#I’ve had this art sitting in my camera roll since JUNE

[froggychair05]

Putting this under a cut because major spoilers for the most recent chapter of Sugarcoated!!!

Ch. 7 vs Ch. 9

“And if you ever find yourself alone

Come ‘round, there’s always room for one more

When the wind is blowing cold, you know

All you gotta do’s knock on my door”

- Home by Josef Salvat

[amerrierworld]

Curtain. (i)

Carol (2015) fanfiction 

Summary: An on-and-off job as photographer can only pay so much, so Therese Belivet has taken a job at an elementary school's art program to help pay the bills. One of her last jobs before the school year begins is photographing a preview night of a successful play where she meets the well-known artistic director of the show, Carol Ross. She forgets about their meeting until September rolls around and she starts teaching an inquisitive young six-year old by the name of Rindy.

Characters: Carol x Therese

Word Count: 1,491

Warnings: none yet!

June.

Therese was staring intensely at her laptop, watching as all the little photo icons from her camera began transferring over to her drive. Rain tapped gently against her windows and a can of Coke sat on her desk, half-empty. She had shut all the windows to avoid any light or outdoor distractions as she tended to daydream while looking out in the distance, but this time Therese was determined to get this job finished.

As she waited for the files to continue transferring, the brunette arched her back, yawning as her body creaked and popped from sitting for so long.

It had been three days since her lucky photography gig at the Hudson Theatre. Thinking about it still made her limbs jittery. It was a smaller theatre, but being the oldest theatre in the city and having hosted many successful shows, it was still a landmark. Therese had been overjoyed at the prospect of working inside the theatre for once and seeing all the ins and outs of the show she had been asked to document.

Her phone pinged from where she had haphazardly tossed it on her bed. She stood up and shuffled over, stretching again and giving her legs a shake as she opened a message from Dannie.

preview done. again.

how was it?

tbh a little messier than when u were there, richard kept missing his mark

of course he did.

yeah ross wasn't too pleased with him...

At the mention of the director's name, Therese's stomach lurched a bit, though she couldn't tell why. They had only exchanged a few words during the preview when she'd been there.

...anyways, manager wants to know how ur doing with those photos

workin on em right now actually

tsk that's too bad

why? did she need them now? i thought i had until next week

nah i was just gonna ask if u wanted to get some food and then get plastered w me and phil

Therese snorted and looked back at her laptop, which lit up, indicating all the files had been successfully imported. Temporarily forgetting about her conversation she hurried to glance through them, immediately noticing the faulty pics that she knew she wouldn't be able to use.

Her phone rang and she picked up.

"Is that a no?" Dannie asked from the other end. Therese rolled her eyes.

"Dannie, not responding in 30 seconds does not automatically mean no. But yeah, I don't know if getting drunk right now is such a good idea, I have a lot to go through. Plus, don't you have to work tomorrow?"

"Preview isn't until the afternoon, Belivet. I have all morning to sober up."

Sighing, Therese flicked through a few photos, stilling as she found one of the director whose back was to the camera as she directed Gen, the lead actress, who stood off to the far side of the stage.

"Therese?"

"Hm? Yeah, for sure. I'll come for food, but I'm going home afterwards, I really don't want to be hungover. I've had three cans of Coke already, alcohol and caffeine don't mix well for me."

"Alright, sounds good."

"When do you wanna head out?"

"...now?"

At that, the intercom buzzed at Therese's front door, indicating someone was in front of the apartment building.

"Jesus, Dannie, really?"

"I know you're always hungry, Therese. Plus, getting off the subway from work at your place is so much closer than mine. Forgive me?"

"Ugh fine, give me 20 minutes to get ready though. I don't care if you're stuck in the rain outside. That's what happens when you constantly drag me out for last minute plans."

"Yeah, yeah, Belivet, just hurry your ass up. We're not going anywhere fancy cause God knows I don't get paid enough to afford anything like that."

"Is Richard coming?" Therese asked, brow furrowing in a split second of worry.

"Him? Nah. I actually think he somehow managed to lure Gen into a date tonight. I saw them talking after the show."

"Oof, poor girl."

"Yeah, maybe I should warn her, y'know. Get her out while she still can."

"Terrible idea, McElroy. You know how actresses are with stage hands."

Dannie barked out a laugh. "Shut the fuck up, Belivet. You're one to talk, considering you were ogling the director the entire night."

"I was not."

"Yeah you were. Now get going, or I'm gonna melt in this downpour."

Therese smiled and ended the call, closing her laptop and hurrying to put on some decent clothes before meeting Dannie outside.

-

"C'mon Terry, not even one shot? As a celebratory drink for this job and the next."

"No, Phil," Therese laughed. "I already told Dannie, I have work to do later."

"Alright, suit yourself, but that means I'm gonna drink extra just to make up for you!"

After having grabbed a bite at a cheap Thai restaurant, the McElroy brothers had dragged Therese to their usual bar even though she was still determined to stay sober.

"Do you even know how to deal with kids, Therese? Elementary school can be vicious, y'know," Dannie said, sipping his beer as he ignored Phil stumbling from his seat to order another drink.

"It's only part-time, Dan," Therese shrugged. "Plus, what kid doesn't like art? If one of them throws a temper, I'll just let him go ham on a canvas with some paint, no big deal. It's therapeutic that way."

"How'd you manage to get a job there anyway?"

"Well, their usual art teacher had to take a break for a year 'cause of an injury, so I'm just filling in for the younger grades. They were desperate for more staff for their programs."

"Jeez, is that allowed? You've barely worked with kids until now."

"I dunno. I did a full police check and stuff, besides I'm not hired for the school, just the programs afterwards so I'm not technically a teacher. But it's a small school with a shit ton of younger kids that often need an after-school program. Chances are they won't even need me in the New Year if the other teacher comes back."

"So they just really need extra hands on deck?" Dannie concluded and Therese nodded. Phil came staggering back with a glass of water, grouchy and mumbling something about the bartender not letting him have another.

"Yeah. What about you though? What's happening after Woolf?"

Danni sighed and slumped back in his seat. "Who knows at this point? Ross is taking a break too, from being artistic director-,"

"Wait, really? She's not retiring is she?"

Dannie smirked at Therese but ignored her sudden eagerness in the conversation.

"Nah, just something about needing to be home with her family. She's worked her butt off for the theatre more than anyone, so it makes sense she wants a break for a little while after this show's done. But she'll probably be back in no time, cause she's like that. In the mean time, Gerhard is taking over. I don't know what she has up her sleeve yet, but I'm thinking a typical Christmas show is coming up."

"Any idea what it might be?"

"Nope. Everyone's talking and wanting to do A Christmas Carol but it's been so overdone, and Abby's always doing unexpected things."

"Damn, I wonder what it could be," Therese chewed her lip in thought.

"You sure you're not just upset at the idea of Ross not working there anymore?" Dannie teased. Therese smacked his arm.

"Dannie," she scolded.

"What! Even a blind person could see she's literal eye candy, though she can be a tough boss. I'm not blaming you for liking her, but I am telling you that she's not as sweet as she looks."

"Hmph, whatever. She's probably got someone anyways, if she's taking a break with family."

"I dunno, Belivet, I've never noticed a wedding ring." He winked at her.

"God, you're the worst y'know?" Therese sighed, though her eyes were twinkling. "I never should have come out to you when all you do is tease me about every girl who I just happen to find kinda cute."

Dannie grinned. "That's what you get for being besties with the McElroys, Belivet. Besides, since Phil doesn't like girls, who am I supposed to go to when I get lady problems?"

Therese shook her head and chuckled before checking her watch.

"Damn, it's getting late. Alright boys, I'm going home. I really need to work on those photos. Don't drink yourselves to death, please?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, Belivet!"

She grabbed her purse before going to hail a cab as Phil and Dannie waved goodbye, her mind whirling with thoughts of the intriguing blonde director. Therese wondered who she was, besides the 'literal eye candy' that she'd managed to capture on camera. Sighing, Therese shook her from her mind during the brief cab ride home, deciding it was best to leave her daydreaming behind for the rest of the night.

A/N: heh... hi. here's my take on carol/therese because i can’t get enough of them honestly. Let me know what you think; this’ll be a pretty packed series so enjoy :3 

I’ve also been posting my stuff on AO3 if any of you use that as well so you can find this and my other stories there too! <3 

[lilyvandersteen]

Out of the Blue: Chapter 7

Cover art: @redheadgleek​

Beta extraordinaire: @hkvoyage​

Links: AO3, FF.net

Author’s Note:

Yep, exactly what it says on the tin. Someone's got it out for Kurt and Blaine...

Chapter 7: Sabotage

“When I consider,” she added, in a yet more agitated voice, ‘that I might have prevented it! – I who knew what he was.”

(An excerpt from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The morning of the shoot, Blaine was up even earlier than usual, and arrived at the location even before his brother. A good thing, too, seeing as it was pure chaos, and he needed to solve quite a few problems and tell everyone where to set up their stuff and how the décor was supposed to look.

By the time Cooper arrived, the set looked as it should, and Coop nodded approvingly.

“Are Kurt and the others here yet?”

Blaine shook his head. “Still early.”

“Then go make yourself pretty now. Reena’s just arrived. She can do your hair and make-up first.”

When Reena had worked her magic, Blaine wriggled into the tight jeans he’d be wearing for the commercial and then walked around the warehouse helping out where needed while he was waiting for Kurt.

Kurt was supposed to be there at eight, but stepped into the warehouse at a quarter to, gaping at the hustle and bustle and seeming very much out of his depth.

Blaine hastened towards him, and tugged him along to Kyle and Reena, feeling in the best of spirits, especially when he saw Kurt give him a thorough once-over, with a glint in his eye that proved he liked what he saw.

His mood plummeted when Kurt, once again, made it all about Cooper. Ugh.

Kurt seemed to realise he’d said something wrong, but his bumbling apology made matters worse rather than better, and Blaine gritted his teeth and told himself not to lose his temper.

Cooper came to smooth things over, at usual, but Blaine wasn’t in the mood to humour him, and left Kurt in Kyle’s capable hands as soon as he’d told him what Kurt’s look was supposed to be.

He turned back, though, when Kurt hesitantly asked if there were changing rooms, and there was a loud scoff.

Chandler! Oh, I might have known the little weasel would make trouble… He had better not mess with Kurt!

Chandler was a new hire, fresh from Parsons. He helped Kyle, mostly, but also assisted Reena if she had too much on her plate.

When he’d first started working for the Anderson firm, in June, he’d followed Cooper around like a yapping dog, forever gushing. Two days later, he’d asked Cooper out, and had seemed miffed when he was let down gently.

After that, Chandler had zeroed in on Blaine as the next best thing, and had started his spiel with him. Blaine wasn’t any more interested than Cooper had been, so he tried as hard as he could to avoid Chandler, and if he couldn’t, he pretended not to hear or not to understand his innuendoes and invitations.

Chandler proved persistent, though, and never gave up, so in the end, Blaine had to tell him plainly that he was wasting his time.

Ever since, Chandler had walked around the sets with a face like thunder, doing as little as he could get away with and slyly instigating fights between models or giving them wrong clothes on purpose. Blaine had started documenting every misstep Chandler made. He wanted the guy out, but Coop refused to fire him without solid proof of misbehavior. “We can’t afford to lose an employee! We’re run off our feet as it is! Also, he’s the kind of guy who’d sue us for firing him, you just know it.”

So Blaine bided his time and built his case bit by bit, without Chandler being the wiser.

Now, the guy seemed to have zeroed in on Kurt. Maybe because Blaine had greeted him with so much enthusiasm?

Whatever the reason, Blaine would watch him like a hawk. No-one would harm Kurt. Not while Blaine was around.

Absently, he stopped Kurt from falling when he tripped over the pants he was putting on, and then sent him to Reena while he helped Kyle unbox the hats. Chandler was supposed to do that, but had disappeared.

It wasn’t until Blaine was introducing Kurt to Mandy and the other handlers that he saw Chandler again, skulking around the horses with a smirk on his face.

Blaine sent him back to Kyle at once, and hoped that the misgivings he felt would prove to be an overreaction.

When he saw the saddle slide off Kurt’s horse when he tried to mount it, he knew that his hunch had been correct. Chandler was targeting him. Sabotaging him.

Blaine maneuvered his own horse closer to Kurt’s, and sighed in relief when the next half hour, nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Just as he was lulled into complacency, though, he saw Chandler pop up again in his line of vision, and he was holding… Was that a sparkler? The guy was mad!!

Blaine rode in Chandler’s direction, hoping to wrestle the sparkler from him before it went off.

Too late! Chandler threw it in front of Kurt, and it exploded with a flash and a bang, spooking the horses, especially Kurt’s.

Thankfully, Kurt was a good enough rider to keep the animal under control and to stop it from trampling anything or anyone.

Blaine was livid, though. He signaled to Jason from Security to follow him, and chased Chandler, who was now running away.

Blaine blocked Chandler from leaving the warehouse and had Jason take him into custody until Cooper would deal with him.

Then he had to go back and smile and sing and pretend to have a nice evening out with friends. With the rage that simmered inside of him, it was hard pretending everything was fine, and Blaine found himself slipping towards the end, glaring at Puck when he belittled Kurt.

As soon as Kurt and his friends were gone, Blaine confronted his brother, showing them the footage of Chandler throwing the sparkler. It had all been caught on camera, and was all the proof they needed to get rid of this psychopath.

“Don’t you dare put your head in the sand again! This guy is dangerous, and we need to get rid of him!”

Cooper nodded, his mouth a thin line. “You’re right. Kurt could have been hurt or killed. My future brother-in-law!”

Blaine quirked an eyebrow at his brother, but he seemed completely serious.

“Consider him gone, squirt. I’ll fire him and sue him for damage.”

“What damage? Nothing was destroyed. Kurt is an excellent horseman.”

“We know that. But Chandler doesn’t, and neither will his counsel. We’ll give the money to Kurt, as grievance compensation.”

K&B

It took nine months until they heard from Kurt again.

Blaine had done his utmost to get rid of the crush that would never go anywhere, seeing as Kurt preferred Cooper.

Still, when Coop waved a wedding invitation at him and sing-songed, “Look what your Kurt sent us!”, Blaine felt his heart skip a beat, and he snatched the card out of Cooper’s hands.

“My, my, someone’s eager!”

Blaine paid no attention to his brother’s teasing and focused on the wedding information.

The people getting married this time were Mercedes and Sam. That last name rang a bell. That was the blond cowboy from the jeans commercial, and probably also the Jaws guy that proposed at the Halloween party.

The venue was a church in Ohio.

“Ohio?”

Cooper grinned. “Yep, they’re originally from Ohio, like us. Lima. That’s about two hours from Westerville.”

“You’re going all the way to Ohio to attend a wedding? Of two people you don’t know?”

Coop looked offended. “Hey! I do know them! Just because you’re unsociable and taciturn doesn’t mean I am! They were at Brittany and Santana’s wedding, and then at the Halloween party too. I danced with Mercedes and talked about modelling with Sam. Booked him for several ads, and talked to him at the shoot each time. So there.”

Blaine shrugged. “Okay. Yeah, I’ve talked to Sam too. We’ve done quite a few ad campaigns together by now. He’s into Star Wars, like me. Gave me some great recs for FinnPoe fanfic. He’s nice, I guess. A very laid-back guy. Never makes a fuss about anything.”

“So put it in your Outlook calendar. We’re going to Ohio next month!”

“Yay.”

“You could sound a little more enthusiastic, you know.”

Blaine rolled his eyes, and then jumped up with his arms in the air. “Yaaay!!”

Cooper beamed. “That’s more like it. Any suggestions as to what I should buy them? It’s a pretty boring wedding registry list this time around.”

K&B

Blaine suppressed a sigh and pretended to sip his wine. As soon as the Anderson brothers had arrived home for the weekend, their mother had arranged for the whole family to go out to dinner, and surprise, surprise, when they entered the restaurant, a business partner of their father just happened to be there with his wife and daughters, and invited the Andersons to come sit with them.

Clearly, Pam Anderson hadn’t given up on matchmaking. Not that it would ever work. Cooper was charming, but slithered out of any attempt the girl made to score his phone number or a date. And Blaine, well, he was gay, no matter how deep in denial his parents seemed to be about that. So the girl sitting across from him was out of luck. He did try to be friendly and sociable, though. After all, his mother’s scheming wasn’t the girl’s fault.

