#but was one of many many many things that compiled into a very uncomfortable atmosphere for me in house

[andromedasummer]

yesterday was. a lot

[crispycreambacon]

Cliché Then and Now

An analysis of the Fraggle Rock episode "Mokey, Then and Now" and how stereotypes permeate our perceptions

Disclaimer: I am not calling for a disavowal of the show, nor am I implying the creators were intentionally racist. I am also not African, so there are likely things I got wrong or missed out on.

Special thanks to @jazzyjuno for contributing to the essay and @madamegemknight for helping me compile screenshots!

— ☆ —

When I first watched the Fraggle Rock episode “Mokey, Then and Now”, I laughed at the usual wackiness and welcomed the surprise of a dynamic between Mokey, Boober and Wembley. However, a strange discomfort lurked at the back of my head once they traveled to the past and met their ancestors. I couldn’t understand why at first when the episode seemed to radiate nothing but the fun I’ve come to expect from this show. Then, the first song came on.

I looked up the lyrics to confirm what I had heard, and to my disappointment, I didn’t mishear. This is one of many examples of pop culture’s reference to Vodou, a widely misunderstood religion from Haiti that garnered an unfair reputation for being “dangerous” and “demonic”, and like a lot of media back in the day—even still today—Fraggle Rock utilized this to create a mystifying atmosphere with a sinister undercurrent. While the portrayal is not as negative as the caricatures surrounding it, it is still a questionable usage of an already stigmatized religion.

(From the first verse)

Who do you do? We do voodoo

(We do voodoo)

Who do you do? We do voodoo

(Who do you do?)

(From the chorus)

Eye of bat, ear of toad,

Hoppin' down the dusty road,

Lizard, gizzard, beetle stew,

These will bring good luck to you.

It's true... True Voodoo!

Caterpillar, caterwaul,

Crawling up the garden wall,

Song of shadow, air of rain,

These will make you strong again.

It's true... True voodoo!

It wasn’t just the lyrics that caught my eye. Funnily enough, I went to the comments section of the music video, and I saw someone say this.

This person is not the only one who made the connection. So have I, and that is because the instrumentation sounds like an amalgamation of different African music genres. The beginning shots even showed the past Fraggles playing drums which look similar to the djembe, a percussion instrument from West Africa.

I had originally thought the instrumentation derived solely from Afrobeat, but my friend Juno pointed out how the creators had blended music from different cultures together to create what was commonly identified as tribal music, making it difficult to pinpoint a specific genre it was emulating. She even caught similarities to music outside of Africa, namely the Axé genre from Salvador, Brazil.

Once that link had been established, I realized why I felt uncomfortable with the past Fraggles. The creators of this episode likely meant to play on generic caveman stereotypes, but in doing so, they accidentally emulated elements of African culture and their stereotypes.

• African Influences in the Past Fraggles' Culture

Take a look at the clothing that the past Fraggles wore. Their accessories and colorful patterns allude to tribal African clothing, specifically Maasai bead necklaces from Kenya and Tanzania, and other jewelry they wear are made from natural materials such as stones, plants and hay.

Covering hair is a very common practice in many African countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe to the point the clothing they use to wrap their heads has its own name which is a headwrap. While the hats that the past Fraggles wear aren’t explicitly headwraps, the past Fraggles demonstrate a reverence of covering their heads to the point when Mokey accidently cited a word to force them to take their hats off, they cried out in despair.

Moreover, when people depict Africans in media or simply imagine them, Africans are often imagined as bald which is a consequence of the generalization of an important part of ancient culture and the spread of ideas propped up by eugenicists. Guess what happens when the past Fraggles take their hats off.

The past Fraggles operated under a monarchy under the “Great and Wondrous leader” Fishface Fraggle whose presentation screams of what an average person may think of when visualizing an African king. His sceptre is carved like an Asante linguist staff—which, while not held by the king, is closely related to the king—and his throne has a loose resemblance to a palanquin which, while not exclusive to African culture, is used in Ghana. To add onto the African king imagery, the past Fraggles briefly showed off fans in the first song which are associated with the king’s fan bearers in Egypt.

• The Poor Implications

On its own, the past Fraggles having African influences in their culture isn’t an awful idea. It only becomes a problem when those influences are being used in a context which further perpetuates African stereotypes.

With all of this in mind, Boneface Fraggle suddenly takes on the “savage caricature” image which depicts Africans wearing bones in their nose and speaking in “broken” English.

It wasn’t just Boneface who spoke like this. There were multiple instances where the past Fraggles didn’t follow General American English and chanted caveman speech which has been associated with Africans to imply their lack of articulation and therefore inferiority.

The savage and uncivilized stereotypes are pushed further when the past Fraggles act in an unsavory way. For instance, they have outlawed laughter, even though it is a completely natural act, and imprisoned a Fraggle for breaking this law.

When Mokey is proven to not be Blundig Fraggle as she claimed to be, they immediately called for her, Boober and Wembley to be imprisoned and tied to a rock for what is implied to be eternity.

