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lunarity2013 · 5 years ago

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OC Details: Lucy Stone

So, I figured it was high time I told you guys about my Hogwarts Mystery OC! I got most of these questions on here from @thewasp1995 (Go check out his OC David, btw, it’s super detailed and so cool!) I really hope you guys enjoy!

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Name: Lucille Maria Stone

DOB: October 16, 1972 (turned 12 during her first year)

Parents: Candace and Sean Stone

Siblings: Nathan Samson Stone (oldest, 9-year age difference, Ravenclaw), Casey Andrew Stone (youngest, 6-year age difference, muggle)

Nationality: Irish

Ancestry: Muggleborn

House: Hufflepuff

Height: as of Year 4, she's 5'1". She doesn't get much taller until after graduation, stopping at about 5’3” by age 25

Eyes: large, round, dark brown

Hair: waist length, light brown, wavy

Sexuality: Demisexual, hetero-leaning

Likes: reading, writing, singing, helping others, cheering her friends on, card games, charms, astronomy, ancient runes, nifflers, cats

Dislikes: being the center of attention, hurting people, fighting, doctor’s offices, spiders, clowns, being betrayed, baking (she’s bad at it)

Friends: Rowan (best friend), Ben (best friend), Penny (surrogate sister), Charlie (competitive best friend), Bill (surrogate brother), Tonks (good friend), Barnaby (crush), Tulip (good friend), Andre (friend)

Enemies: Merula (formerly), Ismelda (thinks her constant threats are a big red flag), Rakepick (evil), Snape (his decision), Nathan (depending on the game's ending)

Neutral: Skye (she helps tutor her), Talbott (more Penny’s friend, but she enjoys seeing him), Merula (after finding Nathan), Liz (Barnaby and Charlie's good friend), Murphy (he's cool)

*Badeea, Jae, Diego, and others to be decided at a later date, after I actually meet them in-game*

Love Interest: Barnaby Lee

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Strengths/Weaknesses/Hobbies:

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What’s their personal philosophy? Do they even have one?

For much of the earlier portion of her life, Lucy’s motto would be “do unto others and you would have them do unto you”. Up until about the time Rakepick shows up, and Ben’s secret-keeping, and just the all-around mess that her life becomes when the Vaults come into question, this is what she lives by. After about Year 4? It shifts a bit, focusing her own values and energy towards protecting her loved ones and innocent people from those who would cause harm, and doing whatever necessary to stop them. And after finding Nathan, she begins to include him in the latter.

How do they feel about their status and reputation as the curse-breaker in the school?

Lucy was never one for the spotlight, even as a little kid. She was content for years to simply look up to her older brother in his successes, and then later to help her parents with her baby brother, showering him with love and attention. Actively searching for the Vaults, and subsequently breaking the curses within, was only part of her plan to try and find some closure as to her brother’s disappearance (something she has convinced herself he was merely a victim of and not an active participant, to save herself grief of her brother not being what she thought). She doesn’t like having so many eyes on her, especially for something she knows is dangerous and putting herself and her friends in harm’s way. But every time she tries to back out and leave it be, she gets dragged back in.

Did they get sorted into the Hogwarts House they expected to? Did the Sorting Hat have any problems sorting them? Or did it not even have to touch their head?

Before Nathan’s disappearance, she would have loved to consider herself lucky enough to be a witch, let alone be sorted into her brother’s house. After his disappearance, however, she had mixed feelings about the idea of sharing his crest and colors, and possibly having more eyes on her than before. Her values lined up differently than his, however, and the Sorting Hat gave her an out in the form of Hufflepuff house. She was still a little disappointed by being so far from her brother’s life there, but years later, she’d swear up and down that being put in the house of fairness, honesty, and loyalty is where she truly belonged.

What’s their personal style?

Lucy wears a lot of early Autumn colors, usually. Lots of oranges, yellows, browns, and olive greens are kind of signature to her style. She typically wears things that make her feel cute and kind of kid-like, so over-large sweaters with skirts or overall shorts and dresses with print tops (floral or stripes, typically). She usually pairs both with comfortable boots and long socks. She wears her hair down most of the time, except when actively exploring the Vaults and when studying for final exams.When it gets cold, she’ll sometimes “borrow” sweaters from her friends to stay warm (usually Bill and Barnaby).

What are their coping strategies for dealing with everything (the Vaults, Jacob, etc.), if they have any?

Lucy has terrible coping mechanisms for her problems, unfortunately. She convinced herself early on that her brother had probably been killed by the Cursed Vaults while trying to help protect others from the curses, and is thus even more broken up when she eventually does find him and sees what kind of person he’s really become. She tries at the start of every year to ignore the signs of another Vault opening, just trying to live a normal, Hogwarts-student life, only to be dragged into it when people have already been attacked or hurt. After the incident with the dragon and Rakepick, she tries to close herself off, thinking it’s because they’re so close to her that her friends keep getting hurt. It doesn’t work, and her friends end up finding her and hugging her as she cries about everything that seems to go wrong with her life.

What electives do they take throughout their time at Hogwarts?

If she could, she would take every class available because it was so hard to choose just a few! In the end, however, she settled on Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, and Ancient Runes, because Alchemy was only for 7th years, and Arithmancy was “just magic math”. Muggle Studies was almost chosen instead of Divination, but Luc decided she wanted something a little more challenging. (She didn’t realize her patience was what would be tested lol).

Are they in any clubs or extracurricular activities? What about Quidditch?