His father became more boisterous and talkative after a few glasses of wine. The endless stream of words that came out of his mouth made Blaine despair of ever getting out of there. He’d been working long hours all week, and was exhausted and cranky. All he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep.

Cooper had bags under his eyes too, but he smiled and talked as if he was having the time of his life. Sometimes, Blaine envied Cooper’s easy manners.

The more exuberant their father got, the more he gesticulated, until at one point, he knocked Blaine’s glass over. It was still full, and the wine soaked and stained Blaine’s shirt and pants.

Blaine grimaced and excused himself from the table. When he turned around the corner, he bumped into someone, and started apologizing until he noticed exactly who it was. Chandler!

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“Is anything the matter?” a cool voice said.

Blaine looked at the newcomer, and froze when he saw it was Kurt. Chandler smiled at Kurt and slid his arm through the crook of his elbow. What? Were they dating?

“Nothing’s the matter, sweetie,” Chandler purred, patting Kurt’s arm and smirking at Blaine.

Kurt quirked an eyebrow, and then took in the stains on Blaine’s clothes. “Oh dear, you need to get those stains out stat before they dry in and become even harder to get out. Pour some really hot water on the stains and they should disappear. I hope the restrooms here have hot water on tap.”

Blaine hated that Kurt had to see him like this, and hurried away with a quick “Bye!” thrown over his shoulder.

The restroom, of course, only had cold water, so he had to go back to his table with the stains still there, shivering because his shirt and crotch were so cold and wet.

Cooper took one look at him, got up and announced that he would drive Blaine home, waving off their parents’ protests and glibly excusing himself to their father’s business partner and family.

“Thanks for giving me an out!” Coop said when they were in his rental car. “I was getting bored.”

“Same. Hey, you know who I ran into while going to the bathroom?”

“Kurt, right? I saw him a few tables over, with Sam and Mercedes and their family. Probably the rehearsal dinner.”

Blaine scowled. “Not just him. He was with Chandler, of all people.”

“Chandler? As in the guy I fired and sued?”

“Yep. They seemed pretty cosy.”

“Wait. What? You think they’re dating?”

“Looks like it. Do you think Chandler’s plotting something else? To get back at the lot of us? Should I warn Kurt?”

Cooper whistled long and slow. “It’s possible. But I don’t think Kurt will believe you. It’s your word against Chandler’s, and you’ve been too rash with your accusations before.”

Blaine clenched his jaw. Yes, that was true. But he was scared for Kurt, and anyone else Chandler might target. “Do we still have that private investigator following Chandler around and documenting his every move?”

“Yep. You said to keep tabs on him for at least a year. Because you thought he’d try and retaliate.”

Blaine raked a hand through his curls, and winced when his fingers were instantly coated in hair gel. “I have a really bad feeling about this. I’m going to get in touch with the P.I. to see what Chandler’s been up to lately.”

Coop shrugged. “Go ahead, squirt.”

The phone call to the PI, and the pictures and videos the man e-mailed to him, made Blaine even more uneasy. 

Chandler had moved to Ohio after he’d been fired, and was now living with his parents again. He’d found a job in a wedding dress store, and had done nothing interesting until the day Kurt and his friend had turned up at the store. The PI told Blaine that they’d come out of the store without the woman trying on any dresses, and the video he’d taken showed Kurt looking displeased, and telling his friend that Chandler didn’t have a clue what would look good on her. The rest of the conversation was even more enlightening. Apparently, Kurt had briefly dated Chandler in high school. Was that why Chandler bore him a grudge? Because things hadn’t worked out then? If so, why were they dating again now?

After Kurt and his friend had left the store, Chandler had quit his job, just like that, and had started stalking Kurt, following him around whenever Kurt was in Ohio to help his friends prepare their wedding. Chandler had also orchestrated “chance meetings” with Kurt at all the important places: the bakery for the wedding cake, the flower shop for the church decoration, the venue for the reception and dinner. Not at the church, but the PI had spotted him there, too.

“He’s forever snooping around without making it seem so,” said the PI. “If he weren’t such a fucker, I’d employ him. He’d be good at this job.”

Blaine shuddered at the thought of Chandler as a PI. That would lead to blackmail, for sure.

“He’s been back at the bakery, the flower shop and the restaurant several times. Under several pretexts, and dressed up differently, so as not to be recognized.”

So far, Chandler hadn’t done anything harmful, though. That was the PI’s conclusion.

“I’m sure he’s planning something,” Blaine told him. “And it won’t be pretty. The wedding is tomorrow, so I need you to hang on to Chandler like a barnacle. Maybe contact a colleague so that you can shadow him around the clock. I wouldn’t put it past him to try something tonight.”

“Around the clock? That’ll cost you!”

“I can afford it, trust me.”

“All right, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Call me the minute he steps out of line, understood?”

“Will do.”

[harrisonstories]

Above and below: George Harrison and Sir Jackie Stewart at the Gunnar Nilsson Memorial Trophy meeting in Donington Park, England, Middle: George driving the Lotus 18 at the same event (3 June 1979)

NOTE: This is a rather long but refreshing read about a side of George’s life which doesn’t get talked about much. Here is an interview George and Jackie did at the Gunnar Nilsson Memorial Trophy. 

A Beatle’s new mania

George Harrison, former lead guitarist with the legendary Beatles pop music group, talks to Chris Hockley about his passion for Formula 1, fast cars and a private life

IT’S PUZZLING in a way why George Harrison has such a fervent passion for fast cars and motor racing. For since the mind-boggling days of the Swinging ‘Sixties, when as one of The Beatles he was swept towards super-stardom and super-richness on a tidal wave of hysteria, the pace of his life has slowed to a virtual crawl.

Gone are the days when he had to make a run for it through thousands of screaming pop fans. Today, you are more likely to find him in his wellies, gently pushing a wheelbarrow towards carefully-tended flower beds in the vast grounds of his palatial country mansion.

Gone are the days when he lived out of a suitcase and wasn’t sure if he was in London, New York, Tokyo or Cloud Cuckoo Land. Today, he meditates silently for hours in his own temple.

Gone are the days when girls scratched each other’s eyes out as they fought to touch a fragment of his clothing. Today, he is happier to stay at home with his wife Olivia and their 10 month-old son, Dhani.

Yet there is still one public side to the private Mr. Harrison. For as well as being one of the world’s most famous pop stars, he has gradually become the world’s most famous motor racing fan.

“I’m getting too well known at motor races now,” he grins – as he is beseiged by a swarm of autograph hunters who have just rushed past Mario Andretti. “It was my hobby, now it’s getting like work again.”

George’s lean and craggy features are a frequent sight at Grand Prix meetings around the globe. His name is enough to ensure him VIP treatment, but he reckons he repays all the behind-the-scenes privileges he enjoys by attracting publicity for the sport.

Though he is often to be seen in the midst of a cluster of photographers, he does not go out of his way to court glamour. Harrison goes motor racing to see and not be seen.

He has been a genuine enthusiast since the days when he was just another poor kid from the streets of Liverpool, digging deep into his pocket to get into the city’s Aintree circuit during its heydey in the ‘Fifties.

He loves talking about racing. To him it represents a refuge from never-ending questions like: “Are the Beatles ever going to get together again, George?” Or, “Is it true that Paul McCartney once had a bunion on his right foot?”

In his slow, deliberate – and knowledgeable – Scouse drawl, George will tell you about oversteer, understeer, gear ratios and why he hopes Jody Scheckter will be world champion this year.

And he will rave about Fangio with the same 12-year-old’s wide eyes that watched the great Argentinian dominate the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree with Mercedes team-mate Stirling Moss.

“I can’t remember why I started going to Aintree – I think I just saw a poster advertising a race,” he says. “Anyway, I used to go there whether it was a big or small meeting, take my butties and sit on the Railway Straight embankment to watch the race. I went to a lot of bike meetings as well – I was a big fan of Geoff Duke!

“I had a box camera and went round taking pictures of all the cars. If I could find an address I wrote away to the car factories, and somewhere at home I’ve got pictures of all the old Vanwalls, Connaughts and BRMS. All that stuff got lost when I went on the road with The Beatles, but I’m sure it’s still in my dad’s attic.”

Such was his enthusiasm that it was a question of whether cars or guitars would dominate his life. He couldn’t afford both…he couldn’t afford either, really. because he had to borrow the £2 10 shillings he needed to buy his first guitar. Luckily for him, he opted for pop.

“By the time I got any money at all I was 17 or 18, getting a couple of quid a week from a few concerts in Liverpool. But I got so involved with rock ‘n’ roll and The Beatles – we were on our way to making records and all that – that to tell you the truth I completely lost touch with motor racing apart from watching the odd bit on TV or reading magazines.”

As the Fab Four became the world’s top pop stars, so they were able to call the tune and ease up on their stamina-sapping schedule. George found himself free to head back to the tracks once more…and in true showbiz style aimed straight for Monaco.

It was there that he met the man who helped him to step backstage of big-time motor racing – Jackie Stewart. George found an instant affinity with Stewart, not least because Jackie wore his hair long and was an outspoken critic of the established order, two keystones of the “rock revolution” of the late ‘Sixties and early ‘Seventies of which Harrison was so much a part.

George said: “Jackie did such a lot for the sport and was criticised for it. People moaned and groaned when he wore fireproof suits and talked about safety – things which are so obvious and practical now but at that time were being put down.

“Another thing was that he always projected the sport beyond just the racing enthusiasts which I think is very important.”

It is Stewart, always a big Beatles fan, who has given George an appreciation of the finer points of the racing art, often driving him around circuits – he scared the pants off Harrison at Interlagos this year – or showing him the best places to watch from “inside” of the track.

“I always enjoy the last session of the qualifying best,” says George. “Jackie taught me how to get the most from it by wandering around the circuit to watch from different places. That way you really get into how cars are handling gear ratios, the whole thing.”

The rapport between the two was vividly illustrated at the recent Gunnar Nilsson Campaign meeting at Donington, where both took part in a demonstration of classic Grand Prix cars. Afterwards, Harrison changed into jeans and sweater, while Stewart stayed in his racing overalls plus the mandatory black corduroy cap. As they walked into the royal enclosure to watch the afternoon’s racing, Stewart turned to Harrison and said: “I don’t know why I am dressed like this.” “Because you’re a twit,” came the reply.

Friends say that of the four ex-Beatles, Harrison is the one who has kept his feet closest to the ground. He seems to have retained the “love and peace” message of the flower power era and has refused to be swayed by the cynicism of the ‘Seventies.

His easy-going manner has made him a popular figure among the Formula One drivers, and he has become friendly with many of them.

“It’s obviously an advantage for me to be sort of independent,” he says. “I’m not like a spy from Ferrari or Lotus or anything like that. It’s a very nice position to be in – I am no threat to anyone so they are friendly towards me.”

His close contact with the drivers has also changed his attitude to them. Like most race fans, he has had his idols – Fangio because he was top dog in his childhood. Graham Hill because he was “a very English gentleman,” Jackie because he was Jackie and so on.

Now, there are no more heroes. “It’s difficult to single anyone out because I’m much closer to them. I mean, there’s people like Jochen Mass who might never be world champion but is such a nice person.

“But I want Jody Scheckter to be world champion this year. It would be good if Grand Prix racing was like the music business, where you can have a No. 1 hit and then get knocked off by your mate for his turn at No. 1. But unfortunately it isn’t like that. There is a point where you are just ‘ready’ to be a world champion, and if it doesn’t happen, it could be all downhill from there.

“Jody is ready – he’s got the car and the team, and mentally he’s right there. To get in the right team at the right time is almost impossible. It happens, like Mario last year – he was very fortunate in having that car.

Take Villeneuve. He’s very good but he’s still a bit young and more prone to making mistakes than Jody. He’s got a lot of years ahead of him, though. That’s why I’d like to see Jody get it now.

“Alan Jones is another one who’s ready. He’s great, he’s mature and he’s ready to win. And now he has got a really good competitive car. Maybe next year Alan Jones will be right at the head of the championship.”

Harrison is no sluggard himself. He drives a Porsche Turbo and what he calls an “old” Ferrari Dino Spyder. There are whispers about 140 mph tyre-squealing burn-ups on a 10-mile “circuit” around his incredible home – Friar Park, near Henley-on-Thames.

Certainly it is not difficult to imagine a glorious road circuit winding through the 33-acre wooded grounds. Nothing would come as a surprise after the mansion itself – a £2 million fairy palace that would do credit to Disneyland – and other amazing features of the grounds like three lakes built on different levels, a series of caves filled with distorting mirrors, model skeletons, glass grapes and hundreds of the proverbial garden gnomes…and an Alpine rock garden including a 100ft high replica of the Matterhorn!

But George though he admits he sometimes has “a spin through the woods,” insists that the burn-up stories are exaggerated: “It’s all very slow speed around the garden – you know tractors and wheelbarrows and things like that…”

He has, however, had a go at the real thing. He took his turn at the wheel of a Porsche 924 in a 24-hour run for the Nilsson campaign at Silverstone, organised by his local sports car specialists, Maltin’s of Henley.

He drove Stirling Moss’s famous Rob Walker Lotus 18 at the Nilsson’s day at Donington, where Jackie Stewart managed to frighten him yet again by blasting his Tyrrell around at full pelt at the same time.

And he has even managed to get his hands on a modern generation Formula One car. It was at Brands Hatch two years ago, the time when former world motorbike champ Barry Sheene, another good friend, was thinking of moving into car racing. Sheene took George with him when he tried out a Surtees TS19 with a view to having a crack at the British Aurora Formula One series.

It was an occasion which George remembers with more than a slight grin…

“Barry persuaded John Surtees to let me have a go. But John said: ‘He’s got no gear.’ So Barry rips off his fireproof vest and says to me ‘Here y’are, you can wear this.’ I just slipped on this sweaty old thing and borrowed John Surtee’s crash helmet. I got in the car and said: ‘I’m not going to go fast because I haven’t even walked around Brands Hatch, let alone driven round.’ So he said: ‘Oh shit, you had better get in my road car.’

“Well, we went bombing off round the track in his Mercedes and he was saying things like: ‘Keep it over to the left here, make sure the tail doesn’t flick out too much here, and so on. I was just hanging on for dear life.

“I got in the F1 car and thought ‘Now, what did he say?’ Then, while I was pulling away in the pit lane, trying not to stall it, I was thinking ‘God, it’s windy in this car.’ I hadn’t even remembered to close my visor!

“Still, it was a great feeling. Although some people have told me it wasn’t a very good Grand Prix car, believe me if you hadn’t driven one before it was fantastic. It was like, wow…those wheels just dig in round the corners.

“I didn’t go very fast. I just signed the chitty saying that if I killed myself it wasn’t John’s fault!”

George, now 36 years old, is unlikely to do a Paul Newman and turn his hand to serious racing. He is honest enough to admit he is apprehensive of the dangers.

Neither is he likely to become involved in large-scale sponsorship, despite a reputation for generosity (it is said that he once gave the landlady of his local pub three rubies for her birthday).

He has dabbled in a small way with bike racing – last year he backed Steve Parrish, who he knew through Barry Sheene, when Steve lost his works Suzuki ride. But this year he has turned down an approach for £185,000 to run a BMW M1 in the Procar series – and has no intention of following in the footsteps of Walter Wolf or Lord Hesketh by setting up his own Grand Prix team.

“What with living in England and the tax I pay, it takes a long time to get some cash anyway, and the last thing you need is just to give it away. You need too much money to do the job properly in Formula One. If I had £3 million to give away, which I haven’t, there’s probably better things to give it to than motor racing. Like the starving, for example.”

The last comment reflects Harrison’s continued commitment to the impoverished parts of countries like Bangladesh and India. All the royalties from one of his albums go into a foundation, and from there the cash is handed out to various charities.

There is a chance that in the years to come, George’s enthusiasm may rub off on his son, and we may yet see a Harrison out there on the track. After the usual parental head-scratching, George concedes that he would not stand in the way if Harrison Junior opted for cars instead of guitars – “though by that time they’ll probably be driving missiles or something.”

But for the time being at least, George will stay on the outside looking in. A weekend at the races will go on being the noisy, urgent, smelly and exciting contrast to the gardening and the meditation.

And a brief glimpse of the one public side to the private Mr. Harrison.

-  MOTOR magazine (28 July 1979)

[ksoap-ie]

My Brother’s Best Friend - 2 Taehyung x Reader

"Being Park Jimin's sister hasn't exactly been a blessing. Although I do in fact love my brother, it's always a struggle to get people to recognise my passion when someone else is already so high above me...

