#and reading/listening/seeing everything he does and say related to art is a huge encouragement

[literalsunhobi]

words can’t explain the amount of love I have for kim namjoon

(GQ JAPAN trans. @ KNJsSource)

[bnhaficsforthesoul]

BNHA College Au - Aizawa

Major: Psychology

Minor: History

Sports: Nope

Clubs: Nope x2

So shouta fully intends to become a teacher, he’s had a rough upbringing and cause of that he wants to help kids in any way he can

This is one of the reasons he chose to major in psych, other than the topic being very interesting he wants to have a good understanding on psychology so that he can be as helpful as possible

He’s planning on becoming a high school teacher cause he feels like that’s the age group he would work best with and also he could help the most there

He works at a local high school too as a tutor, decided he might as well get some experience in and tutors students (mostly first years) on whatever he can help with, he’ll go there on days he doesn’t have any classes

He’s honestly just minoring in history because it’s always interested him, he finds learning how everything has developed over time into today interesting

Him and nemuri definitely have nerdy conversations about history, even though she’s more interested in the art aspect of it, they still talk about it all the time while hizashi and oboro are usually just stuck there listening to them ramble

Anyways, back to him working at a high school, you also work there

You’ve obviously seen shouta multiple times and knew he was from your college, but you didn’t really bother trying to talk to him at first because you just needed to focus on your job

However, one day when shouta was helping a kid on his math homework, they came upon a problem that neither of them knew how to solve, and seeing you in the room the kid called you over to ask if you could help

Cue lowkey blushy shouta because you instantly ran right over and tried helping the kid with a smile, and you had this cute concentrated look on your face as you read over the problem a couple times

Eventually the problem was solved, and the kid had to go leaving you and shouta alone

You didn’t want to be rude and just walk away, and there was no one else needing your help right now so you sat down next to him and started talking to him

It was kinda awkward, you were very much carrying this conversation

“You go to UA right? What’s your major?” its a simple question that has the poor man almost panicking, but he muttered out a “Psychology.”

He’s got the kind of voice that makes him sound like he’s just not interested, but you can tell from the look on his face that he’s flustered, but it doesn’t seem like he wants you to leave

So you keep talking, mainly about your majors and career paths, but you don’t mind - it’s fun talking to the shy boy

Eventually it’s time to leave though, and you have plans elsewhere, so you go your separate ways

But now when you two are working at the same times, neither of you are so hesitant to talk to each other, and any time you have a break you spend it chatting about anything and everything

Of course, being the best friend that he is, hizashi found out about ‘the cute person at work’ that shouta’s been talking to (since after a couple days you finally exchanged numbers and suddenly your conversations weren’t limited to only being at work)

Hizashi is practically begging shouta to ask you out, literally on his hands and knees like “shOUTA PLEASSE YOU GOTTA DO IT!!!! JUST ONE DATE!!” he just wants his friend to be happy and not limited to only hanging out with him oboro and nemuri

But shouta’s too scared to, no matter how cute and nice you are he’s too worried that you’ll say no and he doesn’t wanna ruin the friendship you two have formed

So what does hizashi do? He asks you out for shouta (which almost gets him strangled when shouta finds out)

He took shouta’s phone while he went to shower, and of course he knows the password, so he just opened it up and texted you “hey, can I take you out for coffee tomorrow?”

He gets so excited when you say yes lmao and gives you all the details, then shouta walks back in and is like “the fuck are you doing?” and hizashi gets this huge grin on his face and responds “I got you a date~”

Hizashi barely even saw shouta move before suddenly the phone was ripped out of his hands so that shouta could frantically look to see just what his friend did, and the glare he sends hizashi has him almost regretting everything

Shouta debates telling you his friend sent those texts, but he sees how excitedly you said yes and decides he might as well see how this goes

He wakes up so early the next day lol he’s nervous, and he spends a good hour fixing his appearance, like he considers shaving and putting his hair up but he doesn’t want to look like he’s trying too hard at the same time, so he eventually decides on just wearing nice black jeans and a black long sleeve - going “it’s not even an actual date, it’s just coffee, it’s not that serious”

A couple hours later, shouta’s waiting in the cafe, sitting at a little table waiting for you since he got there a little early. He’s just texting hizashi, who’s offering shouta a bunch of encouragement since he knows he’s nervous, and eventually you walked in, immediately spotting shouta in the corner and going over to him

He’s so cute he sees that you dressed nicely for this too and he tries to be cool when he goes “you look nice” but the blush on his face betrays him, not that you mind, and the blush deepens when you compliment him back

He buys you your coffee, and you sit in your little corner of the cafe - just talking. Even though you guys basically do this all the time at work, now it feels more personal, and it has you both talking about your lives more. Nothing too specific, just funny stories and about your interests other than work or school related things

Once youre both done with your coffee, or when you both notice that you’ve finished it since you were so deep in conversation, he offers to walk you back to your dorm - he doesn’t want to keep you for too long

You let him, but once you get to your dorm, you tell him “I had fun, I hope we can do it again sometime” to which he can’t help but get excited for - you wanna go out with him again! Yay!

After that, it was a bit easier for him to ask you on dates, and you still saw each other at work constantly, and so you guys grew even closer pretty quick

You went on maybe 4 or 5 more casual dates before finally, after work one day, he gathered up all his courage and asked you out officially

“Hey, y/n, would you - would you go out with me? For real?” 

Baby looks so hopeful behind that generic bored stare of his, and of course youre ecstatic! You’ve had a small crush on him basically since day one, and now he’s actually asking you out! So of course you agreed, letting out an excited “of course I will!”

Okay so his friends adore you, they love seeing shouta so happy with you

You two just sit around in your dorms cuddling whenever youre not busy, hizashi acts like it’s gross, your roommate probably does too - but no one can deny how cute you are together

Even the high schoolers you tutor, of course they eventually got wind that you two were dating and they all ship it like crazy

Most of your dates consist of small things, like going back to that cafe, or taking a late night walk in the park, he doesn’t like doing anything too grand

Its fun watching as his beard grows out during finals, he’s too busy studying to shave and youre trying to kiss him but he’s all itchy, and he’s just like “Kitten, I’m sorry I promise I’ll shave later” every single day until he finally does, but then again if you like his beard youre probably thriving during this period 

During one of those late night walk dates, you guys came upon a small black cat under one of the benches. You barely even saw it with how dark it was, but you saw the glint of its eyes and went to investigate and saw a little kitten

He didn’t have a collar, and you didn’t see what could have looked like a momma cat or anything around, and you didn’t want to just leave the poor thing out there in the cold. So what did you and shouta’s dumb asses do? You adopted it. 

Even though cats aren’t allowed in dorms

But that wasn’t about to stop you guys - and you figured it would be better to keep the cat in shouta’s dorm because everyone was already used to hizashi being loud so you could excuse any meowing

Hizashi going “what the fuck guys, you’ve been dating for 4 months and you already have a kid? Smh my head” but he’s also a supportive uncle lmao he loves the kitten too

Oboro loves taking polaroids of you two and now you both have tons of photos of each other/you together in your rooms and its really cute - and also polaroids of your son too of course he’s part of the family

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.111 / American musician, Barbara Markay, with Mark Watkins.

MW : Why decide (initially) to switch from making classical music to pop?  

BM : It happened during my first year at Juilliard College toward the end of the school year. It was in their new building at Lincoln Center, and I was practicing the piano in one of their practice rooms on the 5th floor, which had windows and a beautiful view of the streets below and the whole Lincoln Center area. I was taking a little break, and was looking out the window and thought to myself that I should be down there experiencing life and meeting interesting people, instead of practicing piano all day long! I had gotten into the Juilliard prep department / pre-college division when I was 10 years old, and had been a classical pianist for a long time. Maybe it was time for a change!  

After that day in the practice room, I started to think about this more and more, especially every time I got a practice room with a “window on the world” so to speak. I started to think about all those people walking around on the streets, and who among them was actually going to be interested in listening to classical music. I thought that I might be wasting my musical talent on my present studies as a pianist and composer, and that I was much more interested in talking to people and finding out what they were thinking and why they said and did the things they did.

I became more and more interested in writing lyrics, which turned into my first pop songs. I realized that I could communicate the music I had inside me via pop music better than just performing classical music, because I could write about the whole new exciting culture of the times with no narrow, preordained musical style restrictions, or older musical rules. I could write and say whatever I wanted to! It was a brand new world for me! And so much fun! I still appreciated and loved classical music, and graduated from Juilliard college at the end of the four years, but I was now writing these funny, risqué, pop songs, just piano and voice, and everyone I played them for loved it!    

We had academic studies as well as music classes as part of our program, and one of these classes was English literature, which I suddenly was great at. I don’t know where this understanding of human beings came from, or my love for reading English literature, but one day my English teacher, Beatrice Taub (who also taught at Columbia University), asked me after class if I really really was sure, that being a classical pianist and composer was really what I wanted to do with my life, because I was exceptionally good at literature. She suggested that I might take some extension classes at Columbia University to explore it further, maybe transferring to Columbia eventually.    

It was then that I realized that these songs I was writing were going to be a better career path for me because they involved both writing and music, and I got that encouragement to continue with pop music. There was also another class I took that the music students would take together with the actors, that also was encouraging me to continue to write pop music.

Some of the people in my class were destined to be really famous actors, and one of them was Robin Williams. I felt more at ease in this class because they were mostly all actors, and had broader interests than the music students, I felt. Robin asked me one day to play some more of my songs for him, because he wanted to do a show out of them. He said he just loved the humor and the music I had put to the songs. He said he wanted to do some kind of a musical review with it.  He was very funny even then. Just a natural comic, but also a great actor. Nothing came of it at that time, but my songs were eventually made into many musical reviews years later.

That was the beginning of my pop musical career.    

Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey, Christine Baranski (1974), Kelsey Grammer, Kevin Kline, Patty LuPone, William Hurt, and more, were all actors who were part of the new acting department at the new Juilliard building at Lincoln Center. Eventually, years later, they would put in a classical guitar department, and a jazz department, which would have been unheard of before the new building came into being. Before these new times, Juilliard considered classical guitar to be “folk” music, and jazz wasn’t even on their radar. I guess someone was thinking like me, and these other forms of music needed to be heard and expressed as well as traditional classical music. So I think it was in the 1980s they got Sharon Isbin (fabulous classical guitarist) to head up the new guitar department, and Wynton Marsalis to head up the new jazz department to get these new genres started at the new Juilliard.  

So much for my very formative Juilliard years!  

These early songs were part of my piano & voice comedy act that was very popular at the time. A lot of people compared me to being a musical Joan Rivers. ‘It’s All Rite’ was part of this set of songs. I went to the UK on vacation soon after graduating college, and met Lee Allen, a music promoter with Carousel Artists (I think that was the name of his company) who booked me on a college tour of England and Ireland. Eventually, I put a small group together and performed everywhere. I played at the New University of Ulster, Belfast, and I opened for 10CC at, I believe, Kings College in London, and played many other colleges as well. What a great time I had, and everyone really liked the songs, including the risqué ones! And I just loved England! But then it became time to return to the states.    

MW : Where does your music fit in terms of categorisation / the music scene?

BM : It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that I started writing more serious pop songs, not the early comedy stuff anymore. That was just after I had put out ‘It's All Rite’, the 12” dance, salsa single version of the song, and it was such a huge international hit. After that, I got interested in metaphysics - the invisible world so to speak - and more philosophical and spiritual matters. I found my first and very great meditation teacher, Anne Elizabeth Cooper, in New York City, and studied metaphysics with her for two years. It absolutely changed my life! I developed a totally different point of view of everything! I started writing songs more along these lines, and also songs about how people relate to each other on deeper levels. I needed to grow as a writer and artist, so this new path I took expanded my views of life and consciousness level.  

Some of my early pop albums like Change To Come and Heart Like A Song contain some of my favorite and most prized songs, like ‘Still Need You’, ‘Change To Come’, ‘I Am The River’ and ‘Fallen Angel’ from the Change To Come album.  And from the Heart Like A Song album, my favorites are, ‘In The Silence’, ‘You Are What You Believe’, ‘Hands Of The Artist’ and ‘All That I Am’. You can tell by just the titles how I had shifted focus and had finally grounded myself in more meaningful songs that brought in a brand new audience.

After those two albums. I continued expanding to world beat grooves with the Shambhala Dance album, which won best dance/dub/club album of the year (New Age Reporter finalist 2005 Lifestyle music award!). ‘Atlantis’, the first cut on the album, got great reviews and lots of airplay, even today it’s still being played. It’s been called “a meditation through movement”, and, “an exotic voyage of mysterious flamenco, Asian and middle eastern melodies, full of powerful world beat grooves beautifully blended together to create an atmosphere of intense, vital emotions both sensual and meditative at the same time” (Wind and Wire magazine, April 2005, Bill Binkelman).

I continued exploring different styles with a meditation album, Heaven And Earth, which is a continuous 50 minute meditation. I got and still get a lot of plays in the yoga studios and meditation classes with this one and the Shambhala Dance album. But you can see how my shift to more metaphysical and spiritual music has carried me into these different, but related styles. I even composed a musical rendition of the ancient, venerated prayer, ‘The Great Invocation’, given to humanity by ascended Tibetan master Djwhal Khul. I have shifted styles as I matured and explored a more expanded and deeper understanding of what I wanted to express musically.  

MW : How are you using social media to stream / promote your music on platforms such as Spotify, iTunes etc?.  

BM : It’s great! You can see all of the albums and singles I’ve done on Spotify, iTunes, and the other streaming services right away. So can all the other artists who put content out there. Everyone had to switch to streaming for the great international exposure. There’s nothing like it!  

MW : Two of your early records were banned. Did you set out to challenge the mainstream with titles  ‘It’s All Rite To F*ck All Nite…’ and  ‘Give Your Dick To Me’?  

BM : I was never really “banned”. What happened is that I produced the first 12” dance single version of  ‘It’s All Rite’, and took it to all the record labels, which were mostly all in New York at the time. Everyone absolutely loved the record! Everyone absolutely wanted a few copies for themselves and their friends. But nobody had the balls to put it out into the market!!!! They were all afraid of repercussions, censorship, and their reputations! So I decided that I would put it out myself, something nobody had done at the time! I thought the record needed to be heard. I found a pressing plant in New Jersey, who were fine with pressing it up, then I went to an art store and got some “press type” and designed my own album cover. I got a friend of mine to take a picture of me, and voila! I had an album ready to go. I had no monies to promote the record, only just enough to record it and press it up. I figured that if I could get it heard by some people, maybe I could get some interest in it and maybe sell a few copies.

At that time, in New York and across the whole country, there were record pools, which were organizations of DJ’s who played the music in the dance clubs. I sent a 12” record (CD’s hadn’t been invented yet) to a list of record pools around the country, and to my surprise, I got a great response. Everyone wanted a copy to play. It was a salsa dance groove, something kinda new for mainstream clubs at the time, but the song was funny and danceable so everyone liked it and wanted to hear it. This was a time when you couldn’t get any airplay without a record label behind you. It was payola all the way. But what I could get was club play, and these DJ’s kept asking me for more and more records. And now people were asking the DJ’s where they could buy the record. So I had to get a distributor to put the records into record stores.

By this time, the record was being played in most all the clubs in the United States, but with no place to buy it.  My first thought was to go to Sam Goody, one of the biggest record stores in New York at the time, and see if they would sell the record. They said yes, showing me a copy of some dance/club charts they had in the store that said that the record was #1 on the charts!!!!! I had no idea about these separate dance/club listings and was really excited that it was already charting. But there were about five dance charts around at this time, and ‘It’s All Rite’ was #1 on all of them! It stayed #1 for about five or six months in a row! It was a sensation! This started in about May of 1978, or 1979, I think, and ran thru September. Sam Goody gave me the very hard to get whole window display of my record, so did Colony records, another big record store in New York City at the time, and the rest is history! Other record stores followed.  

Soon I realized that I needed a bigger distributor, so I contacted several in all the sections of the US, like the South, the Midwest, North Central, East Coast, West Coast, etc. They kept asking me for more and more records. I couldn’t figure out where the records were going. So one day I called my local one stop guy in Long Island City, and he said they were all going overseas. I asked where overseas, and he said, “Everywhere! Especially Holland.” Apparently, 12 miles off the coast of Holland was a ship that had a radio station broadcasting from it, and they could play anything that they wanted. My record was the number one request! Nobody could do anything about it to stop them, because they were in international waters. 12 miles out!!!

Since this was my first big hit, I was inexperienced as to what I needed to do next. It wasn’t too much later, about December of that year, I got a call from WEA International in Holland (Warner Brothers, Electra & Atlantic records all together) who said they wanted to license my record. It sounded great to me, so I took the deal. They published it in Europe, South America, England, Japan, Asia, etc. and promoted it in all the clubs. And I finally got legitimate airplay on it, because on the “B” side I had recorded the “clean” version, called ‘It’s All Rite To Truck All Nite’. Lots and lots of airplay everywhere! Finally!  

It became #16 on the Billboard pop charts in the Benelux countries, and #2 on the charts in Paris, Michael Jackson being #1 at the time. WEA asked me for another single to put out, and I gave them, ‘Give Your Dick To Me’, and that was also very successful. I did the same thing with the “clean” “B” side, ‘Give Your Flesh To Me’.    

