#but thats also such an interesting added thing! to explore culture and how sometimes we have to go against it to heal!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

definitelynotshouting · 1 year ago

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Do you have any tips for starting a story? The middle and end is easy (lie) but the beginning SUCKS to write sometimes

oh gods no joke openers are one of the hardest part for me. Theres so many ways a story can start, and it makes me CRAZY because that right there is your hook, thats what convinces people to start reading!!!!! And there are so many unique ways one can start, so it ends up feeling a bit like that one reaction image of the girl being handed so so many pancakes

I think for me, what i try to ask myself when sitting down to write an opener is: "what kind of story is this?"

Because each story needs something different to accomplish its goals. A slower story might want to take its time with setting the scene, while an action-packed one might start in media res and with a bang!!! I guess if i had to give advice i would say, take the time to identify what your story is trying to say, and then look at what different openings can do for you to identify that goal.

For example; this is from my fic when the night cries, which is essentially a ghost story:

This was meant to be an introspective story, with a very gentle pace overall, so i took the time to really set the scene, build up the sense of what we're looking at before we get dropped into the fic proper. I remember my thought process for this was: how can i make this unique??? how can i make it FEEL like one of those old paintings with the beautiful yellows and summery oranges, while giving the reader a sense of whats to come?? Adding in the repetition of "it begins" was a way for me to sorta hammer that home: this is the start. This is where the story originates. And in a technical sense, it hooks your attention, with the question and immediate answer within the narration. The intention here is for the reader to want to know why this is important, and now it's answering that, but still leaving gaps for more questions.

Now compare that to, say.... lost in the dark's opening:

The overall pace of hunger au is slow, but this opener isn't-- partially because it's a rough draft, but also because what i wanted out of this scene was a sense of deep, deep urgency. We're in the middle of action; Grian is physically running while he thinks, and i wanted the reader to feel hunted and uncertain with him. Dropping everyone in with Grian at one of his most frightened, shaken points was the best way i felt i could establish that scene, and throughout it i drop hints as to what's actually going on. He's scared. He thinks he's going to hurt people. He's been on the move for a very, very long time. These are all things that are meant to pique interest and get answered later, when the reader is already invested. And i guess in that regard, its really all about timing.

But yeah!! Rambling aside, i'd say try out a few different ways of opening your fic and see what works. Think of em as thumbnails; write maybe 200 or so words at most and see if something works better than something else. I think theres this secret culture of shame among writers for not putting the perfect start down on the page the very first time you open the doc, but it's super normal to have to workshop things around to your liking!!! There's absolutely nothing wrong with writing a few different openers to see what works best for you and your story, and in fact is something i genuinely recommend. Its good practice, and essentially functions as a warm-up!!! You also get the benefit of exploring new angles in a scene, which can sometimes unlock really cool stuff for your writing

Sorry for how long this is, anon!! Hopefully you find my rambling helpful :D thank you for sending in this ask!!!

#shouting speaks #asks #i could go on abt stuff like this for HOURS i go crazy for this sorta thing #also part of the reason chap 6 is taking so long is because i needed to redo the opening scene multiple times #before i realized i actually needed to shuffle the scenes around so they kept interest and good pacing!!!#basically: dont be afraid to just sit down and try looking at things from new angles #also smth i didnt mention bc its very specific to me: i picture things like theyre movies #so i often sorta reflect that pacing in my writing. i have a very vivid imagination so i can see actions and settings VERY clearly #and often what i do is i sorta look at the big picture #and decide okay do i want to start here??? and if i do i slowly zoom in via details until we cut to the actual start #OR. i immediately zoom in so we're seeing the character or setting element right away #so yeah. movie magic ig skfnejdjdjdk #hope this helps!!!!#edit: forgor long post tag #long post #txt

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samanthasroberts · 6 years ago

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So who put the cyber into cybersex?

Today we have cybercafes and cyberwars but cybernetics the term that launched a dozen prefixes has been lost. In a new book, Thomas Rid aims to reconnect cyber to its original idea of man-machine symbiosis

Where did the cyber in cyberspace come from? Most people, when asked, will probably credit William Gibson, who famously introduced the term in his celebrated 1984 novel, Neuromancer. It came to him while watching some kids play early video games. Searching for a name for the virtual space in which they seemed immersed, he wrote cyberspace in his notepad. As I stared at it in red Sharpie on a yellow legal pad, he later recalled, my whole delight was that it meant absolutely nothing.