-------

Disclaimer: In no way am I dissing Jimin or his family in this fanfiction. Everything that I am writing is completely made up and for plot line purposes only. I love Jimin and his family very much so please don't think otherwise. Thank you.

Masterlist

"I'm going to a company in Seoul to train in singing and dancing so that one day I can perform..."   "Come again?" I sit on my knees excitedly, "my brother, Park Jimin, is going to become an idol?" Jimin laughs, vigorously nodding his head. "Yes, I am."   "As in, Big Bang kind of idol?"   "Yes..."   "As in, 4minute kind of idol?"   "Yes!"   "An in-" Jimin playfully lets out a quiet yell while shoving my shoulder. He does it lightly but it's enough to make me fall onto the bed covers. Letting out a small giggle, I get up and shove him back and it turns out to be a mini war inside my bedroom.

  At some point Jimin falls off the bed and lands on the hard wooden floor. Grinning, he climbs back on the bed as our laughter dies down. "But really, [Nickname] I'm going to be an idol."   "I know..." I pause for a few seconds before a smile tugs on the edges of my lips, "and you know what?" A silence follows not long after my voice speaks. "I'm very proud of you, Park Jimin."

————————

While Jimin was living his last few days of being a trainee and being desperately close to taking the next step of being an idol, I was doing my last art exams. It was very difficult to say the least. Especially since I'd much rather be cheering my older brother on during his debut but it was hard to find the time to even see him.

Luckily, on the 13th of June my school suddenly decided to shut down due to many teachers being sick and the school not being able to cover lessons. I was able to go visit Jimin and his members for the first time ever.

  I arrived at BigHit only ten minutes before the boys debut so I was told to go where the cameras were recording the boys who were on the stage. Sitting down on a metal chair in the audience, I looked up at the stage. The boys were coming on. The camera started rolling. Park Jimin was debuting.

  Once the the lights dimmed down and the and the music faded out, the girls in the audience stared screaming. Meanwhile, the newly debuted boy group bowed thankfully before heading backstage. As soon as they left, I got up from the hardened metal chair. A stabbing pain twisted in my back, however that didn't stop me from wrapping my fingers around the previously brought plastic shopping bags and walking backstage. Loud screams and talking was heard from the door that lead backstage. The screams seemed to be from someone younger as well as laughter coming from a voice which was more deeper then normal. Grabbing the handle, I opened the door and the view of backstage lays before me. Near the door where I was standing, was Jimin. His hair was still dark brown and he was wearing the same clothes he wore on stage. A black cap patterned with shades of orange and yellow was placed backwards on his head. He wore a black tank top that had shiny, gold writing printed onto the chest, it read: 'A FENDI BAG AND A BAD ATTITUDE' and showed off his muscles. Underneath his black shorts with gold detailing  around the sides that stopped long before his knees were thigh-high socks. Three white stripes were sewn onto the black socks just under his knees. To finish off his look, Jimin wore simple black trainers, except his midsole and foxing being white. A gold chain hugged his neck and finally on one hand he wore a golden bracelet and on the other was a similar golden watch.

  Jimin's eyes glanced towards the door as it opened and quickly said goodbye to the camera. Not long after, he rushed in my direction, immediately taking the plastic bags from my hands. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be at school right now. You do know it's a Thursday right?" Laughing at his continuous questions, I shook my head. "No, my school was shut down for today because there wasn't enough teachers to teach classes so luckily we could have a day off. But Jiminie..." After hearing his name he makes a quiet 'hm' sound. Whilst grinning I wrap my arms around his shoulders and jump up and down squealing like the girls in the audience. "I'm so proud of you, I hope you know that. I mean, my idiot of a brother, becoming an idol. That's going to take some time to get used to... really though you're doing great. It's going to get harder but you've always got your younger sister support you in Busan, okay? Okay."

A grin stretches on Jimin's plump lips and he parts his lips as if to say something. However, the man with the deep voice flings his arm around my brothers shoulder. He is a lot taller then Jimin, probably a few inches or so. His hair is partly dyed, on the top of his head is a curly mess of light brown and underneath is an undercut which is a dark shade brown, almost black. Now looking at his face, his ears are noticeably larger then average. His lips curve into a boxy smile with teeth white as freshly fallen snow. Gleaming, his black eyes are painted in eyeliner giving the man an almost rebellious, perhaps emo look. The makeup which he's wearing gives the impression that this man is not someone you'd want to mess with despite having an immense smile planted on his face. "Who's this Jimin?" Said name looks up at the curtly mess and forms crescent moons on his eyes. "This is my sister, Y/N, she came to see my today from Busan. I think I've told you about her before." "Hm..." The man places his index finger and thumb on each side of his chin as if in thought, "the sister that had a crush on her home room teacher? Or the one that tried to crawl into the back of an ice cream van?" My face immediately turns red and I look at Jimin in disbelief. "You told someone about that? Jimin I told you not to tell anyone!" Jimin starts laughing the moment I start hitting him uninterruptedly.   "So that was you?" The curly mess asks, "Jimin talks about you a lot. I'm Kim Taehyung, stage name is V." A boxy grin is formed on his face and he makes a peace sign backwards, making the letter 'V' with his middle and index finger. I grin and bow at him. "It's nice to meet you." Then, heavy footsteps belonging to a lanky man come towards us. He is dressing in black like the others with a fire-like pattern printed onto his t-shirt. Hidden underneath is a long-sleeved shirt and black jeans which are covered up with black socks similar to Jimin's. Dangled from his neck is a golden chain and to finish off the look he had black sunglasses placed on the bridge of his nose. "Hello, my name is-" if I remember right, his name tag said- "RM." He takes of his glasses and instead puts them so they're hanging off his collar, meanwhile I slightly bow. "Your the leader, right? Nice to meet you, I'm Jimin's sister, Y/N." "It's good to meet you as well, Jimin talks a lot about you." He laughs, resting his hand at the back of his neck, fingers fiddling with the chain that's hanging. "Would you like to take a seat? You can meet the other members and also talk with Jimin as much as you want, I'm sure you both missed each other." I smile at him, and nod.

Warmth suddenly crawls up my hands and an unknown feeling of comfort lingers inside my soul. Large fingers embrace themselves around mine, emitting security from such a simple gesture. With a light yet abrasive tug, I stumble on my feet as they are forced forward. My eyes glance towards the culprit face for a split second. Time seems as if it stops despite it being not very long. The corner of his lips grew into a boxy smile belonging to the one and only. Kim Taehyung. "HEY! Kim Taehyung-"

————————— "-! What are you doing with my sister?!" Taehyung's grasps mine tighter as he drags me away from my older brother. It's after the last shoot of the boys most recent song, DNA. BTS have been getting more and more popular as days go on, in fact they are even known around the world by many. For me, I've now finished school. Unfortunately Mum, Dad and Jimin couldn't attend my graduation. None of them could find the time since they're all busy with work but it's okay, I'm just glad it's over. Recently I've applied for a job in design, the employer needed someone that was willing to spend time coming up with creative pieces so they they could advise illness which are often brushed away. It's been about a month so hopefully I'll be told if I've got the job or not yet.

A pain shoots through my hand, pausing my train of thought abruptly. "Run, Y/N! Run!" Oh right... "Quickly go now! He'll catch you!" Only a few meters away, lays Taehyung. His ash grey hair is spread out along the floor, as he speaks his breath falls out uneven. His arms are surprisingly pinned down by Jimin, who's seemingly laughing with the exception of his expression.

I push myself from the floor and start sprinting as quick as possible from a sweet danger.

[living-dead-parker]

The MOMA - H.H

Pairing: Harry Holland x reader

Summary: Where Harry sees the most beautiful piece of art the world has ever seen...oh and there's, like, pictures there too. (Where Harry meets reader at the Museum of Modern Art)

Warnings: cussing

Word Count: 1.9k

N/A: This is based off my experience at the SFMOMA in June where I saw a really cute guy who I thought was the love of my life bc he was so cute and soft and with who I had such strong bi-fi connection except this is more how i wish it went down bc me and the dude never talked. Like, we would steal glances at each other and follow each other through the whole Magritte exhibit but unfortunately he was the one who got away :")) but ye and the Tilted Plane part made me really wish I had a Harry Holland to hold hands with so I HAD to add that in too

"Tom fuck off." Sam laughs after Tom pulls his hair as we wait in line to get tickets for the Museum. Tom, Haz, Sam, and I decided to have an impromptu trip through California.  We decided that we're only ever here for work and never get to explore the state.

Currently, we are waiting in line at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. San Francisco was just one of the plenty stops in our road trip and the next is San Luis Obispo to go to different beaches. We decided to stay in San Francisco for three days to witness as much as we can.

"Guys, shut the fuck up. We're in a museum." Haz says. We all nod and quiet down. We pay for our tickets and go down to the entrance.

"Last chance to upgrade your tickets for the Magritte exhibit." the man at the entrance tells us. We all look at each other and nod, deciding to give it a shot. We upgrade our tickets and take the elevators up to the fourth floor where the exhibit is.

Once we get there, we see a group of people standing in a room. We see some people conversing, others looking at the art and others reading the description on the side. We walk through the first room. However, in the second room, my eyes lay on a girl with two girls making out next to her.

She has h/l h/c hair. She wears a white lacy dress with her hair in two buns. She has a pink backpack on her shoulder and black Doc Martens. She turns to her friends and I get a brief look at her face. She has e/c eyes and a cute nose. She has red lipstick and winged liner.

"Uh oh, Harry's being a creep." Haz says. I snap out of my trance and turn to the group.

"Huh?" I ask. They all chuckle, looking behind me.

"She's a cutie for sure." Tom says. Everyone nods in agreement and walks off. They don't stray too far but are obviously giving me space to try something.

"You sure?" I overhear her friend ask.i turn and notices she's alone now.

I walk around the exhibition, stealing glances from her, enjoying how she  looks. She'll occasionally go to the other side of the room but I'd follow her through the whole exhibit. She read through all of the descriptions and takes in all the art. In the fourth room we see a painting of a man with a cage as his head.

She pulls out her phone and takes a picture. I step closer and suddenly decided to speak up.

"Pretty dope painting, innit?" I ask. She turns around, eyes wide in shock

"Definitely. The Therapeutist. One of his weirdest for sure." you respond.

"I'm assuming you're big on art, huh?"  I ask. She nods, looking down a little.

"Yeah, I guess you can say that." you say.

"I'm Harry, by the way." I say holding my hand out. She takes my hand and shakes it.

"Y/n."

"What a lovely name. Say, y/n. Since you know so much about art and this dude, why don't you teach me about his art?" I ask.

She smiles as she nods at my proposition. Turning around, she leads us to a picture of a rose with a knife. She takes it in for a while, running a finger across her chin as she thinks.

"So this one, it's actually my favorite of them all, is called Le Coup au Couer. The Blow to the Heart. It was created in 1952." she says. She looks up at the picture and examines it.

"It seems as the flower is holding the dagger and my way of interpreting it is that those you love tend to hurt you the most. Their love is the rose but their actions or words can be the dagger." she says. I nod, taking in every word as she begins to dissect everything about the painting. The colors and the color scheme, the parallels, how the lines can symbolize different things and I realize what she's doing.

"Can I ask, are you into photography?" I ask. Remembering I've had to dissect and analyze tons of my photographs in old photography classes.

"I like taking pictures of things for sure. But I used to take a photography class my last two years of high school, so analyzing pictures was a big thing in that class. Guess it just stuck." she says. I smile widely.

"That's so cool. I'm a photographer, so I think it's cool how you do that." I say. She smiles widely.

"That's so cool, I'd definitely love to see your work someday!" she says.

We continue through the exhibition and at the end, I see the guys sitting down and talking. They look up and notice us walking out together, laughing at some dumb thing we heard someone say.

"Well, it was nice talking your ear off, Harry."

"Oh, I didn't mind. I enjoyed it actually. Learned something new." I say. She smiles widely and nods.

"Well, I should go find my friends. They said they'd be here but they're not." she says with a frown.

"You can join me and my group, we can help you look for them." I offer, knowing they wouldn't mind. She shakes her head.

"Nah, it's cool. Don't wanna take your guys time here. I'll be fine." she says. I shake my head this time.

"No worries, join us. They won't mind, I promise." I say. She looks around contemplatively before giving out a simple yes.

"Okay, yeah I'll go." she says. I smile at her and lead her towards my group. They all look up at us with wide knowing smiles.

"Hey guys, so this is y/n. A new friend. She lost her friends somewhere so I told her we'd help her find them." I say to the group. Eagerly, they nod, while greeting her.

"I don't mean to sound like a fan girl or anything and I'm so sorry but holy shit you're Tom Holland. Wow." Y/n says as she looks at Tom with an excited look. However, she doesn't freak out like girls in the past have. Something different, which I like.

"Sure am, nice to meet you y/n," he says as he stands to greet her. "I assume you're a fan?" he asks.

"If I'm being honest, Homecoming was better than the other Spiderman movies. But yeah I'm kind of a fan." she admits with a shrug. A wide smile spreads across Tom's face.

"Well thank you!" Tom chirps, his face turning into a genuine smile.

"Anyways, Tom is my brother. Then there's his best mate, Haz. He's basically like another brother. Next to him is my twin brother, Sam." I tell her. She greets Haz and Sam with a simple handshake and a courteous hello.

We walked around for 10 minutes before we found her friends. The friends came up to her, screaming about how one of them almost broke a sculpture. Something about accidentally leaning on it.

"Leave it to Nadia to almost break something. Disaster gays, am I right? Well, we should head to the top floor and then head out?" she asks her friends. They agree with her and are quick to turn around.

"It was nice meeting you, Harry. Again, thank you for letting me talk your ear off." she says. I shake my head, indicating that it was fine.

"It's fine, I enjoyed it." I say. She smiles shyly and waves, walking off. I turn around and see everyone looking at me with deadpan looks.

"What?" I ask. They all roll their eyes at me as I shrug at them.

"You could've asked for some way to contact her, man." Tom says like it was obvious. Which it was.

We continued out throughout the rest of the museum, exploring the top floors first. Occasionally, we'd bump into y/n and her friends. She'd wave at me from afar and vice versa. However, we all managed to ride the same elevator up to the sixth floor. As we began walking the floor, I noticed that y/n's friends would push her towards me. I saw them become friends with my group. All of them would stay behind us a bit, Sam taking my camera from me to enjoy ourselves. We went into one of the showrooms and watched a video on modern black history. We moved into a different show room where they had three giant screens in a dark room that play sea noises.

However, things picked up in an exhibit called the 'Tilted Plane'. The point of the exhibit was that it was a dark room with lights hung up cascading down at an angle so that it seemed the room was tilted. It did feel that way as our eye adjusted to the dark. I walked in side by side with y/n, enjoying the trippiness.

"Oh shit." I hear y/n whisper as she grabs hold of my arm. I reach out to her, holding her up slightly.

"You alright, love?" I ask. She nods rapidly, a chuckle emitting from her lips.

"Yeah, I just got really tripped out right now and almost fell." she says. I laugh lightly as she lets go of my arm. We move throughout the room and I take notice of how the lighting makes her just so much more intriguing.

We walk around the room for a while longer and enjoy the atmosphere. After 10 minutes, though, we notice we're the only ones in the room. Everybody left and she begins to take notice too.

"We should probably head back. They must be wondering where we're at." She says.

"Yeah, probably." I say. She leads the way, being careful as we walk out. We notice the big group hanging out near the elevators. We walk up to them and I see y/n frown.

"Looks like this is the end." she says lightly. She seems disappointed that our time is up.

"You've been on all the floors?" I ask. She frowns as she nods. I sigh as I begin to muster up some courage.

"Before you go, can I ask for your social media?" I ask nervously. She chuckles nodding. Within a matter of seconds, she pulls out a pen and a random receipt and begins to write down her Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat handles. She hands me the paper with a smile on her face.

"It was nice meeting you Harry. And if you're still here later today, I may or may not be at Fisherman's Wharf later today around 4." she says. I nod and wave her off as she walks away with her friends.

"My man!" Tom says excitedly. I chuckle as I put the paper in my wallet to keep it secure.

"Damn Harry got game!" Haz says. I shrug.

"She was perfect." I say.

Later that day, I looked through my camera, noticing Sam took pictures of me and y/n. A lot of them were from behind as we talk about an art piece. Some were from in front as we looked down at something, probably reading a piece's description. However the best ones were silhouette pictures in the 'Tilted Plane exhibit. All of those ranged from us standing side by side as we walk further in, some were of me holding y/n up, others from us looking at each other talking.