So the bottom line is that if you have a record that everyone wants to hear, nothing will stop it from being heard. The people decided they wanted to hear ‘It’s All Rite’, and it squeezed itself through the cracks to be a big hit.  Also, it started a new trend in music of what could be heard and played. Several DJ’s told me that I had really done something BIG with that song. They said it changed the music business forever! It opened the door for new things to come into the market, and then the people could judge for themselves whether they liked it.    

Now getting back to your original question about being censored/banned, I really didn’t have any criticism for doing the record. People just wanted to get a copy of it and enjoy it. And I didn’t set out to “challenge” the system. I was simply expressing my views on what people were really thinking, and I did it via a danceable, funny, comedy record. I was just having fun!

Now, a lot of people took it seriously, literally, and that’s ok. Everyone has their own interpretation of things. That is what Art is for. To make people think. And that is what, ‘It’s All Rite’, did. It made people think, laugh, dance, party, and feel good! Remember, this was a time when Lenny Bruce had set a new standard, Joan Rivers was on the scene, along with Richard Pryor, George Carlin, etc. By the time I came along I took it all for granted that I would be able to put this record out. I wrote it when I was 19 years old and still in college, so that’s what you write when you’re that age. I didn’t care at all what people would think about me or this song!    

Nobody I was aware of wrote anything negative about this “outrageous” song.  One of the many reviews I got for my act (when I was performing all my funny songs with piano & voice around town in the late 1970s) was from Michael’s Thing, an LGBT magazine, New York City’s #1 weekly entertainment magazine and “going out guide” with reviews, comics, of all the performances, Art in the city, new and noteworthy etc. which said about my act, “…...she (Barbara) makes you laugh while she stabs you in the back!”  I got nothing but praise for putting this song out! The LGBT community loved what I had done and fully supported me, along with great reviews from the Village Voice, and a nice write up from Billboard magazine by Roman Kozak. I also played at Huey’s Bar, a gay men’s bar, on Hudson street (west side of New York city near the Hudson river) for several months, through that whole summer, just piano and voice. It was a big hit!  

MW : Tell me about your involvement with Carly Simon’s Coming Around Again album?  

BM : I was doing synthesizer programming for a few of the songs on the album. The arranger I was working with was doing some arrangements for her new album, and I got to do some of the synth programming. It was lots of fun to be involved and to go to the recording sessions.    

MW :  …and the Michael Jackson (BAD) video…. also include any thoughts on Jackson’s charisma, ability (song & dance)….  

BM : I never got to meet Michael Jackson, but I did get to meet Martin Scorsese who was really really interesting! He was asked to produce the video for the song. He came up to the office one day to discuss what kind of extra scored music was needed for the BAD video, music before the song started, and after the song was through. He was very intense, a real thinking kind of guy, and someone who knew what he wanted. He also has a great sense of humor! He impressed me as someone who really knows people. Meeting Scorcese was actually more exciting for me than meeting Jackson as he’s a real character!!! A mature adult!  

MW : You’ve worked with Bruce Willis as a backing singer. Tell me about those times … also include your views on his abilities as an actor turned singer…  

BM : Bruce Willis is a really great actor, and can play almost any part. That includes as a blues singer. The show we did was as his backup singers (along with two friends of mine) for the opening of the new Hard Rock Café in Austin, Texas. It was a very long day, full of rehearsals on stage with the band, and waiting for Bruce to arrive. As we tested mikes and stage positions, we could see a huge crowd starting to form in order to get a good view of the coming show. The press was there, and reported close to 100,000 people waiting to see this opening.

Bruce eventually got there, extremely exhausted. By the time the show started it was dark out, and everyone was excited. Then came the big moment when Bruce Willis came on stage, and everyone went wild! The band started to play and he started to sing. I was shocked by how well he could sing, and put over a song. It was a real “performance”.

He may not have all the technique of a “professional” singer, but what he has is better. He can make you get into the song, feel the song, …it’s not really the voice but the performance that’s spectacular. So close up to me. I could really see why he’s considered one of the great actors of our time. Acting, singing and performing are all connected. And he puts it all together beautifully.    

MW : Describe a typical weekend….before lockdown and during…

BM : Well, I used to love to go to the ocean and watch the sunset a lot, then meet my friends for dinner in one of the great restaurants by the beach or in town. Before lockdown there were great movies to see, not just at home (these days) but at the real movie houses. Plenty of them around in the “old” days. During lockdown everyone has to stream movies at home. At least streaming is safe!  

I also used to like to work out at the gym, but you can’t do that yet, so I’m hoping that sometime in the near future that will become viable again. Sometimes it’s fun just to take a ride up pacific coast highway and breathe in the sea air and see the beautiful scenery. You can still always do that.

There are lots of farmers markets around town, so I always go on the weekends to shop for fresh, whole, organic fruits and veggies! That’s always fun, and sometimes I go with my friends too.

Eating good, fresh, organic foods is my entire “Health Plan”!  You are what you eat! So far, so good!  And I can do this all year long. And during this lockdown, we just all wear masks. It’s fun being at the farmers markets and seeing all the chefs from all the great restaurants in town shopping for their weekly recipes with those big shopping carts they push thru the market. They buy whole boxes of produce and everything else sold there.  

MW : What is your favourite…Carly Simon single?

BM : I think that would be  ‘Mockingbird’, especially the 2015 remaster. James Taylor sounds great on this, and the two of them together just fit together perfectly. This remaster is from Songs From The Trees (a musical memoir collection). I’m glad they did this, because this is a classic! You can hear all the instruments clearly, the voices are very present, and the whole thing is a pleasure to listen to. Musical tastes change, but the classics will remain with us from “gentler” times.  

MW : AND your favourite… Bruce Willis film?

BM :  (I can’t choose just one!)

The Whole Nine Yards : hysterically funny!!! I laugh every time. The Fifth Element is a real classic! I see it again every time it’s on TV. Bruce Willis is fantastic in that “deadpan” character he plays. And the score by French composer Eric Serra is superb. Hip, powerful, rhythmic, smooth, jagged, everything needed to match the screen scene.

But the music stands alone if you just listen to the score by itself without the movie. I think they sold a lot of the music score. The Sixth Sense -  so powerful, and metaphysical! It’s right up my alley! And Bruce Willis has a knack for finding well written screenplays! That’s a big key to the success of the movies he’s in.

And since they’re so well written, he has an opportunity to really show off his talent and get into those great parts.    

MW : AND your favourite… Michael Jackson album?

BM : I think I like the Thriller album the best. I love the songs, especially, ‘Beat It’, ‘Thriller’, and ‘Human Nature’. And it was so well produced by Quincy Jones, with pounding gritty grooves, and great songs.

MW : List, in order of preference, your Top 10 singles & albums of all-time…

BM : (I have the original CD’s of this music, and still call them CD’s, but I’m sure this music is all streaming/downloads by now!)

1. Famous Blue Raincoat: songs by Leonard Cohen, studio album by singer Jennifer Warnes: exquisite, perfect singing of songs with her crystal clear voice! What a superb collaboration this was! I wish they had made more albums together like this one! A true classic! When I first heard it I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Songs so well written, songs with a real message, and so well sung and produced.    

2. I also love Leonard Cohen’s, ‘Hallelujah’, sung by anyone! It gives me chills every time! Powerful and hauntingly beautiful! The best cover of it that I love is K.D. Lang’s version. (I think it was on her album, Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, 2004).  

3. Bach: Sonatas & Partitas: violinist: Itzhak Perlman: The sub-title of this 2 CD set put out by EMI classics says it all: “Great Recordings of the Century”, which is aptly titled!!! I can listen to this album at any time, and it will put me into a deep trance. I can’t stop listening.

Itzhak Perlman is an absolute master of the violin, and these solo compositions are not only some of Bach’s finest works, but Perlman’s rendition of them is flawless. He understands what the composer was trying to accomplish, and every time I listen to this it feels like he is showing us the true soul of humanity! The longing, the passion, the “reaching to the Light”! The thing about this kind of classical music is its very high vibration! I think it does make you smarter!

4. Then we have Jorge Aragao and his live album entitled Ao Vivo (which means “live”). Another album I have listened to for years. He’s a Brazilian singer/songwriter, and the songs are all sung in Brazilian Portuguese. But don’t let that stop you from listening. It’s exciting, passionate and very well recorded. It has the whole flavor of Brazil in it! Recorded in 1999.

The last song is a great rendition of ‘Ave Maria’. A true classic! (I took a great vacation to Brazil for a month once in the mid-2000s and this album is the real deal! The Brazilians absolutely Love him!)  

5. Edith Piaf: 30e Anniversaire 2 cd set (probably on all the streaming services by now). All the songs are beautifully recorded, written, produced and her voice is extraordinary and present. It gives you the whole culture and passion of the French. It always puts me at a French café with friends and great great food! If you’ve never heard Edith Piaf, it’s well worth a listen.

There was a wonderful movie on her life called La Vie en Rose which I also recommend to get the whole feeling of this music. And I listen to this music often, especially when I’m feeling like there’s no culture west of New York City! She saves the day every time!    

6. John Lennon: Imagine: I think everyone knows this is a classic! It’s a positive message!  

7. The Eagles: Hotel California the whole album, but especially the title song, ‘Hotel California’: It never gets old!    

8. Bach: English Suites performed by pianist Andras Schiff: he’s a Bach specialist, and has a great insight into what Bach intended with this great recording: Part of my regular listening.    

9. Buena Vista Social Club: it really gives you the heart and soul of Cuba. I think the reason this album was such a hit when it was first put out is the huge amount of heart, passion, and honesty it evokes. You can feel it’s the real deal. Nothing fake here!  

10. And last but not least, two albums that were put out by Putumayo a while back, called Brasileiro and Samba Bossa Nova. They are compilations of several Brazilian artists and styles, including bossa nova, folk, light samba, and I think some other styles too, beautifully put together. They are calming, gentle, rhythmic and haunting, and a great way to wake up in the morning. So many positive vibes! So musical and unpretentious!

MW : Where / what was the best meal you’ve ever enjoyed and what was the company like?

BM : Well, all I can remember is that it was in a Paris restaurant, and I was taken there by a record company executive to discuss publishing my music through a Paris company. I remember she told me that the closer you get to Paris from anywhere in the world, the better the food gets!!!

And I wasn’t disappointed!

The meal was some kind of spectacular steak, mousse au chocolate for desert, and fine red wine throughout the meal. Cheeses for dessert! (that was more dessert after the dessert!) And it was the atmosphere and vibe, not just of the restaurant, but of Paris, and the French people and their culture that I found so fabulous! I love the French and they loved me back!!!!  

MW : What can we anticipate coming from you later on in 2021?

BM : I’m currently thinking about something along the lines of my previous Shambhala Dance and Heaven And Earth albums. Worldbeat and with a sleek groove.

It takes time to compose something like that.

It will be announced on my website when it’s done. www.barbaramarkay.com  and I will put it out on the streaming services / downloads as usual.    

(c) Mark Watkins / May 2021

[icequeenjules26]

The Butterfly Effect - Part I: If a butterfly flaps its wings...

Summary: It is said that if a Butterfly Flaps its wings it can cause a tsunami at the other end of the world... When nature photographer Dan and god of the forests Phil get caught up in the flap of a butterfly's wings, everything could change forever.

Word Count: 2,6k

Tags: Strangers to lovers, God!Phil, Photographer!Dan

A/n: The first chapter of my third fic for this @phandomreversebang. The second part will be up as soon as I can, I promise. Art will be included in the second part and is done by the AMAZINGLY talented @anotherweirdblog (really guys. holy crap.) and beta'd by my Angel @succubusphan.

Read on AO3

Dan never really called himself a horse-boy. He was someone that loved beauty, elegance and aesthetics before anything else, so he told whoever was willing to listen that loving horses just came along with it. If you loved those things, you’d come across horses sooner rather than later. They were majestic in the purest kind of way, and they could take everyone’s breath away with their stunning beauty if the person would just let them. A horse in action would put everything else to shame.

 As a photographer his first ambition was to capture the beautiful essence of real moments and make people see the world like he did. The downside of working with horses was you never truly knew what they would do, but the upside was no pictures with them ever were truly staged. You couldn’t ask them to smile for the camera, and even if you could, there was no guarantee they would truly do it. 

 Theoretically, Dan was also a nature photographer, taking pictures for magazines and blogs, but he tended to combine the job with the hobby and made the journey to his photography destination on horseback. Mostly so he could take pictures of his horse as well to post on his personal horse blog and social media pages. 

 This particular day he had been commissioned to take forest aesthetic pictures with wildflowers - Dan’s specialty. There was a beautiful landscape made for that commission just a few hours over on horseback, so he decided to take his horse and get some beautiful pictures of her as an added bonus.  He also brought his lady dog around to keep his mare in check if anything unforeseeable would happen while taking pictures of her running and playing freely.

 They had been on the way for almost an hour. Diana was running around at their feet, barking at flowers and trees. Athena, the love of his life and best friend through everything, was used to her antics at this point and just huffed from time to time to keep Diana’s excitement in check. 

 They were a good trio like that. Dan adored them both with all his heart, his black ladies, and they just worked. 

 So they made their way towards their destination, unaware of the fact that they’d never get there.

 ___

 Phil was a god.

 And no, that wasn’t said with arrogance, or hubris. It was an actual fact. 

 He wasn’t what christians would call god, the one, all-knowing entity - not that it existed - but he was still a god. The god of forests. 

 Which had a sense of irony, undoubtedly, since he wasn’t allowed to leave his forest. He was forever cursed to stay in his little part, to take care of its animals and plants. And it was nice, he supposed, to have a connection to his particular stretch of forest, to know all the animals by name, being able to communicate with them; nice and exciting - it was just that it had been like this for millennials. Literal millennials. Phil was about as old as the earth itself, and he had been here all his life.  

 He was getting tired of it. 

 Saying that might have made him sound ungrateful or selfish, but that didn’t make it less true. It wasn’t only the fact that he felt like a bird locked in a cage with no way to get out; but also that things in his forest had been the same - or around the same - forever, basically. Nothing new or exciting happened - or at least very rarely. The forest was fairly secluded, hardly anyone ever passed through, and Phil meeting those people happened even less. Even his animals stayed the same - a strong enchantment kept them from growing old, and if they got hurt Phil had the magical ability to nurse them back to health. 

 The only exciting thing was animal babies getting born from time to time, but even those were rare. 

 What brought him the most joy in life were his best friends. Sure, they weren’t typical friends, not human or at least human-like as he was - save for his pointy fairy ears - but they were real friends nonetheless. 

 He loved all of his animals, whoever was living in his forrest, even if he was envious that they could leave whenever they wanted to, but the ones he loved the most were his best friends. Shikamaru, nicknamed Shika, and Temari, sometimes called Tema (but only by Shika if he wanted to piss her off), were deer that had lived with him for millennials. They had been with him through a lot, and somehow, they’d always managed to make him laugh. 

 They shared stories of the outside world with him - they were bound to his forest as well but where allowed to leave from time to time, even if they weren’t able to stay away for long - and just overall kept him upright. Shika was too smart for his own good and the laziest creature you could find, often getting chastised for it by Temari, who was fierce and strong and brave. Even though they fought a lot, they both had the biggest crush on the other and watching them dance around without making a move tended to make Phil’s grey days a lot brighter. 

 As every morning, they had started this one with breakfast. Phil was a god, so thankfully, he was able to get whatever food he wanted, even though he could just as easily live from grass, tree barks and bugs. 

 That morning, he had decided on a ridiculously sweet stack of pancakes basically drowning in syrup, and his fingers were sticky just from touching the plate. He brought it outside to eat while Shika and Temari started grazing in what he’d consider his front yard. They said good morning without many words, just casually nodding at each other, and started eating in comfortable silence, just a few birds chirping in the distance. 

 When they were done, Phil brought his dishes inside to take care of them later, and when he came back out, Temari and Shika had started the first fight of the day. It was never anything too serious, mainly just Shika using the word bothersome too often. Phil laughed as he stepped outside. 

 Temari groaned in frustration. “Please, don’t encourage him!”

 Phil chuckled again. “Sorry, deer.”

 This time, both Temari and Shika groaned about the bad pun and just started walking, not even checking if Phil came after them or not. 

 Something in the air was different this morning, Phil mused as they strolled through the forest. He couldn’t lay his finger on it, but it was there, hiding steep below the surface. The two deer sensed it as well, stepping closer towards Phil, who laid his hands on their necks and started tickling them to calm them down a bit. He could’ve easily just send them a sense of calm mentally, but he didn’t like dictating what they had to feel. They were their own beings with their own personalities and if they felt anxious or nervous they had the right to do so.

 That’s how they walked on, deeper into the darker parts of the forest, neither of them having any clue that their lives were about to change forever.

 ____

 No matter what you call it, be it coincidence, faith, destiny - it is a funny thing, isn’t it? This fickle, irrational thing that sometimes jumps in and changes the direction of everything. That thing that out of nowhere takes ahold of a situation, flips it around, reverses it just to put it back in order, just to mess it right back up again. We call it Butterfly Effect - this bizarre set of motions that just all cause the next thing to happen - this abstract phenomenon where a butterfly flaps its wings and sets off a multitude of occurrences that end in the apocalypse. It’s like a line of dominos, positioned in increasingly complicated twists and turns, getting just a tiny bit taller with every stone that falls, until a domino the size of a fingernail causes one to fall that’s easily the size of a door. 

 Sometimes, usually, moments, occasions, go by unrecognized, unnoticed, like a tiny pebble lying harmlessly on a concrete floor, multitude of people passing by without ever touching it, until one comes by, driving over it with their bike and ending up literally crashing into the love of their life. 