How wrong can you be? Cyberspace turned out to be the space that somehow morphed into the networked world we now inhabit, and which might ultimately prove our undoing by making us totally dependent on a system that is both unfathomably complex and fundamentally insecure. But the cyber- prefix actually goes back a long way before Gibson to the late 1940s and Norbert Wieners book, Cybernetics, Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, which was published in 1948.

Cybernetics was the term Wiener, an MIT mathematician and polymath, coined for the scientific study of feedback control and communication in animals and machines. As a transdiscipline that cuts across traditional fields such as physics, chemistry and biology, cybernetics had a brief and largely unsuccessful existence: fewof the worlds universities now have departments of cybernetics. But as Thomas Rids absorbing new book, The Rise of the Machines: The Lost History of Cybernetics shows, it has had a long afterglow as a source of mythic inspiration that endures to the present day.

This is because at the heart of the cybernetic idea is the proposition that the gap between animals (especially humans) and machines is much narrower than humanists believe. Its argument is that if you ignore the physical processes that go on in the animal and the machine and focus only on the information loops that regulate these processes in both, you begin to see startling similarities. The feedback loops that enable our bodies to maintain an internal temperature of 37C, for example, are analogous to the way in which the cruise control in our cars operates.

Dr Rid is a reader in the war studies department of Kings College London, which means that he is primarily interested in conflict, and as the world has gone online he has naturally been drawn into the study of how conflict manifests itself in the virtual world. When states are involved in this, we tend to call it cyberwarfare, a term of which I suspect Rid disapproves on the grounds that warfare is intrinsically kinetic (like Assads barrel bombs) whereas whats going on in cyberspace is much more sinister, elusive and intractable.

In order to explain how weve got so far out of our depth, Rid has effectively had to compose an alternative history of computing. And whereas most such histories begin with Alan Turing and Claude Shannon and John von Neumann, Rid starts with Wiener and wartime research into gunnery control. For him, the modern world of technology begins not with the early digital computers developed at Bletchley Park, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania but with the interactive artillery systems developed for the US armed forces by the Sperry gyroscope company in the early 1940s.

From this unexpected beginning, Rid weaves an interesting and original story. The seed crystal from which it grows is the idea that the Sperry gun-control system was essentially a way of augmenting the human gunners capabilities to cope with the task of hitting fast-moving targets. And it turns out that this dream of technology as a way of augmenting human capabilities is a persistent but often overlooked theme in the evolution of computing.

A mechanical dog manufactured by robot maker Boston Dynamics. Cybernetics proposes that the gap between humans and their machines is much narrower than humanists believe. Photograph: Boston Dynamics

The standard narrative about the technologys history focuses mostly on technical progress processing power, bandwidth, storage, networking, etc. Its about machines and applications, companies and fortunes. The underlying assumption is that the technology is empowering which of course in principle it can be. What, after all, is the web but a memory aid for people? What the dominant narrative conveniently ignores, though, is that the motive force for most tech industry development is not human empowerment but profit. Which is why Facebook wants its 1.7 billion users to stay within its walled garden rather than simply being empowered by the open web.

The dream of computing as a way of augmenting human capabilities, however, takes empowerment seriously rather than using it as a cover story. It is, for example, what underpinned the lifes work of Douglas Engelbart, the man who came up with the computer mouse and the windowing interface that we use today. And it motivated JCR Licklider, the psychologist who was, in a way, the godfather of the internet and whose paper Man-Computer Symbiosis is one of the canonical texts in the augmentation tradition. Even today, a charitable interpretation of the Google Glass project would place it firmly in the same tradition. Ditto for virtual reality (VR).

Given that he starts from cybernetics, the trajectory of Rids narrative makes sense. It takes him into the origins of the concept of the cyborg the notion of adapting humans to their surroundings rather than the other way round an idea that was first explored by Nasa and the US military. Thence he moves into the early history of automation, and startling tales about ambitious early attempts to create robots that might be useful in combat. In 1964, for example, US army contractors built the Pedipulator, an 18ft tall mechanical figure that looked like a prototype of a Star Wars biped. The idea was to create some kind of intelligent full-body armour that would turn troops, in effect, into walking tanks.

From there, its just a short leap to virtual reality also, incidentally, first invented by the US military in the early 1980s. Rids account of the California counter-cultures obsession with VR is fascinating, and includes the revelation that Timothy Leary, the high priest of LSD, was an early evangelist. Leary and co thought that VR was better than LSD because it was inherently social whereas an LSD trip was just chemically induced isolation. Then Rid moves on to the arrival of public-key cryptography, which put military-grade encryption into the hands of citizens for the first time (and which had been secretly invented at GCHQ, so one can imagine its discombobulation when civilian geeks independently came up with it).