It’s really hard to find time to do extracurriculars when you’re trying to protect people from being frozen in ice blocks or sleep-walking into an acromantula nest. She did join the Frog Choir after third year, though unfortunately drops out between 5th-6th year to focus on her studies (and the Vaults). She occasionally goes to the music club, though is not an official member. Unfortunately, Lucy may be a decent flyer, but isn’t quite cut out for Quidditch. Besides, she’d rather be in the stands (huddled and warm) while watching her friends play instead. Sometimes she’ll help Madame Pomfrey with healing students in the Hospital Wing, but the smell of the potions and medicines reminds her of the doctor’s office, so she wouldn’t ever do it for a living.

How studious are they? What kind of studying strategies do they use? Do they have any study groups with their friends?

Lucy is a stickler for good note-taking, bringing a bunch of spiral notebooks and colored gel pens and highlighters with her every year to take “proper” notes to share with her friends during their weekly study sessions. She and Rowan usually lead for most classes, though Penny takes charge for Potions, Ben (and Rowan and Bill, sometimes) lead for Charms, and Charlie and Barnaby for Care of Magical Creatures. Lucy, Rowan, and Bill sometimes help some of the younger students set up study groups as well, and often let the younger Weasley siblings and Cedric join their sessions, too. Liz doesn’t always study with them, but will when she needs to, Tulip and Tonks only show up when forced or bribed, and Skye was wrangled into coming once, but got everyone off task getting into a trash-talk showdown with Andre over the Gryffindor v. Ravenclaw game the following day; everyone else either has a different group to study with or refuses to do so entirely.

How willing are they when it comes to breaking school rules?

Lucy hates getting in trouble, since it’s being put under a spotlight in a more negative context for her. The first three years of school, she tries whatever she can to avoid breaking the rules when possible. After the Fear Vault is closed, however, she starts loosening up a little bit. She still doesn’t like to break the rules, but she’ll do it with less coercing, and gets even sneakier to get away with it.

Do they hang out with any of their friends over breaks? If so, which one(s) and what do they do?

Living all the way out in Ireland, just outside of Dublin, it’s a bit harder to get to visit her friends before she heads into London for her school shopping at the end of summer holiday. Charlie and Bill make use of the fireplace to invite her over for dinner a few times during the break, flooing her there and back without much hassle. She makes time to spend with Rowan specifically during the summer, inviting her over to spend a week or so every year, and Rowan inviting her for the same amount at her house right after. She gets an owl (a cooky brown owl that her little brother named Bernard) for her family to send her mail during the year, and uses him herself to keep in touch with the rest of her friends until September rolls around again.

After they graduate, do they fall off the map and keep a low profile? Or do they continue to exist in the public eye?

After deciding very early on that she didn’t much care for being the center of attention, once she had the opportunity to fade into obscurity, she took it. She eventually married Barnaby and moved with him to Romania, where he and Charlie work together with dragons. Lucy decides a little later on to document some of her childhood, but feeling awkward about writing her own life story down, changes the names and some of the details to instead create a fictional book series for kids. It later gets published under a pseudonym and achieves moderate success in both the muggle and magical worlds.

How does their career path differ from what they thought they’d be doing? Or does it differ at all?

It took Lucy her entire life to figure out what she wanted to do. At Hogwarts, when asked what career path she wanted to pursue, she was so shocked that she asked if she could “just go back to bed”. She decided to take whatever classes could be most broadly considered for a number of professions, and even then wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do once she left Hogwarts. She decided to handle her personal life first, cheering her friends on as they found their paths, and then going with Barnaby so he could achieve his dream. It was only later, after beginning to just write things down, that she realized how much she enjoyed doing it.

Do they have any hobbies? What about any talents or aptitudes?

She loves taking some time to just goof off with her friends, playing Gobstones or getting some Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. She’ll spend some gloomy weekends curled up in a big armchair in the library, quietly reading to herself (and later, helping Barnaby with his dyslexia). She’s also a major card shark, winning almost every muggle card game she’s ever played and often tricking her friends into playing with her and losing anything from candy to wizard cards to even money, on occasion. She’s particularly good in Charms class, as well as Astronomy and Ancient Runes.

Do they have any favorite spells?

She likes spells that can used to help others, like Episkey or Protego. She has a certain fondness for Expecto Patronum, of course. She also likes using Lumos, to light up her bed behind the curtains after a bad nightmare.

What’s one thing they did or thought as a child that they later look back and cringe about?

Long after she and Barnaby finally get together, they both end up hearing about the bets their friends placed on their relationship and how lovesick they apparently acted before asking each other out. Tonks and Tulip will sometimes act out their mutual pining at lunch or at the Three Broomsticks, leaving both of them flustered and cringing over just how insufferable they must've been before they realized their feelings were returned. If she could go back and do it over, she might almost be tempted to have just kissed Barnaby at the Celestial Ball and avoided the whole mess. Almost.

If they could travel anywhere at all in the world—money, time, and language not being an issue—where would they go and who would they take with them?

It's a tough choice between some very good options, travelling to historical landmarks across the globe with Rowan, getting tasty food in Paris with Penny, or taking her family for a nice, normal vacation to Disney in the States. But eventually, she'd probably decide on travelling the world looking for various beasts and creatures with Barnaby, and writing about their adventures.

If they’re an Animagus, how easy was becoming one for them? Were they happy with their Animagus form? Or did they want it to be something different?