• Why Should We Care?

After all, the creators likely didn’t consciously draw inspiration from African cultures, nor did they intend to enforce these stereotypes. In fact, I proposed they were likely focusing more on caveman imagery.

That’s the thing though. Stereotypes, especially racial ones, are ingrained in us so deeply that we can subconsciously be influenced by them when we create and enjoy art connected to their subjects. Caveman stereotypes have a lot of overlap with African stereotypes, so in the creators attempting to portray one image, they accidentally invoke another.

In spite of my speculations on them drawing from cavemen, we cannot be completely sure of the intentions of the creators when trying to portray the past Fraggles as from what I can tell, they had not made them public. Regardless of what they intended, that doesn’t erase that the culture of the past Fraggles can be interpreted as a cumulation of African stereotypes.

We may not even remember where stereotypes originate from as they are a gross oversimplification of observations from our ancestors, yet these stereotypes stick with us and our culture even if we aren't actively thinking about them. Believing and passing on generalizations is a lot easier than thinking of all the nuances of a subject and researching where these generalizations came from.

Let me make it clear: you are not a bad person for not noticing before. The creators are not bad people for unintentionally perpetuating these stereotypes. This isn’t an issue with individual morality. Stereotypes are, by their design, meant to go unchallenged for literal centuries, and people aren’t meant to ponder over their validity. They are presented as simple truths so that we won’t have to think about why they factor into how we treat and think about other people, and we won’t have to confront the prejudice that they can cause.

This is why we have to actively call out stereotypes when we do notice them because how else will we ever stop believing them so easily? If we never question why we believe and enforce them, how can we undo their harm? Even something as small as pointing out when stereotypes are used in a TV show or calling out someone who uses them for their tasteless jokes can lead to bigger changes such as dismantling the racism which benefited from stereotypes.

• So What Do We Do About It?

Moving forward, we need to be more mindful about how we portray subjects in our art to ensure we can explore them with the nuance they need and to ensure that marginalized groups aren't harmed by our art. We also need to be aware of when the media utilizes these stereotypes and how they are presented in the media’s context. Recognizing harmful portrayals in others’ work can help us stay vigilant when making our own art, and we can also help each other realize our own shortcomings and minimize the harm done in the future. We live and learn then, we can live and learn now.

[awakeneddragon]

List of Kin Experiences

A while back, I decided to compile a list of various experiences that I’ve had that I consider to be at least slightly non-human in nature. I thought I would finally share it here. 

The basic layout/template was made by @a-dragons-journal, but the writing is my own.

Phantom Limbs: This is a common thing to experience in the otherkin community, and describes feeling limbs that are not physically there. Though my own experiences with this are quite tame in comparison to others (as some have reported being able to feel when these “limbs” are touched), this is something that I’ve gone through for many years without thinking too much of it. 

Feeling myself having claws/talons was a regular occurrence for me. Though I couldn’t “see” their specific appearance, I definitely knew they were there and was able to “move” them. This was an involuntary and consistent thing that happened. I remember being pretty insistent on keeping my nails long due to this, and it always felt wrong when they were clipped.

Feeling a tail was somewhat common as well, as were ears that would flatten or raise themselves depending on my emotions/what was happening around me. My teeth also sometimes felt sharper than they actually are. I don’t experience most of these as much as I used to, but not to the point that they’re rare.

Connection To Dragons: I’ve always had a large fascination with dragons. I'd become really attached to dragon characters in media and overall just connected with them more than other types of characters. 

I remember how I would sometimes imagine myself having a dragon form, and one of the imaginary friends I had was also a dragon. When I learned of the existence of roleplaying on the internet, my characters almost always had something to do with them (could transform into one, had a dragon ally, etc.) Whenever a movie, show, game, or whatever else depicted a dragon (no matter their role), my interest was immediately piqued. 

I became really interested in learning more about the different types and the many stories that have been written about them. I remember being upset when learning that a lot of the stories were of dragons being portrayed as cruel, selfish, and violent, as that didn't match my perception of them at all. I always saw them as these incredibly intelligent and gentle creatures that only attacked when threatened, or at least believed them to have more of a variety of personalities than what the media displays them to have. 

I would also cling onto anything that suggested the possibility of them existing elsewhere, either in the past or in the present. Even as a kid I believed in different dimensions and the possibility of "mythological" creatures existing in ones separate from ours or on separate planets. Anything that connected me specifically to dragons was always a delight as well, such as me learning that I was born in the year of the dragon. Though zodiacs to most people are often seen as dismissible nonsense, it truly meant something to me and admittedly still does.

Connection To Nature/Elements: Though it’s a fairly normal occurrence even for those who are non-otherkin, being out in nature is incredibly calming to me. However, what may set other people’s experiences and mine apart is the sense of familiarity I feel or the urges I experience in certain locations. There have been multiple occasions where I’ve told myself, “I swear I’ve been here or somewhere similar before”, despite the fact that I never actually have. 