"Ready to go to Fisherman's Wharf?" Tom asks. I look up at him with wide eyes and a shocked smile.

"We're going for sure?" I ask. He nods with a wide smile.

"Yeah, let's go you twat. You have people to meet."

[vandnana]

Loving You Is Easy

Part Nine

Kai and I stepped back into our personas as we explored the entirety of the building. We made our steps inaudible as we walked through aisles of books, crouching once in a while to avoid the eyes of invisible adversaries. We entered darkly lit corridors to sneak past people who were after us, and hid our faces in books to mislead our chasers. 

“Should we make a break for it?” I whispered into Kai’s ear, hoping for his approval in the matter.

We had our backs against a bookshelf, and Kai peeked into the hallway, checking if we were in the clear. He turned back to me, his eyes determined.

“Let’s do it.” He whispered back, stepping into the hallway. I followed him, and we dashed through the library, quickly and quietly as we could. 

Kai briefly looked behind, then furthered the speed of his pace, almost matching a jog. 

“Senator June, they’re gaining on us. Hurry!” He whispered a little too loudly, prompting stares from the people peacefully trying to concentrate. 

I covered my mouth embarrassed, but matched my pace to his. We found our way back to the front of the library, stepping through one of its gigantic wooden doors. 

“We made it out Detective Kai.” I huffed, pretending to catch my breath.

He hunched over, letting out his own feigned, taxing breath too. “That was a close one, Senator June.” 

Our seriousness made me laugh, and I pondered how ridiculous we must have looked in the library. “Is this a normal thing you like to do with people?”

He sat down on the pavement, patting the ground for me to sit too. I sat to his left with my legs stretched out in front of me.

He looked at me again, his eyes almost closed because of how big his smile was, “Ha, no. Usually, I just play this out in my head. Acting it out like that is so much more fun.”

“They all probably thought we were crazy. But, I agree. That was really fun.”

“Those people were probably jealous of us. They were all in there studying, and we were avoiding bad guys. I would be jealous of us.”

“Studying is the worst. I’m sooo glad I’m out of high school now.” I stretched my arms in front of me as I spoke.

“I hate studying too, but at my school, it’s all about creativity. And the things we learn all relate to the fashion industry, so I feel like I’m improving.”

“So, you’re a fashion designer?” I happily asked, intrigue staining my tongue.

He nervously laughed at my question, then scratched the back of his head, “Aspiring to be one, yes.”

I eyed him quizzically, sensing the disbelief he had in himself, “Nooo, Kai you’re definitely already a fashion designer.”

He met my eyes, his eyebrows raised at the boldness of my words. “Huh? No, no. I still have a lot to learn and long way to go.” 

“Yeah...but that doesn’t mean you’re not a fashion designer. You’ve made your own clothes right?”

His hand was clued to the back of his head, and he looked down to avoid my eyes. He could feel his face blush.

“Yeah, I have. I jus-”

“So you are one! You shouldn’t doubt that you are. There are so many fashion designers that still have to learn and have a long way to go. You’re part of that.” 

He met my gaze, and I beamed at him, a genuine smile painted on my face. I felt the need to be encouraging toward him. No one had ever nurtured my dreams, and it broke my heart to see someone so timid about the thing they’ve chosen to do with their life.

“Thanks, June. That-that means a lot.” He sheepishly let out, feeling a little speechless at my sudden seriousness. 

“My family never believed in me. Ever. So, I’ve always just had to believe in myself. You’re doing what you love right?” I voiced, hoping that he would feel uplifted.

His face contorted into a sad pout at what I had said about myself, and he nodded slowly at my question. 

“Choosing to do what you love instead of what’s easy is hard, but you chose what you love. You’re already there. Just think of it as rising up from where you are.”

Kai was silent for few seconds, taking in everything that I said. His cheeks were a slight shade of pink, feeling overly praised and way too good than he felt he deserved. Finally, he broke the silence, letting out a sigh drenched in awe and bewilderment. 

I looked at his expression intently, “Why are you sighing like that?”

He looked at me for a second, then looked down giggling, before returning his eyes to me. “Why do you think? You’re like a motivational speaker. Everything you said...thank you. And your family? They’re a bunch of idiots for not believing in you.”

I acknowledged his gratefulness by smiling at him, before replying back, “Yeah, that’s why I left home. I haven’t talked to them since then, but I don’t miss them. Being here...it’s probably the happiest I’ve ever been.” 

Kai chose not to say anything, letting my thoughts settle into the air. For a moment, I thought about how my life was changing in front of me. Everything felt easier for me, and I felt free. Kai and I remained in our reflective bubble, the sudden growl of my stomach interrupting it.

I looked down at my stomach and Kai followed my eyes. I put my fingers to my mouth to shush my stomach, which made him laugh.

He got up, extending a hand to help me get up too, which I didn’t need but took anyway.

“There’s a pizza place nearby that I love. Do you want to eat there together?” Kai suggested, wiping off the invisible dirt from the ground on his clothes.

“Yeah, that sounds great! But, before we go, can you take a picture of me next to the lion?”

“Of course! Let me see your phone.”

I took my place next to the stone lion, it’s size largely contrasting mine. Kai knelt down to get a good angle, and after a few seconds. He handed it back to me. I looked over the photos, satisfied with how they turned out.

“Thanks. Hey, do you want to put your number in here?”

“Oh yeah, here. I’ll give you my phone so you can put your number in too.”

We exchanged numbers quickly, then handed back one another’s phones.

I sent the pictures to Chanyeol, then tucked my phone back in my pocket.

“Okay, lead the way, Kai.”

The pizza place wasn’t far from the library, taking only five minutes to get there. We were apparently lucky, arriving when only a couple people occupied the place. Kai emphasized its popularity, but he didn’t complain that we were essentially the only ones there.

I felt a little lost looking at the menu, wondering what I should get. I looked at Kai for help, and he guided me by recommending the margherita pizza for simplicity or the combo if I wanted more toppings. I wasn’t a big fan of too many toppings, opting for the margherita pizza. Kai’s pizza consisted mostly of meat toppings and red onions.

Once we reached the register, I insisted on paying for the food, but Kai lightly pushed me away to put his card into the chip reader.

“Okay, here’s your table number. We’ll have that out for you in about 10 minutes.” The employee looked at us with tired eyes, obviously not wanting to be there.

We both nodded and said our ‘thank yous’ before finding a seat a lite further back in the restaurant.

“You know, you didn’t have to push me to get your card in the chip reader.” I said as I sat down across from him.

He shrugged, averting his eyes innocently, “I had to do what I thought necessary.”

“Well, that was highly unnecessary, but I’ll let it go.”

He only smiled mischievously in response, before changing the subject.

“So, June. What do you wanna do with your life?”

The heaviness of his question made me laugh suddenly, “Getting right into the juicy stuff, I see?”

He laughed in response, still childlike. “Yes, I’m a fashion designer...apparently. And you’re going to be...?”

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment as if it would drop an answer down to me, but inside I knew what I wanted to say.

“You know the lion statue? Or even the other statues we saw at the library? I can make those.”

Kai’s eyebrows knitted in surprise, his eyes suddenly huge. “You make sculptures? Nooo you don’t...but you do?!? That’s so cool!” He admiringly gasped, his mouth hung open after his praise.

I felt myself get embarrassed, and I understood how he felt earlier at being overly praised. I nodded and smiled. “Yeah, when I was younger, my parents made me take a sculpture class, but to their dismay I actually really liked it.”

“Do you have pictures of what you’ve done?” He asked eagerly, slightly bouncing in excitement.

I pulled my phone out, opening my camera roll and scrolling to the album I had made for my art. Looking back on that album felt like blowing the dust off of an old box. I never really gave up sculpture, but I wasn’t allowed to pursue it because of my parents. They would have splurged on textbooks, probably even a mini laboratory in our own home, but when I would ask them for art supplies, they’d just scoff at me, and their eyes would beg me to stop what was just a mere hobby to them.

I handed him my phone, encouraging him to keep scrolling through the gallery. He peered intently at each picture, taking more than few seconds to look at each one. I looked down at my hands that never forgot the hard work I put into those sculptures, and they suddenly craved to work again.

Kai gasped again, pulling his face back in pure shock. He turned the phone around to show me the reason for his gasp, and I giggled.

He showed me a picture of a small figure I had made for my 3D Design class a year ago. It was a copper bear standing on its hind legs, with its head tilted and it’s paws up.

“This right here, is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And you made it?! With your bare hands?! June, I’m in awe.”

“There’s a thousand pictures in there of some intricate stuff and the bear got you? You’re a different breed, Kai.”

“Okay, the other stuff got me too, but that belongs in an art museum. That bear, it’s-it’s got a homey vibe to it. June please tell me you have it with you, I will literally buy it from you.”

My cheeks reddened as he complimented me further, and I held my cheeks to calm them down. “Stop complimenting me. I’m not used to all the attention. And sadly, no. I don’t have any of my sculptures here. I let my art teacher keep them all.”

Kai pouted at my response, his head hung down. “I’ll chill with the compliments then, but you should start making stuff like this and selling them! You’ll make it big. You could even go to school too! The Pratt Institute would be lucky to have you.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Those figures only take a few hours for me, unlike the bigger sculptures.”

“After this, we should go to an art store, and you can get some stuff.”

“Hmmm, I don’t think I have enough money to buy everything I need today. I’d rather get it all at once you know? Plus, I need to make a list of what I need exactly, so I don’t just feel awkward in the store. You already know that feeling.”

Kai chuckled, nodding his head in agreement, “Yeah that’s a good idea. We can just go another time then. But, after this, what did you want to do?”

“Well, the woman I live with, Mrs. Park, I mean Halmeoni...she’s not my grandma by the way,”

Kai laughed, then I continued,

“She gave me money to spend today and I don’t want to spend it, but if I come home empty-handed, she will be super disappointed.”

“Wowwwww. I get money to go get the groceries, but you get money to go shop for anything you want. I’m jealous.” He leaned back into the seat, crossing arms all pouty.

“I appreciate her a lot, but I really don’t go shopping ever. So, I don’t know what to buy. I feel like I have everything I need.” I scratched my head, still trying to think of what I could buy.

“Why don’t you buy a new outfit? I’ll help you pick it out. I mean...I am a fashion major.”

I looked down at my outfit, quickly realizing the plain drab I had on compared to Kai. He was wearing a blue gingham sweater and black pants to match, while I wore regular blue straight-legged jeans, a black hoodie, and a black coat.

“Are you saying my outfit right now is ugly?”

“No, it’s just simple. You can do much better than simple. There’s an Urban Outfitters really close by. We’re definitely going after this.”

“Urban Outfitters?”

Kai nodded, his eyes that were once on me, now focused on the approaching girl holding our pizzas

“Alright guys, here’s your pizzas. Let me know if you need anything else!”

“Thank you!” We both replied and she smiled at us in response before walking away.

I took my phone out to take another picture for Chanyeol who had since responded to the pictures at the lion statue. He sent the picture back, but it was edited with him in it, crouching down on the step in front of me. I sent my picture of the pizza, texting him:

-Please don’t edit yourself onto the pizza too.

We devoured our pizzas before walking back out into the cold air, which only embraced us for two minutes as we hastily entered the store. It wasn’t overwhelmingly large, but it was filled with racks and racks of clothes that were all seemingly attractive. Kai led me through the space, his mind at work to pick the perfect outfit for me. We were silent for a while, and Kai asked me what my personal style was and groaned when I said I didn’t have one.

“Everyone has their own style. You just haven’t figured it out yet. Find something that you like and I’ll find clothes to match. And you have to try them on. It’s a must.”

I followed his instructions, carefully examining the entirety of the store. I found an intrigue in an aisle of skirts, observing each one until I found one that caught my eye.

It was an array of orange and brown with a hint of green. It was velvet, and the design was scattered patchwork, the once separate pieces of fabric patterns, all sewn into one mini skirt. I handed it to Kai, and he inspected it, then held it up to my figure. In his mind, he laid out the perfect outfit for me, and once he finished, he swiftly left my side, scrambling to find the items that he had imagined.

I would have followed him, but I essentially would have just been running after him. So, I roamed the area where I was, touching little trinkets here and there. He came back with two different tops and a pair of black boots, shoving them into my hand and turning me toward the fitting rooms.

“Here, I got you a fitting room. Your skirt’s already hung up in this one. Try these with it, and put the boots on. And show me too!”

I closed the curtain of the fitting room, slipping off my clothes and stepping into the skirt and boots.

The first top Kai had chosen was a green knit cardigan that complimented the green in the skirt. I came out to show him, and he analyzed the look before sending me back to try on the next top.

This one was cropped and light pink. The back was open and on its hem were ties that were meant to be wrapped around the waist. I tried my best to tie it in the back but ultimately gave up.

“Hey, Kai. Can you help me with this one?” I asked, shoving the curtains away with one hand as I held onto the the string.

He was visibly flustered as he agreed to help me, and I turned around, bunching my hair up with one hand as he tied the back for me.

Unbeknownst to me, he was blushing madly, tying it as best as he could without touching my bare skin. But, he failed, his finger brushing my back lightly as he finished the bow. His touch didn’t invoke any reaction for me, but his body felt a wave of goosebumps, which he shook out, and putting his hand on his chest, he could feel his heart beat slowly rise.

“Is it-uh too tight? Or too loose? I can adjust it for you.” He looked away from me, his hand shyly at the back of his neck now, his cheeks hot.

I turned around and put my hands on my hips, “So what do you think about this one?”

“It’s-uh-it’s definitely mor-more fitting than the last one. I think you look great. This ones definitely better than the last one, but what about you, what do you think?”

I turned back around to look in the mirror, and I smiled. I had never worn clothes like this, but the girl in the mirror was not foreign to me. If anything, I felt like I was stepping into my real self, the clothes I was wearing manifesting a side I always knew I had.

“Yeah, I love it. I think I’ll just get the skirt and the shirt though. The boots are too expensive.” I pouted sadly, lifting up one of my feet to admire the boots I had grown to love.

Kai noticed me as I silently said goodbye to the boots, and hated the idea of the outfit not being complete.

“Oh okay, let me put them back then. Don’t change out of the clothes until I get back. He offered, smiling.

I took them off and handed them to him, tilting my head at him, “Why?”

Kai searched his mind for an excuse to stall me, “Be-because when you shop, sometimes it feels right at first, but you might change your mind. So, just settle into them and if you don’t end up liking this outfit. We’ll choose another one.”

“Ahhh I see. Okay, I’ll just be here then.” I stepped back into the fitting room and closed the curtain.

Kai felt his shoulders relax, relieved that I didn’t question his motives. The boots were $80, but that didn’t matter all that much to Kai as he stepped in line at the register to buy them for me, and because he had a rewards membership, he saved a couple dollars.

Walking back to the fitting room, he called my name and I peeked my head out of the curtain. He extended a bag out to me, and I grabbed it cautiously, looking in to see the boots I was intent on abandoning.

I stepped out of the fitting room, gasping, “Tell me you didn’t just buy these for me?! Kai, what the hell?”

“They weren’t a bad price. I got a discount anyway.” Kai shrugged, laughing at my shock.

I gaped at him for a little longer before he urged me to put them on again.

I placed them on my feet, and somehow I instantly felt better.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! You really didn’t have to do this, but you did, and I hate to say it but I’m glad.”

“You’re welcome June. Now get out of there so you can pay for your clothes. Or we can just steal them, if you want a thrill.”

I grabbed my original clothes and shoes, and put them in the bag that Kai handed to me.

“Ahh I would, but Halmeoni would notice that I didn’t use the money she gave me.” I sighed sadly, walking toward the fitting room.

The same girl that helped Kai also helped me, formulating the situation in her mind as she observed us.

“You picked out a cute outfit!” She exclaimed admiringly, typing in the price codes into the computer.

“Actually, he picked it out.” I corrected, smiling up at Kai who didn’t really pay attention to what the cashier had said, strictly keeping his eyes on me.

“Really? Your boyfriend has great fashion sense.” She complimented before continuing, “Your total comes out to $74.83.”

The word “boyfriend” made Kai’s eyes light up slightly, but at the same time, his shyness overtook him. He expected me to correct her, but I just gave her the money and politely thanked her. She handed me back my change and a receipt, which I planned on giving Halmeoni later.

She waved goodbye to us as we walked away before tending to her next customer. We walked out of the store, and Kai gazed at me.

“That girl in there really thought I was your boyfriend.” He began, curious about why I didn’t correct her, but feigning innocence.