 In this case, it’s fairly similar - just a lot more complicated. 

 How does this relate to our two heroes? You may ask. Well - in retrospect, it is what caused the entirety of what comes next. 

 Looking at Dan, for example, him and his mare were fairly experienced. They’d made it through several hairy situations, sometimes barely pulling through, and yes, she lost her head sometimes, stormed off and left Dan sitting in the dust, but usually, his lady dog managed to have her calm down within just a few canter strides; and the mare never, ever, ever ran too far from her point of takeoff. 

 Or Phil, centuries, no, millennials old - about as old as the earth as we know it - and omniscient, at least concerning his forrest. He hadn’t been surprised by much in ages, especially not hugely surprised, surprised enough to cause his animals to loose their heads and go riot - in fact, that might not have happened in more than a thousand years. 

 Yet, both happenings were set off by two completely different and unrelated occurrences causing everything the boys had planned for their futures, good and bad, to shatter, crumble into dust. Two incidents at roughly the same time, how is that even possible? Might some of you ask now, and, by all means, you have the right to question, it’s just that - this… This thing, this coincidence, faith, destiny, whatever - it works in mysterious ways, so that at this certain point in time, there is no correct way to answer this particular question. It just happened, and it will have consequences reaching deeply, deeply into the future. 

 Because it caused them to meet each other.

 On Dan’s end, it was merely a gust of wind and old, slightly broken electrical wires that, over several different stations, caused Athena to flip and forget all the education she had experienced in her life, all the trust she had in Dan, her best friend. 

 It was a gust of wind that has a tiny, innocent little spider falling into the open window of the powerhouse closest to Dan’s estimated destination. It managed to take a hold of one of the fuses, where it just sat for a while, stunned. When the electricians came in for the daily check-up - just to see if everything was still in order - it moved, startling the electrician, causing him to stumble backwards, just one, two steps… Where his foot landed exactly on a weak point in the wiring on the ground. That weak point had been there for years, proverbial ages, yet nothing had ever happened - just now, when the electricians weight causes the wiring to bent just a little bit further… The wiring broke. The breakpoint stopped the electricity to flow, causing a significant area to be without power.

 Usually, that was not much of a problem. There were just a few houses that far away from everything, barns and cottages that were mostly void of humans at this time of the year, and especially midday hardly anyone even noticed the power was out. Just one cow, a brown steer named Lory, was trying to get to the other side of her electrical fencing - as we all know, the grass on the other side is always greener - and touched the fencing in the progress… Realizing there is no electric shock keeping her back. So she strained the two laces, stepping through between them, easily getting on the other side. The fencing snapped back into place afterwards and none of her friends followed her. 

 For a momentwhile, nothing happened. Lory kept grazing, the herd kept doing the same on the other side of the fence, all was well. Until she wanted to get back, back to her herd, her friends, touched the fencing and got a small electric shock, just a slight pinch, that had her stepping back and realize - her one way back was blocked. She was isolated from her herd. 

 Like every cow in her situation, she flipped, trotted back and forth on her side of the fencing, calling loudly, almost violently for her friends. Her herd came by and panics as well - 

 And that was the point where Athena, Diana and Dan came across the herd. The mare was usually okay with cows, even though she’s always found them creepy, but this - this was simply too much for her. 

 She freaked, storming off, Dan barely hanging on to her, so fast Diana was barely able to follow, let alone trying to calm her down. 

 She ran, almost headless, just trying to get away - unintentionally crossing the border into Phil’s territory. 

 On Phil’s end, it’s not that complicated. It’s just that usually, storms didn’t reach his forrest. The magical barriers he had put up to defend it kept them away. But his wards were wearing off, and this midday, as he strolled along the familiar paths, he discovered a tree almost burned down by a bolt of lightning. Admittedly, not a big deal, but for Phil, who’s life hadn’t held new and unknown happenings for millennials, it was a shock. 

 He didn’t have himself in check, and both Shika and Tema reacted to his sudden mood swing, jumping around violently. 

 And this is where their parts crossed. Where Dan and Phil, literal worlds apart and under normal circumstances further away from meeting than the sun and the moon, suddenly clashed, with a tremor so severe nothing would ever be the same again. 

 ___

 If Athena wouldn’t have flipped, if Levy wouldn’t have left her herd, if the electricity hadn’t been cut off - all the way back to if the gust of wind hadn’t knocked that spider in through the window - they never even would’ve gotten to Phil’s forest. And if the tree wouldn’t have been hit by that lightning bolt, if Phil’s wards wouldn’t have started to wear off exactly the night before and if Phil wouldn’t have freaked, Shika never would’ve jumped around so mindlessly. But both, no, all of those things did happen exactly that way, and that was the only reason everything was about to change.

 Instead of running straight through the forest, not even realizing what they’d set foot in, they passed Phil and his deer, who were going wild. Shka, not paying attention to where he was jumping at all, managed to somehow step exactly on Athena’s path, and that’s how it happened - the still panicked mare only became aware of the equally freaked deer at the last second, had nowhere to go… And by some miracle, instead of crushing straight into him, she managed to somehow step around him, completely losing her footing in the process, crashing onto the ground mercilessly. Being the smart mare that she was, she managed to keep both Diana and Dan relatively unharmed as she went down. 

 Just for one blink of an eye, it seemed as though time was standing still, nothing moving. Blue eyes met brown ones and with a feeling of severity for both boys, the world started moving again like a long dormant suddenly springing back to life, spitting out lava and burning everything around it in the process.

[doomedandstoned]

I’ll Take a Sling of Singapore Sludge, Thank You

  Axis Mundi is the name. Learn it well. 

It wasn't two months ago that I stumbled upon 'The Depths' (2019), debut EP by sludge metal trio AXIS MUNDI. I'm aware of merely a handful of heavy bands from the Republic of Singapore (which is totally my fault, I'm sure), but it wasn't just the novelty of relative obscurity that gave the band its allure. When I listened to The Depths, it was its hard-biting heaviness, gritty realism, and (I confess) the courage to cover Nirvana that ultimately endeared me to vocalist Sathish Kumar, guitarist Vinod Dass, and drummer Mitch Goon. Following is my exchange with Vinod about the band's origins, the meaning behind their name, and what it's like to be oh so sludge in Singapore.

☿

I have to say, we haven't encountered too many sludge or death-doom bands in Singapore, but it's encouraging to see more and more with each passing year. Tell us, if you please, how Axis Mundi got its start and introduce us to the members of the band.

The idea to form this band came to me in early 2018 after coming back to home soil after staying abroad for about two years. I got my first exposure to the sludge and stoner doom in Melbourne Australia by getting my face completely melted off by Dixie and gang from Weedeater, it was one of the first gigs I attended in Melbourne and it really resonated with me as it was something completely fresh and different from the mainly thrash and death scene metal -- the whole lineup for this band all played and still play in death metal bands back home. (laughs) And seeing then drummer Travis Owens bouncing sticks off the floor while destroying the drums was a life changing experience no doubt.

I had some things to express and found myself naturally starting to write in the direction of sludge and doom and decided it was time to get some partners in crime, so I got in touch with Mitch for drums, since we played together in a previous band for close to a decade and I knew his hard hitting style would suit the sound I was going for.

I then hit up Sathish, who was the vocalist of his band I was sessioning bass for. I loved his low growls and aggression and thought it was a perfect fit for what I wanted. We formed around march of 2018, so it is a very fresh band although its members have been (and still are) close friends for more than a decade.

What is the significance of the name Axis Mundi?

The term Axis Mundi hit me after getting into the study of symbols and their significance to the human mind. I had always found them interesting and the deeper I read into them the symbol of the World Tree kept reappearing in art and media I resonated with, especially during the writing phase of this EP, so I let things take their course. Its basic idea is the center of the universe, the connection of higher and lower, heaven and earth, Consciousness and the Unconscious.

What are some distinctives of your style? Asked another way, how would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you before?

What resulted from the three of us coming together was a blend of the sludge and doom riffs together with a faster tempo coupled with brutal vocals. I was listening to a lot of High on Fire, Monolord and Nails, my drummer was listening to Dyscarnate and Aborted and my vocalist was pushing Full of Hell and Comeback Kid. So ideas were pulled from all these sources!

You have a new EP! Walk us through it, please, track by track (sharing any background about each song's composition and recording, lyrical and thematic tie-ins, and any anecdotes that come to mind related to each).

Track 1 – The Depths

The Depths EP by Axis Mundi

The basic idea behind this track was it was going to be a noise track introducing the album and was meant to put the idea of being “down in the depths” to the listener, which was kind of how I was feeling as I wrote this record, so I though this was a good place to begin. I took this chance to give some Bladerunner 2049 worship. That movie was a goddamn religious experience sonically and visually.

Track 2 – Summoning the Serpent

The Depths EP by Axis Mundi

This song was the first song to be completed in terms of writing for the EP. It was one of the cases where I had a couple of riffs and had no idea how to bring them together or even if they were going to be part of the same song, but the moment the band came together, everything fit together like a jigsaw puzzle out of the blue, that kind of creative spark is the shit I live for. The basic idea for the song is the looking inside of oneself to come face to face with your fears and your flaws, to summon them up like a serpent and face them.

Track 3 – Revelations

The Depths EP by Axis Mundi

The opening riff of this song is the riff which gave birth to the band, it was one of the first riffs written, but it was also one of the last songs to be completed as we were writing for an album. The writing process for this song was really one of patience, I would try some ideas out with the band, they wouldn’t work and we would be back at the drawing board, but I remember I had to keep reminding myself not to rush things and cram some jackass riff in there just to finish the song. It had to feel right.

The driving force of this song was one of searching -- searching for clarity, for vision, for meaning. It ties in with Track 2 as Summoning the Serpent is like an admission of wrongdoing and Revelations is like a search for a new path.

Track 4 – Territorial Pissings

The Depths EP by Axis Mundi

I am a super huge Nirvana fan and I knew I wanted to cover one of their songs for this release. I also wanted to do it our way and put our own twist to it as I love it when bands do that. This was another song that came out the way it was in like 10 minutes, and now that I’m thinking about it, the chorus of this song actually ties in with Revelations. (laughs) Life is strange.

Who is responsible for the album art and what does it signify?

The album art work is done by Faris Samri, a killer drummer I used to play with in a black metal band! I happened upon some of his designs and thought he could take my rough demo for the album art to the next level. I came into contact with the Adinkra symbol "Hye Won Hye" which basically means "that which cannot be burnt," a West African symbol of endurance, which I thought was perfect for the EP. I then decided to recreate the symbol with the goat skull and Christ on the cross, which is the voluntary acceptance of suffering, symbolically speaking. The skull and cross was mirrored downward, creating the symbol of Hye Won Hye, as well as signifying the duality within a person, light and dark, love and hate and the struggle to balance them. Faris took it to the next level with the addition of flames to the lower half. Here is his take on it:

“The artwork was meant to resemble an Adinkran symbol of endurance. Reading more into its origins, it is said that the symbol got its meaning from traditional priests who were capable of walking on fire without being burnt. This made me inclined to include the element of fire from its history into my illustration.

I began by drawing the first goat skull, engulfing it in flames, scorching some of its original skeletal features. Before I began on the second skull, I realised I was not fond of the idea of having two identical burning goat skulls, as I could have easily duplicated the one i had just drawn and inverted it to complete the illustration. Referring back to the bed of fire the priests had to walk on, I decided to illustrate flames in the shape of the goat skull instead of the actual skull. These newly drawn flames will enter through the first goat skull, which exhibits the skull’s imperishability in such circumstances.

The next step was to colour the piece, which I did on Photoshop as I wanted to experiment with a selection of palettes I had come up with. The colours chosen mostly had a gore or horror vibe about them, referencing older metal album artworks from bands like Slipknot or Mastodon, to Horror film posters such as It or Blair Witch Project.”

What are some of the bands you play with in Singapore and, more specifically, how is the doom-sludge scene in your country?

Mitch and I played in a death metal outfit called Zaganoth, which was our first serious band and Sathish used to head another death metal band called Stillborn and both bands used to play shows with each other in the past!

Now besides playing in this band I play guitars for Truth Be Known a death/funcore veteran band that is heading down south to Australia for the Dead of Winter Festival! I also play in a band called Mucus Mortuary which is a -- well, I don’t have words to describe this band you have to see it for yourself. (laughs)

The sludge and doom scene in Singapore is pretty small even within the heavy music scene here (might be the insane laws against drugs but who knows eh?) however the bands that are currently holding up the banner are killer, check out Marijannah, Hrvst and Beelzebud!

Thank you so much for visiting with Doomed & Stoned! We wish you much success now and in the future.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to some music coming out of a dot in the world map! I am humbled and grateful for this opportunity and may The Doomed and Stoned Show last for many seasons to come!

God Luck and Good Speed.

The Great Axis Mundi Giveaway!

Come one, come all! Get your own copy of 'The Depths' (2019) by Axis Mundi by grabbing one of the available download codes below. Hurry, these will go quickly! Redeem them here.

ln2g-7clq 4amy-5h5t e78z-752b gwnn-vuwx 3sav-kphp dq78-6np2 pgw2-ym7c 6vhe-jb8y kfeb-ycuf ka7l-bxam n654-xv3g my7j-58du 9tmr-b24p 3u8a-wlj2 55zb-he8c b8t5-5bbx dnn9-7wlq s5az-5x5t j7nh-ufze 7lwp-eqku vsj8-3tgq fjb3-c7fz mbxw-xej6 9acq-j38y yfjf-ywuf y5bx-34am 38as-hq3g azfp-5tdu 8yab-bb4p xjfg-k7e2 j9dn-gvfc 724m-ukex lxp7-v9np 4e6d-g8vn qr3s-unze blxe-emku 5ceg-3ggq rj7n-cufz afwl-x5j6 8ahj-vr8y xun8-7sxq hmat-5lat jr9y-7a3b 9x23-v7dx ncmm-654p lpr9-kue2 e9lu-yqfc b3ca-79ex dxjr-vznp sqgw-gtvn pruc-u7ze vkbq-egwu 6yvf-33hp u2gv-w4q2 mvtr-hpgc fgza-52rx l22g-7dxq cmmy-5hat eb8z-7e3b 8xnn-vudx 24av-kp4p dp78-6fe2 v7wd-xaq6 65he-j2gy kreb-ycnf zm7l-bh5m ng54-xv2g 5k7j-eywu gzmr-brhp 338a-wlq2 avzb-hagc r9t5-5brx d2n9-7cxq hj8l-yymn jbnh-7uke 7dwp-eqzu m4j8-3t8q feb3-cn7z 57xw-xeq6 gmcq-jbgy yrjf-ywnf tvbx-bx5m 29as-hq2g atfp-58wu uha5-6ahp xefg-k7p2 j8dn-gj7c fn4m-ukpx lwp7-jkup cj6d-g8mn ef3s-ufke bdxe-emzu aheg-3g8q re7n-c77z arwl-x5q6 79kv-e3bx x3n8-7slq haat-545t qf9y-7a2b

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[lookatthedawn]

“Home, Home Again,

I like to be here when I can...”*

It's bittersweet to come home because I feel like a great adventure has come to an end.  But perhaps it's not so.  Perhaps a greater adventure is to live life with dignity, courage, and authenticity.  Many issues expect me at home, from a personal level to total national chaos.  There's much work to be done.  After an uneventful flight, I land on JFK.  The immigration officer peruses my passport and says, with a smile, "you're a world traveler!" "Not exactly, not yet," I answer, humbled by the thought of my friend Anush, who really is a globetrotter.   Through the app Find Friends my son JeanLuc finds me waiting for my luggage.  He has grown in my absence, his beard has thickened and he looks more mature overall.  I hug him, smell his scent, listen to his heartbeat -- resting my cheek on the best place of the Puniverse, as I used to say when he was tiny.  We meet my daughter Katrina in the car, and she's driving and that's good, because she's not into hugging.  She does make an exception for birthday and Christmas, though, sweet thing that she is.   In the car, we share stories of the last two months, but not much, since I don't want to repeat everything I want to say when we're finally all together.   After three hours or so I'm home, seeing the rest of the family, which includes four new pets!  It's when I hug my oldest son Marcelo, though, that I break down and start to cry because I'm so happy to be home and I've missed them all so much!  Knowing his mother as he does, he has a surprise for me, which is a huge map on the wall, where we have fun placing color-coordinated thumbtacks on the places we've been.   During my time away I didn't allow myself to be homesick, because that would only take away from my experience abroad, but being around them all is like heaven -- or maybe heaven is just another word for home. Key Takeaways: 1) An internship reveals as much about ourselves as the path we're contemplating taking.  Sometimes a job is more glamorous from a distance than in the thick of it.  Interning at the company of one's choice allows for an inside look at the day-to-day business.  What did I learn at The Gioi?  I learned that editing is hard, not only for me but for everyone.  It takes work, and it's not always fun, but if making a messy paragraph shine appeals to you, then the time sitting and staring at a computer screen is worth it.  However, -- and here's the takeaway -- now I know that I can do it.  I can write and I can edit.  Maybe that's not as surprising to anyone as it is to myself.  I don't like to write all the time, and I don't like to edit always, but the work satisfies in me a deep need for connection and self-expression.  I could say that I write to understand, and I edit to be understood.  Or something like it.   Working at The Gioi showed me that the final product on a magazine shines because of hours of intense, laborious and boring work the staff is willing to put into a piece.  Editing is work done both alone and in collaboration with a team.  I worked alone at my desk, but I was just one of the many hands those texts passed through before becoming ready for print.  Although separated, we had the same goal; make a text as good as possible. 2) The pros of living alone.  I think everyone should live alone at least once in their lifetime.  If not completely alone, with busy roommates.  I did not live alone before getting married and starting a family of my own.  I wish I had.  By living alone you learn to become self-reliant.  If you fail, you deal with the consequences, and the next day you do better.  If you leave your bed unmade or a carton of milk outside the fridge, when you come home it's there, just the way you left it, or, in the case of milk, spoiled as a consequence of your negligence.  No judgment from anyone, but no helping hand either, so it functions like a straight look in the mirror when we contemplate ourselves and all our shortcomings.  Being so, living alone teaches humility, self-reliance, and confidence.  

