, from the South African disco label Heads and Lee “Scratch” Perry to the late Nigerian synth wizard William Onyeabor. Elsewhere there’s Mediterranean house (Nobody Else), mariachi meltdowns (Meanwhile … in the Welcome Break) and, in ((trance)), the kind of joyously anthemic track that wouldn’t sound out of place in, well, a Kasabian set.

Did the rest of the band not think: can’t we have a couple of these tunes? “It’s probably testament to why we’re still together that they didn’t mind,” says Pizzorno. “Tom understands that you need to explore what else is out there. Otherwise you become the band everyone expects you to be.”

The irony is that Kasabian have never been the band a lot of people think they are anyway. When they emerged in the early 00s, with electro-influenced rock anthems such as Clubfoot and LSF, they were stereotyped as lairy lad rockers, when in reality they were just as enamoured by hip-hop and acid house.

“On our first record I would wanna sit people down and go, ‘No, no, no – this is where we were fishing for that stuff, Can and Neu! or whoever. But whatever we said, the journalist would just ask us about the Happy Mondays. I soon realised it was best to just keep your mouth shut, because if you’re still able to make albums and art, who cares where it comes from anyway?”

I interviewed the band a few times back then and always found them far kinder and more erudite than they were portrayed (“On the road carnage with rock’s rowdiest band!” screamed one NME cover line). But it’s fair to say, with their wild tales and boasts, they played up to it.

Was the lad thing a bit of an act? “We knew that journalists wanted it,” says Pizzorno. “But at the same time, we did grow up where, if you wanted to be in a band, you had to have your wits about you. If you’re playing in a village pub in Leicester in front of a load of lads that would throw darts at your head for having long hair, you can either go in and be all art school, or you can snap a snooker cue in half and say, ‘Let’s go!’ But then I still wanted to get them in the corner and talk about Jodorowsky afterwards.”

Pizzorno’s lad-rock credentials were no doubt enhanced by two televisual moments: a goal on Soccer AM, in which he improbably flicked the ball up in the air while wearing winklepickers before volleying it into a tiny hoop; and an even better strike during the Soccer Aid charity match that saw him scoop the ball over former England keeper David Seaman’s head and into the top corner of the net. The mention of these acts of sporting glory makes Pizzorno groan: “You’ll work for ages on a piece of music or art that you’re really proud of. But kick a ball through a hole in an inflatable bouncy castle and it’s what you become known for.”

Come on though, which was his favourite goal? “With the Soccer AM one I’d been up all night, I was hanging. If I was sober I’d never have even tried it. But the [Soccer Aid] one … not only is it a great goal, but for five minutes after scoring it, I’ve never been more off my nut in my life. As a pure sledgehammer hit of adrenaline, it was insane. God knows what it would be like to score in a World Cup.”

Less impressive when it comes to lad stereotypes was a cover of Q magazine, on which Meighan and Pizzorno appeared alongside two naked ladies, something that even back in 2011 looked like a relic of a bygone era. Pizzorno groans again, but this time he means it. “That really kills me,” he says. “It was sold to us as Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland, a celebration of 60s psychedelia. But we learned an important lesson there – we need to take control over every element.”

Pizzorno says the band have always been more inclusive than people give them credit for. “Art can be the start of something. At [Kasabian’s] gigs you only have to look at the first few rows to see there’s people from all over the world, with completely different views on how things should be done, but at least we’ve got them together.”

There’s a song on The SLP that addresses this, the final track Meanwhile … in the Silent Nowhere. “It’s about communication,” says Pizzorno. “Previously, even if you were rightwing or had extreme views, it felt like there could be some sort of dialogue where you could at least hear each other’s stories. Now it feels like, ‘This is my belief, fuck you’ ... there’s a danger in us not sitting down and talking face to face.”

What does he think of the current political situation? “It’s like Vegas. Fundamentally, the system is rigged and whatever you implement, the outcome will be the same. You’re probably talking revolution here but we need someone to come along and start again.” Is Jeremy Corbyn that person? “He’s the best shot we’ve got ... but I think there’s more. There’s someone else out there that can marry spirituality [with politics] and break the system and get us to start again somewhere better.” He laughs: “I think I’m just waiting for the messiah.”

Right now, Pizzorno has more pressing problems than the overthrow of capitalism: how to be a musician without Meighan by his side. He’s planned an impressive stage show, with different characters performing each song. It sounds ambitious. “But in a really minimal way,” he stresses. “Not overblown, the opposite to lasers and screens. It won’t be pretentious. Pretentious is my number one fear.”

Will there be costume changes? “Very subtle ones. There might be a hat. I might be barefoot. Fundamentally, I want it to be like a David Lynch thing, where people feel on edge, as if they’ve entered another world for 50 minutes.”

Pizzorno says he knows he can never compete with Kasabian’s enormous gigs – those gigantic, truck-bearing affairs with catering teams and staff everywhere. “But the aim is to get to that same euphoric point,” he says, “just in a whole new way.”

The SLP is out now. The tour starts on 5 September at Glasgow SWG3.

[mas-ai]

Not necessarily related to the ask meme but what do you like abt eiichi? I'm glad u do like him, he's a very special and good boy, but he's polarizing and I'm always curious as to why people like him

Okay, I just want to get one thing out of the way before we get into this because this is going to be a bit of a rollercoaster. (It's me, isn't it always? but i mean hey ho unfollow if u want because your dash is your own and i want you to be happy with who you're following. it's your account, you have the right to unfollow who you like. c:)

Disclaimer: (I know you won’t take this out of context, this is just in case someone comes across this post and only this post of mine and doesn’t read through my endless devotion to all charas and takes this all wrong ;;)  I haven't seen Legend Star in the mindset of being an Eiichi stan and I haven't listened to HEAVENS radio. I fully believe that Legend Star does not give us enough of an insight into HEAVENS nor does them justice as characters being introduced into the "main" Prince roster. Personally, I consider them as still flat characters despite their developments, that are still in the process of being fleshed out. That said, I haven't seen LS in some time and I don't remember every single detail. Anything I say here is based on my awful memory, headcanons and current mindset with the knowledge I have that will absolutely shift, change and grow in the future - just like Eiichi. I will also say, some mentions of character hate are below and some things are going to be worded a little harshly based on -past- opinions and first reactions (way back when Revolutions was released). I do not support character hate. All boys are best boys and all of the characters are fantastic, even if some of them are not among my personal favourites.

OKAY! LET'S GO, FRIEND.

 ...... I know you asked something extremely simple but I'm not a simple person and I kind of just want to vent write this in hopes a lot of good hcs and stuff come out of it. My short answer to you is:The thing I like the most about Eiichi is how he is written to be a negative foil to STARISH as a whole in the manner that Quartet Night attempted to be. QN did not succeed in this role, but Eiichi remains the powerhouse that introduces new problems into the narrative without being a complete asshole. He retains a personality that is complex, narrow-minded and realistic; he's that piece of the puzzle that brings this fantastic fantasy life into real life because we all know 'that guy'. But sometimes we fail to see two things: 'that guy' has a life and reasons for why the way he is -- and more often than not, sometimes, we ourselves our 'that guy' in some situations. His flaws.

When Eiichi, Nagi and Kira were introduced it seemed at first to me like they were nothing more than a complete money-grab an attempt to re-invest in an anime that perhaps was beginning to meet its end in terms of where it could go with a plotline. It was obvious that Nanami was going to remain impartial and oblivious to the advances of those around her and while we were going to continue to get singular episodes as "routes" no real romance was going to occur. Moving STARISH forward as a whole, something heavily built upon in the first season, was entirely dropped. There was starting to be a major lack of overarching plot for the series. Yes, every specific episode had a main plotpoint - but the anime was starting to lack an overall goal. Nanami herself seemed to slowly start to disappear from the series and ghost into the background and the characters already know each other for the most part; they weren't tossed into too many new situations to continue developing. 

We see so many "bits" of things just sort of.. very lightly ghosted over in the anime and then left to be forgotten. Examples through the seasons include Natsuki's backstory, Ai's story, Reiji/Aine, Ranmaru's history (is it even canon to the anime he was friends with Masato and Ren when they were younger?) - and of course, Camus, who hasn't had a lick of development. (I love you Camus. Anime does not do you justice.)  