The final substantive chapter of Rise of the Machines is about conflict in cyberspace, and contains the first detailed account Ive seen of the Moonlight Maze attack on US networks. Rid describes this as the biggest and most sophisticated computer network attack made against the United States in history. It happened in 1996, which means that it belongs in prehistory by internet timescales. And it originated in Russia. The attack was breathtaking in its ambition and comprehensiveness. But it was probably small beer compared with what goes on now, especially given that China has entered the cyberfray.

In some ways, Rids chapter on conflict in cyberspace seems orthogonal to his main story, which is about how Wieners vision of cybernetics functioned as an inspirational myth for innovators who were interested in what Licklider and Engelbart thought of as man-machine symbiosis and human augmentation. If this absorbing, illuminating book needs a motto, it is an aphorism of Marshall McLuhans friend, John Culkin. We shape our tools, he wrote, and thereafter our tools shape us.

Thomas Rid Q&A: Politicians would say cyber and roll their eyes

Thomas Rid: Our temptation to improve ourselves through our own machines is hardwired into who we are as humans. Photograph: Flickr

How did you become interested in cybernetics? The short word cyber seemed everywhere, slapped in front of cafes, crime, bullying, war, punk, even sex. Journalists and politicians and academics would say cyber and roll their eyes at it. Sometimes they would ask where the funny phrase actually came from. So every time my boss introduced me as, Hey, this is Thomas, hes our cyber expert, I cringed. So I thought I should write a book. Nobody, after all, had properly connected todays cyber to its historic ancestor, cybernetics.

Initially I wanted to do a polemic. But then I presented some of the history at Royal Holloway, and to my surprise, some of the computer science students warmed to cyber after my talk, appreciating the ideas historical and philosophical depth. So I thought, yes, lets do this properly.

You teach in a department of war studies, so I can see that cyberwar might be your thing. But you decided that you needed to go way back not only to Norbert Wiener and the original ideas of cybernetics, but also to the counter-cultural background, to personal computing, virtual reality (VR) and computer conferencing. Why? War studies, my department, is an open tent. Crossing disciplinary boundaries and adding historical and conceptual depth is what we do. So machines fits right in. I think understanding our fascination with communication and control today requires going back to the origins, to Wieners cybernetic vision after the second world war. Our temptation to improve ourselves through our own machines big brains in the 50s, or artificial intelligence today is hardwired into who we are as humans. We dont just want to play God, we want to beat God, building artificial intelligence thats better than the non-artificial kind. This hubris will never go away. So one of our best insurance is to study the history of cybernetic myths, the promise of the perennially imminent rise of the machines.

How long did the book take to research and write? It took me about three years. It wasnt hard to stay focused the story throughout the decades was just too gripping: here was the US air force building touch-sensitive cybernetic manipulators to refuel nuclear-powered long-range bombers, and theres LSD guru Timothy Leary discovering the cybernetic space inside the machines as a mind-expansion device even better than psychedelic drugs better, by the way, because the machine high was more creative and more social than getting stoned on psilocybin.

One group thats missing from your account is the engineers who sought to implement old-style cybernetic ideas in real life. For example, the Cybersyn project that Stafford Beer led in Chile for Salvador Allende. Did you think of including stuff like that? If not, why not? The cybernetic story is expansive. I had to leave out so much, especially in the 50s and 60s, the heyday of cybernetics. For example, the rise of cybernetics in the Soviet Union is a story in itself, and almost entirely missing from my book, as is much of the sociological work that was inspired by Norbert Wieners vision (much of it either dated or impenetrable). Cybersyn has been admirably covered, in detail, by Eden Medinas Cybernetic Revolutionaries. I would also mention Ronald Klines recent book, The Cybernetics Moment.

Your account of the Moonlight Maze investigation (of a full-on state-sponsored cyberattack on the US) is fascinating and scary. It suggests that contrary to popular belief cyberwarfare is not just a distant possibility but a baffling and terrifying reality. It is also by your account intractable. Arent we (ie society) out of our depth here? Or, at the very least, arent we in a position analogous to where we were with nuclear weapons in, say, 1946? Cyberwar, if you want to call it that, has been going on since at least 1996 as I show without interruption. In fact state-sponsored espionage, sabotage, and subversion escalated drastically in the past two decades. But meanwhile weve been fooling ourselves, expecting blackouts and explosions and planes falling out of the sky as a result of cyberattacks. Physical effects happen, but have been a rare exception. What were seeing instead is even scarier: an escalation of cold war-style spy-versus-spy subversion and sabotage, covert and hidden and very political, not open and of military nature, like nuclear weapons. Over the last year we have observed several instances of intelligence agencies breaching victims, stealing files, and dumping sensitive information into the public domain: often through purpose-created leak forums, or indeed though Wikileaks.