“Yeah, but I guess it would make sense to other people. You did buy me shoes and pick my outfit for me. I’m not an expert on relationships or anything but that seems like something a boyfriend would do.”

“Ha-yeah, unless you’re us. Just two people who just met today and instantly became friends.” He joked, laughing a little.

“I have a habit of doing that I guess. I met Halmeoni yesterday and I met her grandson yesterday too. But, it doesn’t really feel like that. They treat me like I’ve been the long time next door neighbor who comes over unannounced, but they don’t care because they think of me as family.”

Kai smiled at my description, his philosophical mind grabbing phrases to say, “You make a home with people you meet, and I think that’s why it’s so easy to get along with you. You’re comfortable with people right away, which is hard. I’m not like that at all, but I’m comfortable with you. That’s a talent, June.”

“A talent? I’d hardly call that a talent. A talent is making clothes or picking out outfits for someone else, and having them love it right away.”

“Another talent is sculpting bear figures out of wet dirt.”

“Clay is more than just wet dirt.”

“I really appreciate your art June, but clay is disgusting.” He detested, frowning.

I laughed loudly at his expression, and gave him a disapproving look. He shrugged his shoulders, having nothing more to say on the matter.

I felt the urge to check the time, reaching into my bag to grab my phone that was still in my jean pocket. I gauged how long it would take to get home.

“Do you have to go home now?” Kai asked, a slight dismay coating his words.

It was twenty minutes till four, and I was hit with a mix of emotions. A part of me wanted to hang out with Kai a little more, but a bigger part of me missed Chanyeol.

“Yeah. I have plans with Chanyeol, Halmeoni’s grandson. We can hang out another day though. I’ll let you know when I make my list.”

“Okay!” Kai immediately let out a little too eagerly. He dumbed down his excitement as he wondered about Chanyeol.

“Chanyeol? You met him yesterday? Does he live with you too?”

Something in my eyes sparkled as thoughts of Chanyeol ruptured through my mind and echoed in my heart. Kai noticed, his heart sinking.

“Yeah, he was the one that wanted me to find the lions. He’s pretty unconventional and not like me, at all. But, he’s really fun to mess with and really fun to be around.” My heart was gushing, but my mind maintained the idea that we were good friends.

Kai wanted to like me as more than a friend, but listening to the way I talked about Chanyeol confirmed the sparkle in my eyes. He withheld the deeper longing in his heart, sighing before responding back.

“Alright well, I’ll walk with you until we stop by my school. I wasn’t planning on working on this new project, but I’m feeling a little more encouraged now.”

We walked all the way back to the New York School if Design, the lights along the street now lit as the moon slowly took over the sky.

“Bye June. Thanks for hanging out with me today.”

“Thanks for helping me find the library. And just so you know, you’re my second best friend now. Your spot is irreversible.”

Kai let out another one of his childlike laughs, squeezing in one final thing before heading inside of the school.

“You’re my first.”

[olivereliott]

Island Hopping In The Midnight Sun

   [NOTE: 2020 is the tenth year of my blog at Semi-Rad.com, and since I started it, I’ve been fortunate to get to do some pretty wonderful adventures. Throughout this year, I’ll be writing about 12 favorite adventures I’ve had since I started writing about the outdoors, one per month. This is the ninth in the series. The other stories are here.]

Several years ago in a conversation, a friend said something along these lines: I think it’s funny that in the United States, we don’t think you’re worldly unless you’ve traveled a bit and have a passport, but often times, when we travel, we go halfway around the world to out-of-the-way places and meet people who have never left those places, and we come back and tell stories about those interesting people who have stayed in one place their entire lives. But if they lived just down the road from us, would we think they were interesting at all?

I grew up in a small town in the middle of America, and sometimes when I travel to small towns in other places that feel exotic to me, I catch myself thinking, “This is a great place. I wonder if I could live here?” And then I wonder if the people who live there think their little town is as amazing as I do, or if they wish their town had a movie theater or more things going on, like I did when I was growing up. Maybe both.

—

Hilary and I walked our bikes into downtown Svolvær, Norway, in the late evening, looking for a spot to sit down and eat “lunch” out of our panniers before riding another 15 miles to the village of Henningsvaer. Svolvaær, population 4,700, is a small town similar in size to my 3,000-person hometown, but is surrounded on one side by 2,000-foot rocky peaks dropping straight into the ocean, and on the other by the open waters of the oceanic seas of the Vestfjorden, separating Norway’s Lofoten archipelago from the mainland by a 2-hour ferry ride. Around 200,000 visitors pass through the town each year, including Hilary and me, on day five of our bike tour, having pedaled just over 180 miles in between three boat rides between islands.

We chatted briefly with Ulke, a man we met, about where we’d camp for the night, as he was also looking for a spot. He was hitchhiking his way through Lofoten on his way to Svalbard, having left Turkey, almost 3,000 miles away, a month and a half ago. He mentioned a place near town, and we said we’d planned to ride a bit more south and then find a spot. As he walked off, I was a bit in awe of his adventure, and smiled that we had crossed paths with him on our own—much smaller-scale—trip, just 300 miles across eight islands. I mean, Ulke’s trip was not a vacation—that was a journey. The type of thing you quit your job to do, move out of your house, maybe never come back.

As we rolled our bikes up to a picnic table, a Norweigian couple asked us where we were headed on our bikes, and where we were from. I said we were from the U.S., and the woman replied, “Kardashians, that is all we know about the United States,” and we all laughed. I commented how beautiful Svolvær was, and she said she had grown up there but had been living in Oslo for almost 40 years. We chatted a bit more, then sat down to eat, and then pedaled south.

The sun hung low in the sky as we wound our way down the E10, and then on a smaller road toward the village of Henningsvaer, where we’d spend the night. We hadn’t been in much of a hurry most of the trip, because it was June, during the midnight sun—at this latitude, eight degrees above the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn’t set between May 25th and July 19th. We had no real reason to stick to a schedule, aside from riding through towns when grocery stores were open. We hadn’t been to bed before midnight since the trip started, and on Day 2, we’d slept off our jetlag from 12:40 a.m. until 1:40 p.m. On Day 3, as we sat and ate lunch at a table outside a convenience store in a small town, I commented on how quiet the little town was, then laughed as I looked at my watch to notice it was almost 10 p.m.

If you catch a few days of sunny weather during this part of the year, the result is the longest “Golden Hour” you might ever see, unless of course you live here, or Alaska, or somewhere else in the high northern latitudes. You look at the horizon and your brain thinks it’s seeing a sunset, and the deep amber and orange light just stays that way … for hours. Normally, if I saw a lovely sunset while camping, I’d rush to grab my camera or my phone and snap a photo of it. That evening while I was cooking dinner near Henningsvær and looked over the calm water to the glowing rocky peak of Sørfjellet, and had that same pang of urgency, but then remembered, no hurry—just take a photo in the next hour or so.

We had planned out our trip to give us plenty of time to hang out, shoot photos, explore a little bit, drink coffee in cafes, and in general not be in a hurry. Three hundred miles over ten days equaled thirty miles per day. I had found someone’s route starting in Tromsø and ending in the village of Å, and it looked perfect. Fly into Tromsø, rent touring bikes, ride to Å, jump on the ferry to Bodø, fly back to Tromsø, and then head home. If you mention Norway in a traveling context, the first thing people will usually say is, “Isn’t it expensive there?” And yes, it is, but in a country where you can camp anywhere because of something called “allemannsretten,” which means “all man’s right,” any place you like can be a campsite, as long as it’s 150 meters from the nearest building. So it’s kind of a dirtbag touring cyclist’s dream.

Many of the islands are connected by bridges or tunnels, but those that aren’t require a ferry to get across. Our second ferry of the trip, from Gryllefjord to Andenes, took us across open sea, and was the first time I’d ever seen motion sickness bags hanging on the walls. We strapped our bikes to a wall in the vehicle hold downstairs, then sat at a booth in the bistro and watched chairs slide back and forth across the deck and people stagger back and forth from the snack bar as the ship pitched and rolled. I ate a waffle and drank a cup of coffee, and then put my head down on the table and passed out for a half an hour—the jet lag was finally catching up with me.

On the ferry, almost everyone was local, heading down and getting into their cars when the ferry docked at 8:45 p.m., and we headed down to find our bikes and wait our turn. When all the cars had driven off the boat onto shore, we pedaled out, a little surprised to note that eight other touring cyclists had been on the ferry. The door had opened facing almost due west, and as we rode out to see the cluster of buildings of the town of Andenes and the jagged peaks behind it, the sun washed everything a golden orange. We rolled off the boat and onto land, pedaling on a narrow asphalt road into town, the whole thing feeling like we were at the edge of the world. Of course, to most of the people on the ferry, it was just part of another day of getting back and forth between home and work, or home and some errands. Our adventure, someone else’s commute. We ended up camping about 100 feet off the road south of town that night, cliffs dropping down to the Norwegian Sea on the other side of the road, and a moose strolled through our campsite as we cooked dinner at 11 p.m., the golden hour still hanging on.

There’s a quote from Andy Warhol’s book America that I think about a lot when I think about living somewhere else, or being somewhere else:

“Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see…So the fantasy corners of America…you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.”

That passage can have many different meanings depending on when you read it, and Warhol’s 1980s America is of course far different than the one we live in now. But when I first read it, what struck me was the idea that I could only live one place at a time—no matter how much I fantasized about other places and what it would be like to stay there for a month, or a year. And as I’ve made my way through the middle part of life, I started to understand that I was never going to live in, say, New York in my late 20s or early 30s. And I was probably never going to live in a lot of places, for that matter. But I could travel, and see places, and try to experience a little bit of them for a few hours or days, and know a little bit more about the world because I’d been there and talked to a few people, and navigated a city, and ordered coffee, and maybe haggled with a cab driver.

I don’t know why we travel; just that we’re lucky to be able to do it at all, if and when we can. I can’t say “I love New York,” or “I love the Lofoten Islands,” like the people who call those places home, and do so because they were born there or because they chose to move there. I don’t know exactly how to communicate my feeling for the places I’ve been, but it’s something like this: I’ve been there, count myself lucky to have gotten to experience it in a small way, and even though I’m not there right now, it makes me happy that it’s still out there happening right now, without me. I got to dip in, have the time of my life there, and dip back out, and life kept going on as it was before I arrived, probably changed not at all by my brief presence there.

Bike travel, I think, makes the world feel bigger, because its slower pace forces you to pay attention. A town that’s a half an hour away by car or bus can be half a day away via bicycle—both in our backyards as well as halfway around the world. Biking to the next town over wakes you up to things you’ve missed while flying by at 35 mph or 65 mph dozens of times, and the process of exploring your home territory can make the whole place feel bigger. Which is travel, too. But when we’re close to home we usually have our travel brain turned off, and we’re less open to discovery, and wonder. And maybe that’s why we feel bored with where we live, even though it’s probably more interesting than we give it credit for. I think part of what my friend was saying, when he was talking about us traveling the world to find people who stayed in one out-of-the-way place their whole lives, is that you don’t necessarily have to travel the world to be worldly.

If you timed it right, you could almost get through our entire 10-day, 300-mile Norway bike trip in a single day driving a car on the exact same route. But experiencing it at 11 mph over a week and a half means more images have stuck with me for years afterward:

Looking back at Hilary pedaling an all-but-deserted road in late evening, dodging not cars, but sheep, wearing Gore-tex mitts over her cycling gloves. Riding through a dark mountain tunnel under construction, water dripping everywhere, no lights inside, hoping no cars came through. Sitting at the top of Reinebringen, a steep hike to a peak, where the clouds parted for a few minutes so we could see mountain-ringed inlet and the town 2,000 feet below. Lying in the tent scratching the dozens of welts on my legs from some sort of insects that bit me while I was cooking dinner and Hilary asked, “Do you want to put on some pants?” to which I replied, “Nah, I think they’re just gnats or something.” Trying to sleep on the popular Kvalvika beach after watching the sun “set” sideways at midnight, only to be awoken by the dozens of sheep bleating through the night as they grazed around us, keeping the grass as trimmed as a golf course green. Jumping into the freezing surf for four seconds just so we could say we swam in the Arctic Ocean, and then wondering if it was technically just the Norwegian Sea, or if the Norwegian Sea was considered part of the Arctic Ocean. Looking to the west and remembering that over the next ridge, there was nothing but open ocean for 1500 miles to Greenland. A man dropping a 100-Norwegian Krone bill out the window of a pizza restaurant in Bodø to a street musician who had just packed up his steel drums to leave for the night after playing for a couple hours on the plaza below.

On our third-to last day, we stopped at a small tourist shop in Ramberg for coffee and waffles, and chatted with the man tending the register, Henrik, who had been born in the house across the street in 1943 when it was full of German troops during World War II. His mother had fed some of the 500 Russian prisoners in the town, and had been taken away by the Gestapo, and was supposed to be sent to Auschwitz, but was not. Henrik had become a driftwood artist, and his eyesight had been fading the past few years. He came out of the shop and sat at our table to talk for a few minutes in the sun before we headed on our way again.

We bought a small glass fishing float from the shop and packed it in our panniers, hoping it would survive the next few days of our ride so we could take it home. When I see it on our bookshelf next to some other knick knacks, the float always reminds me of being halfway around the world, talking to a guy who had seen a lot in his 72 years, but could still point across the street to the house where he was born.

Thanks for reading. These posts are able to continue thanks to the handful of wonderful people who back Semi-Rad on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. If you’d like to join them, click here for more info—you’ll also get access to the Patreon-only posts I write, as well as discounts to my shop and other free stuff.

—Brendan

The post Island Hopping In The Midnight Sun appeared first on semi-rad.com.

[whimsicaldragonette]

Romancing the Sorcerer’s Stone (Part 17 of 24)

Part 1~ Part 2~  Part 3~ Part 4~ Part 5~ Part 6~ Part 7~ Part 8~ Part 9~ Part 10~ Part 11~ Part 12~ Part 13~ Part 14~ Part 15~ Part 16~ Part 17~ Part 18~ Part 19~ Part 20~ Part 21~ Part 22~ Part 23~ Part 24~

June 2003 — London, England

The owl pecks at the window just as they’re sitting down to eat. Harry jumps up, eagerly anticipating the contents of the missive. And, yes, their international floo request has been approved and Malfoy has arranged their rooms. Everything is in order. Just in time, too, since they’ll be leaving the following morning.

Harry hums to himself all the way to the dinner table. He notices Ginny’s frown as he sinks back into his chair, and pauses. Surely he’s told her? Better to be sure, though.

“We’re leaving for Florence in the morning,” he says as he reaches for the peas. “We’ll be flooing out at nine.”

June 2003 — Florence, Italy

It had been Malfoy’s idea, born of a lot of very intense pacing and plotting that first night, to disguise themselves as journalists. Harry had vetoed the ridiculous fake mustaches, but the cover story had been a stroke of genius. Not that he’s ever going to tell Malfoy that.

They’d gotten nearly everything they needed from eager security guards and museum employees. They’d all seemed perfectly willing to discuss security and restoration methods with anyone who offered the chance to have their name in print.

Not that they’d actually be writing the article, he thought, but that doesn’t matter, really. Just the possibility of seeing their name in the papers had got people talking. It’s not long before they’ve worked out a plan of attack.

Two grown men huddled under the invisibility cloak would have been a hilarious sight — except they’re invisible. Conveniently, Harry thinks. Well, there is an inconvenient amount of hunching over and bumping hands and elbows jabbing ribs, but at least no one can see them.

Not that anyone is there to see them, seeing as it’s the middle of the night, long after the museum had closed for the day. They’d hidden, curled into a cramped nook behind what he thought was a rather hideous statue of a horse made of junk, carefully draped in the invisibility cloak as the last patrons had been herded out, as the employees had turned off the lights and locked the doors, as the security guard had shuffled past on his rounds.

Now, secure in their invisibility, they maneuver themselves to their feet and rub the cramps from their muscles.

It wouldn’t do to be discovered on camera, Harry thinks, stifling a chuckle as he thinks of the fright they would give the security guards, a disembodied hand or foot floating in an empty room.

“Ready?” he whispers, and Malfoy nods, casting another disillusionment over them. Together, they make their way to the main gallery, where the painting they need hangs. Only, it isn’t there. All of the planning and scheming, and it isn’t even there.

They stare, flabbergasted, at the blank frame, and the tiny sign that reads “This painting is currently being restored by Baldicotts to return it to its former glory. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Well, fuck me,” Malfoy says, after a moment. “Come on.”