With weather, nothing calms me more than being outside when it’s cold and windy. It’s a feeling of pure euphoria that I don’t really experience from anything else, and usually succeeds in making me feel like running around on all fours and just generally doing various animalistic things.

In terms of elements, I’ve always felt most connected to ice and wind, though occasionally I’ll feel a connection with water in terms of small bodies of it (rivers, streams, etc.) or storms.

Self-image: Though I often liked to imagine myself as a dragon when I was younger, this habit became much more significant when I acknowledged my draconity and remembered the appearance of my past form. Ever since this discovery, in my day to day life it’s impossible for me to see myself as entirely human. I know that I’m not, and there is no denying that fact for me. Whatever I’m doing; whether that be typing, walking, or eating… It’s become almost instinctual for me to envision my dragon form in the place of my human body. When I look in the mirror, my normal appearance just feels so unnatural in comparison to my kintype. 

Non-human Noises: Making noises that are more similar to the sounds an animal would make is something that I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. It’s my instinctive reaction to a lot of emotions. Snarling, growling, and hissing are all sounds that I commonly make, though on rare occasions I have made low rumbles that could be considered some sort of purr. Making and listening to these sounds is comforting to me. You can hear an example of some of the noises I make in my blog.

Movement/Expression: I don’t think I could even give an accurate number to the amount of times I’ve wanted to walk on all fours. I haven’t attempted to in a long time since I know it won’t be as satisfying as I’d like it to be, but imagining it feels so much more natural than walking on two legs. 

Another notable thing for me is how unnatural it sometimes feels to use forks and spoons when eating. It doesn’t really matter what it is; I usually prefer to eat things with my hands. As you can imagine, I’ve always been a bit of a messy eater, though I do at least know now to keep my manners in check. 

When experiencing anger, I often feel the urge to bare my teeth and/or dig my nails into whatever they’re in contact with.

In addition to this, I got in the habit of copying the movements of various dragon characters (Toothless, Spyro, Draco, Haku, etc.) They always felt more “right” to me.

Combat Instincts: The few times I’ve had a heated interaction with someone, I often felt the urge to claw them instead of punching them like most other humans would do in a fight. In fact, when I was a very young kid, my first instinct was to scratch people that made me upset/uncomfortable. I’m glad that I've grown out of that habit, but it was another reason that I disliked my nails being short. I saw them as the default/best method to defend myself.

Flight Instincts: Though I’m sure many wish to fly, I’m unsure if it often reaches the intensity of the desires that I often feel. Whether I’m outside or simply seeing an image where the sky is present, my very first instinct is to fly. It’s not simply a want; it’s something that I truly believe I was able to do at some point. I can very vividly imagine and “feel” what it’s like to experience the wind against my “fur” and see the ground far beneath me. This urge usually arrives in my mind before reality sets in and reminds me that flying isn’t possible with this form, and it’s something that gives me a deep level of sadness that is unmatched by almost anything else. 

Prey Drive: This is a very rare thing for me, though I figured it was notable enough to include. On a few occasions when watching documentaries, I have been able to easily envision myself in the predators place. At the sight of the prey that it's chasing, I’ll feel the urge to sink my teeth and “claws” into them. Of course, I would never actually go out and harm an animal.

Shifts: In the otherkin community, the act of going through a shift refers to people who are temporarily feeling especially like their kintype in some way. I don’t personally experience a heightened sense of smell or sight like some others, but it is incredibly easy to see myself as my past form and I'll have an increased urge to do many of the things listed above.

Dreams: It’s become a common occurrence for dragons to in some way be involved with my dreams. Most of the time I’ll just simply come across dragons or humans that can turn into them, though occasionally I’ll have the physical appearance of my past form. I unfortunately don’t remember too much of the latter dreams, but I do know that even in the dream world, this made me incredibly happy. It just felt correct, and I remember feeling a strong sadness when waking up.

Memories: I know that the human mind can make fantasies seem incredibly possible and/or real, so I take all of these memories with a grain of salt. However, I have had several experiences that could be considered memories of some sort. Below I’ll list some notable ones.

The very first memory I had depicted my past form in a "hallway" (I don’t know how else to describe it) that was made entirely out of snow and ice. I remember being able to vaguely see my reflection on the floor, and I looked up to see a blinding white light that I'm assuming was the exit before I started to run towards it.

My second memory was myself being in a forest full of leaves on the ground. I was on top of a slope, which I skidded down. I vaguely recall there being a nearby river.

Another memory depicted me in a snowy landscape. It was in the middle of the night and I was flying high in the sky.

I also had another memory at night/late afternoon, but the sky was just bright enough for me to see dark clouds. I was standing in an open field and looking around. It was pretty windy, as well; like it was about to storm. It's a very peaceful memory for me, despite the bad weather.

The most recent one I had yet again has to do with the night, but relied more on feelings and strong urges than sight. I was running in a forest, potentially chasing after/hunting something. It felt very cool and the overall atmosphere of it was very “wintery”. 