Lucy studied up on being an animagus with Talbott while at Hogwarts, but couldn't bring herself to actually become one until after graduation. She remains an unregistered sparrow animagus even after Voldemort is finally defeated. She would've liked to be maybe some kind of cat, but can't deny that being so small and being able to fly are some great advantages when the second war rolls around.

Do they like what they see in the mirror?

Had it not been for her magical abilities making themselves known as she grew up, she might've gone through all of primary school unnoticed. As it was, kids often ostracized and ridiculed her for being weird and different until she finally went to Hogwarts. Between that and the guilt she carries for everyone that gets hurt by the Vaults, it takes her a very long time to come to terms with herself and her self-worth.

How good are they at taking compliments?

Lucy is pretty decent at taking compliments, so long as it's not a bunch all at one time; she gets anxious when too many people try and talk to her at once. When Barnaby compliments her, though, she gets flustered and stumbles over her words while blushing really bright, almost blocking out her freckles.

How much do they trust their friends?

Lucy trusts those she keeps close to an almost impossible degree. It can sometimes lead her to trouble, such as leaving her vulnerable to pranks by Tonks or Tulip.

Are they pretty self-reliant? Or do they like to go to their friends for help?

At first, she's much more willing to do things as a group, having her friends' backs as much as they have hers. Later on, however, she begins closing herself off, trying to take on everything herself to avoid her friends getting hurt because of her. It doesn't last very long, however, as they all work better as a team.

Who is their favorite Weasley? Or can they not choose?

Ginny and Ron are just too cute, from what little she's seen of them. Bill is like another older brother, and she loves him dearly. She and Charlie are great friends, but anything and everything becomes a competition with them, starting with a "who knows more about dragons" contest that she actually won in their 2nd year. They could almost have been considered rivals up until later on in Year 4. Percy is alright, she Guesses, but even she thinks he needs to loosen up a bit. And she spends most of her time trying to just keep the twins separated from Tonks and Tulip, if only to avoid the Apocalypse.

What’s the thing they like least about themselves?

She's a little stuffy about rules, she worries too much, her actions and choices keep putting people in danger, and FFS, she faced a DRAGON and still can't kill one measly little spider??

What’s the thing they like most about themselves?

She cares about her friends and family, she would never go out of her way to betray them or to hurt others. She takes pride in the lives she's helped and saved.

How bad is their temper? Do they tend to lash out at others or themselves?

Her temper only gets really out of hand when someone she cares about gets hurt. She can usually handle someone hurting her with nothing more than a few years, but attack the people she cares about? That'll be the last thing you ever do.

What’s their biggest regret in life, if they have any?

She blames herself for far too many things. She wishes Ben hadn't been hurt and controlled by Rakepick, she thinks she could've done more to help and support him. She feels like if she had been more observant as a kid, she might've seen something going on with Nathan and could've stopped his disappearance. She's terrified about how the two of them being so involved in the Cursed Vaults with effect Casey as he grows up, and if he'll end up inheriting their legacy or not, if it might get him killed.

What kind of first impression do they tend to leave on others?

Lucy is sweet, doe-eyed, and a little naïve. A pretty face, very smart, but very open and trusting. Would apologize to you if you poured soup into her lap. Most would either want to protect the sweet, innocent child or absolutely take advantage of her trusting and kind nature.

What is the achievement they’re most proud of?

She once managed to eat an entire tin of her mom's homemade butter cookies without vomiting (her mom isn't a very good cook, and definitely can't bake). But now she's expected to eat at least some every time her mom bakes them when she's home. (Just another advantage to being away at a boarding school most of the year).

Do they like having photos taken of themselves?

She's a little camera shy, depending on who she's with; any groups larger than maybe 5 and she'll try to duck around and take the picture herself instead. But small groups, she can handle it. And she'll take any photo with Tonks, so long as she changes something about her appearance to take the main attention off of her.

What’s one big way that your MC differs from the in-game canon?

Lucy does not like searching for the Vaults. She would have been content with maybe a few of his journals and an official, personal explanation from Dumbledore. Sh didn't need this. She doesn't want to be the one fixing this, but apparently no one else knows how or cares to try, so she feels responsible. She's also not in the same house as her brother.

If they’re an Animagus, why did you choose the form for them that you did?

Lucy becomes an animagus much later than in canon. She becomes one right before the 2nd war, in order to evade detection. She becomes a little sparrow bird, small and common enough to escape notice. I chose it because of its relation to the second Fable game, whose protagonist is named "Sparrow".

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So, I hope ya’ll enjoyed! Let me know if any of you have any more questions!

(Edit: I am so sorry about the picture formatting, I know its hideous, but I have somehow lost the ability to use my mobile app to fix it (no fucking signal, my ass) but I promise I will try again tomorrow, when I am far away from the lack of signal at my house.)