“Er, where—“

Malfoy sighs, grabs Harry’s arm, and apparates them.

They land back in their hotel room, and Harry throws the cloak off. “Malfoy! What the fuck was that all about?”

Malfoy doesn’t answer, just turns toward the bathroom. As he walks through the door he says, over his shoulder, “Because that painting is being restored by Pansy bloody Parkinson, and we can hardly visit her in the middle of the night.”

Harry gapes at the door. Parkinson is restoring the painting?

Parkinson is restoring the painting.

How very… odd, Harry thinks, as she opens the door of Baldicotts: Restorers of Fine Art.

“Oh,” she says, tone thoroughly unimpressed, “it’s you. Tell me, what have I done to warrant this?” She addresses this last to the sky as if the clouds might answer.

“Pansy, you incomparable bitch,” Malfoy drawls, “you grow more beautiful and cruel every day. You wound me, truly.”

She laughs delightedly. “C’mere you,” she says, drawing Malfoy into a hug. She thrusts him to arm’s length and studies him for a moment, kisses his cheeks, and then nods at Harry, sleek black bob swinging.

She looks much as she had in school, only sharper. Like the years have worn off any softness and only hard, brilliant diamond remains.

“You look good darling,” she says, as she gestures them inside. “Life must be agreeing with you lately.”

Malfoy smiles. “As a matter of fact—“

“Not before tea, darling. You know I don’t discuss business without a strong cuppa and a good chocolate.”

“Never change, Pansy dear,” he says fondly. “How else would I know what to get you for Christmas?”

“As to that, Draco, you really must stop sending me green things.” She darts a glance at Harry, and he looks steadily back, confused.

She shrugs, turning back to Malfoy, who looks a tiny bit uncomfortable, but determined to ignore it.

They settle into stylish, yet surprisingly comfortable leather chairs in a small parlor off the main room. She snaps her fingers, and a house elf pops into view. “Mindy, tea for three, please. And some of those chocolates we just got in from Paris.”

Mindy nods and winks out, reappearing quickly with an elegant tea tray.

“So,” Parkinson asks, crossing her legs daintily, “what nefarious scheme has brought you to my place of business today?”

Malfoy leans forward, steepling his fingers. “You’re restoring the Carmichael portrait for Uffizzi’s.

She frowns, tapping her overly-pointed red nails against her cup. “Yes. That’s a statement of fact, not a request.”

Malfoy takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “We need it.”

She raises her eyebrow. “You need what?”

“The painting. It’s cursed you see. Carmichael was a distant relative of my grandmother, and his portrait was cursed back in Grindelwald’s day. We simply can’t allow it to continue making the muggles sick.” He leans forward, warming to his subject.

Both of her eyebrows shoot up, nearly disappearing under her close-cropped bangs.

Harry leans back in his chair and sips his tea, content to watch. Malfoy is a master at manipulation.

Parkinson, it seems, is unmoved by his charm.

“It would be against my ethical code, darling,” she says, sipping her tea calmly.

“Bullshit,” Malfoy says. “You don’t have an ethical code — never have. You forget I know you.”

She lifts a finger to silence him.

“It would be against my ethical code,” she continues implacably, “to do it myself. Which, honestly darling, you don’t want anyway. I may be a whiz at restoring paintings, but I leave the forgery in the much more capable hands of my assistant.”

Harry leans forward now, interested. “Where is this assistant?”

She waves a hand airily. “Who knows. She owled me earlier that she had met up with some old school acquaintances at lunch and was taking the rest of the day off to take them sightseeing.”

“Old school acquaintances?”

“Mmm. You might know them as your wife and fiancée.”

“Oh.” Malfoy looks nonplussed for a moment. “Who is this assistant, then?”

Pansy uncrosses her legs and recrosses them in the other direction. “Not to worry. Luna is the best forger I’ve ever encountered.”

Harry nearly inhales his tea. “I’m sorry, did you say Luna? As in Luna Lovegood?”

Pansy grins toothily. “Like I said. She’s the best.”

She pauses.

“Now, we come to the question of payment.”

“We can give you—“

She waves him off as if she were swatting a fly. “I don’t want your money, Draco.”

He frowns. “Then, what do you want?”

She considers for a moment, tapping idly at the side of her cup, and chewing the side of her lip, in what Harry assumes is a very un-Pansy-like way. Then she uncrosses her legs and leans forward like she’s about to tell them a secret.

“I want an invite to one of your dinners at the Burrow.”

Malfoy does choke on his tea. “You want — but— good god, woman. Why?” he splutters.

“Hey,” Harry says, shoving him good-naturedly. “That’s my family you’re knocking.”

“I know, but—“

“Malfoy,” Harry says, a note of warning in his voice to temper the humor. “You like those dinners.”

“Yes, but—“

Harry’s eyes narrow, and he looks past Malfoy to Parkinson’s amused face. “But, why do you want to be invited, is the question. What’s your game, Parkinson?”

She laughs lightly. “No game. Well, not entirely, anyway. I just want an in.”

“An in…” Malfoy’s eyes widen in horror. “Pansy, no.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Pansy yes.”

He sighs heavily. “Which one? Which horrible ginger Weasley do you have your eye on this time, wench?”

She rolls her eyes and pats him on the head. “If you must know, it’s George.”

Malfoy stares, horrified. “No! Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes? Why on earth would you—“

“Have you looked at him lately, darling?” Pansy interrupts. “He’s definitely eye-candy now. And I find I enjoy his company. I just want a chance to get to know him better, that’s all. Surely you can afford that.”

Malfoy grumbles to himself, but Harry interrupts him by placing a quelling hand on his knee.

“I’m not entirely sure this is a good idea, mind, but if any of the Weasleys can handle you, it would be George. The next dinner is this coming Sunday. Can you make it?”

She grins. “Wouldn’t miss it.” She rubs her hands together, her manner entirely businesslike once more. “When do you need your painting?”

“As soon as possible,” Harry says. Malfoy still looks like he’s having trouble forming words.

She nods. “It will take a few weeks for Luna to complete the reproduction. We’ll need to restore the real painting first and then copy it. I’ll owl you when it’s ready.”

“If you’re going to be attending Weasley dinners, you may as well just tell me in person.”

“Hmm. True. Now,” she says, rising from her chair and ushering them out of her office, “I’m afraid I have to get back to work.”

She leads them back to the door, heels clicking smartly against the black and white tile floor.

It’s a lovely suite of offices, now Harry is paying attention. Elegant and refined, with the touch of whimsy that could only have come from Luna.

Luna and Parkinson. Now there is a match made in a special kind of hell. Harry shakes his head, hoping he knows what he’s doing, but he’s fairly certain George will be able to handle her.

Part 1~ Part 2~  Part 3~ Part 4~ Part 5~ Part 6~ Part 7~ Part 8~ Part 9~ Part 10~ Part 11~ Part 12~ Part 13~ Part 14~ Part 15~ Part 16~ Part 17~ Part 18~ Part 19~ Part 20~ Part 21~ Part 22~ Part 23~ Part 24~

You can also read, comment, etc on AO3, FF, or Wattpad

[accio-ambition]

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the wonderful and encouraging words in response to the first chapter! Honestly, the amount of messages and tag screaming I received made me so happy. I cannot express how much I appreciated every single comment. I can only hope that I do the story and you guys justice. :) I forgot to mention last time that I’ll be updating this every Tuesday and Friday well into sweater weather season. And also we don’t meet Killian for a little while yet, whoops, did, please don’t kill me. Another huge thank you to @sotheylived for beta-ing and @shipsxahoy and @queen-icicle-fandom for the lovely accompanying art. You guys are the best! Go give shipsxahoy’s original post of the cover and queen-icicle-fandom’s snapshots from the first chapter, as well as the other @captainswanbigbang stories, some love. I’m working my way through them right now and they’re all SO GOOD.

Summary: Bouncing around with her son for the majority of her life, Emma Swan has told herself she’s happy in the city. It’s where the most camera operating jobs are, and that’s how she makes her money. But when an old friend calls her and asks for her help on a new project in small town Maine, Emma finds herself in a place she’s never been with people she doesn’t know filming a profession she knows nothing about. But when the captain of the ship she’s filming begins taking a keen interest in her and her life, she finds herself wondering whether she might just catch something other than fish. Deadliest Catch AU Rating: T Content warning: Character death, some violent situations

FFnet/AO3

Chapter Two

With the weekend behind them, Emma at least has work to keep her mind off of the impending future: Jefferson’s offer, David’s advice, the possibility of moving. This series she’s working on, it’s alright. The cast is sweet – especially Anna, who’s too bubbly for her own good and exactly what casting was looking for in their main character. But it’s minimal work for her. They’re filming on a fucking camcorder approximately four years past ancient.

But it’s a gig. For such a shitty set up, it’s not all that shitty. The pay is good, the food is better, and she gets the weekends off to hang out with her son.

Her traitorous mind thinks of the possibilities. Maybe it would be good to sort of…settle. Good for Henry – he could make better friends if they have to stay in town for a set amount of months instead of moving wherever they’re filming. He could focus better in school, maybe join a sports team.

And her. It could be good for her. She knows Mary Margaret and David and Jefferson, so she wouldn’t have to worry about making friends or having people to watch Henry if something urgent comes up. She’d have a job already set up that has the potential to go on for years. And it’d be an adventure: she’s never so much as been on a boat, let alone know how it works.

“Doesn’t seem like a good idea, actually,” she mumbles to herself as she fixes the camera minutely, trying to adjust for Anna’s subtle shift in positioning.

“What was that?” the director asks her. “Is something wrong?”

“Nope,” Emma quickly answers, standing up and backing away. “Everything’s fine, just talking to myself.”

She can’t come to a decision by the end of the week, something particularly unusual. Even since Henry was born, Emma’s been more of a shoot first, ask questions later sort of person. It’s how she survived and sort of thrived growing up in the foster system. But something about this opportunity – the time, the people involved, everything – gives her pause.

Unsurprisingly, it’s her son that makes her decision for her. Saturday morning is rainy and ugly. The perfect kind of day for catching up on the movies they both managed to miss in theaters.

Instead of connecting her laptop to the TV, Henry sits down next to her with the laptop in hand.

“I’ve got so many questions,” she says sarcastically. “One, what are you doing with my laptop and, two, why aren’t Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones on my TV right now?”

“Ghostbusters can wait, mom,” Henry huffs. “This is more important.” He presses a couple of keys on the laptop and shifts around on the couch so that the computer screen is completely hidden from her. For a moment, Henry sits there and looks at her, as if he’s gauging her reaction to news she hasn’t heard yet.

Then he inhales deeply. “I found us a house.”

She’s flabbergasted. “What?”

He turns the laptop so she can see the screen properly. “A house,” he repeats himself. “In Storybrooke. For when we go there.”

Taking a look at what the kid’s pulled up on the screen, Emma’s jaw drops even further. “Kid, I haven’t even accepted the job yet.”

The screen shrinks from her view as Henry sets the computer back on his lap and scoots away. “Why not?” he asks.

“Partially because you hadn’t said anything.”

Henry shrugs, his focus turning to the house on the screen before him. “It’ll be an adventure.”

“But won’t you miss your friends here?” Emma inquires.

“Mom, I’ll make new friends,” he reasons, flopping onto the couch cushion behind him. “I think it would be really good for us. Plus I could finally see snow.”

That makes her chuckle, reaching forward to pinch his knee so it jerks. “Is that what this is all about?” she asks him. When he doesn’t immediately answer and she spots his bashful look, Emma sighs. “Henry, all you had to do was ask and we could’ve driven up to Denver or something and gone skiing.”

Henry mumbles something unintelligible, wiggling away from her so that she doesn’t pinch his knee again. When he’s got his back to the opposite end of the couch, he shoots her with a withering look.

“Take the job, mom. Stop looking for a reason to run from it.”

It’s moments like these where Emma can’t help but grin. If she had any doubt as to who’s child this was, it’s accusations and truths as he’s just said that remind her Henry is hers. He knows her so well because, beneath it all, that is exactly why she hasn’t answered Jefferson’s offer yet.

(And she did have concerns about the kid, that wasn’t a lie. She is a mother, at the end of the day.)

“Then look at the house,” Henry continues. “It’s got a fireplace and an upstairs and it’s pretty close to the water.”

“Really?” she asks. Following her son’s finger, Emma spots the little map. It’s got a green pop-up that represents the house and, just as Henry said, three streets over is water. “I bet you can see the ocean from the top floor.”

“Dibs!” he shouts in her ear.

“What are you dibs-ing?”

“I call dibs on a bedroom with a view of the ocean.”

“Um, I’m the parent here, I get first dibs on everything.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Yes it is, you’ll understand when you’re older.” Emma exhales noisily, letting out a little moan along with it. She lets her head loll back on the couch and stares at the ceiling in contemplation. “So we’re really doing this?”

Henry grabs the phone and hands it to her. “Operation Pirate is a go.”

With a resigned sigh, she dials Jefferson. “Can’t you come up with a different name?” she asks as she searches for Jefferson’s number. “You know I’m not going to be following Jack Sparrow or Long John Silver or anything like that.”

Henry shrugs. “Operation Go Fish doesn’t have as nice a ring to it.”

Mimicking his shrug, Emma mumbles, “Fair” before the phone connection goes through and she’s greeted with, “Hello, Emma Swan” from the other side.

“Hello Jefferson.” She winces a little because her voice sounds stern even to her own ears. “Um, I’m calling to-”

“Now wait,” Jefferson interrupts her swiftly. “Should I be sitting down? Do I need a box of Kleenex? Grace!” he yells. “Can you find your papa some Kleenex?”

“What are you talking about, Jeff?”

“I’m assuming you’re calling to let me down gently,” he says matter-of-factly.

Emma chuckles. “No, I was calling to accept.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she repeats herself. “I mean, unless you want someone else.”

“No, Em, this is going to be delightful!” Hearing how happy her old friend is on the other end of the line makes her smile. Jefferson’s always been a bit eccentric - a little crazy more often than not - and thus is always at one extreme end of the reaction spectrum. At least this time around, it’s the positive side. “So do you think you can get up here by the last week of June? Little prep time, get to know the ship, et cetera, et cetera.”

Emma gives Henry a thumbs up. “I think I can manage that.”

“Amaaazing,” Jefferson sings. “We’ve already got a place up there we’re moving to in three weeks, so we’ll be on site if you’ve got any concerns. We can look for places for you two.���

Sending a sly eye across the couch to her son, she says, “Actually, Henry’s already on that mission.”

Jefferson chuckles. “What a forward-thinking son you’ve got there,” he says. “Wonderful. You know how to reach me if something comes up. I’m working with the network on contracts and salaries and such, but we can figure out the nitty-gritty in person.”

“Yeah, that’s totally fine. So long as I’m getting paid.”

“Of course. I’m working for something in the almost exorbitant range.”

“As long as I can keep my kid alive, I’m fine with whatever.”

“Great.” There’s a bit of a lull in the conversation before Jefferson, a tad more serious than she’s used to hearing him, assures her. “This is going to be great, Em. Don’t have any doubts.”

“I don’t have any yet.” Henry starts waving erratically at her, causing her to roll her eyes. “The kid’s having a stroke or something trying to get my attention, so I’ll call you if I have any trouble.”

“Awesome. Goodbye, Emma Swan.”

“Bye Jeff.”

“Bye Jefferson, bye Grace!” Henry shouts before Emma hangs up with a sigh.

Rolling her shoulders back, Emma prepares herself for her son’s enthusiasm. Where he got so much of it, she’ll never know. “Alright, kid, so what have you got for me?”

“You’re gonna love it,” he says, flicking through the pictures.

Her first thought is, “It’s a house,” which she shares aloud.

She hasn’t lived in a house in years. They’re too expensive for her paycheck, too big for just her and Henry, and too permanent for her lifestyle and history. Since he’s been born, it’s been apartment after apartment with an occasional loft thrown in to change things up a little. And it’s worked well.

But, Emma supposes, now that Henry’s growing up and getting older, it makes sense for him to experience that white picket fence life.

“That’s what I said,” he sassily responds. At her raised brow, Henry exhales and gestures toward the computer screen. “I looked for apartments. They don’t really have anything good for us, but they’ve got a bunch of houses.” He clicks through a couple of the pictures and Emma gets a general idea of what the place looks like. Henry stops at one picture in particular that shows what looks like a living room. “Look, a fireplace.”