Russian agencies have been leading this trend, most visibly by trying to influence the US election through hacking and dumping. Theyre doing very creative work there. Although the forensic evidence for this activity is solid and openly available, the tactic still works impressively well. Open societies arent well equipped to deal with covert spin-doctoring.

Were currently experiencing a virtual reality frenzy, with companies like Facebook and venture capitalists salivating over it as the Next Big Thing. One of the interesting parts of your story is the revelation that we have been here before except last time, enthusiasm for VR was inextricably bound up with psychedelic drugs. Then, it was tech plus LSD; now its tech plus money. The same cycle applies to artificial intelligence. So cybernetics isnt the only field to have waxed and waned. Absolutely not. I was often writing notes on the margins of my manuscript in Fernandez & Wells in Somerset House, where London fashion week used to happen. Technology is a bit like fashion: every few years a new craze or trend comes around, drawing much attention, money, and fresh talent. Right now, its automation and VR, a bit retro-60s and -90s respectively. Of course our fears and hopes arent just repeating the past, and the technical progress in both fields has been impressive. But well move on before long, and the next tech wave will probably have a retro feature again.

At a certain moment in the book you effectively detach the prefix cyber from its origins in wartime MIT and the work of Norbert Wiener and use it to build a narrative about our networked and computerised existence cyborgs, cyberspace, cyberwar etc. Your justification, as I see it, is that there was a cybernetic moment and it passed. But had you thought that a cybernetic analysis of our current plight in trying to manage cyberspace might be insightful? For example, one of the big ideas to come out of early cybernetics was Ross Ashbys Law of Requisite Variety which basically says that for a system to be viable it has to be able to cope with the complexity of its environment. Given what information technology has done to increase the complexity of our current environment, doesnt that mean that most of our contemporary systems (organisations, institutions) are actually no longer viable. Or is that pushing the idea too far? Youre raising a fascinating question here, one that I struggled with for a long time. First, I think cyber detached itself from its origins, and degenerated from a scientific concept to an ideology. That shift began in the early 1960s. My book is merely chronicling this larger history, not applying cybernetics to anything. It took me a while to resist the cybernetic temptation, if you like: the old theory still has charm and seductive force left in its bones but of course I never wanted to be a cyberneticist.

The Rise of the Machines is published by Scribe (20). Click here to order a copy for 16.40

Source: http://allofbeer.com/so-who-put-the-cyber-into-cybersex/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/so-who-put-the-cyber-into-cybersex/

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allofbeercom · 6 years ago

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So who put the cyber into cybersex?

A mechanical dog manufactured by robot maker Boston Dynamics. Cybernetics proposes that the gap between humans and their machines is much narrower than humanists believe. Photograph: Boston Dynamics

Thomas Rid Q&A: Politicians would say cyber and roll their eyes

Thomas Rid: Our temptation to improve ourselves through our own machines is hardwired into who we are as humans. Photograph: Flickr

The Rise of the Machines is published by Scribe (20). Click here to order a copy for 16.40

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/so-who-put-the-cyber-into-cybersex/

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wwwrains · 4 years ago

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Reflection

This class has been eye opening to say the least. I had always been under the assumption that being a woman and succeeding was enough; I never gave much attention to the struggles that women as a whole encounter, the idea that some women have to work even that much harder never occurred to me. In the modern day, being a feminist is not enough. Intersectionality is a reality and because of that we must be humanist with an emphasis on WOMEN! How do we do that? Is it done by unveiling the middle east? Probably not. How about by closing the wage gap? That could certainly help, but still is not enough. We have to retrain our brains and the culture in which we are raised in. One way of doing this is through storytelling, and no, not the stories you want to hear but the ones that are difficult to tell and even harder to read.

In the readings and TedTalks from the class we could see the idea of this intersectionality starting to form (figuratively of course, this kind of bias has been around for generations). How many times have women been subjected to a single story? I know I'm guilty of doing it to other women. Thinking to myself that if I pushed through the sexism then why can't they? Well because sometimes is more than just the gender or even the race that creates obstacles. Chimamanda Adichie talks about the perceptions her roommate had of her in her TedTalk The Dangers of a Single Story. These prejudices had nothing to do with her gender or race, but because she was from Nigeria it was assumed her english would be poor and her music more indigious. How often have we made judgements in our own minds about someone who looks different then those in our inner circle. In Adichie's story it wasn't even her outward appearance that got her labeled as less, it was the country, community and culture that assigned her identity long before her physical self. Her birthplace became her single story at that moment, but the reality is english was her native language and she loved Mariah Carey! It's this type of pitying stereotyping that can be so damaging, especially in a country made entirely of immigrants.