#hphm #hphm mc #hphm oc #hogwarts mystery #hogwarts mystery oc #jacob's sibling #oc details

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johnnymundano · 6 years ago

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Night Fare (2015)

Directed by Julien Seri

Screenplay by Cyril Ferment, Pascal Sid and Julien Seri

Story by Wahid "Tarubi" Mosta

Music by Alex Cortes

Country: France

Running Time: 80 minutes

CAST

Jonathan Howard as Chris

Jonathan Demurger as Luc

Fanny Valette as Ludivine

Jess Liaudin as the driver

Édouard Montoute as the police officer

Alighting from the stale fart and sweaty sock ambience of a London-Paris coach, Chris (Jonathan Howard) is reunited, after a two year self-imposed absence, with Luc (Jonathan Demurger) and Ludivine (Fanny Valette). Ludivine still resents Chris for leaving her without any whiff of warning, and has shacked up with Luc in the meantime. Luc is understandably a little edgy about this, but even edgier about the reason Chris left. After the trio’s internal tensions spoil the initial part of the evening’s partying, Ludivine begs off and goes home, taking Luc’s car. Determined to make sure the night is one to remember Luc cajoles moody Chris into accompanying him to another party. Increasingly unsettled by Luc’s blatant drug huffing and overbearing passive aggression Chris complies, because Chris is English, and thus believes confrontation must be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately the pair take a taxi and dun the driver on the fare; Luc as a hilarious joke to show Chris who is in control and Chris, because he is English and follows the path of least resistance. Big mistake. The driver takes umbrage to excessive levels and stalks the bickering pair through the eerily unpopulated Parisian night, a night in which interpersonal conflicts will be settled forever and one person will discover an unexpected future.

I don’t want to be too hard on Night Fare, it does a lot of things very well indeed for most of its run-time after all. In fact if it had just stuck to the psycho-stalk cabdriver premise it would have been a nifty little movie. Unfortunately someone didn’t think that would be enough, and the last third of the movie shifts gears way too abruptly, the back door swings open and coherence’s seat belt snaps and it tumbles out, becoming just a bloody snail trail in the movie’s wake. But before that happens, Night Fare is pretty good stuff. Obviously you have to buy into the rules of the game: you can’t just knock on anyone’s door for help; the police will be dicks; there will only be one police car and it will be the one full of dicks; the cab driver will be able to find them as though the pair were programmed into his SatNav; and, as ever, people being chased by a car must always run in a straight line for an unseemly amount of time before belatedly realising this is a really bad idea. This latter is fine, a familiar part of the filmic furniture for anyone who has seen Christine (1983) or The Car (1977). The police, well, we all respect the police obviously (good evening, officer) but since Luc is an obvious wrong ‘un, their attitude is understandable. As for just not knocking on the nearest door, well…I don’t know about Paris but I was once down that there London, and we (I wasn’t alone; well spotted) got the tube out to an outlying district, which was a massive mistake. Apparently big cities have these large areas that are just made up of offices and sandwich bars that serve the office workers. After a certain hour they are deader than Guinness, the dog I had in the 1970s. Seriously, it was like The Omega Man (1971), but without the albino afro vampires or Charlton Heston. Eerie stuff. As for the cab driver being able to find them all the time, well, that’s just what happens in these movies, so go with it or get another movie.

So, yes, Night Fare is an efficient and enjoyably tense thriller with a keen eye for style, which effectively transforms the city at night into a sodium lit hunting ground, and it also has some thrillingly brutal action sequences where sharp editing makes up for a lack of budget. I am delighted to report that the acting is spot on by all involved. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Jonathan Howard was allowed to have a proper English accent (“Thays a fukkin bin ovah thurr!”). Fanny Valette has little to do but does what little she has to do very well. Jess Liaudin is convincingly implacable as the cabbie with a mission. And Jonathan Demurger convincingly travels from one-note rogue to faceted human being, but no one could travel past that to the extent he is expected to do and remain convincing. Night Fare is good, solid genre fun right up until, well, right up to the point it isn’t. If Night Fare was just a movie about two cheeky scamps who rip off a taxi driver who then stalks them through the Parisian night with violence on his mind, then it would be pretty great. Unfortunately Night Fare abruptly decides that’s not enough and makes a hard turn into some sort of comic book origin story. This just confuses things far in excess of anything the movie’s initial, elegantly simple, premise can bear. About the only bit of foreshadowing that supports this whiplash inducing change is that dogs like the driver and he doesn’t kill a cop who behaves decently. It’s not enough, son; as my Dad might say. Ultimately Night Fare doesn’t lay enough groundwork and thus chokes on a massive exposition dump that seems to jump out of nowhere like an angry cab driver in the Parisian night.

In Night Fare’s defence though I could well have missed something, as quite a bit of it is in French. There were no subtitles so I naturally assumed this was an artistic choice. Both Chris and I could be as equally bemused by the goings on around us, both of us limited to drawing only the broadest of inferences from the opaque chatter around us. This did work quite well. Initially. The party scene was just meaningless noise neither Chris nor I felt part of. When the cops stop our cheeky chaps and the encounter takes a counter intuitive route, we were both unbalanced and non-plussed. And when Luc seeks shelter with his gangsta pals the initial air of threat is suitably discombobulating. Clever stuff I thought. Or I did until the ill-advised animated (!!?!!) exposition dump narrated entirely in French. Even I figured out at that point that someone had just neglected to put subtitles on the version I was (legally) streaming. Luckily, despite being monolingual, I am able to draw information from the moving image alone (as is any normal human being) so I could pick up the gist of what I was seeing. Unfortunately the gist of what I was seeing suggested that Vlad the Impaler turned into The Count Of Monte Cristo and after a daring escape, washed up In Japan, where he stole rice until a Samurai caught him and trained him to become a weapon of justice. Not only that, but also to be part of a secret order of human justice weapons which ultimately reached their modern day incarnation in our disgruntled cab driver. Yeah, just…no. And full disclosure here - I’ve read comics since I was 5 years old, so God help anyone normal with digesting that stuff so late in the movie.