My first memory is what gave me a basic idea of what I looked like, though it wasn’t until in other memories where my appearance was consistent that I was more confident in myself. Funnily enough, before these memories I actually didn’t think that much of eastern dragons. It wasn’t that I disliked them, but they simply didn’t cross my mind that much due to western dragons being a much more common depiction in media.

Hoarding: This is the stereotype for dragons and something I see many dragonkin discussing, but it’s something I actually don’t relate with too much nowadays. However, when I was a kid, I would collect practically anything I could find around the house or outside. Rocks (that I would often insist were rare even though they clearly weren’t), rubber bands, beads, etc. These are all things that most people would consider worthless, but at the time they were special to me and I kept all of these items in a box that I was quite protective of.

Dens/Small Spaces: I remember when I was a kid, my mother and I built a pillow fort. I would hide and curl up inside it at every opportunity, as it made me feel incredibly content and safe. I have a similar urge whenever I see dens in movies and games. If I’m playing something that has caves, dens, or any other kind of small area, it’s very common for me to stop whatever I’m doing to just relax in these locations for a while.

And that concludes the list. I may update this whenever I recall anything else I find worth mentioning. My journey of being dragonkin has definitely been an interesting one, and I’m glad that I decided to become more involved in the community. Aside from some difficult times, being otherkin has had an overall positive impact on my life. It’s resulted in me meeting new people, feeling a sense of closure with myself that I’ve been lacking for as long as I can remember, and learning new things about dragons and the cultures of various places around the world.

[sweetdejun]

coterie: the black leather bracelet (2/2)

gang!x1 x fem!reader

synopsis: you’re an ordinary girl, with an ordinary life. but what happens when you catch the gang that is famous for keeping their deeds under the table, in action?

coterie’s masterlist can be found here

pairing: lee hangyul and y/n

a/n: mentions of sex (I couldn’t write actual smut to save my life), cursing, and mentions of alcohol and drugs, so proceed with caution. this is also LONG.

In the first few weeks, you spend observing hangyul’s work. he insisted that you should observe him so that when it comes to your assignment you don’t ask him questions. you thought it was a dick move on his part, but in hindsight, you’re positive that he knows what he’s doing. during the time you’ve observed his actions, you’ve also warmed up more to hangyul. after you made it clear that you were uncomfortable with all the flirting, he stopped. he’s got a sarcastic sense of humor, which is always active, and you’ve started to notice this growing sympathy towards hangyul; given the job he has, he’s a completely different person in actuality, and, unfortunately, not many people get to see it. finally, once the week is over, hangyul brings you the information for your first client the very next morning. it’s a manila folder with your name neatly written on one of the corners, and he hands it to you after breakfast. “here’s your first target, y/n. name’s jang juhyeok. his dad is the head of the national intelligence service, and they have some evidence that we’d like to have back. I’ve asked wooseok to compile all his information and have put it in this folder, for you. this is the first and last time I’ll be doing this for you, though. now you know who to go to if you need any information on him.” you stop him before he can leave, and ask, “so, what now, do I just find him and try to become friends with him?” hangyul understands your confusion as to where to begin, so he thinks a bit before answering, “ultimately the goal is to lure him in, somehow. you decide what you wanna do and how you wanna do it. I’d suggest going to places that he commonly visits and just trying to paint a picture and create a story. I don’t know what else to tell you other than good luck. now, I’ve got to get to my target, so I’ll see you around.” and with that, he waved and left you at the door to your room. the corner of your room had a desk space, where you set up things like your laptop and such. taking a seat there, you decided to open up the file and familiarize yourself with its contents. this guy, juhyeok, is a senior at another university in the city and is a business major. in the profile are details about his social life, academics, and something like a day-to-day schedule that he follows. you look over the schedule and this dude’s a party-goer, a gym fanatic and is still managing to get by with good grades in school. a perfect guy? impossible. there must be something you can use against him, you start to think, and then, you see it. under ‘hobbies’, there is the name of a club, where he DJs. “perfect, I’ll start from here. maybe then I’ll get some starting point figured out.” you mumble to yourself as you read through the notes provided by wooseok. you find out juhyeok DJs on friday nights. that only gives you...wait, that’s in a couple of hours. you get up out of your chair and rush over to your closet, rummaging through the clothes to see if you can find something just right for the occasion. just when you think you can’t find anything, you see it; haseul bought a short black dress to take you clubbing for your birthday months back. you went, though you stayed away from the drinks for the most part because ultimately you would be the designated driver. you didn’t get rid of the dress, because it was a nice dress, just not something you’d buy for yourself. you never thought you’d ever need it desperately but a night like tonight required the attire. you quickly changed into it and got ready to go out. you called soonja, “is there a mode of transportation available at this time?” she told you the driver should be outside, and she’ll call for him to be ready. and you grabbed a coat and your purse before heading down. on your way out, you collided with a body, who was none other than hangyul. his eyes went wide. “where are you going?” you tried to ignore his gaze scanning you from head to toe, and answered him, “going after my target. wish me luck.” and when the driver came around, you walked away from hangyul, unaware of his lingering gaze on you.