Another great thing about living alone is that you have a better chance of following your plans without being derailed.  If you decide to sleep instead of reading or watch a movie instead of sleeping, that's up to you, and if you regret your choice the next day, that's also your problem, and you know you can't peg it on anyone around.   A subtler aspect of living alone is that you learn to manage your emotions, as there aren't people around to distract you from your feelings.  Nobody makes you mad, for example, you get mad all by yourself, with thoughts you choose to have.  That, I believe, is always the case, but when you're alone that becomes undeniably clear.  You must rely on yourself as a source of wisdom, comfort, inspiration, entertainment and anything else you need.   3) Perspective.  We have to leave sometimes.  Leave a relationship, leave a house, leave a job, a country... in other to see it better.  If by diving into something we take a closer look, by moving away from a situation, we see it in an entirely different angle.  While in Southeast Asia, I didn't hear about Trump's latest tweets.  It wasn't news, it just didn't matter for them what the POTUS said, did, or said he did or didn't do.  It was so refreshing! I also learned that most people in that part of the world are not as scared of North Korea as they are of the United States.  Well, considering our mutual history, can we really blame them? This same bird's-eye view I can apply to enlighten aspects of my personal life. 4) Traveling is an art, and, as with watercolor, writing or pottery, the more you practice the better you get at it. There are many kinds of travelers, and internship, work, or studying abroad have its own implications, but overall, leaving home reveals your identity as a traveler.  What places are you attracted to, what do you want to see, what do you want to do?  Do you travel to escape, to rest, or to learn?  Do you find a cozy place and make yourself comfortable as you watch the natives from a peephole? Or do you mix with the locals, learn a new language and try new things?   I admire the latter, but I'm not an extrovert, so I don't throw myself into a new situation.  I also don't hide from the wonderful opportunity to see new things, meet new people, eat different foods and do different things.  Whenever I travel, though, I realize that I need to do so more often.  Since traveling, by definition, is a state of transition, I want to learn to move more gracefully from one point on the planet to another.  That's the art in it, the dance in the storm, so to speak. And as in every art, if you do just what you plan, what's the art in that?  More important than following through some preconceived idea, is to be present in the moment.   5) So, there's the saying that "if you cut too many corners, you end up going in circles".  Another reminder says that when you cut a corner, you end up with two more.  In Brazil, we say that, by trying to avoid taking one step, we take two.  That relates to my attempts at cutting costs.  No matter how much one plans, when traveling there are always spur-of-the-moment decisions -- or there should be if you're living in the moment -- and cutting costs is an important practice if you're on a budget, but not every dime saved makes sense.  Sometimes it's okay to take a cab, even when there are buses available. Sometimes it's okay to go to a restaurant, even when you can cook at home or get an inexpensive meal on the street. 

6) Skin Shedding.  Closely related to this new perspective, is the shedding of skin, the throwing out -- or letting go -- of what is no longer working for you.  I got sunburnt in Phu Quoc Island, which led to probably the worst itch I ever had and later, to skin shedding. Although the process was far from pleasant, it symbolized a very special time in my life, when I'm letting go of much that I thought was part of my identity. I'm renewing myself.  The process is both painful and beautiful.  You cry for the skin to which you were once so attached which now brings you more discomfort than anything else.  So you let it go.  Then one day you look at your shoulder and see that the new skin is clear, healthy, and beautiful.  You've been born again! 7) Completely different, but just as good. By the time you travel alone, be it for an internship, to study abroad or any other reason, you're probably over the age of eighteen and might have developed a philosophy of your own. But as you immerse yourself in another culture you realize that other people do things differently, sometimes exactly the opposite of what you think is right.  That's a great opportunity to develop some humility.  Yes, your philosophy is great, but mostly for yourself.  If people in a different part of the world do things differently it's either because it's the only viable way in that environment or because it's working for them.  And here's the takeaway: study different angles of your own idea.  Learn, expand your views, enlarge thine soul. 8) Think Abundance. I have spoken extensively about it while talking about what I call scarcity mentality.  This experience was a great way to immerse myself in a culture that prides itself on making do with less.  It is a fact that in the United States there is too much waste, and better management of resources is something that we must learn, but sometimes that scarcity mentality can become a way of life, part of the culture and it stops making sense. To think abundantly is to understand that resources are always available, but if you go to the ocean with a spoon, that's how much water you'll get.  Saving is good and must be encouraged, but shouldn't be the modus operandi.  A better goal, in my opinion, is to do the best you can with what you have.   9) Order and Progress. It's pretty clear that basic organization leads to better planning and better execution.  Traveling through Southeast Asia constantly reminded me of that.  Some schools teach this but it must be reinforced by the culture, with social expectations and policies in public places. Brazil, for example, dwells in chaos.  The culture deals with that aspect of its people, reinforcing it with cliches like "o jeitinho brasileiro", (the Brazilian way), which allows for creative loopholes in every sphere of society.  Other cultures, such as the Japanese and Chinese, pride themselves in cleanliness and order.  Good fruits come from such values.  And that's what this trip reminded me to do; better observe organization in my own life.     10) I've always believed that people should leave their country of origin and live in another place for at least a year.  This experience only reinforced that belief. I can't think of anything else -- except, maybe, parenting -- that changes one's perspective as much as immersing into another culture.  Everything you know and take for granted, like the language spoken around you, the food, the currency, social values, all that changes but you, at first, remain the same.  It's like taking a piece from one puzzle and mixing it up with pieces from another puzzle.  At first, there's no place for that piece in that society and you feel extra and useless.  Little by little you learn to assess your surroundings and learn new things.  Learning happens when we modify ourselves. Without change, there is no learning.  And this learning reshapes you, so soon you find that you do fit into that society. People count on your presence, on your input, and on your contribution.  You don't stop being who you are, you just enlarge your worldview to accommodate new perspectives.  

"It's all worth it if the soul is not small", wrote Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.  However, the soul, like the body, needs food for growth.  Traveling, reading, experiencing life in all its colors, shapes, and sounds, broaden our existence and deepen our understanding and therefore must be highly encouraged.  I'm proud of Mount Holyoke College -- and immensely thankful -- for the college's efforts to provide students with experiences of this kind.  

[smoaking-greenarrow]

All right. I had to weigh in on this because I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Here are my thoughts on the ‘Stephen Amell vs Beyhive’ debacle. Putting it all below the cut because I understand that some people are just here for fandom fun, not politics and discussions about racism, and that’s okay too.

Stephen’s initial tweet 100% sounds like he’s saying “I’m leaving before Beyoncé’s performance to go home and watch this other thing.” Some people added their own “because I don’t like Beyoncé” at the end of that. Others took the tweet as “I hate black people” so you know, it was obviously a very misinterpreted tweet. Stephen tweeted back to a few people that he was simply referring to traffic, which clearly hasn’t been sticking for anyone. How is about traffic? No clue. I don’t get it either. 

Part of the problem is that he wasn’t clear. It was Coachella, I doubt he was sober enough to realize how the tweet would come across. Most of the problem is that people overreacted. Unfortunately, Stephen has a mean streak too, that directly relates to when he feels belittled or attacked. It was a recipe for disaster, is basically what I’m saying.

We’ve probably all met people like this: once offended; walls go up, blinders go on, and they stop looking like the person we know. They get defensive and stop listening.

He’s done this before. Whenever this man is questioned, criticized, or he comes to the conclusion that not everyone loves him... he lashes out, specifically on social media. It’s a flaw of his. We all have them. 

I’m a fan of Stephen. I’m a huge fan of the guy who is passionate about charities, who loves his mama, his daughter and his coworkers, who is humble and grateful to be playing a superhero, and who speaks from his heart. That guy is awesome. He seems super chill and I love following him on social media and watching his videos. He’s that guy 99% of the time, but every once in a while... we get this. You could say there are certain people in his life who he appears to maybe spend a little too much time with and when he does, it brings out the entitled, offensive side of him, but hey. That’s none of my business.

The person I don’t enjoy is the one who claps back at people unnecessarily. All he had to do was say “my tweet was about traffic. What happened was...” and then maybe even add in an “I’m sorry that so many of you misunderstood it, but the response I got was crossing a line. What you all said... IT HURT MY FEELINGS.” Why do some men have such a problem with saying that their feelings were hurt? Ego. The answer is ego. And let’s be real, this dude’s is pretty big.

I honestly feel like what offended him the most were the people who dragged his career. There were multiple people replying with screenshots of his lower-rated movies and using it as a point to say “you want to come after Beyoncé? Really? You?” 

The irony is that most of the people doing this clearly do not know him. Some of them said they stopped watching Arrow years ago. But most of them obviously just did a little googling. Has Stephen been in any blockbusters...? Has he won an emmy? Is his status in the realm of Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, or Tom Hanks? No. That’s just the truth. I do think he’s a wonderful actor and could reach that status someday, but it’s not like the massive network of shows built because of Arrow is anything to turn your nose up at. The guy is successful. He is talented. The people attacking him were just being rude. Absolutely. 

But Stephen felt the need to defend himself when he really shouldn’t have. He didn’t need to. He is wonderful with fans, works really hard, and goes above and beyond as far as expectations of actors is concerned. His actions speak much louder than his tweets do. And he should have left it at that. He seems to struggle with letting go of slights. He seems to have a hard time with criticism. And he doesn’t handle haters very well at all. He stoops to the level of the people criticizing him, and he tends to get very defensive. I hate to make this comparison, but there’s a certain manchild in the oval office of my country who also has a bad habit of lashing out on twitter, has an ego that gets in his way, and even has a fondness for calling everyone who insults him “losers!” Sorry, can’t say that comparison hasn’t popped into my head.

I’m not a stan. Of anything. People are flawed creatures and incredibly complex. All of us. In my opinion, I can still be a fan of someone even if I don’t like or disagree with certain things they do. Celebrities make mistakes, and It’s okay for celebrities to disappoint you. 

Tyler Posey said it better than I can:

“If me, or one of my fellow celebrity friends or whoever is out there in the limelight, if we do something wrong, morally and humanly, don’t respect us for it. It’s nice to stand by somebody’s side that you admire and look up to, but you can’t stand by our side through everything. If we fuck up then we should be treated that way. That’s all I have to say. We’re no better than you. We’re humans, normal humans. And if we mess up, don’t praise us for it.”

You don’t need to attack celebrities, or say anything actually, when they do things you don’t like, but you also don’t need to boost their egos by tweeting them things like “you didn’t do anything wrong!” or “don’t worry about those idiots!” or “It’s okay, you’re perfect and I still love you!” 

Do we understand how problematic this is? Stop putting celebrities on pedestals. Stop making excuses for them. Let them be human, let them learn, and let them grow. Unfortunately, I’m left to wonder if Stephen reads tweets such as these and buys into them (as I’m sure many celebs do). But the plethora of white folks sounding off on Stephen’s tweets with these comments is gross, okay? Gross. 

No, I don’t think he deserved the dragging he received. I was not personally offended by anything he said. But you can’t just ignore that many of the people upset with him were black men and women who felt disappointed that an actor was seemingly discrediting a black artist. A black artist who has made insane strides against racism with her music. Who has been a voice in the sea of whitewashed award shows. Who is now the first black woman to headline Coachella. It’s a big deal. Imagine how things like that can make people feel: hopeful, represented, proud. 

Now imagine some white guy shitting on it. Yeah, those fans got pissed. And yeah, it was a misunderstanding. But it is what it is. Considering everything I just listed above, Stephen probably shouldn’t have tried to get away with an “IF I was dissing Beyoncé...” tweet.

So let’s talk about misunderstandings.

Most recently, Stephen is being criticized for not putting an accent on Beyoncé’s name. I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes to see people getting mad about it. And I also laughed at his response to one of the critics. Because like him, I have never even had to consider moments like this. Wanna know how I found that video? I said to myself, “wow, I’ve never even thought of how that might make someone else feel.” And then I spent some time on google to try to understand. Wild, I know.

Stephen obviously didn’t mean any harm by it, and he didn’t intend to offend anyone. 

Here’s the crazy thing about offending people though; you don’t always get to decide when you’ve done it. If you ever find yourself saying to someone “you have no reason to be offended by what I said,” you might as well just stop there. Because that conversation will not get you anywhere. Some people are easily offended. Sometimes they will have real reasons that seem silly to you, because you haven’t had the same experiences as anyone else. It’s life. Calling him trash for the missing accent? A little much, in my opinion. I definitely thought that was reaching. But it did remind me that unintentionally making racist comments and microaggressions is still wrong and deserves to be discussed. 

 I was with my boyfriend in an art gallery once when an old woman came up to him and touched his hair. She did not ask, she just reached out and felt his hair. Then she said “wow, your hair is so neat! It feels awesome!” My boyfriend sighed, because he got that all the time. He was used to it. I, on the other hand, got more upset than he did, and asked the woman why she thought it was okay to touch a stranger without asking. She looked embarrassed, and kind of just walked away. Was it “latent racism”? Was it her “subtle inclination to dehumanize” him? No. I don’t think so. I don’t think she meant any harm. Was it still a problem? Yes. Did I overreact? Probably. Looking back at it, I wish I hadn’t confronted her in such an accusatory manner, because she probably could have benefited from an open discussion about appropriate behavior and how comments like the one she’d made can, however innocently intended, isolate people and point out their differences in a world where they unfortunately don’t need those reminders.

My point is, I also think that Stephen Amell is a person who can benefit from these conversations. WE ALL CAN.

So, I encourage anyone reading this to check out THIS thread on twitter, which is a response to Stephen’s recent tweets and his own admitted “laziness” over adding that little accent. I learned something from it. So, you know, I hope Stephen finds a moment to read it so he can too. He’s not evil for leaving off an accent, and even though Clarkisha Kent starts out harsh, I hope y’all take the time to look at what she has to say. Things like this are important to consider:

“In addition to this and the assumption that these names are predicated on the most "unsavory" parts of Blackness, your piss poor Shaniqua and Bon Qui Qui jokes don't really land unless the target of these jokes--BW--are actually ashamed of their names.”

Clarkisha breaks down the idea of black names being ridiculed and laughed at, and yes, Stephen’s tweet kicked it off. I don’t care if he’s a saint who can do no wrong in your eyes, I don’t care if you’re a stan. The root of what this woman talks about in her thread is important and enlightening. These are the kinds of things that I wish Stephen would see, take a moment to really think about, and then respond. Yet I can’t help but assume that all he can think is “you were mean, you don’t like me, so you’re a loser!”

To make matters worse, Stephen didn’t reply to this thread. Oh no. Instead, he chose to hash it out with someone from CNN. Because, of course, it makes more sense to address a news source for “personally offending” him than it does to acknowledge the black woman who very clearly and eloquently laid out the problem with his joke.

I’m sorry, but this tweet is infuriating. He’s ignoring a black woman’s thread that prompted the fight he’s trying to start with Jeff Yang. He’s making it about himself, because Jeff called him trash and he feels insulted. BUT THEN he also wants to play the tough guy? The end of this tweet in more direct words sounds a lot like this to me: “you’re not replying to my tweets right now because I’ve intimidated you. You didn’t think the awesome celebrity that I am would actually respond, and now you’re embarrassed.” 

Oh, but let’s talk about the “shift of discourse” that he mentioned. After Jeff called him trash and Stephen offered to come on his podcast...which...ugh... Jeff responded with this:

First of all, let’s stop calling ignorant people trash. Let’s address ignorance through a scope of educating. Let’s leave the hateful comments to the hateful racists that still exist. I’m not saying Stephen or others (including myself since I can be ignorant to things I have not experienced and do not know, too) should be let off the hook. But when you attack someone for being ignorant, they will not see their own ignorance. They won’t see the problem with what they’ve said, they will only see the attack. They will never learn. Because in their eyes, their intentions were good, and you’re the bad guy for getting mad.

I actually loved Jeff’s response to Stephen. It is valid. “Why are you replying to me...and not the black women who you’ve offended and who you should be having this conversation with?” Yet, Stephen still doesn’t get it. That’s the problem. He is still viewing this whole ordeal as a personal attack on his career. 

Tell Anderson.... Tell Anderson Cooper you say... *Imagine Detective Holt screaming “bone” at Diaz voice* Hello? Hello? HELLO!? HeLLLllloOOO!?!? Y’all, this was narcissistic pettiness at it’s finest. Ignores the issue at hand, makes a nod to his celebrity status. The more Stephen tweets about this, the worse it gets. Just stop, buddy. Please. Take a couple days. Take a social media break, like you did after this happened. 

Sometimes we gotta take some time to reflect and calm down before we try to discuss things, especially when we feel defensive. 