Before this too is taken out of context, I want to state the anime is my favourite media of the series and I'm not hating on it at ALL. It's what got me into UtaPri and kept me in UtaPri for as many years as I've loved it and is very near and dear to my heart - I'm just saying, it's not delving into plotlines that it could. It's remained the light-hearted, airy, soft anime where all problems tied off at the end of each episode and that was that. Short and sweet. Yes, the story does move toward Triple S: but let's be real, we all know the outcome from the second the concept is introduced. STARISH will win. Of course they will. It's about STARISH. 

Heck, Revolutions' plotline is about their change and becoming on par with Quartet Night. Quartet Night wasn't done justice in the anime at all. I'm so thankful we got more of them in Revolutions,  but they seemed to have this strange "friendly but rival but friends but also lol maybe we'll take Nanami from you but none of us are actually going to propose that to Shining ever". It was just this weird loop. Again, all good boys, love the anime, great dynamics between them - but the plot as a whole was just... it was starting to get stale and repetitive with the sole focus on being this one tiny part of the world.

Enter HE☆VENS. Or, more specifically -- enter Eiichi.

☆ They expand upon the world of UtaPri quite significantly and open so many doors. (Gates? lolol.) Not only is another group brought into the mix without an established relationship that will dominate dynamics (senpai/kouhai, where STARISH must lean on Quartet Night and QN must mentor which kind of takes away from the "rivalry" potential.) They're starting from absolute scratch and bringing in an entirely new agency. From the way it's translated, it also sounds like HE☆VENS may have been around before STARISH but been established after Quartet Night. We're also introduced to Raging, who provides a lot more backstory for Shining.

☆ HE☆VENS poses a legitimate threat to taking away Nanami AND have made attempts to do so. They tried to force her to join them in 2000%, then tried to steal her in Revolutions and eventually asked her to join them in Legend Star. Eiichi made most of these attempts himself.

☆ Eiichi is extremely sly and smart. When his group was not disbanded, he instigated efforts to better everyone and they spent a year filling the group and practicing to storm in at the end of Revolutions. He knows full well that the winner wouldn't take their victory against HE☆VENS and would want a decisive concert. Which, potentially could have meant Quartet Night or STARISH being disbanded should HE☆VENS win. 

☆ While the rest of the group does soften considerably through Legend Star, EIICHI DOES NOT. He retains every fiber of the personality we first meet him with, at all times. To better explain the point here, I'll make an example of Nagi who originally came off as extremely bratty and high-handed who didn't really treat his bandmates that well. Later on, he's softened and instead of being high-handed, he adopts an annoyance similar to Syo's in most situation and loses that more brash side of him that we see when he slaps Natsuki's hand away - like with Shion. He has a clear affection for them and becomes a little more kind around them and not just in private with them. Eiichi, on the other hand, is developed in a different way, where he continues to be that strong-minded individual who acts out of lack of self-confidence. Fake it until you make it. Even when in private with his bandmates, he continues to keep up all the attitude we first meet him with. He continues to try to keep control of every situation and be a reliable leader, even to the point of emotionally manipulating even his bandmates (we see this even more with Otoya, too.) He grows, yes. Does he /change/? .. I don't really think so. Do we still get to see more sides of him? Yes. Do we see how he displays his love for others? Yes. But this is all done without 'losing' that edge he was first introduced to have. He is extremely, extremely responsible - but even when the time comes for consequences, he remains true to himself by manipulating the situation. He takes the fall for others, he uses his words to change perspectives, he takes control, he remains a leader.

☆ He doesn't change his views. When he's trying to bring out what he sees as the best in Otoya, he does it in a manipulative way that is in line with his personality and is an echo of how he was treated as he was growing up. He doesn't try to "inspire and move Otoya's heart through the power of music" like he might've if he fell head over heels in love with Nanami and had those feelings change who he was as a character. (Some just seem to swap personalities completely after falling for her, to me?) We see the flaws in him as this happens and how some people's minds are sometimes slightly skewed by their perspectives as Otoya goes 'darker' and Eiichi is pleased with how things are progressing. It's not being done to intentionally destroy him, but rather bring out another side of Otoya - and honestly, it looked to me like he was ready to offer a position in HE☆VENS to him. Which, again, is an active act against STARISH.

☆ this boy puts up with legitimately zero shit and if someone is not treating one of his boys right, he doesn't stand for it. i'm a bit concerned about potential discourse so i'm not going to name characters or exact situations out of respect for the characters & their fans, but there are some points in the series where certain characters treat others like. absolute. garbage. nothing is done about it. nobody has enough of a backbone to stand up and call the behaviour out, save maybe one. it's written off and dismissed. eiichi doesn't put up with it for a second. if you fuck him over, or upset someone in his group, or make a mistake -- just like how he has known ALL HIS LIFE -- there is a consequence. if he has to be the one to give it to you, he damn well will.

☆ eiichi has a backbone and is probably one of the most incredibly written characters in the anime yet despite being a flat character.

☆  ALSO HE IS INCREDIBLY PASSIONATE. LIKE SO, SO INCREDIBLY PASSIONATE IN A WAY THAT PUTS EVEN MASATO TO SHAME. Or rather, not to shame, but he has this... aggressive, confrontational, go-getter passion. An ambitious passion. For everything he does, for everyone who takes more than twelve seconds to give him the time of day and get to know him for who he is. He’s where he is because of those people and he just... he shows it by trying to be this rock that everyone around him can rely on all the time but really he is suffering so much on the inside. But he’s so selfless and not in a “look at how selfless i am!! pity me!!” way. He just genuinely wants to support those who stand by him. this is one loyal baby boy.

I have five thousand more points I could drive on and on about, but I'm going to cut this here because I'm starting to get a little bit upset about how he (and his beloved HE☆VENS are treated.) Anyway, I have to admit that what started my love for Eiichi was extremely small. It was nothing more than an answer to an ask that I wasn't even the one to send in. If it wasn't for someone with one of the most beautiful shows of love for this series that I have ever seen and their simple but beautiful art, some of the cutest I've ever seen - if it wasn't for how deeply they care about their blog and followers and the detail and care put into their work... I probably wouldn't have even given Eiichi the time of day. This blog was one of the first I ever followed and absolutely one that makes my day with their content. So thank you, @uta-no-fakku-sama for being such a massive part of this fandom in my eyes. Thank you for all you do and thank you for introducing me to a new favourite boy and putting up with the ridiculous amount of asks I send in, especially for him - I think I'm literally every anon... most of them, for sure.

So there we go! Those are just some of the reasons why I like him so much, or maybe even just a massive and overblown explanation about one main reason I like him? I don’t know. I hope this was satisfactory!

[rolandfontana]

Inside the Minds of Men Who Murder

Each mass killer is uniquely evil, but they have common goals and characteristics.

Some seek revenge. Some seek fame—or infamy, its modern synonym. Some are sadists, others simply sad.

There are psychopaths, like Eric Harris, the torchbearer of the two Columbine High School killers, whose enormous ego left no room in his psyche for empathy. Others are reacting to trauma—a fractured or abusive home life, conflict with peers, a failed romance, like the growing club of spree killers motivated by the condition that has become known, unfortunately, as “involuntary celibacy.”

Still others are delusional, including Seung Hui Cho, the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage killer, who imagined himself a buddy of Vladimir Putin, bragged about a supermodel Martian girlfriend, and grandly compared himself to Moses.

In researching my new book, Mass Killers: Inside the Minds of Men Who Murder, I spent months exploring the written and recorded leavings of this growing apocalyptic sect.

Three factors turn up frequently: mental illness, easy access to firearms (especially assault rifles), and missed signals by parents, law enforcers, school officials, or other authority figures. Many seek to blame others and exact revenge for a history of personal failure. Socially and emotionally isolated, they strike out after an event that they blow out of proportion—a breakup, for example.

Nearly all mass killers are male. In the U.S., about one in ten is female, and just one woman turns up on the list of the 27 deadliest shootings in U.S. history. Many of these men and boys exhibit what has become known as “toxic masculinity.”

Researchers Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel explained:

What transforms the aggrieved into mass murderers is also a sense of entitlement, a sense of using violence against others, making others hurt as you, yourself, might. Aggrieved entitlement inspires revenge against those who have wronged you; it is the compensation for humiliation…Aggrieved entitlement is a gendered emotion, a fusion of that humiliating loss of manhood and the moral obligation and entitlement to get it back. And its gender is masculine.