as soon as you told the driver where you wanted to go, you began to come up with your story. you couldn’t give away your true identity and you certainly didn’t want the guy to ever be able to find you again. you conjured a tale with the help of wooseok, and by the time you reached the club, you’d gone over it a few times. you thanked him before letting him know to be back in around two hours. that should give you more than enough time to introduce yourself to the guy. the atmosphere of the club resembled the one you saw in your dream heavily. the fumes of the various alcohols were suffocating, and the sticky floors covered in god knows what clung slightly as you walked around amongst the crowds of people, until you managed to get to the center of the dance floor. there, at the dj booth stood juhyeok, bopping his head along to the music, messing with the records in front of him. you start to dance, eyes trained on him, waiting for him to look up. bodies are hitting yours, but you still somehow manage to move your body as if you’re the only one there. and luck’s on your side because as juhyeok’s gaze flickers up for a second, it comes back and is trained on you and your body. you take this moment and direct a smile and a wink towards him, which he reciprocated with a smile of his own. he calls someone over, and when they get to him, he hands them the dj headphones and is on his way down. you feel yourself getting nervous but you make your way over to the bar and down a shot of tequila to calm your tense nerves when you feel a tap on the shoulder. you turn around and there is juhyeok. “hi, I’ve never seen you around here. are you new to town?” you get into character and smirk, “you could say that. I never have time to come down to party, so I thought since I had nothing to do tonight, why not?” he sits you down, a beer in his hand and a martini in your own, and you tell him your “story”, about how you used to live in a nearby city, and when your job transferred you, you’d been so flooded with work that you rarely had time to sit and relax. you tell him about your job as an accountant, which you’re positive that he’ll check on. silently thanking wooseok, you almost missed it when juhyeok asked you for coffee the next morning. “you know, I’m gonna need your name and number for that.” for a short second, you’re about to say your own name but then remember, “I just got a new phone, so give me your number, and I’ll text you my name. but for now, I need to go.�� he narrates his number to you, and he grabs your wrist, only to kiss the back of your hand. “tomorrow?” you smile at him, “tomorrow.” and you do eventually text him, and one thing leads to another, you start to gain juhyeok’s trust. of course, as your relationship gets stronger, you begin to spend more time around him. he is convinced you guys are a couple, and you’ve got him exactly where you want him. one night, when you returned from the club, you entered the house and found hangyul sitting on the couch. in his hand was a glass, filled halfway with some liquid you assumed was alcohol. said assumption came true because when you approached him, he looked up at you, with a wave of anger looming in his red eyes. “do you know how late it is, y/n? I get it, you’re doing fucking amazing, but please, make it back home at an earlier time than two in the fucking morning. I don’t care if that’s ruining the fun, or whatever, just-” you scoff, rolling your eyes. “and who are you to tell me when to get home? relax, hangyul, I know what I’m doing. just let me do my job. and for pete’s sake, stop babying me.” your speech is a little slurred, but you continue, “I’ve almost got him. now I just need to get him alone, in a secluded area. I plan on taking him to the sunflower fields tomorrow, and there’s a small shed on the way there. that’s where I’ll put him.” “stop babying you? stop acting as if you’ve been doing this job forever! you’re still new, don’t forget that. I know that it’s unsafe for anyone to be out at this time, but if you don’t care, it’s not my fucking problem!” hangyul huffed and moved closer to you. you can smell the faint alcohol radiating from him. at this point, your face is inches away from hangyul’s and you slip on a sleepy smile and shut your eyes. 

“alright, alright, I got it. but could you keep it down? my head hurts and I’m so tired,” your balance is slipping away from you, and you trip over nothing, falling forward. luckily, hangyul catches you before anything can happen, and your upper body is awkwardly leaning against hangyul’s chest, with his arms wrapped around your waist uncomfortably. he shifts a bit and adjusts one of his arms under your knees so that now he’s carrying you bridal style. you’re knocked out, and fall asleep with your head buried in the junction between hangyul’s shoulder and neck. he feels your breaths against his skin as he takes you up the stairs and into your room. he gently places you down on your bed, and unhooks your arms from around him, before reaching down and putting your blanket over you. your hand catches his just before he leaves, and you tug him down, catching him off-guard. the moonlight that once reflected a halo on him now illuminated the brilliant features of your face, and your tired gaze managed to look saccharine at the same time. “c’ mere,” you whisper and hangyul obliges, moving his face closer to your own. your eyes move down from his small widow’s peak to his deep umber eyes, down his nose bridge and stop at his pink mouth. he seemed to read your mind because he finds himself coming closer to you. your actions resemble his own, and you tilt your head up just enough so that soon, your lips collide with his own. at first, there is no movement. but hangyul gathers his strength and kisses you, slowly as if he’s taking you in second by second. your hands move out of your blanket to cradle his face, and his move to hold your covered waist. the passion gets stronger as does the fire growing in the pit of your stomach. you need more contact, you think but your train of thought quickly fades away, as hangyul’s mouth starts to wander down your neck, wanting to touch every inch of you. a strangled gasp leaves your mouth and hangyul loves the sound of it. the night brings many similar sounds coming from the both of you and the thought of sleep came around much later than it was originally intended to. 