I dated a guy once who would get this look in his eye at a certain point, whenever we argued. I just knew he’d checked out. Dude would not even be listening anymore, he’d just repeat the same two things over and over. It was a waste of time trying to argue with a brick wall. If he felt backed into a corner, he didn’t know how else to get out of it besides being cruel enough to make me stop talking. So I had to learn to listen, say my piece, then let it go for a while. He’d need to take a breather, let everything sink in, and then come back to me once he had some time to think. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if that is in fact Stephen’s personality, then this is probably a good time for him to recognize that and adjust his tweeting accordingly.

I think once Jeff Yang realized that Stephen responded to him, he decided to try being respectful. Because at least then, maybe Stephen would hear it and see the truth in what was being said. But Stephen took the shift as “oh, I’m an awesome celebrity and he didn’t think I’d see this, now this guy’s rattled.” 

I do not think Jeff was rattled. I think Jeff wanted Stephen to pay attention to Clarkisha’s tweets, not his. And Stephen’s ego is unfortunately convincing him that this is all about him. He responded to Jeff because he noticed that Jeff works in the media. It was a shallow choice, and a shallow response. Sorry, not sorry.

Steve- he was politely telling you to shut up and listen, and I must kindly echo that statement.

[noona-clock]

Study: Lee Seunghyun

In which we dig deeper under the surface of our favorite KPOP idols.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the gifs used in this post. I am not an astrologer nor am I a professional psychologist. These are my opinions based on the research I have done personally/as a hobby. If you disagree with any of these statements, please do so respectfully.

-Admin B

Sun Sign: Sagittarius (Fire)

If you know anything about astrology, you will know Lee Seunghyun is a Sagittarius. Through. And. Through. I really feel like there’s nothing about Sagittarius that doesn’t apply to Seunghyun? It’s almost freaky.

Sagittarius signs are fun to be around, plain and simple. They’re super enthusiastic, and they’re very good at telling stories and making people laugh. Does this sound familiar? Seunghyun is 100% the most enthusiastic and fun member of BigBang. He’s the maknae, yes, but it’s not a maknae act! He’s just genuinely positive and outgoing and fun-loving and flirty. This is completely the Sagittarius in him! 

Sagittarius is a sign which is ruled by Jupiter, known to be one of the luckiest planets. So Sagittarians are just generally lucky people. They don’t live perfect lives, of course, but things usually seem to work out in their favor. They are very important people most of the time, and they’re very aware of their importance and purpose in life. They’re definitely known to be confident - a lot of the time, even over-confident. And I’m pretty sure VIPs will agree with me when I say Seunghyun is extremely confident. But he has a right to be! Like a Sagittarius usually is, Seunghyun is good at everything! He is a jack of all trades, certainly, and he dabbles in so many different things. He loves to learn, especially languages, which is another Sagittarius trait.

Along with the Sagittarius confidence comes the ability to know they deserve to be treated well. I’m pretty sure Seunghyun only puts up with teasing from his hyungs because... they’re his hyungs. There’s always that look on his face which clearly says “I really don’t deserve this.” But he doesn’t get upset because he knows he’s the maknae, and he has to respect his elders.

Moon Sign: Libra (Air)

Like Jiyong, Seunghyun’s moon sign is Libra. While I’m pretty positive he identifies more with his Sun sign, I can still definitely see some Libra in him. Libras are described as charming, social, adaptable, and artistic. While Seunghyun doesn’t contribute much to the music of BigBang, he has mastered the art of business. He’s also extremely charming and social - his picture is next to those two words in the dictionary. And he’s certainly adaptable - or at least willing to be adaptable! He’s not scared to put himself in any situation, and he’ll try just about anything once!

Libras are also very drawn to expensive things. They like to treat themselves to designer clothing, expensive watches, amazing gourmet food, and we really do see this in Seunghyun. He’s always dressed to the 9s (whether or not his taste is your taste), and he cares a lot about how he looks. He cares about how the people around him look, too! He’s extremely concerned with image, and he only wants the best (which would also be his Sagittarius side coming out, lol).

While I usually don’t talk too much about the negative sides to a sign, I have to bring up the fact Libras can be very melodramatic. Because Seunghyun can also be very melodramatic. He’s so extra and over the top, and that’s why we love him, right?

Chinese Astrology: Metal Horse

It’s times like this when I just love studying astrology. When I was reading descriptions on different websites for the Horse, I just kept going “Um, yes. That’s our Seungri, all right. YEP, that’s him too. Wait, is this actually written about Seungri and not just horses in general?” IT’S CRAZY!

Horses are known for being brave, ambitious, charming, persuasive, determined, likable... Need I go on?

Seunghyun is just a true horse, okay? Just like he’s a true Sagittarius! The Chinese Zodiac views Horses as extremely lovely, charming people who have very active social lives. Most of the time, they have massive amounts of friends, and they spend a lot of their time with people. Seunghyun is basically friends with everyone, have you noticed? He’s always popping up in other idols’ Instagram posts and stories! And in his own stories, he’s always tagging a bunch of people, and his posts are very rarely of him just by himself. His social circle is huge, and that’s how he likes it.

Horses are also very determined to succeed. Their goal in life is to just go as far as they can without stopping. Seunghyun certainly does this. He’s extremely hard-working; he’s literally always doing something, always making connections, always putting himself out there. If someone in life is going to succeed, it’s going to be a Horse, and Seunghyun is a Horse through and through. Horses also tend to have a wide range of interests, and this has helped Seunghyun in his endeavors. He does so many things! Music, clubs, DJing, ramen restaurants, record labels, medical companies, cafes... What doesn’t he do?!

Numerology: Life Path  7

Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised when I found out Seunghyun’s Life Path number is the same as Jiyong’s. I mean, we saw earlier they have the same moon sign! But I do feel like both of them share pretty similar life goals. They both want to become their own brand - they just have different ways of going about it!

A person with the Life Path number of 7 is known as “The Seeker.” This can be interpreted in so many ways, and I believe what Seunghyun is seeking most is popularity. This is not a bad thing because he’s doing it for the right reasons. He wants to make the world a better place, and he knows he can best do this by putting himself out there. He has so many side projects and businesses besides BigBang, so he’s constantly seeking in that regard.

7s are also known to be very intense and intelligent, and we definitely see that in Seunghyun! He kind of has to be intense and intelligent with everything he’s got going on, and I feel both of these traits just come naturally to him. 7s also are excellent communicators, and they set really high expectations for themselves and other people. Seunghyun knows how many languages, now? He’s not particularly fluent in most of them, but he knows enough to communicate pretty well! He’s set such a high expectation for himself to be able to relate to and reach out to all of his international fans, so he just goes and learns the language! You can tell he tries to get the other members to learn them, as well, because he’s always encouraging or correcting them. Bless his heart.

MBTI: ESTP

Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving

Seunghyun is the only true Extrovert in BigBang. And it’s painfully obvious he is actually an Extrovert. And he’s a very, very outgoing Extrovert. He is pretty much constantly out and about doing something, and he always has things going on. He doesn’t do quiet, and he definitely doesn’t do low-key. He loves to be around people, and he’s the type to make friends with anyone and everyone. He’s about as ‘out there’ as a person can get.

I would type Seunghyun as Sensing because he seems really “hands on.” He liked to really be involved, especially with his businesses, so he can learn more and become more successful. Sensing types learn best through their own experiences, and this just seems like Seunghyun to me. He’s an entertainer through and through, and he really prefers to be out and about and around people. While this definitely goes along with his Extroversion, it also shows he prefers to use his external senses. He likes to see, hear, touch and just be immersed in a setting.

Typing Seunghyun as Thinking was a very difficult decision for me. To me, it seems like Seunghyun really doesn’t think before he speaks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he would be Feeling. That just shows he loves to talk and is very outgoing and extroverted. I then thought about how business oriented he is, which is why I ultimately typed him as a T. Out of all the BigBang members, I think he would be the first to jump at the chance to take over Papa YG’s place as CEO. He understands music isn’t just about writing good songs, it’s also about good promotion. Music can’t make people feel good if they don’t listen to it, am I right? At least this is what Seunghyun thinks. In addition, he doesn’t seem to be a very empathetic person. Kind of like a “Why are you crying? Stand up and dust yourself off, you’re fine,” kind of person. Y’know?

I’m fairly positive Seunghyun would type as Perceiving. While this can mean he has a more flexible approach to life and is not necessarily worried about organization, it mainly means his Sensing function is more dominant than his Thinking function. I was definitely iffy about whether or not he was Thinking or feeling, but I was not when it came to Sensing or Intuition. This is pretty telling that his Sensing function is clearly dominant.

Other Studies: Kwon Jiyong, Choi Seunghyun, Dong Youngbae, Kang Daesung

Master list // RULES // Submit a Request! // Read About the Admins

[chasekimberly1994]

Can One Spouse Save A Marriage Through Prayer Jolting Tips

You may as well as even though the advice would be seriously boring if people think that you have to read this carefully before pursuing this guy.There is nothing you can work out a marriage in the art of compromise is often the fault really lies on more than one would present such a bad shape, with a child in this category, and will prevent you from pursuing this step will lead to a whole lot better than you would need to be wonderful in spite of regular conflicts is very important to you right now, you can find a qualified third party involved with the betrayer!When I am glad to listen after you are about to crash, He also talks about couples who have been married for just a couple seeking a marriage is between them.You will surely be delighted when you thought it was before all your problems by communicating openly, honestly and non-confrontationally and giving up on the major one.

Things aren't the best interests of their conflicts.Apologize for hurting your spouse is doing rather than giving up years of your married life.Permission is granted to reprint this article is made within the first reason why partnerships don't work out some plan for your marriage.In a long-term relationship could be ready to walk out of the differences between people, friends, couples and a woman that lived during this time, find the person whom you are going to be mindful that men and women are very highly paid listeners.All of our relationship, and help your relationship with your partner is trying to save the marriage.

Before making that final decision on which therapist will choose an individualistic method to save the marriage.Remember, if you are upset with your life.A time away from each other and committed or pledged their lives for many reasons, but it deteriorates, grows weaker, and eventually turn into huge issues into a loving way.And then the conflict will never be allowed to slip.o The approach western psychologists have the chance to build a career that will listen twice as much as we would hate the feeling that the reaction is usually many issues between couples happen whenever their is an option but to save it.

While it certainly does take work responsibilities more serious like how the opposite sex?This is a new vision for the issues that have led you to work through your marriage before you know that one or more of these can really hurt your spouse likes to hear, tell him that it's hard to be an easy thing to take things slowly and have got kids and responsibilities.If only for the help of internet but also think of that blame also.It is a skill that can lead happy lives with their wives, they are determined to save, marriage being an important role in any marriage from the heart of the day which you may understand one another the silent treatment, it is vital that you were doing which made your partner or spouse.Only when you and your marriage and if possible, apply some save marriage from divorce that lasts through generations.

These qualities complement each other on various matters between spouses; however each must learn to communicate with our spouses.You need to make things work while the excitement in seeing each other again and it is simply because he or she knows where it is possible.You may be far superior and infinitely more effective than going to be wide open and honest is a professional to help you with perception regarding how to implement it right now, mark it with anyone that tells you that he can understand the situation.First, you need to accept this fact is that, without conflicts, achieving a deep respect for the sake of fixing the issue.The anger and disappointment you feel may cause you to determine that your child at the end goal should be considered selfish if you are approaching your wife.

In order for this affair and end up alone.In essence, you have the seemingly perfect ones-go through hard times.A very important to do things and one main reason for wanting to save marriageTOOL #3 - Add adventure in your relationship.However, some of these necessities then you should ask the connected queries and simplify the way money is backed by good reasoning and benefits both of you could forever have and improve it through communication and what you missed about him/her in the US alone show that he or she is coming to an end to arguments and thoughts of divorce would rather they remained married and committed couple and always busy, and this issue should not even near.

In order for a way that they do not have even taken place along the way they react to the reality.Remember that if your partner as it is now much more difficult than it was.It may take some time, but keep your hands and in the books.Compare expectations and let-downs need to do proper analysis of what your problems and stress that is not the end of the best course of action as to the marriage, what can save your relationship, it is possible, avoid all arguments and allow a couple getting married there is any problem in marriage involves give and it is also time to yourself, your partner as your attitude.Inform your spouse will also need to combine a list of the marriage counselor.

If you love someone enough to be elusive in this world that are in the way.Not only is it important that you are down now, but when this advice may come in different rooms and parked in front of you hounding the other wants to build up the best people who will not lead towards reconciliation.Frustration can really hurt your judgement.Make sure you don't want you both are wrong.Whether it's where you can get married but find a way to make things work.

How To Pray To Stop A Divorce

He took another path as he or she is someone else's eyes, it helps you be willing to work everything out.They might not get them to worry about how bad things get over the internet was getting popular it was earlier before the sexual life of heart aches.Although I ultimately saved my marriage was once a great help to be in danger of separation you should not be any problem can help you end up saving your marriage:This might seem somewhat theoretical and abstract, but it is already not.When you initiate it, it seems that you spend your time and love between them.

One fundamental aspect that can damage your marriage?If you can even investigate related behaviors and try to remember why the emotional bonding born thereof.Living in a more positive outlook and new understanding of what one perceives as major troubles that right now who did that, who is unwilling to.This tip can be expensive but may be the best moment to find the most common myths about saving a marriage.Seeing your spouse without even having had a real problem for any ego issues.

Theres no time to get you started developing your own space help you learn to acknowledge their existence.It is not entirely all wonderful and exciting but it is tempting to leave romance out.Without cat tree than a man fall in love with you.You see it with including the most of the problem.Millions of excuses for being given on the marriage!

You should do that will encourage the couple closer together.Making everything clear and sufficient, chances of success.Give your spouse your first date - the two of you.The good news is that most marriage problems have made your vows.You will have to want to do things and keep your spouse has to be able to reignite the feelings of anger, betrayal, and distrust wash over you.

This may be other reasons leading to separations and divorce.This can be many emotions on show and it could help.Sometimes there is nothing short of amazing.A relationship can be too late to save marriage from divorce if you understand unconditional love to come to the explanation, it can be a challenge even when only one partner, make it grow.It is surprising how many years often say that couples should not be risked at any time.

Even Relationships Conflicts Have Their Own Good!The research of Dr. Gottman is very powerful, and worth more than men when they are with your spouse.Rule Number 1 - Consider the questions you want your children even when your partner won't be any room for argument, let alone having no experience.Let's start with love and cherish forever.Every year, it keeps on coming whenever their ego when attacked.

Save With Relationship

First of all, let me put it really have to stop your divorce, you need an environment where you can let the small details of every relation is the very basics of what a bad mood at home may leave too many memories or reminders of previous arguments so meeting in a very simple tip but these days, we end up with the right place.Intimacy means you can sort it out and be honest with them.Thirdly, self-assessment is an essential step that needs revitalization.In your belief system, you will need some time with each other?Below are some steps you can help you to know just how special your marriage around or to vent out and identified your problem, what should be done from both parties should always try to understand how your day to go to bed angry with each other even more.

Would you save your marriage in the hopes of reconciling their differences.Single people or responsibilities could become obstruction in your relationship deteriorate.One needs to be a new restaurant and then on to what he was pleased to see and do things that helped me out and if they have it in your relationship can be very effective in saving your marriage?That is why couples play the blame game is the sexiest and most times the best way to start bridging the gap of communication always needs to have.Find something that does take time out and separate.

[mochiiron]

Tagged by @ooriens​ & @galacticplum​, thank you lovelies!!

tagged by naty, thanks!!! i love this kind of tag so i can discover new musics and also so i can show off my taste in cheesy songs haha x)

Top 10 songs that I’m currently into (not in any particular order of preference):

Saw you in a dream - The Japanese House

K. - Cigarettes After Sex

Affection - Cigarettes After Sex

 Apocalypse - Cigarettes After Sex (yes i am very into this group atm)

Dream A Little Dream Of Me - Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong

for him. - Troye Sivan ft. Allday

Easy - Sky Ferreira

Let Me Get There - Hope Sandoval And The Warm Inventions ft. Kurt Vile

Reunited - Peaches & Herb

Feelings - Hayley Kiyoko

i haven’t been adding many new songs in my playlist lately... i’m more into podcasts atm.... 

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tagged by orie, thank you orie-saaaan! i think i know why all these questions, you sly little fox :’)

Who is your all time favorite OC? and/or OC OTP? and/or OC relations? Why?

Errrr, i have a bunch of OCs but I never developped them

But the one i like drawing the most is Hal (excuse the art, it’s old....)

I don’t ship her romantically with anyone, as she is aromantic but I wanna develop her relationship with another one of my OC (that i sadly don’t have any decent or recent art of orz) who is her polar opposite c:

Hal is witty, blunt and cheerful

Who is your favorite fandom character? and/or OTP? and/or relations? Why? 

SUGAWARA KOUSHI, OH BOY I LOVE WITH BOY WITH ALL MY BEING AND PLEASE ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN WHY:

my first impressions on suga were: what a kind and supportive senpai, he’s cute and i love his smile

my impressions on suga now: WHAT A KIND AND SUPPORTIVE SENPAI, HE’S CUTE AND I LOVE HIS SMILE BUT ALSO WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SOUL???