Nobody involved in Night Fare disgraces themselves, and let’s be fair, until the final act everyone positively excels. Night Fare is undoubtedly a stylish exercise in tension with some remarkably personable characters you can really root for. That is, as long as you watch a version with subtitles, and as long as you stop at the bit where someone makes a very difficult choice (you’ll know it; don’t worry). After that...eh, yeah, you’re on your own. You might like it; it’s possible. Crossed fingers, eh?

#Night Fare #Movies #Thriller #France #2015 #The 2010s #Julien Seri #Jonathan Howard #Jonathan Demurger #Fanny Valette #Jess Liaudin #Horror

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theteacherthepreacher-blog · 8 years ago

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My Toxoplasmosis Blog, 2

So, Let’s skip to the middle of this story. I mean, why not? It’s my blog and I feel like it.

I am a musician, but the art of music has been fraught with frustration, for me. Time and again, I’ve turned my back on it, only to be drawn back in, because if your DNA is about making music, you can only escape it at a terrible cost. Since musicians don’t get paid anything decent, in the USA, unless they are rock-stars, I all but took a vow of poverty when I realized I just had to sing and play. It was during one of those periods that I re-discovered Yes, and in particular, Close to the Edge.

I knew Yes very well, in high school, and CTTE was a masterpiece that had captured my ear in sometimes terrible ways. Nowadays, it’s called an ear-worm; when I was a teenager, I found myself hearing Siberian Khatru playing in my head with such intensity that I couldn’t concentrate on my classes. My memory for music is quite remarkable, and I could play it back note for note in my head, but that often meant I forgot where I was going. I can still remember that- the juxtaposition of that toxic little guitar motif and the serene, majestic Berksheres, where I was attending Windsor Mountain school, a boarding school for budding pot-heads and artistic geniuses. They clashed, the glorious trees and the prog rock kick in the face. I loved Siberian Khatru, and was addicted to playing it as loud as possible. But the actual title track of CTTE was over my head (that’s a pun, if you know the songs on that album).

30 years later, I illegally uploaded the whole album online, probably from Napster. Not a nice thing to do, but I was poor at a level below anything I’d ever experienced. I was getting divorced, my ex was making really good money and leaving me to go on Welfare and food-stamps, I was only able to eat because I was playing guitar and singing in the subways of NYC, and I was crushed to a point that I don’t think I’ve ever been crushed before. (But every time I say that, I can remember something worse. The last three years comes to mind. But anyway.....

It happened that I had used some of the very last bit of money from my ex to buy an MP3 player and I was walking up 6th Ave in a not-so-nice part of town, when the song Close to the Edge came on. It changed the direction of my life, and here’s how:

I’ll never forget that I was stunned, to the point that I actually pulled over, out of foot-traffic, because I realized I was barely walking, and I didn’t want to help people up (in Manhattan, we try to remember this, on the streets), and this was because the music was so shatteringly gorgeous, continually evolving into more and deeper beauty, and it actually brought tears to my eyes. I almost wept openly, on the street. Later, I realized that I had heard it as a kid, and it didn’t make sense to me, then, but when I heard it again, 30 years later, it all made sense - indeed, I had been waiting to hear it again. This is something about the way I process music; the first time I hear it, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything to me, but my subconscious arranges it in my mind so that, eventually, I hear it and realize it’s been in there the whole time. There are a lot of Moody Blues songs like that.

I floated home, through Chelsea, in shock. This happened every time I listened to it- in fact, I was listening to it on the way to visit a friend, and it was so mesmerizing that I missed my stop on the subway.

Eventually, within the course of a few days, I decided to see if Yes was still together, if the members of the band were still alive, but with some trepidation, because you never want to hear that someone who has virtually been a friend in your youth has passed. But I still had the computer my ex had left me, and I spent a great deal of time online, so I googled Yes. I read a lot of Wiki about the various members, learning all kinds of interesting things about them, and how they had worked together, what they had thought of eachother....and then I read that Jon Anderson, the lead singer, had been hospitalized with acute respiratory failure

It’s been said to me that singers are heard first and most keenly, over and above all other instruments, and being a singer myself, of course, it was Jon’s voice I had fixated on, as a teenager. But most people fixate on that voice- the unique quality of high, clean, lyric and the slight layer of smoke on the *perfect* pitch, the interesting and sensitive phrasing, the freshness, the sustained strength, the humor and vitality, the nimble beauty of it; his voice is truly inimitable. I sang along with him, in my teens, even though his range and mine are not comparable; I didn’t care. I loved his singing, I danced to his singing, I felt that he was there with me, in my tiny dorm-room. He *was* there with me, I felt I could embrace him- but I also felt he was a whole level of artistic that I would only ever dimly understand. I was 17, and studying classical voice; I wasn’t trying to be Jon Anderson, but I sure could treasure his work, and I did.

And now, I read, he was desperately ill! Oh no, I thought, I must find out where he is, so I can send him a card!! And so I started sleuthing, to find out where he was (I thought, he must be in England), and over the course of the next few days, the truth unfolded for me, to my horror: he had been dumped by Yes!!! I know how stupid rock musicians are; I know how spineless they can be, too. But this was a new level of rotten: they had dumped him while he was in the fucking hospital, leaving his wife to pick up the pieces, and worse: they had replaced him with someone who could imitate him, and worst of all, THEY HADN’T TOLD HIM. Oh no....all of them but one, the gallant and faithful Rick Wakeman, had left him to find out he’d been fired, by reading it in the trade papers.