the next morning arrived fast. the sun shone down on you from the window, and you woke up to a pounding head and a sore body, and it only took you a few seconds to realize that you were completely naked also. you tried to get up, but something, or rather, someone was holding you back. a bare arm was holding you tight around the waist, and you turned to see sprawled next to you was hangyul, exposed from the shoulder up. you didn’t need to check to see if he was naked or not, and the events from the night before were hazy, but still managed to bring a blush to your face. “uh, hangyul. get up.” you tapped his arm, holding the blanket around your upper body to guard yourself. “hangyul,” you were a bit louder this time, and see him reaching to rub his face. once his eyes adjust to the light, he sits up before looking over at you. his eyes shoot open. “wha- oh. uh... hmm.” his hand goes back to scratch the back of his head, but hangyul’s eyes were fixed on his lap. “we had sex last night.” he said after some moments of being silent. “yeah, we did.” hangyul peers up at you through his lashes, almost contemplating about saying something. he sits up straight, alerting you, and reaches over to his side to slip on his briefs. “we won’t talk about this anymore. pretend it never happened. what happened last night was... unprofessional. it was my fault, I should’ve been more aware of myself.” you don’t know why you felt a dull pain in your chest when he said that, but you agree. “yeah, don’t worry. forgiven and forgotten. it was a drunk mistake,” you said and hangyul, who was turned away from you, winced a bit when you said that. one by one, he and you pick up the articles of clothing you’d thrown on the ground mere hours ago, and hangyul dresses himself and turns away as you do the same, out of respect. you walk him to the door, and he turns and says, “today, you’re meeting juhyeok in that sunflower field? I’ll get there a bit earlier, and I’ll be near the shed, ready and waiting for your signal, okay? I’ll have a mic in there, so find a way to say the word, “the bird is in the nest”. it sounds weird, but it’s a specific enough phrase. work it into a conversation or something, that’s when I’ll come in. until then, bye.” you shut the door and calm yourself from the whirlwind of emotions going through you. fuck it. it’s about time you admit to yourself that you've found him attractive for a long time. and you felt like shit when he treated your...union as a mistake. you don’t hold any other position in his head other than a co-worker and it shouldn’t matter what he thinks but it does. and you wish nothing more than to stay here, in your bed all day, but you need to get ready because you’ve gotta get to juhyeok’s house. you get dressed, grab your purse and your phone and leave your room. as you walk down the set of stairs you see hangyul in the foyer and make brief eye contact with him. he mouths, “are you leaving now?” you nod and he gives you a thumbs up. you’re down the stairs completely and are walking towards the entrance, where the car is ready. hangyul, who’s walking to a separate vehicle, looks at you and says, “I’ll leave now. see you soon.” and steps inside the car, before driving off.

the drive to juhyeok’s house seemed too fast, but that’s probably because you are shaking in nervousness. you can only hope things will go your way, and that you’ve had a successful mission. the only thing you feel bad about, if anything, is that you’ve messed with juhyeok this entire time. sure, the guy’s not perfect, but you still did share some connection with him; it’s just not mutual. you get to his house, where he’s waiting for you and waving. “I thought you were gonna ditch me,” he tells you as he reaches out to give you a hug that you lightly return. “I wouldn’t ditch you. come, let’s go! I wanna get some good pictures!” you feel his stare linger on you a little longer, but you move around him to sit in the car. it’s a silent drive on your way there; the field isn’t too far, but it was no five-minute drive. you were quiet, staring out of the window or messing around with your phone. the only sound was the mixture of the music and static on the car radio. juhyeok decided to break the silence at some point, with “what’s on your mind?” his hand went over the console and rested on your thigh, his thumb running across it and giving you shudders. “it’s nothing. I just...have a feeling.” you weren’t lying: you had a sinking feeling in your stomach, but it usually felt like this when you were nervous, so you didn’t pay much attention. you started to see the yellow of the sunflowers as the car approached it closely. after some time, juhyeok parked the car, and turned to you. “well cheer up, y/n! we’re here! and I have a picnic basket full of goodies for us.” you smiled at his attempt to distract you, and teased “didn’t know you were capable of building a picnic basket for us, you dork. that’s too cute,” and he blushed a bit. you stepped outside the car and took in the beautiful scenery. it’s a shame you won’t have too much time to spend out here because the purpose of your visit is most certainly not recreational. it takes you two about an hour to settle down, enjoy the contents of the picnic basket, and take a few pictures. then you two lie next to each other on the red checkered sheet, and you look up at juhyeok, to find his gaze already on you. you lean in, according to your plan, and kiss him. he kisses you back and you quickly decide that he doesn’t kiss anything like hangyul. you both sit up, and you place yourself in his lap, then continue. things get intense, but your heart isn’t racing like it was when you were with hangyul. no adrenaline running through you, your senses aren’t going hazy, and you’re not craving more; all of which you felt with hangyul was absent with juhyeok. but you need to execute your plan, so you break away and whisper in his ear, “there’s a shed nearby, why don’t we go there?” it’s apparent that juhyeok approves of your idea, because he groans and nods feverishly, at a loss of words. you get up and walk him over to the shed. you walk in first, and before you can say anything, you feel it: a gun pressed against the back of your head. 