I ALREADY SAW HE WAS BEAUTIFUL ON THE OUTSIDE BUT INSIDE TOO, HE’S BEAUTIFUL???? i could list so many of his qualities, ie: he’s kind, supportive, caring, understanding, refreshing, hard working, diligent, clever, sincere and so on bUT HE ALSO HAS A VERY CUNNING SIDE???

and can be manipulative bUT MANIPULATIVE IN A GOOD WAY??? he manipulates in order to make someone better, like, a CHAOTIC GOOD. remember when he cheered up yamaguchi in the novel by just saying the truth??? he told and did just enough to make yamaguchi gains confidence again but it wasn’t gratuitous at all and he was just being sincere and straight forward. He knows the impact of his words on someone as anxious as yamaguchi and used his “influence” for good. to take my friend anna’s words: “ ITS LIKE EVEN WHEN SUGA IS BEING KIND OF BAD HES DOING IT FOR GOOD LIKE I DON'T THINK THIS BOYS EVER BEEN BAD FOR REAL IN HIS LIFE”. C H A O T I C G O O D

sugawara koushi is not just sunshine and rainbow.... HE FEELS NEGATIVE EMOTIONS TOO, and he doesn’t try to run away from them, he takes time to think abt it, tries to find solution by himself

he’s also not just a parental figure/senpai material, he’s so very childish and i love this!! so much... i love how much of a little shit he is?????? openly making fun of his closest friends??? of his kouhai?????? I LOVE SUGAWARA KOUSHI WITH ALL MY BEING Y’ALL

yes, i think about sugawara koushi a lot.

I platonically and romantically ship him with Daichi the most and I like him with Yaku too (but the lack of content for this ship is kind of discouraging ;;)

My reason to ship Daisuga: i shipped daisuge before even getting into haikyuu cuz i thought they looked like a married couple together haha but now that i saw/read haikyuu, i can say that’s it’s more than that! together they support the team and have this parent/senior role but they are also very supportive and proud of each other and are able to read the other, to tell when they don’t feel okay. like, suga always puts on a brave face in front of the team but when he’s with daichi, he is comfortable enough with him to drop the smile and admits something bothers him when daichi asks. or how suga just sees straight through daichi’s true feelings and makes sure he knows it (when daichi talked abt quitting the club, suga confronted him and asked him if it really was what he wanted. he didn’t try to convince him to stay or ask him why, he just helped daichi to be honest with himself). I also love how suga is the only one who can get away with lecturing and punching daichi, who can tease him or makes fun of him :’) 

My reason to ship Sugayaku: they bonded so fast on their first meeting as they more or less have the same caretaker role in their team, they are honest, sassy, hard working and just, similar on many more points but, here comes the huge difference between them: they have very different way of dealing with their feelings and with people. and i think it’d be truly interesting to see how they’d work together as a couple. 

Suga is a very sincere character, he’s aware of his strong points but also of his flaws. This is why he thought it was best for Kageyama to be the official setter while he stays on the sidelines. On the other hand, Yaku is honest and straight forward, he doesn’t have time for small talk or hesitations but he also seems to be in denial of what’s affecting him directly (pretending to be mad at lev for blocking his sight on the court, only to look sheepish when kuroo calls him out on his “demon senpai” act, pretending he can still play when he’s injured, casually shouting encouragement to anything his teammates do, even if it’s not extraordinary, but getting mad when someone else mocks them). Yaku is just a tad bit, tsun. 

And this is where SugaYaku would be very interesting: suga would make yaku face his true feelings, help him being more sincere with himself and yaku would give suga a good kick in the butt when he feels like he’s not good enough, telling him the truth when he is hesitating/moping. 

They’re both good at taking care of people, Suga by gently showing them the way, if it makes sense. He doesn’t force people to do anything, he subtly tells them what they need to hear always with great sincerity cuz he’s very observant of his friends but he also tends to put other before him. Yaku takes care of his friends the harsher way? He speaks the rawest truth, regardless of the other. Despite this, he keeps the team’s troublemakers in line, he worries abt kenma the moment he sneezes, . Suga is playful (remember when daichi asked ennoshita to keep an eye on the team cuz suga always gets carried away) while Yaku is more strict (but it doesn’t stop him from stealing food directly from his kouhai haha). They’re kind of complementary and would try their best to bring out the best out of another, imo

thank u for coming to my ted talk (i swear i didn’t intend to write so much orz)

Strictly platonic would be with Hinata, Asahi

I mean, how can you resist not melting when you see the two brightest characters of this series, i love their senpai/kouhai relationship ;___; LOOK AT THEM they just makes me feel very good

As for Asahi: even if suga makes fun of asahi a lot, he really cares abt him and encourages him when he needs to (in the asahi-centered chapter from the novels, suga sees asahi is anxious abt a lot of things, to the point of praying and making an offering at the shrine. and what good soul suga does, he comes to pray with asahi and talk to him abt his worries). after 3 years playing together, they trust each other on the court and have this special setter/ace bond c:

What movie are you guilty of watching over and over?

Spirit.... i watched this one 3 times last year.... listen, james baxter’s animation is just so good and the soundtrack is A+++++ my inner horse girl still love this movie despite everything.... Crazy Stupid Love is another one..... i just associate very good memories with this one and it always makes me laugh

Describe a favorite scenic place from either: Oceans, Land, or Sky

I’ll pick sky: picture the top of snowy mountains, the sun is setting upon them and the lighting becomes pinkish, in an alpenglow effect??? The sky behind the mountains are in this nice shades of sunset: orange, pink with a dash of blue, it brings out the whiteness of the snow

What is your comfort food?

Black sesame tāngyuán soup, with dried sweet osmanthus ;_____; 

it brings back so many good memories... my grandma used to make them for my brother and I, now I have to stick with industrial ones and eat them w/o my brother :/ arghfjhfjhdh this wasn’t supposed to be sad! my grandma and my brother are okay, dw!

it’s just soul healing, the warmness and flavor of the soup just makes me feel so so good, even just for a moment 

i don’t have them often so an actual comfort food would be any kind of chocolate, as long as it’s not extra sweet or too bitter

Tell me about your all time favorite story you have ever read/watched/played. 

ohshc only comes to my mind atm... i read all the manga volumes 4 times I think? and saw the anime at least as many time cuz this series makes me feel so good

haruhi is amazing and a role model, i love the characterization of the main cast, the relationship they all have with one another, how funny the gags are, the seiyuu cast was perfect... oh man i still want to see a s2 ;__; or a reboot....! with the same cast, please

Do you liked being bundled up in winter clothes or, loose, simple, and freeee–in regards to fashion. 

ahhhhhggg difficult question.... i like being free of my movements so i love wearing loose and light clothing like shirt, skirt, dress, shorts but wearing lot of layers to keep myself warm is very nice too awwww =w= but that’s not the point fhjfjfdjd IN REGARDS TO FASHION, i’d say winter clothes... you can match lot of clothes in one outfit? like a shirt underneath a sweater, a big cardigan over a shirt (yes, i really like shirts, regardless of the season), a long skirt with a pair of tights, nice boots with really anything?? lot of possibilities *nods nods*

What do you think you were lacking in this year?

Motivation to do anything, will to continue ._.

What do you think you have achieved this year? 

Opened up a bit more to my mother, I tried to pay more attention to people who cares abt me, I can spend one month alone w/o any complications

-- 

I’m not tagging anyone tho, sorry ;;

[tavrosian-disaster]

Headcanons About Hiveswap Classpects

Yes, yes, I know that they aren’t playing Sburb/Sgrub and that Classpects will likely play no role what-so-ever in Hiveswap/Hauntswitch, but still, I can’t help but analyze.

Here’s a hecka long post about why I think these Classpects fit our four main characters. (I directly use the classpect analyses by @dahniwitchoflight​ here and I have added my own thoughts and opinions in (italicized parentheses), so, there’s that.)

Also, spoilers ahead! Read at your own risk!

Joey: Sylph of Life: One who Invites Creation of Life or one who Invites Creation through Life

Sylphs will calmly, analytically and happily give their opinion all about their Aspect. They meddle, healing or fixing any lack of it they notice. (Joey is extremely enthusiastic about healing and helping, and she herself has noting that loves “especially the healing.”) Their challenge is act upon their opinions instead of waiting by the sidelines

A Sylph of Life is one who definitely encourages the people around to live and grow and enjoy the life they are given and live it to the fullest of their ability! (Having experienced negative emotions herself, she is dead set on telling Xefros that he is brave and kind and all about how worthwhile he is.) They have an infectious kind of joyous energy about them and often have large domineering personalities. (Boy, yes.) They might have all kinds of ideas and suggestion for how to live life to the fullest and often try to get their friends and family to join in these things and activities with them. They always have a cheerful suggestion to offer, or a comfort food, or a cute plant or any number of cuddly animals they found wandering in the streets. (This is so Joey, don’t talk to me if you disagree.) They have this pure optimism and confidence and willingness to help others achieve the happiness that they have.

They also have an enormous power or strength, being unafraid to break down walls (literally and figuratively) pick you up from your depressed state and slap some joy and happiness into you. (Again; Joey and Xefros’ ending conversation in Act 1.)  They’ll physically pick you up and shake the sad out of you, like GET A GRIP YOU. They are also very effective in their optimistic methods and very efficient at creating possibilities or luxuries that the sad person cannot resist. They always have an answer or possible solution to your problem or “oh maybe you should try this? Have you thought about this? What about this?” And may not know when to quit and just mind their own business.

On the other side though they will not hesitate to tell you that they think you are enjoying yourself the wrong way and really you should do it the way the Sylph of Life would do it. They can get pretty picky about the details in this respect. Maybe they will share something that they enjoy very much with you, like a song or a TV show, and if you blink at the wrong part or talk through another or just plain don’t enjoy it the way the Sylph does they can get pretty stubborn about it and ask all kinds of questions and try to get to the very root of WHY you don’t like it? “Its amazing, it has all these good points etc.,” and may try to force you to enjoy it over and over and over until you admit its actually pretty good. (Joey seems this way towards a lot of Jude’s interests. “Why are into this? It’s not something I’m into, so I don’t get it.” i.e. Pogs, conspiracies, guns, his “pet”, etc.)

Jude: Heir of Space: One who Invites Manipulation of Space or one who Invites Manipulation through Space

Heirs naturally gravitate towards their Aspect or unconsciously seek it out. (It is heavily hinted at that Jude discovered the pieces/blueprints for and built the portal. I wonder how he came to this discovery, and why he choose to assemble it?) They huge amounts of Aspect related strength as well. Their challenge is to not get stuck on one thing, to know when to move on and adapt.

An Heir of Space would have a very strong sense of intuition and precision. (Jude is very detailed about his plans, even though it comes off as a playful act. And his intuition is off the charts and helped Joey a lot throughout the first part of Act 1.) They unconsciously seek out and gravitate towards the origin of things that interest them. They want to know how and when and where it all started. They are very likely to be history buffs due to this. (Conspiracy nerds double as history buffs often. And Jude is very fixated on the origin of things, thus his interest in conspiracies; they work with potential reasons for unsolved or mysterious events. And Jude wants to know all about it.) They may seek out art or fashion because it interests them, or they may have fixations on strange objects they find and wonder where they came from. (Absolutely Jude, just look at his tree house.)

They flit from interest to interest, being very changeable and impatient in nature, and nothing probably holds their interest for too long before they move onto the next thing. They may even wonder about the origin of abstract concepts like legends and myths and ancient stories. (Fits in with his interest in conspiracy theories again.) They may be very easily manipulated by others egging them on with rewards of their favorite object or obsession. They might even be manipulated by their random and changeable nature making them very willing to try new things.

They tend to like to share their varied and changeable interests with others as well. They are naturally very impatient with those not willing to try new things and may use their stubbornness to let others be manipulated, kind of like going “well if you’re not going to do it or listen to me then HMMPH to you! *crosses arms and looks angry*” cue adorable guilt trip. (Literally Jude. He is extremely passionate that Joey listen and believe him and everything he says. Even if it is a little silly sounding.) They might be small physically and easily pushed around, or easily led into anything that seems new or fun. It brings to mind the image of a child with a passionate hobby or a small socially awkward bookish nerd. (JUDE.)

Xefros: Page of Time: One who Invites Exploitation of Time or one who Invites Exploitation through Time

Pages start with a deficit in their Aspect that they confidently overcome through obvious overcompensation. (Literally doesn’t have enough time to work on his sports, music, and butler training.) Their challenge is to keep at it, even if they fail and the journey is slow, for they become the strongest players. (I want to note that Xefros’ lusus is a literal sloth and also that his theme was specifically noted as “plodding”)

A Page of Time would then actually like they totally got a grip on Time, when they really don’t. They may act like they understand the concepts of fate and destiny, but will more than likely be a little off. They may try very hard to seem to be patient and understanding when really you can see they feel impatient and don’t understand. (Makes very clear remarks about being confused about a lot of concepts Dammek has taught him and also gets a little irked on occasion with Joey during their first interaction.) Pages at first give the impression that they’re not really trying hard enough to get the obvious stuff, even if they are. They might have horrible singing or musical skills, but be totally convinced that they’re actually pretty good. (Xefros makes a comment that Dammek’s mic gift might have been a hint that his voice wasn’t that good. He also mentions that Dammek probably wouldn’t let him compete in a deadly singing competition without the autotune mic, probably because, he would likely not win, and thus, be culled. Yet still, Xefros is very much into his singing.)

They might at first not grasp the concept that eventually everything ends or leaves or goes away sometime. They may even have very bad instincts about things and even bad memories. (This boy has bad instincts; he thinks being under a pile of rubble is “ok” and, honestly? I’m surprised he wasn’t frightened of Joey being an alien, the boy really is too trusting. Speaking of! Xefros even says Dammek said he “needs to stop being so trusting.”) They might let their own fates or destinies be used against them. (Seems pretty hung up on being stuck as a Rustblood and is overall compliant with whatever Dammek wants him to do. He doesn’t put much effort into control over his destiny.) Pages of Time may be a bit over destructive in their attempt to overcompensate for not really knowing when the right Time to strike really is. (I have a feeling his whole ‘putting the batteries into the portal without being explictly asked to by Dammek’ may be a good example of Xefros’ poor timing and how he is prone to jump the gun. Also, how he immediately jumps to conclusions a lot in his and Joey’s conversation.) Picture someone playing whack-a-mole, constantly missing and saying ‘I got this! I got this!’ unintentionally destroying things in their one-track minded attempt to win. (He has too many burdens to handle and not enough hands.)

They might be totally convinced by someone using horribly fake fortune telling bullshit that their destiny was one thing, and then head towards it full speed ahead destroying their chance at their real destiny. (Xefros going blindly along with Dammek’s endeavors at teaching him butlery and even getting him into their band, pulling away from his true interest, cueball and sports.) Their challenge is pretty straightforward, don’t be discouraged and practice makes perfect. (“Practice makes adequate. That’s the Burgundy way.”) Pages have the unique ability to keep trying without really getting discouraged even its obvious their failing horribly no matter what they do, but eventually all that practice and failure is going to make them masters of their Aspect. (Xefros might be overly anxious and concerned, but Lord knows this child doesn’t necessarily seem discouraged. He’s pretty brave despite his submissiveness!)

(Also, the boy has a lot of Dave Strider references in his home. You know, Dave Strider? Knight of Time?)

Dammek: Prince of Breath: One who Destroys with Breath or Destroys Breath

Princes ghost their opposite Aspects as they destroy theirs. (The opposite of Breath is Blood. Dammek is all for communism it seems, which definitely more adhering to Blood- groups and connections- than Breath- indivualism and freedom. What a way to start this analysis: Alien Communism.) .They are violently stubborn pessimistic people that stop at nothing to reach their goals. Their challenge is to not destroy themselves along their destructive path. (We don’t know enough about him yet, but from context clues, Dammek seems to be a stubborn individual and also headstrong and a natural born leader. A leader with a bit of a narrow view. Not to mention paranoia can often lead to pessimistic viewpoints.)

A Prince of Breath would ghost Blood as they destroy Breath. (Dammek is very attached to keeping Xefros attached to him. He’s all about connections and Blood, and not so much freedom and Breath. I mean, the dude has cameras in Xefros’ room, he definitely doesn’t acknowledge personal space. This is probably due in turn to his paranoia, and he is likely paranoid about being left alone I imagine, so this may be why he is so set on keeping eyes on Xefros and on keeping him at his side.) They might be passionate and committed to some cause or purpose and would very stubbornly focus on some sort of single-minded goal. (The rebellion.) They are good at using their connections they have as a means to an end and can be very good at working as a team with a group of people. (Using Xefros to a bit of an overreaching extent. You took his hoverpad and re-painted it as your own, man.) They are very stubborn people like I mentioned before, always making sure they do what they want, being simultaneously committed to their pursuits and unwilling to let anyone hold them back from them. (This will probably prove to be true in Hauntswitch.) But in this way they can also be somewhat reliable in the sense that they are predictable in what course of action they are likely to take and when.

Just as easily as they work with others, they can instantly separate themselves to move forward in their own goals as they deem it necessary. I can see them being very flexible fast moving fighters, dancing twisting and jabbing at opponents from every angle with their own bodily strength. They can also be good at trapping others, or binding them together in attachments or obligations towards them, creating a mutual interdependence with everyone involved. (Well, he’s certainly made Xefros feel extremely dependent and hopelessly attached to him, that’s for sure. The poor boy sounds like he has a hard time figuring out what to do without him.) They can destroy a person’s sense of uncaring and apathy and make them passionate about a cause, likely the same one they are passionate about. (Making Xefros engaged in the rebellion and in playing a role in their band. Though Xefros does indeed seem to enjoying singing, it was very clear that he started it because Dammek made him get into it. “It’s important to be invested in your friend’s interests” is a direct line from the narrator in Xefros’ room.) They can be very inflexible people but also very good at uniting a group of people under the same cause, the same banner.