In my opinion muslim women have it the hardest in the eyes of intersectionality. I also believe they are the most misunderstood and misinterpreted group that we talked about. Lets cover the intersectionality part first, because it is very different depending on what part of the world they are located in. As Americans we all put up a guard against muslims on September 11, 2001. We began to tell ourself the same story about every muslim we saw. In America it became painful to be a mulism overnight. Many women from this population are easily identified by the color of their skin and a hijab covering their heads. This is now a group of women who have so many odds stacked against them, especially in the American culture. Its the single story of these muslim women that so many of us lump into a single idea when we think of them in their native country. I cannot speak from experience about what it is like to be a woman in radical muslim country, but I think we can all agree we’ve seen news coverage and shocking headlines that gives us an idea of the grim reality that so many women in those positions must feel and be going through. This brings me to the misunderstood part. Now there is absolutely no doubt that women of the middle east (that are normally muslim) have been opressed for many years. Unfortunately, we assume that hijabs is an external show of that oppression. Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? paints a very different reality than the one many Americans make in their heads; showing how damaging ill-informed readers can be on a single story. Another example we saw of this is Mogahed’s What It’s Like to be Muslim in America. Her account of what it was to be a well educated muslim in America after the 9/11 tragedy was a harrowing example of how easily our bias can be swayed. After that day, muslim people were minimized not to a single story but a single act of violence.

Now that I’ve laid out some of the largest issues which we discussed in class, I want to talk about how they apply to each of the books we read. While both books were interesting reads and each protagonist had their own struggles, it can not be overlooked that religion had a major role as co-star in each. This has my mind thinking about how many real life stories are impacted by a religious villain; it can take the form of stereotypes but also it can impact the way you see the world around you. Okparanta Under the Udala Trees was a story of a girl who faced hardship after hardship in her life. Losing her father in the beginning and then her mother(not literally in this instance but the divide between them shattering their bond), lastly, feeling betrayed by religion because of her sexual preferences. She lived in a country in which homosexuality was not accepted, mkaing her question her own skin while her beloved mother tried to use the bible to teach her a virtuous life. I think we so often think about how our communities and cultures discriminate against women and race and religion, that we forget that sexual preference is something that commonly is not tolerated within families and close friends. This is one thing I wish we would have explored in more detail, since internal sexism and discrimination was present in both books, is just damaging these are in adding to the single story. The idea of how the ‘author’ of the single story may be impacted by these principles within their own home not just their own community. Peri, which was the lead character in Eli Sharfak Three Daughters of Eve battled with religion and sexism among other things. When reading this book its easier to understand why the world makes these assumptions about oppression in muslim centered countries. I can also imagine how empowering this story would be for a person who is in a similar situation. Peri had the opportunity to step out of her community and into a more tolerant open minded one at Oxford. She also had the advantage of being well educated. To the average American this doesn't seem like much of an advantage, but it is. Women in muslim communites have started closing the gender gap on education. (Murphy, 2016) That’s an important fact when fighting for equality worldwide. Higher education can mean better jobs, better salary, and more independence for women. Peri was able to stand up for herself at the dinner party because she had the knowledge to do so.

Earlier I talked about shifting the culture to end inequality, and to do that we have to change the way we think about situations. The gender divide is ingrained in us from a young age; sayings like “you run like a girl” and “thats so gay” are derogatory but yet every child has heard them and most have said them. Most children are raised in a home where the mother is the homemaker and the father is the breadwinner. It's these things that are not taught and that make up are individual stories that are so limiting, so dangerous. Aristotle's moral theory deals with habits; virtue is practiced and mastered. If that's the case then we have to change our habits and teach our youth differently. When i read these books and listened to these stories I couldn't help but think how difficult it would be to have conversations on these topics frankly. That's the thing about it, ‘the gift of good literature is that it begins difficult conversations.” What are those difficult conversations for you? When was the last time you told a story that evoked a conversation that started a revolution? I had an experience while in the military that wouldn't allow men and women to stand 24 hour watch together. This resulted in the women of that station to have more watches because there were more of them. When i saw this i couldn't help but think how unfair this was, these women were being given more work for no other reason than being female. I took a stand, this was sexism in my military and I wouldn't just accept it. I stood up to the leadership and demanded equal watches for all sailors. It took two years of adjusting the policy, but ultimately the separation of the sexes was dissolved. That was where my single story as a femisnist begun.

If you had a single story, what would it be?