“surprised?” juhyeok’s tone is completely different. the once dulcet-laced voice now rings with venom, and you can only nod, the rest of you shaking. juhyeok laughs darkly. “what did you think? I wouldn’t know why I’m here? something was off when I saw someone at the club who had never been there and managed to get close to me. my dad trained me from a very young age to take note of people like you. just be glad I haven’t killed you yet.” he keeps the gun on you but moves so that now the gun is pointing on your forehead, and he stands in front of you to see your trembling mouth and teary eyes, fearing for your life. you clench your hands and juhyeok grunts, pushing the gun against you even harder. you cry out in pain and he says, “ keep your hands at a visible place, otherwise, I’ll shoot. what did you take me for, an idiot? your game was easy to catch onto, and at first, I was only suspicious. but when you decided to bring me to a secluded area like the sunflower field, where the only other thing here is this bloody shed, my suspicions were confirmed. now, do you have anything to say before I kill you here and now? perhaps, who you’re working for and what you want from me?” it takes all the courage in you to look him in the eye, and clear your throat before saying, “all I have to say is: the bird is in the nest.” you say loud enough and juhyeok’s face morphs into one of confusion, but before he realizes anything, it’s too late. hangyul and a few other men have burst into the shed, from multiple locations, and they beat down juhyeok and start tying him up. the gun that was against your head now lies on the ground, and one of the men confiscates it. you run to a corner and watch as juhyeok still struggles with the men, kicking and jolting, but he is unsuccessful. hangyul walks over and puts a cloth over his mouth and juhyeok’s movements begin to seize, then stop completely. “he’s good, boys. you can take him. I’ll tell seungwoo hyung everything’s under control.” you lean against a wall in the shed, slowly moving down and for the love of god, you can’t stop shaking and your head hurts like hell. but a hand reaches out in front of you and you look to see hangyul, worry glazed in his eyes. you take it, and he helps you up. “hey, it’s okay. you’re safe now.” he rests his hands on your shoulders, but that only tips you over the edge, because then your arms wrap around his torso, and you pull him towards you, burying your face in his chest. hangyul hesitantly wraps his arms around you and places a peck on your forehead. you two are in this position for some time, until you hear the sound of someone clearing their throat. “sir, I just wanted to let you know that the man is in our car, we have successfully captured him.” hangyul steps away from you, who is now a nervous mess. “oh! okay, just keep me posted, and let me know when he gets there. I’ll send our interrogation team there.” the man, with a small smile on his face, nods affirmatively and walks away leaving the two of you in the shed.

“let’s go, you must be tired. we’re done here, anyway.” hangyul rambles and you nod, following him back to the car. he says he’s parked a few miles away, but that’s the only thing you hear because the sound of your heartbeat is starting to overpower his voice. suddenly he stops talking and you look up to find him looking back at you. “huh? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” you bashfully tell him, looking at anything but him. “ I asked if you were okay.” you bit your lip and nodded, but hangyul wasn’t convinced. “it’s my fault, I should’ve trained you more, instead of throwing you in the situation unprepared.” you shook your head and voiced your opposition. “no, I don’t think it was your fault at all. I think I overestimated this job, and I wasn’t being mindful when it came to doing certain things. I should have paid more attention, but it’s most certainly not your fault.” you’ve reached the car, and hangyul opens the door for you, before going around the driver’s side and starting the car. the ride back home was quiet at first, but out of everything going through your head, there was one thought you felt obligated to voice. “he kissed me today, but it didn’t feel like you.” and if hangyul wasn’t already approaching a red light, he was sure he was going to brake in the middle of the road. “I didn’t enjoy it; yeah, I kissed him before, but after I kissed you, it didn’t feel right kissing him again. I know that I also shouldn’t get attached to the client, but I couldn’t. he was the perfect guy, but that was before I got to know you. and now, hangyul,” you turn and look at him, “I don’t want anyone else. my mr.perfect was with me all along.” he doesn’t say anything in response, and you feel your heart dropping slowly. you reach the house, and before he even turns the car off, you’ve opened the door and are trying to leave. “y/n!” you hear, and hangyul comes running over to you. you stop, but you feel embarrassed. maybe you shouldn’t have screwed it up. maybe now you’ve fucked up the only friendship this team had to of- your thoughts get cut off when hangyul lifts your face with his hands and kisses you. your hands drop your things and fly into his hair, kissing him back. you pull away after a bit and look at each other in the eyes. “you didn’t hear what I had to say,” he starts, thumb brushing against your cheek. you lean into his touch and he says, “you were breathtaking from the day I laid my eyes on you. I hadn’t felt that way before with anyone. you were perfect and still are. but at the time, I thought I didn’t stand the chance because, well, this job painted me a certain way. I thought you hated my guts, and I didn’t feel worthy enough to be yours. last night, you gave me an experience that I’ll never forget.” you blush and look away for a second, and he continues, “I felt even worse about it, and didn’t want it to get in the way of anything, that’s why I said what I said about it this morning. but I didn’t mean it. when I saw you today trembling in fear, I wanted to kill that bastard. trust me, I did, but luckily the other guys got their hands on him before I did. the point is, I feel the same way. and I’m so glad that I can finally call you mine. that is, if you’ll let me?” you laughed and pecked his lips again before saying, “of course. anything for you, hangyul.”