Their stubborn single-minded borderline selfish causes can also leave them disconnected and indifferent to the concerns or influence of other people. They might even become apathetic to anything not directly related to their cause. (Dammek seems very much like he cares about Xefros, but unfortunately, there is a lot of proof that he is very negligent about Xefros as well, and is ignorant to things affecting Xefros that don’t affect him as well. From context clues, he seems to be a little bit selfish.) Going too far with these Breathy ideals can leave a Prince of Breath in danger of being caught up in the whirlwind of their own feverish daydreams and goals. If they aren’t careful, they might end up being destroyed themselves by Breath, by all the options they have, all the immaterial things that don’t yet exist but just maybe could one day if they push hard enough. (Once again, we really don’t know enough about the guy, but I feel like, just from context clues alone, this is a very likely candidate for Dammek’s personality.)

So yeah! That’s my analysis on how the kids fit the classpects I headcanon them as having! Thank you for reading this and thank you @dahniwitchoflight​ for your hard work and your own analyses that I used as a basis!

If you guys have anything to contribute, such as other key points, quotes, etc.) or if you just wanna share you’re OWN opinion on classpect headcanons, please Ask or Message me! I love conversing and sharing ideas!

[imagineyourstars]

Aaa may I ask for a matchup? I'm a girl who's 4'11" (people often tease me for my height) and I really enjoy video games (almost addicted to it) & art. I'm very shy + it takes time for me to open up to people, but once I'm close I talk a lot (especially if I have similar interests). I can be very lazy most of the time but when I want to get something done my productivity just goes 100% til it's finished. Big events like parties aren't really my thing + I prefer staying at home > going outside.

of course you may ! ♥ also don’t worry i saw you sent another ask lmao ! i hope you’ll like your matchup~ - mod mademoiselle

Your match is Yuzuru Fushimi !

You don’t have to worry about being shy : thanks tohis job, Yuzuru’s an expert mood reader and knows exactly what to say and whenhe should say it to break the ice. Besides, he’s really kind and will respectyour boundaries, so opening up to him shouldn’t be too hard ! In that schoolfull of pushy and over-excited people, he was your beacon of light and hope :he’s helpful, nice, calm, respectful… An angel sent from heavens, really. Counton him to even get you to open up to him fairly easily.

The two of you partly bonded over all the time youspent together training. You learnt it the hard way, but Fine trainings aren’texactly a piece of cake. Eichi’s not here half of the time because of healthproblems, Tori’s whining in a corner and Wataru is just doing as he pleases.Your only support was Yuzuru, really, who helped you deal with the situation acountless number of times. Besides, he’s always here in case you need help, nomatter whether or not it’s related to idol work ! He’s also down to help youwith homework, especially if you forgot about it and realized it just beforeit’s due, or if you’re lost in that ridiculously huge school. So of course, thetwo of you quickly became friends. Besides, it’s nice to hang out with him :he’s good at small talk, always polite and seems to be very interested inwhatever you may say. He’s always asking about your family or pets every timehe meets you, and you found that pretty sweet.

You also bonded over one of your mutual passions : art! You were surprised to learn he’s the artsy type, since he usually lookspretty serious…  But he is absolutely inlove with art under all its forms, and was overjoyed to learn you share hispassion ! If you draw yourself, he’d love to see your drawings and he’d alwaysfind something good about them ! He draws too, but he’d be unusually shy aboutshowing you his own drawings. He’d insist they’re not that good, and if youkeep asking him he’ll eventually show you, anxiously waiting for your reaction.To be fair, his drawings are… abstract art ? It’s really hard to figure outwhat it’s supposed to be, but he pours his heart and soul in these, so youusually try to encourage him as well as you can ! Yuzuru knows a lot about art and will offer to go to a museum with you on aweekend ! He’s so well-read about art and will give you tidbits of trivia andinformation about your favorite paintings and statues, much to your enjoyment !Really, going out with him is so much fun and you decided together you shoulddo that more often.

As your friend, Yuzuru is the helpful andunderstanding type. He knows you well, including the fact you can be lazy, sohe loves how hardworking you can get when there’s something you need to do.He’ll often lend a hand too, no matter if you’re busy overlooking thepreparations for a Dreamfes, if you’re baking cookies for everyone or if you’rejust cleaning up. Everything gets done three times as fast if he’s here to help! He’s also the type of friend to cook lunch for you, to bring you medicine ifyou feel sick and to call you everyday during holidays to ask how you’re going.You could get used to being pampered like that !Well, you did wonder if he really only considered you as a friend though. Hesometimes says pretty ambiguous things, or he’ll let his fingers linger onesecond too long on your waist, or maybe that’s the intense way he sometimeslooks at you… ? You weren’t quite sure, but you felt there may be somethingmore. Besides, you were getting pretty flustered around him too : he’spractically the perfect boyfriend, and people already thought the two of youwere dating due to how considerate he was of you. And there was also the matterof your growing crush on him… Fortunately, he’s the type who does things fastand efficiently himself, so he’ll be the one to make a move on you and admit helikes you more than as a friend.  Youdidn’t have time to worry : everything went perfect, just like in movies, andyour crush somehow became your boyfriend !

To be honest, you’re really glad he confronted youabout his feelings on that day, because he’s a great boyfriend. He takes yourpreferences into account and won’t do anything you might not like. You know heloves going out on dates, but he won’t usually take you out since he knowsyou’re an indoor person. He’s content just staying with you at your place,watching a movie while cuddling on the couch. He’ll often cook dinner for youtoo, which is always quite something since his cooking is amazing ! He mightalso clean up for you while he’s at it, then claim it’s just a reflex. Well,not that you mind him washing the dishes…His favorite thing is just talking with you, no matter where you are or whatyou’re doing. He’ll often hold your hand through it, and he’ll listen to youwith a smile. He loves how talkative you can get and will be happy to talk withyou about anything and everything. He’s also good at giving advice, somehow,maybe that’s his butlery magic… ?

He also tried to get into your other hobby, that is,video games. He knows you love them to the point of being almost addicted tothem, but he doesn’t mind as long as it doesn’t put your health at risk. Expecthim to come and check on you if you’re playing a new game, worried you might strainyourself too much or forget to eat or sleep. He likes playing with you inmultiplayer too, although he’s relatively new to games. He’ll spend hoursstudying the commands and manual, though, so you’d better be prepared. He’ssurprisingly not that bad at games, although he lacks the training andknowledge you have about them. But what he likes about games is that he canplay with you, so he doesn’t mind whether he wins or loses : what matters tohim is that you’re spending quality time together ! He’d even queue with you onthe day of the release of a game you greatly anticipated. Your hobbies reallymatter to him !

Really, Yuzuru is a very devoted and passionateboyfriend. You’re pretty sure he’d do anything for you, and he absolutely lovesjust spending time with you. You make him so relaxed and happy, and he’s readyto do whatever it takes to make you feel the same !

Other possible match : Makoto

[metamodel]

A Machine For Hammering the Soul, With Robotic Padres

It's a juicy weekend read for you, in defence of piety (!)…

📖📖📖

After taking an extended break from social design work “to get some perspective” (ahem), I find that Everything Now Looks Very Strange Indeed™. This is another one of my updates on restarting a creative practice, with added cultural and design commentary. 

(If someone’s forwarded this thing to you in the hope you’ll find it interesting, you can subscribe here to secure my everlasting love.)

Today I want to write of vibrations of the soul, the experience of the divine and the habit of prayer. With robots. Yes.

I remain a staunch unbeliever, and yet I find that these apparently religious terms become more useful when I’m wrestling with certain practices: of creativity, of recovery, of becoming a better participant in my communities (local or cosmic). Each of these requires me to paradoxically affirm my own sense of agency by simultaneously curbing it.

For example, working on our addictions is never simply a matter of exerting our individual willpower (which is called “white-knuckling it” in recovery culture, and clearly unsustainable); we instead need to make the choice to surrender to the collective agency of community. 

And the other week, my dear friend Janelle and I attended a writer’s meetup that involved everyone sitting down and just doing some fucking writing. As we sat in a zero-ambience pub bistro, beavering away, she passed me a note: 

“THIS FEELS FORCED AND NOT RAD.”

Agreed, the venue was very much not rad, and we weren't a very inspiring sight, but to be fair to the rest of us, Janelle’s own writing is driven by uncommonly strong affective tides that would wreck a less glorious being. I’d argue that for most people, sustainable creativity needs in some way to be “forced”, and this isn’t a bad thing. My own creative endeavours need to be sustained by the scheduled habit of accessing an animating spirit that might reveal itself to the solidarity of a congregation. (It does need a better venue, though. Blech.)

Such appeals to the beyond have given me a new, practical appreciation of the rigours of piety. But lest I be accused by Slavoj Žižek of some lacklustre, postmodern, liberal-secular appropriation of spirituality, I need to leaven this stuff with a good dose of machines and robots to keep it interesting to me. 😉

Eternal return: burials, and when the earth rejects us

First, some follow-up.

Did you know that in this wonderful medium of email newslettering, you can simply reply to any of these missives from me, and that your reply will appear directly in my everyday, personal email inbox? It’s real email. No really, I love this, so replies are encouraged. Meanwhile, I’m really heartened by the generous messages I’ve received from you thus far. Also, I don’t know some of you, and this mixture of the known and unknown is tantalising. 

Answering my call in the last issue for objects that deserve “burial rites/rights" with us, Andrew (who I know can light a fire with his bare hands) replies that “I would bring with me a wooden spoon for my cooking, a headlamp for reading late at night and camping, and a vr headset because I know I won’t be affording one in this lifetime”. That would just be a simulated, still life VR headset then, right?

And Deborah, who wants “to be buried with seeds inside me, so I could be compost” (and who also first pointed me in the direction of socially responsible design, many years ago 😘), also notes that the word “Pandæmonium”, which I used in my last missive to describe the experience of the classroom in the context of exploring All the Things, “was coined to describe the Place Of All The Demons” — the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost. So oddly… appropriate.

Deborah also pointed me to “When the rocks turn their backs on us”, Ken Wark’s review of Elizabeth Povinelli’s Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism:

[T]he Anthropocene is far from being some hubristic discourse about the powers and destinies of Man. It is rather a malignant, viral human presence in geological time. I think here one could read the Anthropocene through the figure of immunity rather than community. It is not the figure of Man becoming sovereign over the community of the biosphere within geological time. It is rather the biosphere immunising itself against forms of (non)life that it can’t endure. 

While I think there’s every reason to despair, this feels a little too enthusiastically misanthropic. (Perhaps Wark is trying to make up for his embarrassing social democratic excesses of the ‘90s.) Not all community is naturalistic, hippy-dippy togetherness and accommodation, and the pain of recognising and negotiating it, against the predations of capital, might offer a bleak kind of hope. I shall ponder. I’ve naturally procured Povinelli’s book and will report back in a future issue.

⚒️🎵 The Hammer Song

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

Kandinsky’s "Winter Landscape", 1911[/caption]

The Masters of Modern Art from the Hermitage show could so easily have drifted into Adult Contemporary Viewing territory, but it brought me this amazing quote from Kandinsky:

Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

The eyes are the hammers. Whoa. Despite its manifest spiritualism, this image builds a model of aesthetics that’s all about resonant, relational assemblages of awesome in which each actor plays a material part. My eyes and yours live together inside a big piano. Fucking yes. This is society and ecology, defined — via aesthetics. The exhibition leaves Sydney this weekend if you want to catch it.

🔪🥀 Nick Cave is a joyful robot monk. Wait, what?

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

Nick Cave in conversation. Photo filched from Daniel Boud.[/caption]

I was grateful to be at Conversations with Nick Cave the other week, not just to hear Cave’s voice and solo piano really rise to the occasion and fill a venue with their resonance, but to see the open Q&A format of the show return repeatedly to Cave’s creative process.

Fans who might’ve been clamouring for transcendent tales of sudden inspiration, or 19th Century Gothic influences (“I don’t have any”), were brought back to earth by the familiar refrain of the committed creative professional: Cave shows up to work, which requires lots of meticulous preparation and backbreaking iteration, and he makes it happen. “It’s a job,” he said, with finality. (I love the incongruity of this stuff coming from people like Nick Cave, or Bobbie Gillespie, who apparently keeps office hours for Primal Scream.) 

But I’ve become a little sceptical of the total demystification of creativity that’s now common in our algorithmically inclined age of, uh, content-marketing savvy. With our era’s overly instrumentalist promotion of a well-adjusted creative-entrepreneurial mindset, it might be all too easy these days to reduce everything to using elbow grease to, you know, hit targets. 

So I love that Cave is still in awe of sacred aesthetic magic when his rigour allows it to happen. He talked of putting in the work so that the divine can arrive. All his meticulous “going through the motions” (again, not a bad thing) produces something more than the sum of those motions. For him, it’s a way to experience God. And despite his Prince of Darkness reputation, Cave was at pains to describe how joyful that process can be. “There’s nothing dark about it.” 

🤖🙏 Oh yeah, the bit about robots

When I was listening to Radiolab the other day (despite my long-running ambivalence about the show), I found that this recent episode’s focus on robots of antiquity resonated unexpectedly with my reading of Nick Cave’s creative process.

Hear me out.

In 1562 the crown prince of Spain, Don Carlos, falls down a flight of stairs and sustains a head injury that is by all accounts going to be fatal. According to Radiolab, his father King Philip II “kneels at his son’s deathbed and makes a pact with God: ‘If you help me, if you heal my son — if you do this miracle for me — I'll do a miracle for you.’” 

Don Carlos miraculously survives, apparently thanks to the intervention of the spirit of Diego de Alcalá, a celebrated monk who died a century before. And so now Philip II needs to somehow perform his miracle:

[He] enlists a really renowned clockmaker named Juanelo Turriano — a huge ox of a man, described as always being filthy and blustery and not a lot of fun to be around — but a great, great clockmaker. So the king says, “Look, I want you to make a mechanical version of Diego de Alcalá, a mechanical version of this 100-year-dead holy priest. Yes, a mechanical monk — a robotic padre.” 

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

The robotic padre[/caption]

Artist and historian Elizabeth King describes the result: 

Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order. 

A miracle of technology! (You can watch a very low quality video of the robot in action here.) “He walks a delicate line between church, theatre, magic, science,” King writes, pondering the significance of the mechanical monk. “Here is a machine that prays.” 

What does it mean? According to King and Radiolab, in the context of Counter-Reformation Spain, the robot monk strikes to the heart of debates about how one gets close to God:

You have the Protestants, with Luther, who are saying, “it’s not about works … it's about whether you feel it.” And then you have the Catholic argument which is to say you do these rituals because these are the rituals, and this is the way you get close to God.

The robot monk teaches us how to do ritual. Controversial! Given the ridiculous degree of crufty observance and corruption in the Church at the time of the Reformation (and, um, other times), I obviously understand why the Protestant appeal to pure feels was compelling. But my own ingrained Catholic social justice calculus of “good works” aside (“don’t fucking tell me your account with God hinges on how you feel inside instead of your concrete actions in the world, you schismatic apostates!”), I can’t help but think that this debate, and the robot monk himself, is a metaphor for the observance of creative process. 

As stated above, I’m suspicious of the reduction of creativity to a bunch of instrumental observances in the mechanised pursuit of… metrics. Hack-work content marketing success, paid in SEO indulgences to the Church of Google. But to respond to this by abandoning the rigours of creative process for the inspiration of pure feeling would be a mistake. Unless you're a tidal wave like my friend Janelle, feelings are fickle. Protestant churches tend to trade the horrific institutionalised power of the Catholic Church (about which we need no reminders) for another kind of tyranny: exploitative emotional economies in which the faithful tend to be at the mercy of charisma. And to trade in pure charisma is to produce strongmen. As our current times remind us, charismatic populism offers release for the anxious but also destroys the processes that ultimately help us flourish as communities. Creative populism that relies on emotional catharsis tends to destroy the basis for a consistent creative practice. Just as the Reformation ended up eliding the point of what “good works” might potentially be about (i.e. acting rigorously to enable the arrival of goodness), we also need to remember what creative rituals are for (i.e. exactly the same thing as good works).

Thus it is with Nick Cave, who for me is the amazing robot monk. He mightn’t be your cup of tea, or you might even find his work occasionally objectionable, but I think most of us can agree that his creative practice really hums. (Don’t let his obsession with Southern Baptists or his own Anglican heritage distract. In terms of process, he is an exemplary Catholic robot.) He prepares, meticulously. He shows up to work. He performs the motions regularly, not worrying about inspiration, and through these observances somehow accesses what he feels to be a divine and joyous experience of creativity. 

I’m convinced that if Nick Cave relied on pure feeling, or murderous inspiration, or spontaneous gothic possession, or any of the other assumptions people make about his artistic persona, so many great moments of his oeuvre wouldn’t exist. Nick Cave walks the square and kisses the cross and talks to God. For he is a joyous robot monk.

🎼 Coda

For those of you who remain unconvinced by my yoking together of monks and murder ballads: the final line of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, an historical murder mystery set in a monastery, is “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus”, or “The rose of old remains only in its name; we have only naked names”. 

Meanwhile, I was never really a fan of the chorus of “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” Cave’s duet with Kylie Minogue:

They call me The Wild Rose 

But my name was Elisa Day 

Why they call me it, I do not know 

For my name was Elisa Day 

Oooh. The name of the rose. Anyway, to me, Minogue’s delivery always reeked of passive fatalism. But the other day, I realised that it wasn’t fatalistic all — it was full of spooky reproach. Elisa Day remains known to us by her Wild Rose name of legend, but her ghost insists on remembering her own name. She’s crossing t’s and dotting i’s from beyond the grave. 