“The impression she left on others and her self-perception had been sewn into a whole so consummate that she could no longer tell how much of each day was defined by what was wished upon her and how much of it was what she really wanted.” -Elif Shafak

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sheilacwall · 5 years ago

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Velvet Negroni is Trying to Make Music That’s Built to Last in an Ethereal Digital Age

When we chat his most recent record, NEON BROWN (via 4AD), has been out for less than a full week. But it’s already beginning to add layers to an increasingly mythological narrative. It’s not just Nutzman’s background being gradually woven together with each new review and published blurb, but it’s also the behind-the-scenes contributions that penetrate larger swaths of popular culture. The track “Waves” from Velvet Negroni’s previous release T.C.O.D. was played by Justin Vernon at Kanye West’s famously rural writing camp in Wyoming, resulting in a contribution to opening track “Feel the Love” on Kanye and Kid Cudi’s collaboration album, Kids See Ghosts. More recently, he’s lent vocals on both “iMi” and “Sh’Diah” from Bon Iver’s new album, i,i.

READ: First Look Friday: Meet Donavon — the Soul of the Algorithm & Disciple of D’Angelo

These high-profile contributions aren’t just Wiki-friendly Easter eggs and fine print liner notes; they’re a clear indicator that both Nutzman’s voice and creative direction possess a unique resonance that is parting the seas of an oft-impenetrable musical kingdom.

NEON BROWN offers an accessible entry-point to hear Jeremy Nutzman’s evolving artistry at work. Album highlight “Wine Green” is an instantly recitable, dancehall-esque anthem awash in peppy adlibs and ascending jabs of bass. “Poster Child” showcases a catchy, iridescent love-song-hook that glows vividly while the downtempo “Feel Let” spins out soft, palatable utterances that feel as if they’re being belted from a woozy, late-night cab ride home.

We talked with Velvet Negroni to explore the album, his creative inspiration, and a rapidly changing music landscape.

Title: Girboix Carmelo Artist: Velvet Negroni

Can you walk me through your contributions on Bon Iver’s album and Kids See Ghosts?

Justin Vernon played [Kanye West and Kid Cudi] “Waves” and it was the first thing that perked their ears that day so they got into it a little bit. There’s a part of the song that goes, “I can feel it in my bones!” I think it was basically just that little snippet that they just took that energy and vibe into “Feel the Love.”

So the inspiration was more cadence than lyrics or production?

Yeah, there wasn’t a sample. While Justin was in Wyoming, I was at his crib working, I was there rehearsing to perform a couple of dates with him. He had helped to work on the record a little bit previously.

How did you two originally link?

I play in a band with a couple of cats that he grew up with essentially and so that’s how that intro went long ago. It was kind of fun. We were just around sometimes, and we got to know each other a little bit. And then my friend Ryan Olsen had played what I had so far of the record for him, he was really excited by it and the next time he saw me he kind of just opened up his place as a base, like “If you need somewhere to finish this or work on it you should come out.”

Source: Artist

Can you tell me about the recording process and what went into your new album, NEON BROWN?

A lot of different things but mostly just good vibes, a good schedule and good hours. We would at least kind of sketch out one or two tracks, at least two things every day. Then after a little bit of that, circle back to one that we had worked on previously. The ones with real potential kind of just flowed out of the fucking mess and felt kind of obvious-ish, I guess. It’s like sifting for gold, eventually you keep whittling it down into a body of work that’s ready.

How do you feel now that it’s out?

It’s just exciting that people are listening to it. The album has been done for a pretty sizable chunk of time, that happened long ago it feels like, but now it’s just, knowing that people can listen to it…that’s exciting.

There’s a wide range of sounds on the album, some heady and stirring but also lighter notes. It’s interesting to see you do both.

It’s a natural thing in the songwriting process. Especially when I’m working with Elliott (Tickle Torture) and Simon (Psymun), there’s no off-limits. There’s that many more influences, like each person has a toolbox. Then there’s that added onto the writing process. So, we’re taking from a pretty wide range of shit just in everybody’s own mind and then putting them together. I don’t think any of us think about the style of the song as it relates to the album until after the fact.

youtube

What new artists inspire you right now?

I’ve been excited about Yves Tumor on Warp and listening to this cat Mk.Gee. I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that I’ve really been jacked on. I’m kind of just stepping back into remembering that I can listen to other people’s music you know, like on my own, really just listen to music. Usually, I’m just in such a creative mode in my headspace, or I’m not listening to anything, or I’m working on my shit.

When you were first discovering music at an early age, finding discarded records on a neighbor’s lawn, which albums were especially formative for you?