All Emma can see is the enormous number to buy - not even rent, buy, you’ve got to buy the place - the place. It’s got too many high numbers for her liking. “It’s a bit too expensive, Henry,” she tells him gently. “But we can call the realtor and see if they’ve got something else like this place.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her son’s shoulders fall a little. “Okay,” he mumbles dejectedly. And then he’s clicking around on the laptop again, another picture of another house popping up on the screen. “But what about this one?” he asks, excitement in his voice once more.

Ghostbusters forgotten, they spend the rest of the morning and a majority of the afternoon looking at houses, finding them on Google Maps, and casually creeping on the town Emma hopes might provide a little bit of home. David wasn’t lying when he said the town was small: Storybrooke had to be less than an eighth the size of Phoenix. One hotel, a diner, an ice cream place, a handful of shops. Two bars, so that counts for something in Emma’s book, not that she would have much time between Henry and filming.

It looks very quaint. Very small town America. And, frankly, she’s kind of afraid. It’s been a decade since she lived somewhere where she knew her neighbors and could chat with whoever she ran into at the grocery store. Smiles on the street and a sense of belonging and community instead of anonymity. That’s what she needed when she had Henry: a way to blend into the crowd to shield herself and her son from any sort of judgment.

“What do you think, Mom?”

“I think it’s gonna be interesting,” she says softly. “Different.”

“Different in a good way or not?”

She shrugs. “Guess we’ll have to see when we get there, right?”

She thinks that’s the end of the conversation – that they’re both sort of jumping into the deep end without much thought – until she’s vacuuming Henry’s room on one of her odd days off and finds a countdown on his bedside table. The number is in the mid-30s on that day and when she flips to the final day, she finds more colors and what looks like balloons. In her son’s script, Emma reads Moving to Storybrooke tomorrow!

The thought of confronting Henry crosses her mind, but the kid’s really excited about this. Surprisingly so. And sensing his enthusiasm makes Emma herself a little more excited about their upcoming adventure. They’ll road trip cross-country to Maine and settle into something a little different than they’re both used to these days.

The whole ordeal of packing is both stressful and calming. Once she settles into the process – taping boxes, filling boxes, labeling boxes, stacking the boxes away – Emma’s brain goes blank. She’s done this so many times before, it’s old hat. When Henry was younger, she’d wrap him in a scarf she’d found and cradle him against her chest, or sit him down with a toy train.

Now, though, they make a game of it, or at least try to. He’s only ten, so his attention span isn’t all too long, but when he does help her out, they shoot objects into the box like a basketball hoop.

(Emma doesn’t bother to fight the fact that she goes through afterwards, once Henry’s lost interest or gone off to do his homework, and reorganizes every box. Over the years, they’ve accumulated much more than she’d ever thought, but she’s still wary and tries to pack it all into as few boxes as humanly possible.)

They still don’t have a place to put all their belongings once they get to Storybrooke. Despite a call to the two realtors in town, Emma’s yet to find a place that Henry likes within her price range. She appreciates that her son has a specific idea of what he wants in his life, but a camerawoman’s salary just does not cover a stone fireplace, a wraparound porch, and a view of the harbor, even if Jefferson’s promised raise turns out. It just doesn’t.

But she’s doing her best, fielding Skype tours early in the morning and spending time after dinner perusing the web. She even calls on Mary Margaret to visit the final contenders in person, just so she can get a feel for it from someone she trusts.

(That leads to late night phone calls catching up and she really, really has missed her closest friend. She didn’t realize how much until the second time it happened, when Mary Margaret brought up an old joke from college that Emma had forgotten about.

It’s been a long time since she laughed so hard she cried.)

The boxes are piling up in a corner of their apartment. Emma’s already locked into a promise to sign a contract with a television network: they’re moving to Maine. They just don’t have a place to live for the time being, despite their hard efforts.

That is, until one afternoon, while she’s packing away temporarily useless kitchen utensils and Henry’s checking what books are available at the library today.

“Mom, this is the house,” Henry tells her. “This is it.”

Her brows furrow as she sets the potato masher on the counter to come sit next to him, getting a perfect view of the screen. Instead of the local library’s portal, he’s on a real estate site. The house he’s talking about is the first house he showed her a couple weeks ago, the one with the fireplace by the water. With a sigh, Emma tries to be gentle with her reminder. “We already looked at that house, kid, and I told you-”

“That it was expensive, I know,” he interrupts her. “But look at it now.”

At first, she glances at the computer screen just to appease her son. But, on second look, Emma sees what he’s referring to: the price has gone down significantly, to just within their price range.

“W-what?” she stutters. “How?”

Henry’s got this shy smile he’s trying to hide, the expression he always wears when he’s about to tell her something he’s done but knows he shouldn’t have. “I called the realtor of that house to talk to her and she told me that David and Mary Margaret live in the house next door,” he explains. “So she called them up and talked to them and realized she knew Mary Margaret and brought the price down.”

“What?”

Henry shrugs. She supposes that could make some semblance of sense - Henry relating their financial situation to the realtor, and then the realtor called the Nolans as a reference check. It’s possible Mary Margaret posed as another potential buyer. It could be possible. Improbable, but possible.

Mary Margaret would say it was a sign. You’re supposed to be in this house at this point in life, something like that. And Emma can’t say she wouldn’t agree. The cards seemed to be falling in just the right way.

“I really like this place, Mom,” Henry says, interrupting her thoughts. Gesturing toward the screen again, he adds, “And at this rate, it would be rude not to live there, after what Ms. Shoemaker did.”

Loathe though she is to admit it, the kid’s got a point. The realtor, Ms. Shoemaker, obviously wants this house off her hands if she’s willing to lower the price that much just for them to live there. And, Emma reasons, she would feel a little bad for putting the woman through all that trouble just to decide no.

And the house is really nice. A house.

Emma glares at her son, scolding him with a stern finger to his nose. “You’re manipulative, you know that, right?”

Henry whoops in excitement, jumping off his chair and throwing his arms up in celebration. “Fireplaces and snowmen!” he shouts. Returning to her side, he hugs her tightly as she laughs. “And when Christmas comes, we can get a real tree!”

Gently pushing him away, Emma goes back to her task of sorting the utensils. “All right, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ve still got to pack all this stuff up.”

“But Moooom,” her son complains loudly. “A house. We’ve only lived in apartments.” Henry tugs at the hem of her shirt. “C’mon, Mom, let’s celebrate a little bit. We can pack some more tomorrow.”

(It is a really big thing, he’s got a point. Buying a house is a really adult thing.)

(The voice of reason in the back of her head reminds her that she’s only decided to buy a house. She’s still got to call up Ms. Shoemaker to accept her offer. Well, she should probably check her bank account first, and then she’ll probably have to apply for some sort of loan or something.)

(But she’s going to buy a house. White picket fence and all.)

Setting down the slotted spoon in her hand with a reluctant sigh, Emma turns to Henry. “How about some ice cream?” she suggests.

Her son’s bright smile in response reminds her why Emma does anything in the first place.

[potatowunderkind]

He found the journal on the train.

Lately I’ve gotten into an interest in writing more creatively.  I’ve been searching for different prompts on Google (the title being one of them), some I have found an interest in, others not so much.  I don’t typically share these things with people I know, sometimes I share my writings with a close friend.  I’ve been experiencing a large amount of writers block for stories Fan-Fictions I post to Wattpad so I figured if I have something else to write for the time being I can keep the creative flow going.

I figure that if I continue to write for prompts, I will post them depending on my opinion.  The title of the post will be the prompt I find.

So here we go.  I hope anyone who finds this enjoys reading.

A one way train.  Destination is pointless, most passengers just go where the train takes them.  Few leave the train at certain points but many remain not caring where they will end up.  Many take this train to get away from their lives at home, some eventually return.  Others are long-time passengers occasionally getting off at a new stop.  At one point the train made a stop in the middle of a prairie, a lone station waiting for the passengers.  They soon make their departure and the train pulls away.  A man, no older than twenty-five finds himself alone in the car.  He, himself, has been looking for a way to travel without interruption.  The peace and quiet of the car keeps his nerves calm.  The man had recently boarded the train around four stops before the recent destination.  Home hadn’t been enough.  He found nothing to be important in the small town and family cared not to visit or call.

Though the man of this story’s name is unknown, we will call him Dan.  Dan took a few quick glances around the car before his eyes set upon a small, leather journal sitting on one of the seats.  Finding himself baffled by the object, he stood and moved towards the window seat in the section.  The journal felt small and, upon inspection, not that old.  The cover was a light brown, a leather strand attached to the back was securely tied on the front.  The front cover had a bird engraved along with the words:

          When all else fails, remember to put one foot in front of the other.

Dan began wracking his brain trying to think of who had been in the seat.  The image of a woman around his age had appeared.  She looked to be tired though not unfamiliar with the stops or the ongoing stretch of track.  Her long blonde hair had been loosely braided and set to rest upon her shoulder, few strands coming loose with the passing hours the more she moved.  What appeared to be a pastel color had faded within her hair over time, but continued to give it a lilac tint in the light.  She wore a pair of skinny jeans and a loose fitting long sleeved, faded grey Pink Floyd shirt - the sleeves rolled to her elbows, the whole outfit being completed by a pair of hiking boots.  A large backpack and a heavy jacket sat on the floor next to her while a camera and map sat in the seat beside her.

Ever since he boarded the train, Lord knows where, Dan would steal a few glances at the young woman.  Occasionally she would take a picture, write in the journal, glance at her map or phone, or change the song on her mp3 device.  The young man had begun to wonder what drew her to the train and how long she had journeyed; had she been a newcomer like himself or a regular.  Something in his mind wanted him to get up and speak to her, but another part wanted him to refrain from doing so, to hold back from any conversation which would interrupt her peaceful trip.  However, one or two times Dan would catch what looked to be her tearing up or hiding any crying she may have done.

With a sigh, the young man pulled at the tie of the journal and opened to the first page expecting a name written inside.  None was there.  The first couple of pages had been filled with what looked to be bullet lists, only few topics had check marks beside them.  The date had been from five months prior.

04 February

-Clean apartment

-Look up travel route

-Pay bills (Checked off)

-Organize photos (Checked off)

After the list had been sketches of various subjects.  Most were of a woman who may have been a friend of the blonde, others had been city landmarks.  Strip of photos from a photo-booth and a couple polaroids had been clipped to one page; the blonde and what looked to be her muse.  Flipping to another page, an entry was found.

09 March

Last night was a first in our relationship.  And we’ve had many firsts.  First meeting, first date, first kiss, first fight.  But this… this was something different.  It was around 12:30 in the morning, rain had begun earlier that night.  I woke to the feeling of something soft against my skin.  In waking I could see her outline.  The curtains were somewhat open allowing light from the street to shine through the window.  I registered the soft feeling to be lips gently pressing butterfly kisses to my cheek and neck.  I remember having fallen asleep while reading.

Something was different.

I allowed myself to wake before acknowledging her presence.  Once I got the light on she smiled up at me, a gentle and loving smile. The sight of her had been enough to make me feel, dare I write, arousal.  Her petite frame was hidden by a large t-shirt, curly hair in a mess, her curvaceous thighs…  Her dark skin shone in the dim tableside light.

She returned those irresistible lips to my neck, moving towards my jaw.  I tried to find my voice, wanting to ask if it could wait until morning or another night.  I couldn’t speak.  I found myself out of control my own self.  I found myself returning the affection and not wanting to stop.  The situation had been new, and I loved every minute.

Dan found himself wondering who she was and took a minute to let the words sink into his mind.  He couldn’t help but want to put the journal down, forget he had found it in fear of getting caught reading something from someone’s private life.  A nagging in the back of his mind made him continue flipping through the pages.  A new bullet list appeared after two pages.

30 May

-Pick up final paycheck (Checked off)

-Search for new job

-Download photos

-Meet with Trish in Philly (Checked off)

-Buy medical supplies and kit (Checked off)

-Finalize travel plans (Checked off)

Dan mentally noted the young woman had been from Pennsylvania.  He turned the page expecting another drawing.  Another list, this one shorter.

03 June

-Say goodbye to mom

The written words caused Dan to feel a small amount of heartache.  He wasn’t sure whether it had been for the girl or his own situation, or both.  The ink of the writing must have been hit with water, the dark color causing the words to smudge.  He recognized the bullet hadn’t been checked off and wondered if the woman forgot or couldn’t visit her mother.  The next couple of pages had been blank.  Dan found himself desperately wanting to find more, solve the possible mystery behind the lone woman.  What made her leave?  Why had she left the journal?  He wanted to find out.

The train began to pull into another stop, another small station.  This one being on the edge of a small town.  A small handful of passengers boarded, some with suitcases, others with backpacks like Dan and the young blonde.  His attention turned to the newcomers that found seats in the car he occupied.  Remembering he left his bag in his original seat, Dan quickly stood to carry it over to his new seat as an older woman sat across the way, her greying hair pulled back as she carried travel supplies.  He offered a quick smile her way before placing the backpack on the floor.

The young man turned his attention towards the outside of the train, wanting to watch the scenery and get a look at the town.  Small shops littered the area; coffee, antique, art.  Passing through the suburbs the train began following the tracks passing a marsh.  Dan had no idea where he was if he were to glance at a map, and he had no idea which direction the train traveled.  The marsh was flooded from the high tide.  Small tufts of grass rose from the water.  Not far in the distance was a small, raised plot of land on which stood a two-story house and a single tree.  He began to wonder how someone would reach the house with the high tide and how it must be living there.  When the house passed, Dan glanced back at the journal.

Returning to the blank pages, he flipped through the next couple before finding more writing.

16 June

hold on tight to your dreams.

own your dreams.

live everyday with intention.

start each day with an open heart.

be brave with your life.

sometimes you will have to take chances.

come what may,

follow your heart.

never doubt your instincts.

life was meant for a great adventure.

be open to whatever comes next.

The next page.

29 June

I’ve been on this train since the fifth.  I’m sure it has been around the country by now.  Leaving Philadelphia was different but I needed the change.  Ever since I was a kid I planned for a trip across the country.  I figured it would be with a friend or partner, never alone.  Maybe it’s for the best.

Another sketch.

01 July

We just stopped at the Philadelphia station.  I never thought I’d find myself here again.  I found my life began to fall apart a month after Trish and I first had sex.  I had become stressed at work which led me to leaving my job.  Being an interior designer, having to continuously travel into the city just to work, was not worth the effort.  After finding out I resigned, Trish and I wanted to finish the day at a bar in the city.  We had a beer or two.  The night was spent laughing and crying over our problems in life.  The night was shared from start to end.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later we ended the relationship, Trish saying it was all her, but I saw through the lie.  I knew I had become difficult despite her kindly explaining it was all her.  We decided to remain friends, continue living as roommates, but it became more difficult.  I had offered to sleep on the pullout couch and found myself staying up past one searching of places to go, to see.  I wanted out.

Dan let out a deep breath.  He could understand what the woman may have been feeling.  In his own life he had begun to feel lonesome, also coming out of a breakup.  It didn’t help when most of his friends dropped him or when family had never bothered to call - not that he had much family left.  Finding the entry ended, he turned the page.  A couple had been torn from the section of the journal, however, another drawing of the blonde’s muse had filled the blank space.  Trish.  The young man smiled softly to himself before turning to the next page.

09 July

To whomever finds this journal, please know I am all right.  I have merely found myself elsewhere all for my own sanity.  I realize now that I have not checked off saying goodbye to mom…  I simply couldn’t.  I wouldn’t be able to bare the sight of her face if I said I was leaving home.  I was the only one who remained in Pennsylvania.  My brother had left and gone West, even dad has gone elsewhere.  Mom had hopes that I would remain in the city, at my job.  I hadn’t told her I left.  I hadn’t told her about Trish and I breaking-up.

Trish.  She was a part of me, as corny as that may seem.  I hadn’t found a new job and knew that it would have been a pointless act.  Most of my days at the apartment were left searching for ways of traveling and getting out.  I had to leave.  It’s unfair to her that I left unexpectedly.  Trish has been texting, continuously, asking where I am, why I left, saying that mom is worried.  I am sorry.  Maybe I will return.  One day.

“Hello,” a gentle voice spoke.  Dan slowly moved his gaze up and let it rest on the person before him.  There she stood, the owner of the journal, a soft expression on her face.  She gazed down at Dan with gentle green eyes and a small smile.

The young man found himself become flustered, having been caught reading the journal. “I-I, uh-.” Rather than continuing his stuttering, Dan quickly shut the book and handed it to the young woman who now sat in the seat in front of him.  He heard a giggle escape the blonde.  “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“It’s just- I thought you got off the train.  I noticed you left that behind.”