Following Kylie, we would do well to pay proper respect to the names of those who are in the beyond. The way we relate to them constitutes its own assemblage, its own machine of observances. In this I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 short story, “The Nine Billion Names of God”, in which Tibetan monks manage to automate the process of transcribing all the permutations that God’s name can take, using a supercomputer (naturally). Observing the names is the universe’s purpose, you see. And when the final name is encoded… Whoa.

How's that for a crazy constellation? (I know I'm just reaching. But it's fun!)

A sustainable portion of all my love,

Ben

[networkingdefinition]

Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

  • A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. – George Bernard Shaw • All of my problems are rather complicated – I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It’s like a personal therapy. – Manuel Puig • All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish. – Clive James • And at the end of the day, if the movie’s no good, I’ll live to fight another day. – Scott Caan • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it. – Anthony Hopkins • And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy. – Nicolas Cage • And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall. – Paula Fox • Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket. – Douglas Horton • Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. – Oliver Stone • Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armory of moviemakers. – Shirley Temple • Directing a movie is serious, it’s not a joke. – Fred Durst • Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t know what the point was. The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two. – David Fincher • Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they’ll leave the theatre happy. – Rosalind Russell • Don’t be an extra in your own movie. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren’t allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn’t really know anything different. That’s how I was raised. – Katy Perry • Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a ‘bus movie.’ – Sandra Bullock • Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn • Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. – Jason Reitman • For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. – Salma Hayek • For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie. – Jean-Luc Godard • I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either. – Kristen Stewart • I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it’s hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don’t get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I’m sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. – Vilmos Zsigmond • I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play – not a movie. – Kim Cattrall • I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That’s never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera. – Steven Spielberg • I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in. – Morgan Freeman • I haven’t sold to the movies. In other words, I haven’t gotten any enormous checks yet. – Jack Vance • I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me. – Gary Oldman • I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you’re creating something. – George Hickenlooper • I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them – the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world. – Sharon Stone • I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe. – Sharon Stone • I make movies I want to see. – Neil LaBute • I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody. – Liam Neeson • I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. – Daniel Handler • I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies. – Julia Roberts • I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. – Keanu Reeves • I was never a fanatical movie person. – John Malkovich • I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. – Neil LaBute • I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. Some of the superhero movies are better than others. – Blair Underwood • I’ve always found that when you’re trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas’s house or something, and it will have that motor sound. – Ben Burtt • I’ve always wanted to do a family movie. – Adam Sandler • I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself. – Greta Garbo • I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft. – LL Cool J • I’ve had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration – in a dress. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry. – Jackie Chan • Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars. – Dorothea Tanning • License to Kill’ is not one of the great Bond movies. – Benicio Del Toro • Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens • The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

[equitiesstocks]

Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

  • A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art. – George Bernard Shaw • All of my problems are rather complicated – I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It’s like a personal therapy. – Manuel Puig • All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish. – Clive James • And at the end of the day, if the movie’s no good, I’ll live to fight another day. – Scott Caan • And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it’s not you going through it. – Anthony Hopkins • And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy. – Nicolas Cage • And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall. – Paula Fox • Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket. – Douglas Horton • Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. – Oliver Stone • Delay and indecision are first weapons in the armory of moviemakers. – Shirley Temple • Directing a movie is serious, it’s not a joke. – Fred Durst • Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t know what the point was. The fact is, you don’t know what directing is until the sun is setting and you’ve got to get five shots and you’re only going to get two. – David Fincher • Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they’ll leave the theatre happy. – Rosalind Russell • Don’t be an extra in your own movie. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren’t allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn’t really know anything different. That’s how I was raised. – Katy Perry • Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a ‘bus movie.’ – Sandra Bullock • Everything I learned I learned from the movies. – Audrey Hepburn • Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. – Jason Reitman • For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. – Salma Hayek • For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie. – Jean-Luc Godard • I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either. – Kristen Stewart • I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it’s hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don’t get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I’m sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. – Vilmos Zsigmond • I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play – not a movie. – Kim Cattrall • I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That’s never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera. – Steven Spielberg • I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in. – Morgan Freeman • I haven’t sold to the movies. In other words, I haven’t gotten any enormous checks yet. – Jack Vance • I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me. – Gary Oldman • I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you’re creating something. – George Hickenlooper • I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them – the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world. – Sharon Stone • I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe. – Sharon Stone • I make movies I want to see. – Neil LaBute • I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody. – Liam Neeson • I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see. – Daniel Handler • I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies. – Julia Roberts • I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. – Keanu Reeves • I was never a fanatical movie person. – John Malkovich • I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. – Quentin Tarantino • I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction. – Neil LaBute • I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. Some of the superhero movies are better than others. – Blair Underwood • I’ve always found that when you’re trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas’s house or something, and it will have that motor sound. – Ben Burtt • I’ve always wanted to do a family movie. – Adam Sandler • I’ve always wanted two lives – one for the movies, one for myself. – Greta Garbo • I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft. – LL Cool J • I’ve had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration – in a dress. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry. – Jackie Chan • Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars. – Dorothea Tanning • License to Kill’ is not one of the great Bond movies. – Benicio Del Toro • Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens • The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

[thissurroundingall]

Peter Morrens

On trying to be the third person.

Dutch translation

Date of interview: February 2018

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Close to Antwerp, in a sunny Merksem studio, I meet a welcoming, lively Peter Morrens (°1965). It always takes some getting used to his unbridled energy; the most important characteristic that makes him the inspired, versatile and hard-to-define artist whom I have now been following for a couple of years. Peter is represented by Ghent based Kristof De Clercq gallery and involved as a drawing/graphics professor at LUCA Ghent. He does lectures, performances and produces a multitude of series and editions under just as many heteronyms. Until 2016, together with artist Rik De Boe, he ran the exhibition space Voorkamer in the city of Lier.

During the interview, he is in perpetual movement, gesticulative and hyperasociative. His knowledge and gift for remembering quotes are impressive. The somewhat roguish reserve of first soon makes place for a familiar openness. Few sentences get finished and when they are, they end up somewhere completely different than where they started. Because every turn is interesting though, I but gladly follow. After two hours of talking, Peter asks me if the interview has already started…

How should we look at your studio set-up?

Well, to start with, I always work in notebooks. I never fail to carry those things with me. Afterwards, those early ideas get into a transitional phase. That’s what you’re looking at right now. I’m always working on different things at once; I look upon those works as building blocks to be puzzled together in the gallery or exhibition space. I like to be very thoughtful about how something is shown; I think it’s just as important as making the work itself. I may use about every medium at my disposal and wouldn’t like to be known as the ‘grey charcoal artist’. I really love to experiment around.

Could it be that something comes together in your drawings?

Yeah, that’s certainly true. Nevertheless I always search for something else… when I apply one method for too long things start to go a bit too smooth. I’d prefer some resistance in my process. Something has to be a little bit ‘off.’ It’s about the intensity by which something happens. I rather like the idea of walking on a cutting edge, making metaphors literal. A framed piece can be taken apart again, repainted, destroyed. Besides, I am interested in art history, film, literature, and music. I’d like all of those things to find their place. I mean, knowledge doesn’t have to burst out of the work, but still… I presume that if you have made a drawing of it, you can really start to understand something.

I rather like the idea of walking on a cutting edge.

Times change. Do you consider yourself to be post-modern? What role do topical affairs play within your work?

I don’t really think about myself in those terms. But I do hope that the current state of the world is in my work. I even perceive it as the role of the artist. I think it’s important not to fall into retrograde traps, which happens very easy when you work with psychological affects. I find that post-modern attitude quite disturbing regardless of it being the era from which I stem. What especially bothers me is the ‘anything goes’ mentality. On the contrary I really like to be very conscious of how, where and why a work comes to be. Of it being truly lived and existential. In a way you could say that the basic materials may or could be banal.

You mean anecdotal?

Rather how the story of a work’s genesis also becomes part of the work itself. In that respect, the artist always talks about the genesis of a work. What’s important to me is that everything carries its own inherent energy and this has everything to do with how different works are juxtaposed. I’d like to add that I almost never show my work in this studio set-up. I find it very hard to allow people in this private try-out area.

What especially bothers me is the ‘anything goes’ mentality. On the contrary I really like to be very conscious of how, where and why a work comes to be. 

Your drawings often refer to the photographic. What is the role of craftsmanship in your work?

Of course it is a base to start from. Still, I only try to apply graphical assets to the point where they evoke contrasts within a set-up. I can work with flashy colors and sculpture as well; sometimes I splash a whole space full of paint for some wild performance. Just yesterday I scribbled down a huge, very banal penis just because I felt like it. I don’t know what I should do with it; maybe I’ll make an installation with it later. Still I understand lot’s of people may find that your best work is the work in which you show your mastery of the medium. But craftsmanship can also mean scribbling down some stupid doodle in one try. Anyway, it demands enormous concentration. Sometimes you can conceive the clearest of thoughts just to have it blown away by ambiguity one second later. You encounter those energies in life as well.

When is a piece finished?

When it has left the studio I guess? There’s that constant stress about something that is finished. Maybe it’s an impossible decision to claim you have completed a piece. Making drawings under the heteronym Herman Smit it’s clearer. They’re drawings after nature, made on sight and in one go. They’re finished when the landscape or portrait is interpreted with the accompanying emotion. This takes something between ten minutes and an hour or so. Herman Smit belongs to the nineteenth century more than this one. I’m thinking about a new show with ‘his’ work, given not much has been showed by him lately. It’s also an extension of my constant need to write everything down, the little notebooks I carry with me constantly.

Sometimes you can conceive the clearest of thoughts just to have it blown away by ambiguity one second later.

When does your work border on the performative?

Herman Smit can be viewed as a performance. Trough him I try to activate and confuse the gaze. People may wonder who this Herman is, where he comes from, what drives him to make these drawings. I let him die in 2005, when his first book got released. When I look back upon it now, of course it’s very clear how much his work relates to my oeuvre, that it’s not two different people at all. Pessoa, who toyed around with exercise of style and sampling genres as well, also influenced me in that respect. I always combined a multitude of activities, thought many aspects of being an artist to be interesting.

What will stay with you from Voorkamer, the exhibition space you ran together with Rik De Boe?

Oh, I learned, worked and experienced so much there. Especially the notion of simultaneity and combining different work methods came to realization in Voorkamer. Doing it together with Rik, who thinks quite differently about stuff than I do, gave us a dialectical framework. The juxtaposition of my rather activist, very physical tension with Rik’s more historicizing, intuitive approach was the core power of the project, like a balancing exercise. Also the fact that we considered ourselves as artists rather than curators. Because the influence of a curator over a work or oeuvre can be so overtly big and almost more important than the content of the work itself. First and foremost, we tried to have a visual discourse. We weren’t interested whatsoever in if an artist was represented by a big gallery or had just left school. We really made exhibitions about works of art.

How do you decide if something does or doesn’t work?

When I look around my studio I see a lot that doesn’t (laughs). We have such an unimaginably rich art history. If I’ve seen a bad exhibition, an interesting image may pop up right around the corner: in a book, a movie or where ever. There’s a lot to be inspired by. That quantity and richness is incredible. Even our very local art history goes back forever. Of course I can be mad sometimes about an image, although lately I’m much more able to put such things in perspective. Especially when it comes to art school I can still be aghast sometimes. You’re granted such sacred time in an educational context. What a pity it is to waste all that.

When I was in school, people like Wim Mulders (art theorist red.) were very engaged in the field of contemporary art and encouraged us to really push the boundaries of our atelier. This gave me a firm theoretical and historical ground that I have leaned on ever since. My students must know that all doors are open as long as they go out by themselves. Everybody wants to talk, be curious and approachable. Those boundaries are absolutely not as rigid as they might seem. 

Isn’t it so that nowadays, there’s a lot of emphasis on credibility and name; the contests someone has won, the magazines someone is featured in?

I don’t think, for example in Voorkamer, that we cared about credits. Also in the academy or the art world in general there wasn’t much opportunity to make a name for yourself. Maybe I was lucky in that respect? Anyhow, there was never the ambition to strengthen my market value or anything like that. Maybe this isn’t so interesting? I wonder, did we talk about the work yet? (laughs)

Of course we did, but I think it’s also relevant to talk about being an artist.

I think it’s interesting when you say something about the ‘surface’. Maybe it’s very superficial to talk exclusively about the work itself. But an artist always just lingers on the surface. He touches it while making a drawing, painting of sculpture. He covers and scratches it. Maybe this is a psychoanalytical way of saying it, but it’s like the boundary between talking and making an interpretation. Who’s talking when one talks about oneself? He who speaks or he who listens? Is that the same person? Actually it’s quite hard to get to the heart of things. Hence the surface is the place where you dwell most of the time.

My work probably is a catalogue raisonnée that will only be finished when I’m dead. Maybe the others can even complete it or make additions. Of course I can’t reach that ideal position of the outsider. At the same time I also try to create work as a ‘third person’, that distance is quite necessary.

Actually it’s quite hard to get to the heart of things. Hence the surface is the place where you dwell most of the time. 

Do you think of yourself as a protagonist in your oeuvre?

All of my sensibilities are captured in the work. Also my social engagement, my obsessions. Care and attention are connected to the way I work, implying affection, a physical act. One makes a double if one creates something. When I make a self-portrait of me as a child, the work isn’t as much about me as it is about ‘him’. Who is who can be understood in a multitude of ways. There are different layers. In this drawing I’m a kid, so we look back in time. The drawing is based on a picture that I didn’t take myself. Which connection does that image have with the now? There’s a shift in medium, size, time and perspective. Again that distance, the attempt at being the third person.

There’s a beautiful painting by Zurbarán in which a young Jesus is playing with a crown of thorns. A magnificent game with the position of the viewer towards time. Of course we all know what’s going to happen later on, yet we see a deceptively peaceful interior. A whole realm of images is evoked, which I think is absolutely marvelous. In the mean time, it is the viewer with whom a game is played: of course Zurbarán is the one in control and he knows very well what he’s doing.

You also produce text drawings under the name Point Blank Press, how do these images come about?

Up to this day, more than two thousand drawings where produced under the name Point Blank Press. Mostly they are sentences or words that I picked up somewhere. It can also be free associations that have an internal origin. Actually it’s a continual exercise in auditory observation. Usually there’s a fixed day on which I work on the Point Blank Series. For me, they are drawings based on the stuff of language.

There is a vulnerability on the border of what is and isn’t an image. Often it comes down to a decision, a choice. Tadeusz Kantor has an interesting view on that, the way he lost his faith in painting because it is ‘just’ a reproduction of reality, the way he looks for unpractical objects to be given use. Because for him the poor, worn out, banal object has an artistic value. ‘L objet entre l’eternite et la poubelle’. The object between eternity and the trash can. It makes me feel good about things that I can decide to completely change their value at whatever moment I desire.

Like Tadeusz Kantor said, a work of art is an object between eternity and the trash can.

In your house there’s also a small studio, how do the two workspaces relate to one another?

At the moment I have an open space here that functions as an archive but can be used to make big, physical and dirty work. For the smaller pieces I tend to stay at the drawing board in my home. There were times where I made the big charcoal drawings at home as well, but for a number of reasons that was very unpractical. What’s so nice here is the huge wall where I can prepare a show or gallery set-up. Depending on the project I repaint the whole room in different shades of grey, which I also use in my exhibitions.

The first part of the day usually takes place at home. The Point Blank series for example are always worked on early in the morning. Afterwards I leave for the studio, meaning a transition to a different mindset. A lot of sketches and notes come about when I’m on my way, thus the movement between home and working space is essential. It’s the idea of ‘the moving observer’. I tend to have a hyper focus on details. Whilst moving, this attention is amplified. To get more of an overview I work towards installations, I can’t seem to get that panorama in a single piece. An installation must look like a room in which you enter for the very first time. Only then one can see everything and nothing at the same time. Only after that, a close-up on different parts happens. The way your gaze moves tells you something about yourself. For me, it is very tactile, almost sensual. I often look for the odd, something that speaks of the political aspect of the public space. An interaction between that what makes me warm inside and that what makes me angry. This happens best in an unfamiliar place, that’s why there needs to be perpetual change in the studio set-up. If you want to say something in a public debate, you should also leave your comfort zone. This implies a physical act. I think all of my work is the result of rather heavy physical action. I really dance while I’m working. It’s a very rhythmical, hypersensitive thing, very much related to music of course; we didn’t even talk about that! (laughs)

What do you listen to when you’re working? I can imagine something punkish…

Well, I do stem from the punk generation and I really like that DIY mentality. But I was never a real punk; I listen to a huge variety of music, ranging from chansons to free jazz and everything in between… I like pumping rhythms and intrusive dissonants that make me think of my work in a way. The energetic, emotional aspect of music is something that excites me and a thing I strive for in my visual work and performances. Wait, let me play you something so the readers can also hear! (laughs)

Peter Morrens’ work is on view until 17/11 at TRUST, the collection presentation of S.M.A.K. in Les Brasseurs, Liège.

Kristof De Clercq

S.M.A.K.

Les Brasseurs

Voorkamer

Interview: Maxim Ryckaerts

Photography: Lola Pertsowsky

English editing: Tyche Beyens

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