This upset me to the point that I walked around town in a rage, or in tears, for weeks. And the more I read, the more furious I was. Show business is hard, and people get fired, and sometimes, they get fired in terrible ways, but this is something I’ve never even imagined. And the more I read, the more I realized that it was Jon who was responsible for most of the lyrics. melodies and ideas of the great, inventive music I had revered. Close to the Edge was HIS FUCKING IDEA, AND THOSE BASTARDS THREW HIM AWAY like trash. I was so incensed by this that I went on Facebook (where I had a presence already) and searched for any groups that were about how terrible this was, and so I found some of the best friends I’ve ever had- even though I’ve only met a couple of them.

We were all united in our utter disgust about the way Jon had been treated, our grief over the way Yes had deviled into a tribute band, the terrible way specific members of the band had behaved, the absolute heroism of his beautiful and courageous wife Jane, his mutual love and supportive relationship with his adult children...the whole mythos was extremely compelling- on top of which, there really seemed to be some kind of mafia trying to undermine him, even as he had gotten back on his feet and gone on a solo tour, just him and his SIXTEEN INSTRUMENTS (the guy is too gifted; it’s kinda sick). We banded together to defend Jon in every place or manner that we perceived attacks on him, and there were plenty of them online, yes, even in Facebook. There really are some sick motherfuckers out there. I understand being jealous of him, but to try and take him down.....you might as well spit on Mozart. It’s pointless.....and disgusting.

Some of those friends of mine are still here, still overjoyed to see Jon succeed, to see him happily touring with the genius of his dear friends, Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin, performing masterpieces live onstage, and clearly having the best time of his life, even finally getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which should have done this decades ago, but they suck and have shit for brains), one came to visit me so that we could see Jon perform with Jean-Luc Ponty; wow, that was a banquet!! And now she and I are true buddies- but we already were.

During this time, I had talked to my FB friends about the fact that I am legally blind, and that it is toxoplasmosis that damaged my vision. A few years ago, one of those friends, Kelly by name, sent me a link to an article about toxoplasmosis, and while I usually didn’t pay such close attention to scientific articles, I did, in this case. And I remember that moment like it was yesterday, because I suddenly realized that I was sick, had *been* sick for decades, and a great deal of what this scientist said was true. It was new science, but was gaining not just attention, but evidence in the UK: that toxo doesn’t ever really go into remission, as everybody thought, when Iw as growing up- and as I was always told. That it appears to become quiescent, but continues to subtly influence the character of the person infected. Oh, not in every case, but if you’re unlucky enough to catch it the way I did- in the womb- it has a perceptible, provable track-record for affecting you in ways that are really horrifying.

Example: you may be unafraid of danger when you shouldn’t be; slow to react to danger when your reflexes should be quick; reckless. And I saw that in myself. It may cause a list of upper respiratory problems, all of which I recognized. It may cause migraines; I had chronic, debilitating migraines for years. The list goes on and on; I set there at my desk, feeling like I was going to fall out of my chair. I had already noticed some new symptoms that I didn’t understand, and now I was beginning to. If it hadn’t been for Kelly, I might never have understood what was going on. My vision was deteriorating, but worse (if you can call anything “worse” than that), I was getting sick almost constantly, with upper respiratory infections that morphed into deadly bronchitis; each one was worse than the last. I suddenly put it all together, because of that article.

That my friend Kelly had sent me, because we were both devoted fans of Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Trevor Rabin and Yes.

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80068mimiwang · 5 years ago

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Gentarou Ishizuka – The magic of sight as shown by the Alaskan wilderness

Gentarou Ishizuka is a travelling photographer. The first time he ventured overseas was in his teens, and since then he has been creating international bodies of work spanning from Africa to Asia, which can be seen collected in his book, “World Wide Wonderful”. His standout work, however, is said to be his “PIPELINE” series, where he – as the name suggests – photographs pipelines all over the world.

W.W.W. also refers to the World Wide Web, the heart of the Internet, and through this play on worlds Ishizuka attempts to demonstrate that his work is not only about the journey. It’s also about never losing the curiosity and desire to experience more, and a shifting way of thinking about sight.

In this interview, we ask Ishizuka what being a photographer and the journey means to him.

Amongst his large portfolio of works is “PIPELINE”, a series of photographs of oil pipelines all over the world. In his current exhibition, he gives a new spin on it by turning it into a 360 panorama.

Ishizuka: I’m sure there are a lot of people who look at this exhibition and sigh exasperatedly, “Not the pipelines again!”. I do often ask myself whether or not I should move onto something different (laughs) but honestly, I still want to do more with this. I started this project in Alaska and have since gone on to photograph pipelines in other places like Australia and Northern Europe, and working on this project takes me back to when I was wandering the globe in my 20s. It’s a subject that’s very charming in its own way.

—What made you want to shoot pipelines in the first place?

Ishizuka: I first went to Alaska during one of my global adventures, and right outside the Arctic Circle there’s a town called Fairbanks where they’ve got a pipeline for tourists to come and look at. It was a touristy spot where they were selling souvenir hats and the like, and it was surrounded by all this tundra forest. And amongst all that wilderness was this huge metal tube, and I took a lot of photos of it because it just stood out so much. However, it was only when I returned home and revisited the photos I took that I began to really get excited and think “hey, there’s something pretty interesting about this”.

—And that was where it all began.

Ishizuka: That was when I started to research pipelines. I found out that it spanned a total of 1280km and I wandered to myself, what does this pipeline look like when it goes past Fairbanks all the way to the north? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

—And so you decided to start shooting this series.