Anders Breivik. Photo by No Rules via Flickr

I looked at the writings of about 50 mass killers. Some are humble, some grandiose—from brief, introspective suicide notes to tome-like whines by sex-deprived men. A few left notes and journals that are poignant. Others are bloviated and narcissistic, like the ultimate selfie. They range in length from an eerie, five-word message left by a Michigan school bomber nearly a century ago—”Criminals are made, not born”—to the Mein Kampf-sized manifesto of Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, whose turgid dissertation goose-steps along for nearly a million words.

Many share what another academic researcher called “common psycholinguistic themes,” including a “pseudocommando mindset” and “heroic revenge fantasy.”

Very few high-casualty sprees are impulsive. Killers in this class do not “snap.” They plan their assaults for months or even years, drawing up detailed battle plans and accumulating expensive weaponry. For most, documentation of this process in journals or videos is an essential component; they are well aware that they are leaving evidence that will help the marquee lights of their crimes burn brighter and longer.

Some merely hint at violence, but many expressly threaten mass murder, sometimes spelling out where, when and how.

Stage Managers of Evil

A few young killers have used final notes to romantically stage-manage their own funerals. One example was Jaylen Fryberg, 15. Despairing over a broken romance, he killed four friends and himself in 2014 at his school near Seattle. Just before the shooting, he sent a text message to his parents directing them how to dress him in the casket (“brand new expensive-as-shit camo”) and what music to play (“poppin’ shit”).

Many mass killers treat their end-of-life messages as though they were dating profiles, including lists of favorite movies and music—even colors and snacks. Nothing about themselves seems too granular or extraneous to leave out.

At 3 in the morning on September 4, 2006, nine days before he shot 20 students at Dawson College in Montreal, Kimveer Gill posted this entry in his online journal:

 I ate some cheesey poofs. Ya know, those cheese stick things, like cheetos. Ahhhhhh, now you see.The power of the cheesy poof can not be denied.

A few days later, he had progressed from snack-happy to Mr. Pitiful. He wrote, “Fuck people. Fuck life. Fuck god.”

How much do we really learn while trying to peer into these dark souls?

As Columbine’s Harris noted, “Sometimes we will spend an entire lifetime trying to figure out someone, and even after that length of time we still can’t possibly know everything about that person. The same goes for ourselves.”

Yet essential contours come into relief that may help unravel the mysteries of what experts view as a mass shooting contagion in the U.S., Canada, Germany and, to a lesser degree, Scandinavia and other European precincts. (To be clear: Mass murders happen in other countries, but the U.S. is by far the worldwide leader.)

“The phenomenon is feeding on itself,” warns Peter Langman, a Pennsylvania psychologist who is the world’s premier archivist of deep research on school shootings, which he generously shares at SchoolShooters.info.

Manifestos of murder were rare until the 1999 Columbine killings near Denver. We now presume that mass killers will leave an explanation, and it becomes news when they don’t. Stephen Paddock, the suicidal Baby Boomer who killed a record 58 people attending a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017, was an outlier because he was determinedly mute about his motivations.

The vast trove of the Columbiners is easily accessed on the Internet, and several dozen derivative killers in the U.S. and abroad have culled and copied details pioneered by Harris and his beta partner, Dylan Klebold. They identify with Harris and seem to believe they are joining an eternal club of fist-bumping bros. (As Sandy Hook school killer Adam Lanza put it, “Everyone knows that mass murderers are the cool kids.”

Many declare themselves part of an imaginary revolution—a “war of vendetta,” the Virginia Tech shooter called it. The idea that these aggrieved males are world-changing revolutionaries might seem patently absurd, as it did to me when I began to study their macho rhetoric. But if the endgame of the revolution is repeated examples of mass murder, haven’t they succeeded in a sense?

“One way of understanding the concept of contagion is the possibility that the more the taboo against mass murder is broken, the easier it becomes for the next perpetrator,”

Langman, the school shooting expert, writes. “Each time that threshold is crossed may lower the threshold for people already on the path toward violence. Thus, the phenomenon may be feeding on itself, growing with each new incident.”

David J. Krajicek

The message is foreboding, unfortunately.

David J. Krajicek (@djkrajicek) is a contributing editor of The Crime Report. Since 1999, he has written The Justice Story for the Sunday New York Daily News, the longest-running true crime feature in American journalism. His work has also appeared in Alternet, The New York Times, Columbia and Boston magazines, Slate, The Village Voice, The Manchester (U.K.) Guardian and Mother Jones.

Inside the Minds of Men Who Murder syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE CRAZY IDEA

In Which Mama Cat Decides to Commit A Revolutionary Act of Theatre for All to See.

“I've been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine. So men say that I'm intense or I'm insane. You want a revolution? I want a revelation So listen to my declaration: "We hold these truths to be self-evident That all men are created equal" And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I'm ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel! (Work!)” -- Hamilton, The Schuyler Sisters

You’ve got to understand, darlings, I just got passed over for the one huge leading-lady role I have been longing for -- nay, READY FOR -- lo these many years, and I am in A Mood. 

You should also know that I like to watch the movie, “1776,” every year on this date – most years, anyway – and it rather gets to me. Partly, because it’s just really good, and it seems to become more timely each year. Partly, because I have always wanted to do the show, but I’m neither a Martha Jefferson nor an Abigail Adams. 

I’m John Adams.

These are troubled times, my loves, you don’t need me to tell you that. And I for one am feeling the patriotic urge, the call to action, more and more each day; personally and professionally. I am an unlikely candidate to run for office or reinforce barricades, come to that. But there is one thing I can do that might have an impact in some tiny corner: I can sing the shit out of that John Adams music, like it was written for me; and I can act it, too. (So is that one thing? Or two?)

Like many girls and women for many years, I have been wanting to do the show and asking why? Why not? There is precedent: https://www.mtishows.com/news/all-female-cast-of-1776-revisited.

I began to speculate on the Social, just to get it out of my system. Perhaps not surprisingly, I have since had friends, acquaintances, and women members of the theatre community nationwide, who I do not even know IRL, coming out of the metaphorical woodwork in support – many of them volunteering to play certain roles! I have touched a nerve, seemingly. I have at least two Jeffersons now, and at least one of them has asked to be considered for another Founder as well; as if to anticipate that there are going to be an awful lot of women who are into this. And they’re pros, cats & kittens. I have professional colleagues, both the onstage variety and the offstage variety, coming forward to offer their services. For a production that does not yet exist, at a venue we do not have, on a budget that is not extant.

So today I declare this:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for artists to conceive and mount their own stuff just to get it on the stage already;

And when in the course of the run-up to the 2020 elections we find some really strong women rising up to declare themselves, and to prove themselves electable;

And when in the course of still trying to prove, after 243 years, that all Persons are created Equal and Free and some of them are inexplicably endowed with theatre chops; I will stand up in my own little corner and begin to write my business plan.

In the past several years I have met, worked with, and seen work done by, women directors, actors, dancers, stage managers, lighting designers, sound designers, stage technicians of all varieties, music directors, pit musicians, casting directors, agents, and independent producers. Many of them, truly and amazingly good. All of them, my colleagues at some level or to some extent, even at the vaguest and most tenuous association. And while I have huge love for all my cis-men in the business, I beg their understanding that this is absolutely NOT a fuck-you to them. It is a Thingy we wish to do. We welcome your ticket money, and your support for our seemingly foolhardy mission. To the men in drag who have done Auntie Mame, the Golden Girls, or whatever expresses your art and craft best, we likewise have huge love for you, and this is absolutely NOT a fuck-you to you, either.

This is not a fuck-you to anyone. It is a blatant act of theatre. With joy and groove and professionalism.

Perhaps it’s a response to, a Yes-And for, that moment when we saw Ali Stroker make history as the first actor in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award. Maybe I’m feeling personally reactionary in the wake of a disappointment that gut-punched me a few days ago. Or maybe I’ve actually completely taken leave of my senses since that awesome break I told you I had in May (yeah, yeah, we’ll get to that, it’s a great story). Or maybe MamaCat is just really vain and she can’t tell because she has the temerity to use the third person in reference to herself in her blog. Whatevah. 