In that pack of CDs that I found, I remember some 311, Soundgarden, some Metallica, Lords of Acid. I think there was a Crime Mob CD, some Tupac and even Marilyn Manson. Those were my youngest memories of having music that wasn’t church music.

That was huge for me. But I was so young that when I was playing music, I wasn’t coming at it from a composing aspect at all. It was beyond me how you could even make something like that. I didn’t have any of the experiences that I have now to desensitize me to the wonderment of music in general.

Photo Credit: Rachel Kauffman for Okayplayer

What was the original intention of keeping you from being exposed to that music?

I mean those were just my parents’ rules. They were religious and didn’t think that anything else was worthwhile except for Christian music. I was practicing playing piano for at least one hour every single day and my mom would sit on the bench next to me, there was no getting out of it really.

We’re now living in a totally digital age. How do you feel the streaming era is changing music?

Oversaturation is a real thing, but there’s also so much more of a platform. I think that, eventually, for the most part, good stuff will be discovered. Like there’s too many people listening, seeing and talking amongst themselves deep in the Internet at all times that I think that the good stuff, the truth will prevail. It’s just a different style with music in general, because it used to be the furthest thing away to just go to a bedroom somewhere and record. Most people couldn’t afford to even rent studio time, let alone rent a studio and then then take their time writing songs in the studio as they go. People used to write a song, arrange a song, figure it out, get really good at it and then go record it. Now, it’s pretty much the norm to write a song as you’re playing and then you have the ability to manipulate audio. It changed the format.

When I first got into recording on my own, an amazing feature of it was that it moved so fast and I found myself making a couple of happy accidents. It was really exciting. Like, wow, what happened there? It went from writing songs and then finding happy accidents to just showing up and relying on happy accidents, rather than really spending time with the chord progression of the arrangement ahead of time.

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I think from the critic or audience’s perspective, you also have less time to win over an audience with a shrinking attention span. Not everyone is even really around for a full album to listen from front to back.

That’s huge, yes. You can grab your albums out of thin air. There was no way to pirate an album unless you stole it from a store. So, it was physical, and I think it meant more just inherently then. It meant more on a tangible level. Like, I paid eleven bucks for this album, I’m not sure if I like it yet, but I’m gonna listen to it and keep listening.

The attention span is so fast that I think there’s more people trying to just jump on a wave or catch a wave and make stuff that’s relevant right then, instead of thinking like a whole album. Instead of maybe making a piece of work that is supposed to stand the test of time.

What’s it like to be a musician in 2019? Especially considering it’s increasingly rare to make a living off your art.

You’re correct with that being a rarity, it also depends on what one person’s definition of living and what you’re satisfied with. I’ve been making music for a real long time, but only recently have I even taken into consideration, oh yeah, I guess there’s a chance I could make some money from this. Really. I can only try and imagine what it was like doing what I’m trying to do right now when the Internet wasn’t the Supreme Being.

Photo Credit: Tim Saccenti

Adam Isaac Itkoff is a freelance writer living in New York City. You can follow him (and us!) on Twitter.

The post Velvet Negroni is Trying to Make Music That’s Built to Last in an Ethereal Digital Age appeared first on Hip Hop World Music.

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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9 People Shed Their Clothes To Show The Beauty Of Body Diversity

What if the clich new year, new you was less about changing your body and more about accepting it?

Its a message that Now Toronto, an alternative weekly in Toronto, Canada, has been trying to spread with its Love Your Body issue. The annual issue, which is currently in its third year, features nude photos of local Torontonians who shed their clothes to show that the best New Years resolution is to love who you are at this very moment.

Its also the magazines first issue of each new year.

We felt that the first week of January is so oversaturated with messages about how dieting is the key to happiness, Tanja Tiziana, the photographer who snapped the issues gorgeous shots, told The Huffington Post. Everyone is suddenly on this social pressure to lose weight or change themselves in order to be better.But most people fail because these resolutions arent founded in love or acceptance of their life, body, age and personal challenges.Were just pushed to compare ourselves to some airbrushed model in a magazine.

The idea of this issue, Tiziana explained, is that change and growth are both good things, but they need to come from a place of love for ourselves and each other in order to last and be fulfilling.

Michelle Da Silva, an online news writer for the magazine, also thinks the issue is about how beauty and strength come in all shapes and sizes.

All bodies deserve to be celebrated, she told HuffPost. I want people to see that our bodies tell stories about our past, but also, who we are isnt limited to the skin were in.

Each year Now Toronto puts out a call for volunteers who would be interested in posing nude and talking about their relationship with their body. Then the magazines editorial staff tries to come up with a diverse group of people with different things to share.