Ishizuka: That’s right. I’m the kind of person to lay down the groundwork before I start anything, so before I dove into the project I made two rules for myself. The first was to shoot only on a large format camera, not digital, to capture as much detail as I could. The second was to buy a Ford SUV in Alaska and live on the road while shooting this project.

—You began your journey being bound by these rules?

Ishizuka: That’s right. Once I crossed the Brooks Range, a mountain range that runs horizontally across Alaska, I was met with this magnificent spread of nature with the pipeline running off endlessly into the distance. And that’s when I, well, fell in love with Alaska, if you’ll excuse the cliché. You could also say that it was also the beginning of a relationship that I can never really pull myself out of (laughs).

—They say that the arctic circle is a realm beyond human comprehension, but could you not also say that the landscape there looks a little dull and barren?

Ishizuka: Oh no, no. It’s always changing depending on the season and the timing; I could never get tired of photographing it. I would describe my relationship with the pipeline as… Let’s see… There’s a Sri Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa, who is known as the father of tropical modernist architecture. At his signature work, a country house called the Lunuganga, he’s got these urns all around the place.

—Urns?

Ishizuka: Yes, urns. When I was shooting there, I realised that he didn’t put urns all over the place simply because he liked urns, it was to give the eye something to focus on in a sprawling landscape. It’s easy for the viewer to feel a little uneasy when they’re in the middle of a huge sprawl of landscape because of how endless and aimless it can be, so Bawa’s urns were a way for the viewer to not fall into this unease.

And then I realised… these pipelines are to me what those urns were to Bawa. And both urns and pipelines are very simple in form so on the first glance, it can be hard to tell what you’re looking at sometimes. You might have to get right up to the photograph or even stand further from it to tell what it is, but at the same time you might have more questions once you figure out what you’re looking at.

—It makes for an interesting viewing experience.

Ishizuka: And for an interesting shooting experience. In a large format camera, the film is about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and the finder is about the same size too. When you’re under the large format camera’s black cloth composing the photograph in the camera, it feels like you’re making a sculpture of the landscape before you. And when you’re doing all this by yourself in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness you can’t help but think, “man, this is kind of dangerous, isn’t it?” (laughs) But it’s fun.

—So what sparked your interest in the visual medium?

Ishizuka: I think it started with films. When I lived in Tsukiji and commuted to Ikebukuro for school, I’d often coop up in one of the revival houses in Ginza or Takada-no-baba or Ikebukuro whenever I felt like skipping school. I watched a lot of Iranian and Portuguese films then and I really felt that they were showing me a world I had never seen before.

—And that links with this recurring theme of “journey” that you so often explore in your work, right? So on your website you’ve got these portraits of Wim Wenders (a major figure of New German Cinema) and Jean-Luc Godard. What’s that about?

Ishizuka: I was lucky enough to meet them during my travels and photograph them. I’m a landscape photographer more than anything so I’ve always thought that I’m no good at portraits but photographing a movie director is really something else.

—They let you photograph them when you were just a 20-something backpacker wandering around? Especially Godard, known for being particularly moody. I was really surprised that you were able to get a picture of him looking so amicable.

Ishizuka: I think he’s only moody before the critics. He was quite accommodating when I went to meet him. I read in a magazine that he lived in a small village by Lake Geneva so I just rode over on a bicycle.

—Oh?

Ishizuka: I was having breakfast at a café by the lake, and the customer sitting next to me came to talk to me and I said that I was here because I liked Godard. I was extremely lucky, because it turned out that customer was a friend of Anne-Marie Miéville, Godard’s partner. And then even Ms. Miéville herself appeared. (laughs)

—Wow.

Ishizuka: Ms. Miéville was very amicable and said, “Why don’t you try giving him a call?” and gave me his phone number. I called him right then and there and Godard himself picked up and said to me, “All right, I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

—That’s quite the story!

Ishizuka: And it was a really fun shoot. Movie directors have a very keen eye, and they look at everything with that keenness. It really feels like they’re acting the role of themselves. He would direct me like, “open the curtain and let the light in from there”, or “take this shot from in front of the editing gear”. I felt like I was the one being photographed rather than him. (laughs).

—I can see why. (laughs)

Ishizuka: Wenders and Manoel de Oliveira (a Portuguese director known for being the oldest movie director ever, having passed at the age of 106) were like that too. Happy times… but I digress. I’m still not great with photographing people. I think I’m really meant to be a landscape photographer so I’d like to keep honing my skills in that area.

—So why did you choose to pursue photography over film when you clearly like films so much you’d go chasing film directors?

Ishizuka: Photography is such a simple and easy way of showing your viewers something. Clicking a shutter is a much more simple action than, say, drawing an entire image by hand. Anyone can take a photo as long as if they’ve got a smartphone with them, and pretty much everyone has one. But when you want to capture something that no one has ever seen or done before you start to question if that’s even possible because photography is so ubiquitous. I’ve been asking myself that question for a very long time.

—You spoke about feeling like you were making a sculpture of the landscape when you’re shooting earlier. How do you feel when, say, you’re at Alaska and it looks just like how you had envisioned?