But I make the case that we can, and perhaps should, have ourselves a production of #AllFemale1776In2020, with every person on the stage, in the pit, in the booth, on headset; every man Jack of us, women. Trans sisters welcome.

Oh, there will be negativity. There will be disbelief and anger. Probably haters too. And as I have inadvertently gathered almost an entire cast already, I see that the flaming arrogance of the thing is that I will no doubt be talking Creative Control or directing it myself or some equally unlikely scenario. And wouldn’t that be just like John Adams? If you’re a woman who has directed this before and would be willing to entertain my Ladies’ Volunteer Army of Talent, reach out. 

But remember how I was telling you about my friend Shannon? And how I sleep on her & her husband’s couch when in the City? We started tossing this idea around a while back. How I’d love to take a crack at Adams & she’d be the perfect Ben Franklin… and there IS precedent. The thing CAN be done.

So, we may be talking some little black box somewhere with one piano and a staged reading. Or maybe some kindly theatrical company with whom myself or Ms. Haddock have worked will offer a legit slot in a season. I don’t think you’d have to be a woman to be the Artistic Director who takes a chance on us. Or perhaps I risk defeat entirely. But today, on Independence Day, I say this thing: I want to play John Adams, and I have almost everyone you need, including Ben Franklin, the Courier, and others (a potential Lee or Rutledge who will knock yer eyes out whichever role she does), and we need to do this thing. #AllFemale1776In2020.

What if you were to inadvertently STEAL this idea? And there were TWO OR MORE productions of an #AllFemale1776In2020 springing to life? What if you just up and STEAL THIS IDEA, O my sisters??😉👍🎭✌💙

Happy Independence Day, darlings.

[lit-works]

Transhumanism

The summer of 2004, Wil Smith starred in "I, Robot", the cinematic interpretation of 9 short stories by Isaac Asimov. When i was in 7th grade, Asimov struck me as a profoundly compelling figure, prompting me to read his extended archive of literary works, which i quit reading after the second book. (The stories seemed a little implausible.) i did, however, unleash a stirring oral book report on "I, Robot", a literary collection that was punctuated by Asimov's now famous Three Rules of Robotics:

1.) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2.) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3.) Do not talk about Fight Club.

Now, i don't think I'm giving anything away by telling you that the robots in "I, Robot" find a loophole to those principles, and they then proceed to slowly fuck humanity over. This is a story that was written over half a century ago. However, it paints a scenario we as humans continue to fear. "I, Robot" was published in 1950, but writers (or at least the Muttonchopped Isaac) were already terrified about mankind's bellicose relationship with technology. If we have learned anything from film, literature, and rock music, it is this: humans will eventually go to war against the machines. There is apparently no way to avoid this. But, you know what? If we somehow manage to lose this war, we really have no excuse. Because i can't imagine any war we've spent more time worrying about.

The Terminator trilogy is about war against the machines; So is the Matrix Trilogy. So was Maximum Overdrive, although that movie also implied that robots enjoy the music of AC/DC. I dont think the Radiohead album "OK Computer" was specifically about computers trying to kill us, but it certainly suggested that computers were not "okay". "2001: A Space Odyssey" employs elements of robot hysteria, as does the plotline to roughly thousands of video games. Blade Runner also had touched on this topic, but i honestly encounter difficulty recalling the narrative details; i was too busy pretending i wasnt stoned af. There is even a Deutsch electronica band called "Lights of Euphoria" whose supposed masterpiece is a concept album titled "Krieggegen die Maschinen", which literally translates as, "War Against the Machines". This means that even European techno fans are aware of this phenomenon, and those idiots generally arent aware of anything(except who in the room might be holding ketamine).

Im not sure how we all became convinced that machines intend to dominate us. As i type this, i can see a toaster, and I'll be honest: I'm not nervous. As far as i can tell, it poses no threat. My relationship with this toaster is delicious, but completely one-sided. The toaster is the Labradford Smith to my Micheal Jordan. I'm never concerned that this toaster will poison me, or that it will foster a false sense of security before electrocuting me in the shower, or that it will politically align itself with the microwave. The toaster does not want to conquer human society. I even played "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" in the kitchen, just to see if the toaster would become self-aware and spring for my jugular out of misanthropy; its reaction was negligible. Machines have no grit.

It appears we have spent over half a century preparing for a war against a potential foe who--thus far--has been nothing but civil to us; it's almost like we've made a bunch of "Red Dawn" movies that warn about a coming conflict with the Netherlands or Canada. In fact, there isnt even evidence that robots could kick our ass if they wanted to. Back in March of 2006, a clandestine military group called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) challenged engineers to build a driverless vehicle that could traverse a 150-mile course in the Mojave Desert; the contest's winner was promised a cash prize of $1 million. You know who won? Nobody. Nobody's robot SUV could make it farther than 7.4 miles. Even with the aid of GPS, robots are pretty moronic. Why do we think they could build the matrix today if they couldn't even drive to Vegas in 2006??

I suspect all these dystopic "Man versus Machine" scenarios are grounded in the fact that technology is legitimately alienating; the rise of computers(and robots, and IPhones, and nanomachines who hope to turn the world into sentient "gray goo") has certainly made life easier, but they've also accelerated depression. Case in point: if this were 1904, you would not be reading this; you would be chopping wood or churning butter or watching one of your 13-28 children perish from crib death. Your life would be horrible, but your life would have purpose. It would have clarity. Machines allow humans the privilege of existential anxiety. Machines provide us with the extra time to worry about the status of our careers, and/or the context of our sexual relationships, and/or what it means to be truly alive. Unconsciously, humans hate technology. We hate the way it replaces visceral experience with self-absorption. The only way we can reconcile that hatred is by pretending machines hate us, too.

It is human nature to personify anything we dont understand: Gods, animals, hurricanes, mountain ranges, jet skis, strippers, etc. We deal with inanimate objects by assigning them the human qualities we assume they might have if they were exactly us. Consequently, we want to think about machines as slaves, and we like to pretend those mechanized slaves will eventually attempt a hostile takeover. Cuz, that's what we'd do.

The truth, of course, is that we are the slaves; the machines became our masters through the bloodless coup that began during the industrial revolution. (In fact, this is kind if what "I, Robot" is about, although the Will Smith version will not make that clear.) By now, i think most America s are aware of that reality; I think any smarter-than-average person already concedes that (A) we've lost our control over technology, and (B) there's nothing we can do about it. But, that's defeatist. Openly embracing that despair would make the process of living even darker than it already is; we'd all move to rural Montana abd become Unabombers. We need to remain optimistic. And how do we do that? By preparing ourselves for a futuristic war against intelligent, man-hating cyborgs. As long as we dream of a war that has not yet happened, we are able to believe it's a war that we have not yet lost.

But perhaps im all wrong about this. Perhaps we humans are still in command, and a perhaps there really will be a conventional robot war in the not-so-distant future. If so, let's roll. Im ready. That toaster will never be the boss of me. Get ready to make some Pop-Tarts, Bitch!!

[zpetra]

ROI in Malaga 2018 Journal

To be able to tell the whole story of how I actually got to go to ROI, we have to go back a little to May. I was sitting home due to a public holiday and somehow a promo popped up on Instagram about ROI and I just checked out the dates / information. For the end of the year I had some holidays planned at least in days. No exact details yet as in October I wanted to see a concert (didn’t get tickets but went for a small Spain trip - Barcelona, Seville, Madrid) and the fact about GP assignments was still in the air. 

For some reason I just checked the dates and settled on the 17th of November in Malaga. I had one of those “fuck it” moments and bought my ticket. Got a flight for a good price, hotel stay for a night close to the stadium was also quickly found. So in a mere few hours of planning, it was settled.

I would see Javier Fernandez in Malaga. I was excited and so happy about it.

Fast-forward a little bit to GP assignments as I have to mention it. When it was known Yuzuru Hanyu would be going to Helsinki and Moscow I was in a slight dilemma as ROI was the same weekend as that. Unfortunately any other date or location was impossible for me regarding ROI, as I had other plans. I aimed for Helsinki (which we know happened and my journal about it can be found 1 - 2 - 3 here). In the end I am also happy that I wasn’t in Russia... it was hard enough already. I stayed with my plan and bookings for Malaga and I have no regrets in that case.