Tiziana told HuffPost that this years group left her with a renewed sense of gratitude after working with each one. Here are this years models:

Heidi Hawkins

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Hawkins, a mother and voice-over actor, used her photo shoot to explore how pregnancy changed her body and how she views that change.

My body is completely different. I dont have time to work out or shave my legs. I dont really have time to take care of myself, but I think Im like 90 percent of women who had babies in the last couple of years. I now have cellulite, a stretchy belly and lopsided breasts from breastfeeding, but Im proud of it in a strange way.

Catherine Hernandez

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Hernandez, an author, was diagnosed with two chronic illnesses last year. She used her photo shoot to speak about learning to love and listen to her body.

During the height of my sickness, I would write love letters to my body and post them up. Like, Dear Body. My beautiful Body. I am so sorry that I starved you. Im so sorry that I made you work when you didnt want to work. Im sorry that I pushed you hard when I shouldnt have. I should have just listened to you. And Im listening to you now.

Prince Amponsah

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Amponsah, an actor, social worker and student at Ryerson University, was severely burned in a fire four years ago. At first, he had some reservations about jumping back into acting after the incident, but decided to chuck his fears in order to do what he loves.

I couldnt see myself going back to acting because I didnt feel I had a place there, he told the magazine. You dont see a lot of people who look like me on the stage or on the screen, and sometimes you need those kinds of role models to see yourself, to feel like you can be a part of it.

Jewelz Mazzei

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Mazzei, a body activist and model, spoke to the magazine about how the body-positivity community on Instagram has changed her life.

I never see people like me in the media, and I know that if I had seen models who looked like me growing up, it may have been a bit easier to accept myself. I felt like it wasnt fair for me to love myself and not help other people, because I know what it feels like to wake up everyday and not feel okay.

She then added:

There are still so many people out there who believe they dont deserve to love themselves unless they look a certain way. I want to keep fighting for them and keep spreading the message of self-love.

Ted Hallett

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Hallett, an improviser and writer, was diagnosed with kidney cancer a year ago. He received a large scar from the center of his rib cage to his right thigh due to surgery. He talked to the magazine about how facing death has allowed him to not sweat the small stuff.

I yield to the stuff I have no control over. As I get older, I give less of a shit about what people think. That includes what I look like. My body is my body, and Im cool with that.

Jasbina Justice

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Justice, an activist, yoga teacher, coordinator and performer with feminist porn company Spit, used the photo shoot to expose what she sees as her true self.

When Ive done other things where Ive been nude, its more about performance performing sexuality, looking desirable or Ive been shown alongside other people. Here, I wanted to hold myself accountable to the work Ive done, taking a step toward embracing my body, sharing my story, holding myself up in a really vulnerable way.

Paul Lancaric

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Lancaric, a voice-over artist, talked to the magazine about how visiting and frequenting nude beaches made him more confident about his body and work.

There have been times when my voice-over work has had me sitting in a closet recording audiobooks of erotic novels, and I didnt feel comfortable taking on those jobs until after my experiences with nude beaches and naturism, he said. It definitely connected to feeling confident enough to sit in a closet and read lurid passages about various body parts without laughing or giggling. Those books would have taken forever to record if that happened.

Monique Mojica

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Mojica, an actor, playwright and artistic director at the Chocolate Woman Collective, is also of Kuna and Rappahannock descent. The 68-year-old decided to tie her photo shoot experience into her culture and anger over Standing Rock.

This shoot allowed me to take a big gulp and ask, Where is the celebration? Where is the reclamation? I thought about the women who were dancing and singing and praying in the face of volleys of tear gas, she told the magazine.

She then added:

So, for the shoot, I made it sacred to honor those women who are standing with their arms up. I thought, I am going to sing and dance and pray.

Acacia Christensen

Tanja-Tiziana/Now Magazine

Christensen, a female wrestler, talks about how her body gives her all kinds of strength.

When Im wrestling, thats a good [self-esteem] day. I look the least conventionally attractive when I wrestle, but Im like, This fits. Im dressed like a cartoon character and nobody can say anything about it, she said. I found out about the League of Lady Wrestlers and was asked to join, and somehow Ive become one of the draws. I decided to be the big, fat monster character. Making people boo you is weirdly powerful, and almost more gratifying than trying to get them to like you.

She also added:

I was training in Texas and went to pick up this guy for a power slam. He was like, Youre throwing me effortlessly! A dude might be twice my size and ripped, but I can knock him down because of my build. Im short and have a low center of gravity and Im really hard to move.

To see all the models, check out Now Torontos full story here.