Ishizuka: I take my inspiration from the land, so I don’t go somewhere with an image of how it should look in my mind. I think what this “vision” is will be different for each photographer, anyway. Last year, I had the chance to work as a supervisor on the exhibition “Michio Hoshino’s Journey”, a travelling exhibition held in commemoration of 20 years since his death, and I was able to see all of the photos he had taken during his time. And of course, Hoshino did a wonderful job of capturing the animals and landscapes that he did, but they didn’t speak to me in the same way that the pipelines did. And I think that somewhere in there lies the key to what makes photography so wonderful.

—Which is?

Ishizuka: “Photo” means light, or the sun, and “graphy” means “to draw”, right? So the name itself implies that it’s a result of the coexistence of the manmade and the natural. I feel photos that readily embrace this duality are very pure and authentic. I think what modern day photographers need to do is find new and interesting ways of interpreting and depicting this purity and authenticity.

—And you try to reflect that in your current exhibition and recent work?

Ishizuki: I’ve been working on a panorama series of glaciers, and for a panorama of an ice floe I’ve had to create it out of numerous images to make one big composite image. If there was a spot that needed filling in, I’d fill it in with a photo from someplace else. So when you’re looking at this ice floe, you’re actually looking at a completely made-up scenery.

―So while reconstructing a real environment into something purely made up and be quite a violent act in and of itself, it also captures this duality of the natural and the manmade that you said makes photography so pure and authentic?

Ishizuka: Hmm… Yes, that’s part of what makes photography such a unique medium, but I think it’s also related to how tiny our vision, as humans, can be. An ice floe can be around 7 metres tall, about the height of a small housing complex. When you’re out there in rowing amongst these floes the sheer size of them can make you feel like you’re in a space of endless ice, rowing for eternity. These floes have been moving and growing over the span of tens of thousands of years, and trying to capture them in a shot I thought to myself, what am I really taking a photo of here? In trying to capture and contain something that, by its nature, cannot be captured or contained, I began to realise just how foolish I was.

—I guess you could say that that’s the trap of relying on our sight too much. People say that of all the information our five senses receive, 80% of it comes from sight. And that may lead us to being over-reliant on our sight and being too trusting of how things appear. Speaking of sight, you recently announced a new body of work, “N/P” that you shot at home, where you overlay the negative and positive of an image over each other, slightly unmatched. That’s another exploration of the sense of sight, correct?

Ishizuka: I’m always thinking about this idea of duality in photography, what with the positives and negatives as well. I also find the duality and the huge difference in lugging a large format camera around the Arctic Circle and the vast wilderness, to being cooped up in a tiny darkroom printing photos to be very interesting, photographically speaking.

—Do you find that these scenarios, despite being so different, also have things in common with each other?

Ishizuka: For how otherworldly and majestic the pipelines are, sometimes a mug left on the table with the light hitting it could be just as beautiful. Sometimes I think that if I could photography that mug and do it justice, I would be the most satisfied man in the world.

Photography is magical in the way that the extraordinary and the ordinary all collide in one single click. That’s what I want to believe, anyway. That’s what I ultimately what to show through my work.

—In a previous interview, you said that when you return to Tokyo after a long period of travel, you ease yourself back home by eating GariGari-kun [a typically blue, lemonade-flavoured ice block popular in Japan] and I thought that was such a perfect way of illustrating how far you are from home when you’re out travelling.

Ishizuka: Pretty much. When I was eating those GariGari-kuns after I came back from shooting glaciers, I thought, “This thing’s like an ice floe!”

—So a GariGari-kun is capable of making you feel the same sort of wonder the ice in Alaska does.

Ishizuka: Yes. And with pipelines, there are people who read at them as emblematic of human and nature, and there are also people who interpret them as a sexual symbol, which I find very interesting . And with photographs that also double as information, you can do a lot of interesting things with it, and at the same time I’m veering into some dangerous territory with it…

—Although this interview started out as one focusing mainly on travel, I feel like we got to explore a lot of other topics, and that was fun. Photographers like Risaku Suzuki and Thomas Ruff who interrogate the sense of sight a lot in their work have been getting very big these past years, too. I can really feel the zeitgeist.

Ishizuka: Thank you, I had a great time as well. I still have a long way to go in applying my concepts to a body of work, but going forward I think I’d like to work more on how words can be used and exploring the relationship a photograph can have with words.

The boundary between photographs and words used to be pretty clear cut, but now that smartphones and social media are indispensable to our everyday lives, we often turn to photos to show people something instead of describing it. It’s much easier to show someone a photo of, say, whipped cream and have them understand how fluffy and soft it is from that photo than if you used words to describe it to them.

—As someone who writes for a living, I do often feel irritated by how restrictive words can be. I think that’s why a lot of websites, especially ones for entertainment, use collages and images to facilitate laughter and reactions in their readers.

Ishizuka: I do think that what people want is to communicate with words. I think a lot of people would agree that getting a comment on something is better than getting a like. We all want other people to comment on our photos, that’s why we take them. However, as a photographer, I want to keep honing my wordcraft so I can produce words for photos rather than the other way around, and keep working on it until words and photographs can at least be on equal footing.

—Speaking of, you wrote Glacier Diary, Glacier Bay outlining your photographic journey, which you started writing a few years back, correct?

Ishizuka: Yes I wrote about my day-to-day happenings and when I docked at the glaciers. I feel like “glacier” and “diary” link together like how I talked about “photo” and “graphy” do earlier. (laughs) Robert Frank, whom I greatly respect and have learnt a lot from, incorporated a lot of text in his photos. It’s always exciting to try and see which decisions were conscious and which weren’t I’d like to make a body of work that really interrogates the boundaries between image and text one day.

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