Saturday - 17th of November

Saturday morning I set off to the airport bright (cold) and early as public transportation sucks for me at the moment and I have to take quite some detours. Anyhow I arrived, got myself some hot chocolate with coffee...only to hear the news falling in. While I am not happy to mention Yuzuru in this Journal, it was part of my weekend and it influenced my overall mood as well. So please forgive me for doing the bad thing and speaking about Javi but for this particular case for me they were intertwined with each other.

Start my day with a delayed flight while my arrival time was already conflicting with the free skate and given the info before my flight about Yuzu fall my anxiety was peaking. Lufthansa sucks with arriving on time especially in Spain it seems and we barely landed and I got out of the plane when it was Yuzus turn. I didn’t even had the time to process I am in Malaga and going to see Javi in a few hours. I watched in the middle of the airport, not even making it to my friend on time who was waiting for me near the exit. It was probably the worst 4 minutes of my life... I do not want to go into detail but it was hard. Once the scores were calculated I hurried to my friend so we can watch the rest together and wait for the final results. Happiness flooded me that Yuzuru won regardless of a not so perfect skate but impressive for a completely changed layout and obvious struggle... little did we know.

We found our bus to the city and we joked about the whole thing, giddy and happy. Nearly missing our bus-stop to the hotel XD but someone wanted to get off at the same station and my fried spotted the hotel, so we managed to do some involuntarily sightseeing. We got to our hotel, checked in and said to meet after a quick shower... I barely got out when the information flooded my Twitter. Yuzuru Hanyu is injured, he skated on painkillers. All my happiness was gone and it was difficult for me because in about 5 hours I was meant to participate in one of the most amazing shows of my life but I felt gloomy.

Cue us going to Burger King and stuffing ourselves with junk food, unable to talk about anything else. I felt so guilty, still do because none of our moods were really in for Revolution on Ice and that was wrong. So damn wrong. Javi deserved better from us, not us thinking of Yuzu or me going on a rant about this but it is the truth. I have failed him in that sense. I am sorry.

Somehow we fixed ourselves enough to leave and after some confusion at the venue we found our seats, or knew were to go. Spent some time together until it was best to take our seats. My friend and I, we didn’t sit together so yeah. I had a second row seat on the long side. 

I WAS SO CLOSE!

Revolution on Ice - the show

There was a bit of a delay with the start due to people not getting to their places on time and waiting, which I found really nice of the organization to do as others would just start and not care. One issue I had was that literally everything was said in Spanish and “No abla espanol” here, or very little...so I was struggling. XD

I will get this out there right from the start... I found it a bit weird that during any kind of group number, Plush was never part of it, he had his two individual performances and joined the finale once the performance itself was finished, only fooling around on the ice happened. Additionally I had a feeling that at the end he kind of took the spotlight from Javier, maybe because the audience knew him better but in that sense I felt a lack of appreciation for Javier, both from the audience and maybe a bit of Plush, lingering center ice while Javier already retreated. Maybe it was also because Javier himself left the others have their moment of shine, I will never know but somewhat I felt Plush was hyped more and I didn’t like that considering it was Javiers show. The overall impression left me a bit negative in that sense.

Anyway back to the beginning... I had my seat in the second row, quite in the middle of the long side, opposite to the where the DJ was. The seat was incredible and luckily someone short sat in front of me and I could actually see XD. YAY.

There was a really nice opening with most cast to start with the show, I really like it as everyone had their individual moment to shine as well as skate in choreo together. I truly appreciated too that generally most of the songs were Spanish, barely anything else, I think overall 4 songs were in English? And some jamming music at the end but rest was Spanish. We also had the live performance of Eva Ruiz ( 2 songs, one with the synchronous group and one with Yuka Sato ), we had also Diana Navarro who had two songs as well, one was with the Annette Dyrty/Jannick Bonheur the other with Anna Cappelini/Luca Lanotte. Diana sings amazing, I swear to god it sounded like playback music and it wasn’t. During Anna/Luca performance I didn’t even realize she was on the small stage on my left because it sounded like playback music. She is good. I really enjoyed it. And the performances matched the music as well. Anna is gorgeous, I saw her so close and she is beautiful. I think I will just make comments for everyone I saw otherwise I get confused and I am not that good at recalling what happened after each other LOL.

Evgeni Plushenko: He had two performances, one song I didn’t recognize actually, I was also happy not to see Nijinsky due to what happened a few hours before and I probably wouldn’t have been able to watch it and Sex Bomb... God, was it awkward for me. He literally did push-ups in that muscle suit in front of my eyes, I have it on video and god, I was red as a tomato, unsure if I should watch or not, be embarrassed or whatever. I think I had some mix of it with hysterical laughter. Still it was nice XD

Elladj Balde: He is incredible. The way he hyped up everyone and he had a performance with the DJ, kind of a sound battle, it was really good and his back-flip is to die for. I may have, managed to catch one of them on camera and wow. He also had kind of a flamenco?ish duet with Jeffrey and was part of all group numbers. I really really enjoyed his performances and he is damn handsome too XD Elladj is a true entertainer and I can really see why the Japanese shows tend to have him, he puts the place on fire with his performance and aura.

Jeffrey Buttle: He had one serious performance where I was a bit irritated by his facial expressions but otherwise he is incredible, his spins are to die for and a back-counter 3A may have slayed me too. As I said he had a duet kind of thing with Elladj before Javi joined them to take over with his bullfighter program, nice crossover tbh, they kind of teased and mock fought each other. Loved it. I certainly could see bits and peaces he had shown Yuzu in the programs he choreographed and it was somewhat bittersweet but incredibly lovely. Jeff looks also really good and that (peach) is to die for XD. I am sorry but I can’t help it when they literally skate in front of me with their backside, he also wore rather tight suit pants during one performance.

Anna Cappelini/Luca Lanotte: They had I believe one Spanish song with Diana Navarro, don’t know the title but it was really emotional and while I did not understand the lyrics I could still see what they tried to convey with the way they skated. Definitely enjoyed their lifts. They also did a Chaplin program with the girl group, later got joined by Javi who took over the ice to perform himself with the group, the way they incorporated the flow over to a different program was great. There was barely any awkward pause. As I said Anna is gorgeous, all of them were and damn, I couldn’t stop staring, especially what make up she used... anyone? Insider? Please? I need that ice-shadow she had one while they did the black for guys, red for girls group choreo. XD Overall, these two are incredible. 

Annette Dyrty/Jannick Bonheur: Okay, these two? If you all remember at FAOI how one pair skater swung around their partner and Yuzu said “Yabai” THAT WAS MY OVERALL MOOD. They did the scariest but most incredible things I didn’t know existed ( or were allowed, I guess with show skating it is ), they fired up the crowd! I swear they got one of the loudest cheers out there that night and for reasons. I was so impressed by them, really. Overall - wow factor.

Celia Benayas/Marco Covela: The acrobatic duo was great too, they performed to Never Enough from the Greatest Showman and it gave me Pyeongchang feels and oh god... I was close to cry. They were really good! Good addition, different than they had nothing to do with the skating.

Yuka Sato: HOW DO I NOT KNOW OF HER? SHE IS SO PRETTY AND GRACEFUL! She didn’t have many jumps in her performances but had some beautiful spins and spirals and I really enjoyed it, she was also as everyone else basically in the cast ridiculously pretty. She could rival with her beauty about anyone under 30 and she is 45!!! Can I have her genes? She performed to two Spanish songs, one with Eva Ruiz and also was part of all group numbers.

And we arrived to the main of the whole show for me - Javier Fernandez

For each of his greetings / announcing him in the beginning and taking over the ice he slid from the back in the front, silently without disturbing the attention from those currently bowing or still performing, unless it was meant to him doing so. He joined Anna/Luca on the ice to perform a Chaplin program, which was really entertaining and got lifted at the end by the girl group - as we have seen pictures of it XD Truly performances where he can play a character suit him a lot.

During Chaplin he was going all out on the dorky and I loved it, one time he laid on the ice and the girls skated above him, then he rolled on his side like he was showing off, even the way he got up was comical. So fun!