She smiled.  “I almost got off.  I don’t know why I didn’t.”  The two shared a short laugh before letting silence take over.  “I’m Katie by the way.”  Dan glanced up at her quicker than he anticipated.

“Dan,” he softly replied.

“Where are you headed?”

“Anywhere.  I understand the same goes for you?”

Another giggle.  “Yeah, that’s true.”  The young man felt himself relax the more they conversed.  He realized the blonde’s beauty captivated him but he figured that happened with most who meet her.  No wonder Trish was in love with Katie.  As the train continued down the tracks, the two found themselves speaking more.  Dan gave Katie a view of what brought him to the train and she gave him an empathetic response.  After an hour of speaking Katie insisted on taking a picture, on her phone, with Dan to keep as prosperity of not only her trip, but his.  Exchanging numbers Katie sent the picture his way.

Hours on the train soon turned into days.  Surely a wonderful beginning to his adventure.  He who had found the journal on the train.

[mealha]

Capturing Robert Frank in a pre-gentrified New York City and the Nova Scotia countryside

Robert Frank outside his home in Mabou, Nova Scotia. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

Last week Gerald Fox's documentary film Leaving Home, Coming Home made its stateside debut at the Film Forum in New York City. The film was captured back in 2004, nearly a decade before 2015's Don't Blink, and provides a different and more personal perspective on the photographer behind The Americans.

Originally conceived as a one-hour television program to coincide with Robert Frank’s retrospective at The Tate Modern, Fox shot the documentary on a variety of film stocks over a few days in New York City, followed by a few days in Nova Scotia. As he was filming he says he felt that there was room to do an expanded piece on the photographer.

Robert Frank with his wife June Leaf in Mabou, Nova Scotia. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

“If I was able to use his archives to show his memories and reflections, as long as I captured when I needed in the now, I would have enough material to make a rather amazing peeling back of his entire life,” he says.

The film was completed shortly after, and although it showed at a handful of film festivals, until now, it has never seen a wider release. Prior to its debut at Film Forum we spoke with Fox about the film and what’s changed since he made it nearly a decade ago.

Robert Frank in Mabou, Nova Scotia. Director Gerald Fox says that once they headed there to film Frank seemed much more relaxed. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

Why did it take so long for this film to see a wider release?

The film was commissioned as a program for television to coincide with Robert Frank's retrospective. That is what he agreed to make and in the process of filming it he really, as you see in the film, unburdened himself, probably for the first time ever, about some of the tragedies that had happened in his life. He decided after the television broadcast, that he didn't want the longer film to be seen. That was Robert's decision and I couldn't really do anything about it because his work is in the film, and he has the copyright over the work. I had to accept his decision on that. It was hard for me, but I understood and abided by it.

I really don't know what the reasons were, this is all speculation on my party. At the time it was very definitive that I could only show at film festivals. Robert had been through a similar experience himself with Cocksucker Blues. Maybe he thought that it would make the film more legendary. That is certainly what happens with Cocksucker Blues. By not being able to be shown, it added to its mystique. Maybe he was thinking this would happen.

"I think that relationship between the two of them was one of the nicest things in the film, in a very short time I was able to capture a very real sense of charm and what they got out of each other," says Gerald Fox. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

I plucked up the courage about two years ago to go around to his house, knocked on the door and said Robert, ‘Shouldn't it be time for this film to have a wider opportunity to be seen?’ He said, ‘yeah okay’. It is great that he has allowed me to release it, for that I am very grateful to him. It’s a wonderful portrait of him as an artist and photographer, at a certain point in his life. When they did Don't Blink, he was quite a bit older.

You captured Frank in New York City at a very interesting time, the very beginning of gentrification, are there other things that have changed since you filmed it?

That certainly has become more relevant. This yuppy-fication of New York, it was only really just starting. He felt the city was changing, and for a photographer like him, not necessarily for the better. His part of New York, that was changing. He says, “I don't want to live amongst them” [the yuppies], but he is still there, in that same part of New York. So he certainly likes a certain aspect of it.

Filming with Robert Frank in Nova Scotia in 2004. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

The other thing that has changed since I made the film, is the legendary status of The Americans. In 2004 it was considered to be a great work of art, but when it first came out it was trashed, he could hardly get it published, it got terrible reviews. It certainly was not considered one of the great seminal works of post-war photography, if not the seminal work. What has happened in the interim, even since my film was made, is The Americans has achieved legendary status. That show of The Americans, which went from The National Gallery of Art to The Met in New York and on to San Francisco, locked that set of photographs in as a very seminal and powerful portrait of America, in a way that it wasn't when I made the film. His status, his legendary status, because of The Americans, has grown greatly since I made the film. Those are probably the two big changes.

Photographer Robert Frank during the filming of Leaving Home, Coming Home. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

How was he to work with?

You sort of are slightly treading on eggshells—you see it in the film. He had a certain temperament. He had said to me on the phone, “I want to work with the creativity of the director, I'm not intellectual, I'm willing to do what you want to do, I'll be very honest, but it must be your film and your creativity.” That gave me the idea to play around with the film stocks like he does.

I ordered the black and white film and they sent film stock that was for a bright sunny day, and on the day we were set to film in Coney Island it was dark and rainy. I said to him, Robert we've got a problem. It was a Sunday, so we couldn't get more, he tried calling up a couple of friends of his who had a couple of rolls from 1968, then he started to get impatient and frustrated, he disappeared into his room, and then his wife, June Leaf, went to talk to him. At some point there was this explosion—some of which we caught on camera and I used in the film. Once he got out on the streets wandering around he relaxed.

Director Gerald Fox poses with Robert Frank during the filming of Leaving Home, Coming Home. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

I think he was charming, but he kept you on edge. We had to work hard and fast and it put him under quite a bit of strain, he didn't feel well afterward. I remember June feeling that I had overdone it. Then when we went off to Mabou in Nova Scotia, and it was a different side of him, he was more relaxed there. He is a complex man with a lot of sides to him.

Can you tell me more about capturing the dynamic between Frank and his wife June Leaf?

I think that relationship between the two of them was one of the nicest things in the film, in a very short time I was able to capture a very real sense of charm and what they got out of each other. You have two artists, living, working and inspiring one another. She also was very good in bringing that idea of Robert Frank back to us. He says in the film you work everyday all day and I sit around looking out the window, being Robert Frank. She slightly debunks all of that.

Leaving Home, Coming Home is on view at Film Forum in New York City through June 11. (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment/)

You only had a few days to film the piece, how do you think that affected the final product?

The style of it allowed me to do a huge amount in a short time. I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter how long it takes, it's what you capture in that time. I could have followed Robert Frank around for a year and not gotten that wonderful moment where he and his wife scream. Or the moment when he loses his temper with me. Sometimes the pressure of it all being done quite quickly adds to that. We were also shooting on film, so that adds another layer of intensity. When there is a roll of film running through a camera everybody is just that more focused. Nowadays, people can shoot for hours and hours and so the whole temperature goes down. The energy isn't the same. Shooting it on film made a difference. We didn't have a big budget and we had to do it all quickly really.

Leaving Home, Coming Home is on view at Film Forum in New York City through June 11.

from Popular Photography | RSS http://bit.ly/2IhnRri

[flyrtreynolds]

Noisey: Is Okay Kaya Living in Pop Music's Future?

Noisey published an abridged version, condensing down the lead so that it read more generic, in my opinion. Here’s my first draft, which I’m more attached to.

Pictures taken by the wonderful Lauren Geisswein 

The San Damiano Mission, like many houses of worship these days, is rolling with the punches. With the encouragement of the Diocese of Brooklyn, two friars have come up with a “novel approach” to cure the dwindling followership of the over-100-year-old Catholic church located between Williamsburg and Greenpoint, mainly consisting of hosting concerts and hucking booze during off-service hours. Thus what once had a congregant of god-fearing Slovak immigrants at the turn of the 20th century now has a Resident Advisor page. 

Maybe no act the church has booked thus far exemplifies that change more than Kaya Wilkins, also known as Okay Kaya. Beneath a mural of angels ascending to heaven — the venue’s Romanesque decor remains very much intact — and bathed in blue light, the stoic and willowy 27-year-old singer hums out a bawdy question to a room full of her faithful adorees:

Do you dance like you fuck? Or do you dance like you make love?

With it, some of the crowd noticeably withers with delight in the pews. I can’t help but view the declaration of such candid words in this setting as a metaphor for the 27-year-old’s best work. Within the timeless format of a pop song, she can place a blunt truth that turns the experience on its head, making it both refreshing and more relatable.

Would you come with me to get an IUD? She coos on the first line of “IUD,” the lead single off her upcoming debut, Both.

Maybe, if you come with me, I will let you come in me.

This candor doesn’t immediately shine through in her persona offstage, however. I learn this the afternoon before the San Damiano show, talking with the songwriter, model, and actress in her cozy (New York tongue for “tiny”) Greenpoint apartment, pleasantly aglow with some springtime sun. Kaya—whose real name is Kaya Wilkins—sits perched on top of her bed, cross legged, talking in small pours, allowing her thoughts to slowly fill the glass. Her demeanor is dulcet and reflective, traits you wouldn't necessarily associate with someone who’s often in front of a camera.

“I think I’ve always had trouble communicating,” she says amid a soft smile, admitting that she’s still getting the hang of interviews. “I found mediums to express what I was feeling.”

Those mediums have grown steadily since her move to New York from her birthplace Norway eight years ago. In addition to her music career, which started with an Arthur Russell-inspired Soundcloud mix of her redolent vocals and has blossomed into a rep as one of the city’s more honest singer-songwriters, she also has her long-time modeling gig that’s recently placed her on high-profile runways around the world. Then there’s her acting work, which started with a flash of brilliance in last year’s Thelma, a Norwegian film about a student who struggles with her feelings for another woman (played by Kaya) and the supernatural powers that get intertwined in them.

But these successes haven’t necessarily come naturally to Kaya; with each new artform, she says, comes a growth period when she must discover where her identity fits into things. Whether it’s flooding a church nave with placid truths, rocking “silk skunk” (a real thing, yes) in a Calvin Klein campaign, or auditioning for a role without much prior acting experience, the underlying strategy of it all is to let her personality be the catalyst for the creativity. “I don’t know how I could get away with it otherwise. I don’t have the skills necessarily, but I do have me,” she explains. “I’m sure of my own voice, my style. And that feels good cause I’m insecure about everything else.”

Like many of us, finding her voice has been a journey for Kaya, one that can be traced back to her childhood in a small peninsula community outside of Oslo. There, in a cottage-like house only 10 minutes from the beach, she grew up with her mother and three brothers (her American father, a former marine that was stationed in Oslo at one point, raised her other two brothers in Boston). She has warm memories of summers there, swimming and playing in her mom’s garden, where she would match her clothing to the purple and yellow flowers that adorned it. She found the frigid winters to be bleaker, however, and the area’s homogeneous community to be problematic in relation to her ambiguity, both in identity and appearance (her mom is white and father black).

So she turned to art, at least in part inspired by her mom who worked as a proofreader by day and a painter by night and was just as likely to play Prince around the house as she was a Swedish jazz singer or Cypress Hill. Kaya would twiddle around with a guitar and sometimes play with her older brother’s metal band, but her first obsession became movement after a dance instructor in high school showed her examples of famous performers who “moved funny,” a descriptor she would often get in ballet classes. She realized she could use her uniqueness as an advantage, turning her small gestures, deemed awkward before, into innovative moves.

While we talk, I can see some of these gestures in her hands, which she nimbly tilts and curls through the air while describing things, like she’s peeling back an invisible curtain to examine them. “I just love to feel connected...like, ‘Oh someone is doing something that doesn’t have as many rules,’” she says of finding her creative niche.

She planned to pursue movement into the future, even pondering going to a “modern mime school” in Paris (“I was going to be like a clown basically”). But fate intervened, and she was discovered by modeling scouts, who encouraged her to take up the profession. After a year of trying to make it in London, she moved to NYC to make more money as an e-commerce model, posing as a “shell of a human” on retail websites like Ann Taylor’s LOFT.

It was during this period, feeling under stimulated, isolated and alone, that she decided to revisit music. She picked up a guitar and started recording short tunes to send to her friends and family back home. To get their attention, she would create rough covers of records by artists that differed wildly in tone than her, like Nate Dogg or the Curtis Mayfield-led Impressions. The songs came out soulful and slow moving, gorgeous recreations of upbeat jams. Eventually, combined with her original recordings, she had enough material to consolidate and post online.

“It’s something I just wanted to work on for a while. That’s all I know really,” she recalls of her first musical sketches. “It felt very necessary.”

What happens next Kaya finds strange to talk about, a familiar situation for seemingly any woman trying to break into the music industry. An A&R found her mix and approached her about management, promising to put out her work and introduce her to notable producers. She agreed, and together they released the songs that would announce her Okay Kaya project to the world, including the heart-tugging “Damn, Gravity,” a slowburner centered around love slipping through the fingertips produced by King Krule and Sampha collaborator Rodiadh McDonald. But the A&R also made strange requests, like pressuring her not to tell producers that she was in a relationship (Kaya has been dating songwriter Aaron Maine, also known as the singer Porches, for the past year). The process began to feel “grimy,” she says, and “really uncomfortable.” So she walked away, leaving behind both a deal with a prominent East Coast imprint and distribution through indie powerhouse XL Recordings. Suddenly the idea of an album seemed distant.

“It didn’t make me happy or even wanting to try for a minute. I think it took like three years for me to feel like I had my voice and...just going back to what I wanted to do.”

With “do,” she gestures her arms in upward circles, indicating the significance of the room surrounding us, where she recorded over half of Both, now set to be self-released on June 1 through her own label, Heavy Body Records. The apartment has become the epicenter of her work and a symbol of her newfound self-reliance in music. A small recording setup of a mic and mixer sits against the wall, next to a scribbled setlist for tomorrow’s show; a pile of clear garbage bags, full of merch Kaya designed with a friend, crams a corner. The soundtrack buzzing softly out of the speakers is made up entirely of women singers—Caroline Polachek, Nina Simone, Sibylle Baier—Kaya found inspiration in during the record’s writing process.

Both is a work of cogitation, poking at concepts and feelings Kaya has encountered in her journeys from Scandinavia to New York, the runway to the silver screen. “Emulate,” for example, examines the idea of projecting love and whether it leads to genuineness or manipulation, a question that lies at the heart of the two young women’s dynamic in Thelma. More directly, “Calendar Girl” was inspired by a time when Kaya felt it difficult to leave her apartment so she’d write simple tasks on a calendar—“walk around the block”—as motivation to break her self-confinement. Most of the arrangements that propel these thoughts, aside from a few co-produced by Maine, are her own.

Which brings us back to “IUD,” a single that many women have accepted as a righteous ode to self care amid the current tumultuous political environment. Kaya has a unique perspective on the situation, as she comes from a country that provides basic healthcare services, no questions asked. Thus, while talking about it, she’s able to underlie its significance and how foolish the alternative would be. “I just wanted to be transparent about it and be like, ‘This is happening. People need this.’”

It’s here that we possibly get a glimpse of the future. Kaya’s music, deeply personal in nature, is slowly becoming tangible outside of her own consciousness. In other words, her songs are no longer just her’s; she now shares them with others. We ponder this truth together in the kitchen, where we’ve moved so she could lean out the window and smoke a cigarette. The sound of hammering wafts up from a renovation on the first floor, placing our words to a grating rhythm. A table cloth of husky red roses, maybe a small ode to her mother’s garden back home, ties the room together.

In the self-financed and -choreographed videos for “IUD” and “Dance Like U,” the second single off Both, Kaya presents her feelings as physical embodiments identical in appearance to herself. One twin is irritating and cumbersome, representing trauma and sadness; the other is gentle and understanding, symbolizing acceptance. The “weird sisters,” as Kaya has dubbed them, were born out of a simple concept—a dualism that could serve as an album’s core theme (hence the title Both) and an interesting visual driver. But first and foremost they’re pieces of her, now barer than ever.

So much on the horizon—the show tomorrow, the album drop, the press that will follow—will put those pieces on display. She admits she’s nervous.

“I have no idea what it’s going to be like,” she says with an exhale of smoke. Her tender smile returns as she remembers the most important lesson she’s learned thus far.

“But wait, who am I trying to be? I’m just trying to be me.”

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxxmd/okay-kaya-interview-future-of-pop-both-2018