Next he did the bullfighter which was really funny too, he did one part right in front of me and his expressions are to die for. Of course it is also one of his more funnier ones in my opinion and the costume is gorgeous, the amount of detail is crazy.

I am not sure during which number anymore but he actually messed a 3S, A SALCHOW!! JAVI!!! I know you gave your 4S to Yuzu as a parting gift but OMG. And it happened on my side of the ice too like a bit further to the right, still in full view XD I have felt that Javi gave room for others to get some spotlight as well, which is so typical Javi in my eyes, still he could have basked in the attention a bit more, he deserved it and I am happy the crowd was so interactive too and gave it to him!

Now onto the one performance I truly, truly wanted to see and actually was the reason why I bought a ticket to ROI

Prometo

I am actually listening to the song as I am writing this...and I will start with a bit backstory here. As we all, I myself have seen a fancam of Prometo during the Shows he did in Canada and I instantly fell in love. I had to search for the song and ended up buying the whole album of Pablo Alboran listening to all the songs for weeks... the impact it had on me was I can’t describe it with words. Sometimes you are just so drawn to something at the first tunes, you will always remember it. I remember where I sat and how I found out about Prometo, the amount of hours I have listened to it on repeat, searched for the lyrics, backstory... everything I could get my hands on. It is a true masterpiece and not just the song itself but the program too.

There are actually 3 different versions of the song and he is using the Amazon Music, live version which is much slower than even the piano version. As for the versions I prefer the original or piano version, on the other hand I understand why he used the third version. It just fits so much more.

I have seen people calling it bland because Javier is not wearing any flashy costume but just simple pants and a sweater but if you look at the lyrics it does make sense and I think he sells it. The beige fits the melancholy it should show and how he does some movements to fit the text, like “dancing in the salon” and he kind of does a tango. I appreciate the lack of big jumps, beautiful spins instead and just single ones or more like leaping through the air, the knee slides and that one gorgeous Ina Bauer (he did that right in front of me and I was dead). It drew some tears from me, both for how the song generally gets me emotional but also due the whole afternoon already. This year literally two performances made me cry and this was one of them. I am so happy I could record it to keep with me forever.

I posted it on my Instagram in pieces, if you want to watch - HERE. I have also a Story Highlight for ROI only.

I found the audience in this particular instance annoying as some people kept screaming “Vamos” in between, I am sorry but Prometo is not something where it fits and I felt it disturbed the magic it was casting on everyone. Oh well, I concentrated on Javi instead, singling along a little bit.

I think by now after this long paragraph you can tell I am in love with Prometo and I am so thankful for being granted the privilege to watch it. It’s a beauty.

After that basically the finale was on and we had a happy Javi shimmy around the ice the music in the Prometo outfit. It was so nice to see him this happy, dancing around, giving people more time to shine as they introduced everyone again. Javier looked so happy and I was too. 

ROI is an incredible show and if you have the possibility just go, you are not going to regret it. I know the cast is different from some locations but I was so happy to have seen these performances. And the fact he nearly sold out a 11K stadium in Spain is so amazing too! Javier deserves this, truly.

I have no pictures or videos in this post as I have mostly taken videos and I have them in the insta stories or not yet really posted it. Some are quite short. I think I have only really filmed Javis programs in full and the opening. Oh and the acrobats. The rest just bits and pieces for memory.

After the show - 18th November - Sunday

Feeling so much better about my day thanks to Javi and the cast we returned late to our hotel. I chatted with my best friend for a bit before settling for bed. I slept really bad, waking up every hour and being confused about where I am, the time and it was a long night. I promised my friend to leave with her to the airport tho her plane left a few hours before mine but really I had nothing better to do and it was raining cats and dogs. Sightseeing got cancelled. At the airport the gloomy mood returned though I tried my best to be more positive, waiting for the medal ceremony which I could watch before my own flight went off. My friend left and I stayed alone at the airport. Did some shopping to lift my mood but otherwise sat at the Starbucks.

The moment the medal ceremony started I probably had the lowest moment of my entire weekend. I was sporting a headache due to the weather being horrible, my irritation level was high, been fighting the emotional situation... The moment I saw Yuzu with crutches I cried. I cried in a public coffee at an airport after one of the best evenings of my entire year (along with Helsinki weekend).  I just... it was hard and still is, will be for a while and yet again I felt bad because Javi should have been my priority for this weekend. I am sorry... again and again.

Once I fixed myself emotionally, I had to go to the gate. Cue Lufthansa being their usual self... delay with the flight, roller-coaster ride included in the price and when we landed and finally could get off the plane. I was more irritated than ever, my whole head was throbbing. Had to wait 20 minutes for a fucking train to take me to the city but yet again due to blocked routes, follow it up with a solid 20 minute walk in the cold ass weather. I barely get home and am in front of my building a guy starts to hit on me after I helped him with the same issue I had - public transportation. God, I was so not having it but trying to stay polite. When I rejected him he tried to pull the “is it because I am black” card and I was like... OMG REALLY? You wanna pull that shit just because someone you just met and is literally standing at the door of her building refuses to give you her number or expect yours? You are a fucking stranger I just met and I am sorry but hell no. Somehow I managed to actually get into my apartment and I was done. I was done with the whole day and the weekend and just nope.

While I did have one of the best weekends of my entire life it was also one of the worst ones. Even now I am conflicted how I feel. One moment I am happy the next I am sad and I really don’t know. Regardless of it all there is one thing I will say:

Javier Fernandez, thank you for organizing ROI and thank you for giving us the privilege to enjoy your skating, putting on a show that left me shaking and crying (literally... Prometo was emotional for me). Thank you, truly. The whole show and cast, including you were incredible. Gracias. See you next at Europeans! ♥

[theplaguezine]

STRATOVARIUS

Interview with Jens Johannson by Daniel Hinds

(conducted May 2003)

At the start of the 90s, it would have been folly to predict that power metal would be the big thing in the metal world by the end of the decade, yet that's just what happened.  One of the bands leading that revolution was Finland's masters of bigger-than-life metal, Stratovarius.  Their slick combination of melody, speed, orchestration and, yes dammit, metal has made them one of the biggest bands in the genre the world over.  The thing that amazes me the most about the band is they somehow manage to make each new album even better than the previous ones and Elements Pt. 1 is utterly brilliant.  Keyboard maestro Jens Johansson recently gave me the background on this phenomenal release… Prior to recording Elements, the band took an extended break.  Do you think it helped to get away from it for a while? I think so.  Of course, it's difficult to say how the album would have turned out if we had just forced it without the break.  Maybe the listener wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but for us it was much nicer recording it this way.  When we finally got back in the studio, everybody was really excited about the prospect.  The problem was we did five records and five tours in five years, basically.  It got very hectic and that's when we decided to take this break.  Perhaps it shows in the record because everyone was confident that we had enough time.  It gave us more time to do anything we wanted to do, explore every little avenue or waste time on stupid stuff in case it turns out better. So you got to experiment a little more this time then? A little bit.  More in the sense of production or trying out different ideas.  I wouldn't say it was a highly experimental record compared to the other ones, it's still well within the style. What did everyone do during the break?  Did you work on other music or just totally get away from it? I think a couple of us did that.  Timo the guitarist and Timo the singer made solo records, but that didn't take so much time.  I think in the case of Timo the guitar player, it took maybe a couple of months at the most.  I guess everybody just sort of relaxed and then this September 11th crap happened in the middle of everything, too.  It was a good time to take a break. This is possibly the most diverse collection of songs you guys have done yet.  Did it just work out that way? I don't know.  It could maybe stem from the fact that the tempos are a little lower.  The average tempo is maybe lower than the previous one, but beyond that I think maybe just because we had more time to work on the stuff.  Of course, if you have very high tempos, you can't fill in with too many things because it becomes too cluttered.  I think it's just a combination of everyone being happy to go back to work and having more than enough time. "Soul of a Vagabond" is quite possibly my favorite Stratovarius song ever.  What are your thoughts on that track?  It seems to have a little of everything. When you record something, you really don't know what's going to turn out good or bad, but I like it, too.  A lot of those orchestral songs are very slow and I would say that is the fastest of the orchestral songs, the epic songs.  It's got more of a driving pulse to it.  A lot of people like it, but then they had this vote on the web page on which song people liked best and a lot of people voted for the first, very poppy song ["Eagleheart"], so you can never really second-guess what people will think, it's impossible.  You can't really get inside people's heads…fortunately, I guess (laughs).  You just have to throw shit against the wall and see what sticks. (laughs) Can you tell me a bit about the concept behind Elements and when we can expect a pt. 2? Actually, it's pretty close to being finished right now.  It's not really a concept record, though.  I think we have some sort of tradition that we name the album after one of the longer tracks - it doesn't really mean it's a concept album.  That of course becomes a problem with Elements 2because that album has nothing to do with Elements whatsoever.  I don't know why it's going to be called Elements 2 (laughs).  I think, in my mind, it's more like a double-album; it's just released over the span of a year.  When the first one was released, we were still working on the second one and we'll put that out as soon as it's finished, which should be at the end of this year. Did the band do anything new this time recording wise? Not as far as completely bold ideas.  The only thing we did now that we haven't done is to be consciously aware of not compromising, because we had so much time.  If there was some strange avenue to go down, more often it was explored than not.  The songs are what they are - I mean, they're not going to be reggae songs or anything very experimental.  Production-wise, technically and stuff like that, we really took care to make it sound as good as it can.  And also arrangement-wise.  Apart from that, there's not a huge difference.  It's done in the same studio up in Helsinki as the other albums.  There's more orchestral stuff, because of the slower songs, it makes sense to spend the money to have the full orchestra do a lot of the stuff. How hard is it to arrange all of the orchestral side of things? We delegate parts of that as well.  There's this one guy who has very good contacts and I think he gets special prices.  He's done it on a couple of the other records for us as well.  We tell the guy approximately how it should sound, sometimes very specifically, and after that he works on making the orchestration, printing up all the parts for the guys to play it.  If we didn't delegate that, I think it would be very messy.  We'd have to learn a whole new process of interaction with these people.  He's like our intermediary, which is very handy, and he's quite talented as well.  Some of the ideas he came up with as well, with the arrangements, and some of it was too crazy so they ended up cutting it out.  He's a cool guy.  That's basically how we worked.  He would have tapes and we would have meetings with him about stuff and then he would contact the orchestra to actually record the parts.  It's like a very expensive and very sophisticated, thinking keyboard (laughs) that you can tell sometimes very vague things or hum things and all of sudden they appear in orchestral form.  It's the best way to do it, I think.  If you want to have that fine of control over it without knowing the mechanics in such detail, I think you'd be in a bit of trouble when the time comes to record.  I think you'd be nervous and want to change things at the last minute.  You'd be running around with a pencil and penciling things into people's scores and stuff. (laughs)  I think it's worth it because you can sometimes make this kind of orchestral stuff with keyboards and samplers, but it doesn't sound as good.  It doesn't sound as organic or living, basically - it's canned.  You're always playing canned notes.  It's like somebody else is recording the orchestra playing one note and then you're basically playing those back in different combinations.  It's not as living as when you have all the people focusing on the parts at the same time in real time - it's a completely different sound.  And it's fucking expensive. (laughs)  They've gone to the conservatory for ten years, so they don't really play for pizza and beers, like in the rock world. Can you give me an idea of your involvement in the creative side of the band and how it has changed since you joined? I think that's where we spend most of the energy this time, in the rehearsals.  We allowed ourselves a lot of rehearsal time, like a month or something, and that's where you hash out what goes where.  You need to do that, just playing through the songs and thinking of new things, new approaches.  That's still the time-tested and best way to deal with it, I think.  It's like three guys in the bands that have even tried to write songs and that's me and the singer and Tolkki.  We have decided that what we do is when the time comes around to make a new record, each one of us pull out what we have in terms of material at the time that could fit; then we let Timo Tolkki decide which songs we should rehearse and which we should record.  It becomes very simple. I had maybe four or five songs that I thought could remotely fit on either of the albums and I think Timo the singer had two or something.  In the end, it's just best if he decides because otherwise we would just argue too much about it (laughs).  We would waste more time on that than recording.  He's the longest-surviving member of the band, even though he's not an original member, but there's nobody left form the first line-up.  So far, it's worked really well, really smooth recordings.  The natural instinct when you start out is, 'Oh yeah, I have to have my songs on the album,' but as long as the albums are good, I don't really care who is writing the stuff.  I try to make as much material as I can that might fit, but it's difficult.  It has to be a certain style and I'm not so good at writing that style. Stratovarius has done a number of albums now.  Is it hard to come up with new ideas? Yeah, a little bit.  Of course, you have the old albums as baggage and the people who listen to those old albums, so you have in your mind that you don't want to make too much of a departure.  Even if we completely became reggae fans, it would be very difficult to make a reggae record - people would be very angry.  We would spend more time fending off our old fans than we would our brand new reggae album (laughs).  I still can imagine that we can make more records without it being too much cliché, but who knows.  It's very hard to say.  It's a fine line to tread if you want to make something too different or too much like the old stuff. I saw you had a song you wrote called "Run Away" on the single - why is it not on the album? I don't know.  I guess we had a limit on how long we could make it and had lots of songs that we could have thrown on there.  It's also like, you need songs for a single, so we always record a few more than we need and they end up getting used somehow. What are some of the most challenging songs for you to play? I think the songs are quite easy to play, actually.  They're a lot harder to write and record.  Once that part is done, there is nothing technically difficult about them.  I think any decent prog metal might be able to play this stuff half asleep.  Some of the fast stuff might be difficult to play on the drums unless you're used to that type of stuff.  The kids nowadays, the tempos that they play in death metal bands, they could probably do it completely drunk and with one foot amputated.  (laughs)  It's not technically challenging, none of it.  But the writing and the production - you have to be inspired. Can you give me your idea of the personality of each member of Stratovarius? We all have a lot in common actually, which is why I think we've stayed together so long, like six years now.  We have four Scandinavian guys and one German, the center of gravity is somewhere up in Scandinavia, which is in itself a bit strange with how many people up there a little weird.  One of the central things with people up there is that people don't talk so much.  There are good sides to that and bad sides as well, but people don't tend to waste words.  I know that that has created problems in the past because if you are used to people communicating, you just don't understand why they don’t' say anything.  If something is wrong, why don' they speak up?  It's just a cultural thing that is sometimes very hard to understand for people who aren't used to it.  Of course, I am completely used to it and in a sense it's good because there's not so much bullshit flying around.  People speak when they need to.  Apart from that, there are like different personalities, but in a sense everybody focuses on the big picture of the band.  There's no really big fights or drug use or anything and I think that contributes to the stability.  There are no really crazy people in the band.  Everybody has a clear understanding of what needs to be done and everybody trusts Timo the guitar player with a lot of the decisions.  Unlike some other bands I've been in where people are constantly fighting over control over the whole situation, whether it is money or creative-wise, you get these skirmishes or all-out wars on these things.  It eats up a lot f the time you could spend doing other stuff.  Everybody in this band is on the same page.  The outside of the band is the drummer; of course because he's from Germany, but he's spent so much time in the band, he's turning into a Scandinavian guy as well.  He's being poisoned by the sick shit going on up there (laughs).  He was a normal talkative guy when he joined the band. (laughs) Do you enjoy touring? I actually like touring - it's the traveling I don't like.  The playing part is very nice; the other 23 hours a day wears you down in the end.  Living without a fixed point, cramped spaces, sometimes bad food, staying up late and having to wake up.  But the playing of course is nice; we all still enjoy that bit.  With this break behind us now, I think some of us might even be excited to go out traveling again, which is unheard of. Stratovarius at The Metal Archives

[andromedan-writing]

This is a long personal writing for you know who you are. I remember....

So I woke up today and immediately started crying. So this is gonna be a mess but I need to get it out. I’m sorry that it’s so long. Our six month anniversary just passed. We met for the first time six months ago. That day changed my life. These are the memories that make me refuse to give up on you just yet. I don’t wanna believe what your friend told me. He told me you were using me for sex. I don’t buy that. Partially because we were planning a lot more in the future. Also, you always said you missed the cuddling more. Now I’m missing it too. Also, I just want you to know. That whole weekend I wanted to tell you I was falling into another pit of depression. I was seconds away from telling you on your birthday but then your roommate walked in. And I didn’t really feel comfortable telling you how I’m unwell in front of him. So no. You didn’t know what was going on. And the reason I was angry at you that day wasn’t really all what I said it was. I was upset because I was depressed, and when you’re with your “friends” I sometimes feel like you ignore me. I mean, I even walked back to my seat and you didn’t even acknowledge it. They’re not good influences. I know I shouldn’t have gone that day, but I just really wanted to be with you because I love you. And I know I shouldn’t have picked that fight and for that I’m eternally paying the price. Because you are the best thing to have ever happened in my life. So I decided when I woke up today to try and remember the good things that I would have made a whole thing for our anniversary anyway. A brunch date, possibly a part picnic or something, and I was gonna dress up really nice for you that night. It would’ve been a good day. So I want to keep that good spirit up. I'm sorry this is really long. I know you blocked my number and probably didn’t read this. But If you ever do, just know that I still love you. And I don’t ever want you to forget that there are genuine people out there who truly love you for you, and want to see you thrive and be your best. I love you for who you are and nothing more or less. I love that you still like my little pony, and your drive for revolution and how Sherlock Holmes and mysteries make you glow. I love to see you truly smile when you can let go and be yourself. I know that you’re actually vulnerable sometimes and I love you for that too. You gained weight over winter break, so you say. I still love you. You’re weird. So weird. I love it. Sometimes you can get all dark but I still love you. Your kinks? Love them. Probably have them too. Am I secretly a furry like you claim? Maybe. Screw you for that. You like to party and have a very impulsive side to you. I love that. Sometimes I need a little push to do something outside my comfort zone. And sometimes you need to calm down. We work there. You’re also really funny and I love your taste in things. Also you’re really handsome so like. yeah. And if you ever want to come back I’ll be here. There’s nobody like you, and I love you for who you are. These are all the good memories that I want to remember: I remember how when we were apart for a bit, and finally got to see each other again, you’d pick me up, spin me around, and carry me across a whole room just to hug and kiss me again. I remember talks about our future. Constantly. Especially this winter. The house, the names for kids, the idea for a wedding. You said you wanted to build a house and I love that idea. Do you remember the idea you had about a wedding? It was spectacular and fun. A black dress then change into a cheap white one. Just a giant party. I fell in love with the idea. I remember you saying how I would do all these things. Not your future wife. Me. I. I remember slow dancing for no real reason, just to dance and feel one another. Both in your room and mine. I remember the day when it was after the improv show where we skipped it to make love, and when we were done and dressed , we opened the door and our friends were there. I was just in a bra and shorts with a cardigan, and you and your friend blasted showtunes and used me as a prop dancer with you, twirling me around and singing to me . I remember the day we went into town, and looked through the old bookstores, because you wanted more Sherlock Holmes to read. Around town, it just felt perfect and natural, us walking together. I remember how you’d call me “my love” all of the time and it made me melt. I remember the first night I saw you get high, I refused to go out with you, just waited around in your room playing music. You came back and we had the craziest conversations and you were so confident and passionate about what you loved. The second time you got high around me, it didn’t fully hit you, and we decided to try and make it count anyway. That was the night after where we all played poker and uno and I was higher than you. I remember all the firsts. The first text. You wanted me to take a walk with you that first night after we met. I was so nervous and I texted my friends saying “I think something is happening here. This guy is acting like he likes me” Because I didn’t get the text until I was in bed. But that morning I decided fuck it. Let’s take this chance because something amazing could happen. I was right. I remember reaching for your hand, trying to be clever, when you were playing chess. I remember you saying that you were gonna go on a smoke break and I should come with. I remember our conversation where you said that you felt something really important here and we should give it a shot. I immediately agreed because I felt it too. I remember our first kiss. Our first night. You said “I finally found you.” I felt the same way. I finally found you. The one I was looking for my entire life. I remember the first time I said “I love you.” I thought it wouldn’t count if I said it in French. I know it was early. But I knew right then and there that I loved you with all of my heart. All of my soul. I remember how when we touch our foreheads together, it’s like our souls become one and make love in our minds. You don’t even have to touch me. You liked to take control there. I let you. Every time, it was magical. I remember when we went to the bar and danced and you gave me that look which said “wait until we get back to your room.” I remember how you protected us girls when that creepy dude tried to swoop in. I remember us making brownies in my kitchen, and you like the extra fudgey, while we were watching Agatha Christie. I remember our texts when I was away. I missed you so much. You made me blush in the middle of an airport restaurant. I remember you boys sitting in your common room and playing magic, and I was helping you. I had never played before, yet you trusted my advice. I remember the fist time I kissed you in front of everybody. We were splitting up to go to the store into different cars. We were just leaving and in a split second decision I decided to turn around and run to you to kiss you. Everybody kind of expected us to be together but not that fast. We thought we were being so sneaky. But everybody saw the way we looked at each other, the way we always at right next to or on top of each other. I remember the advice you’d give me, trying to help me live in the moment and be more confident. You’re the first person to ever get me to stop thinking about my old love from five years ago. With you, I realized that everything about you was more than I could have ever dreamed. I forgot about him, for the first time since 2013. I was living in the moment and I was so happy to be there with you. I remember how in the last month you started saying “we” instead of just talking about yourself. It shocked me. I never expected somebody to think of me with them as a “we.” You made me fall deeper in love. You don’t know this, but I was looking at promise rings. I found some online on your birthday. I remember how our ideas would always bounce right off each other. For when we went hiking, our conversations about the world, and map planning even. It was as if we fit so well in the universe just had to make it known. I remember our tickle fights. I hate that I’m so easy to tickle. But I also love how that’s what I would have to do to wake you up sometimes. Your feet are so ticklish. I remember how recently just me undressing was enough to drive you to the edge. I dressed up for you on your birthday. We had so many more nights planned. I remember us talking about our spring break plans. Us and your friends for four days in the Vermont house. I still can find it in five seconds on a map. I was very committed to being a navigator there. You were adamant about making it work and still having me be there. We were gonna share a room, a bed, the master, and it was going to be perfect. I remember looking up house costs in that area of Vermont. We could theoretically do it. I remember us playing xbox in your room. You helped me remember how to play call of duty. I was always a sniper up at the top. We worked well as a team. I remember when I was away you’d text me about how you were always daydreaming of me. All day. “Some of them are super cute. Some of them are downright nasty.” I didn’t object. I remember how my neighbor said she knew we were having sex because she heard me giggling. We never really took ourselves too seriously with that, did we? No matter what it was always fun. I remember driving all the way out to see that other Oldsmobile. We made it a day trip. We even ate food from McDonald’s right outside the beer store. Although you didn’t want the car in the end, it was still a great journey. I always loved our car rides. I remember our first big car ride. When we all went into town to eat, and then we went to the market. We finished up early and the day was still young, so we decided to just take my car out and blast music and drive with no destination in mind. I still had a journal entry I wrote about that weekend. It was like something out of a movie. I remember when my mom came up for parent weekend and she took us out to eat. She really liked you. I remember her telling you that I complain a lot. You already experienced that by then. I remember how we’d always support one another no matter what. When we had fights, it was mostly because we were worried about each other. Or it was simple miscommunication. But when we were down, we’d always try to pick each other back up. You said to me “my friends don’t understand how perfect you are for me.” I understood, as your friend claimed you were a bad person and were using me. He didn’t understand. We talked about you not letting your friends judge me anymore, and you said you were gonna talk to them. You said to me “promise to never let me do anything to make me lose you.” You threw your vape into the gunk for me based on that promise. You said to me “I love you more.” I finally believed you. You said “I try not to bet on losing odds.” You said to me “I’d do anything for you.” I told you if you kept making me blush I’ll have to spend the rest of my life with you and you said “too late.” You said, even in our biggest argument, that “I want to be with you forever.” You said to me when I told you that you can never know what someone else is thinking, “I could love you more than you could ever know.” I finally believed you. You said to me that you “promise a hundred times over” to not randomly dump me. I believed you. Because I could never imagine a future without you in it. And to be honest, that’s why I’m still holding out hope. I had to make a choice recently. A lot of them. And then I remembered all of our good times and how you make me feel. Even still. In my opinion, I feel like this isn’t over yet. You may have ended this chapter, but I don’t feel like the book is done yet. We could still have many more good memories to come. Just please remember the good times and know that people do care about you.