a/n: aaaand that’s over! sorry it took so long, I’ve been busy with packing! I’ll be going out of town for a few days so the next coterie will take some time. that’s why I made this one a little longer than usual. how did y’all like it? did you expect it to be hangyul? if not, who’d you think it was? let me know in the comments and as always, thank you guys for all the love and support you have given this series!!

[collinson-p]

final evaluation.

Introduction

The project consisted of being placed in groups and appointed a certain image that we then, through many different mediums and tasks, such as having photoshoots to recreate the image, and practising our marketing skills through promotion tasks and pitches, had to eventually develop a film of our creation. We used props, costumes, actors, sfx makeup, editing and audio manipulation to resemble the original image in our own way. Throughout this project we also attended many helpful and insightful progression talks surrounding future pathways and courses we may want to be a part of, and notes were made on each of these.

 Research Presentation 

This project started with each individual class member being assigned a certain photo, allocating us into our groups, joining up with peers sharing the same image. The image I received was that of painter Vilhelm Hammershøi’s piece entitled ‘Interior’ Once in groups we had to discuss the image, how we interpreted it individually along with how it made us feel. Then the groups were assigned the task of researching as much as possible on the photo. We wrote all this down and displayed the information thought and discovered using mind maps, spider diagrams, notes, sketches and mood boards, which we then presented to the class. 

Group Research Work

After finding all this information we collectively decided to take the eerie, creepy horror film style for our project. We however noticed how impactful the minimalism of the original painting by Hammershoi was and how avoiding classic horror film cliches would be a smart idea and make our film unique and stand out to others. Following this we would also be able to capture the same essence of The Interior piece. We also discussed researching ways in which an uncomfortable, uneasy feeling could be felt by the viewer through other various techniques such as how audio can be manipulated to cause suspense through sudden, abrupt moments of silence followed by black, empty shots with loud, terrifying low, monotone sounds. I did a lot of research into how I could use audio to my advantage. I learnt how to muffle audio through YouTube tutorials, looked into downloading sample packs of simple sound effects from film such as glass shattering and an argument, however these feel very cheesy and do not fit the tone our film is capturing. We also went out of campus together to conduct location studies into whereabouts we could replicate certain shots and scenes we desired to include in our piece. Popular places were plain, empty, cold areas where Connor, our model, could stand and look very alone and isolated. 

Photography studio work

We wanted to come together and carry out a professional photoshoot using the type of equipment david wanted to test out such as an LED light, gels to accompany the light, costumes, props and correct location. Due to Connor’s absence I was the model for the shoot and am very pleased with the shots my group captured of me. One of the key things we are focusing on is the tone of the original images we were given therefore we ensured the lighting was very harsh and that all the shots are very moody, bold and atmospheric. The gels were used just as an experimentation to see if we would want to use them in the future and if they worked with our ideas. The mask was used to emphasise on my idea of the figure in the shots having their identity stripped away from them along with the jacket to add to that effect. The shoot lasted a while but was worth it for the shots captured. The rest of the day we spent sorting through the hundreds of raw shots and selecting our favourites as inspiration for the upcoming stages and editing practise. This has been utilised very well so most members of the group could come together and express our ideas. 

Storyboards

As a group and individually we began coming up with ideas on what a film based upon/ taking inspiration from our image would include. We decided as a group to do some brainstorming in a dm room downstairs together and just fire ideas onto mindmaps, and then later more developed finalised storyboards. By the end of the day there were many many individual sheets filled with ideas. It has really been about talking and jotting down any ideas or thoughts. Two are my own individual boards along with with the help of Emily for the shot ideas on the second rough storyboard, the others group ones. 

30 Second Elevator Pitch

We pitched our main film idea in a maximum of 30 seconds presented with storyboards and mindmaps, to the class. David gave his pitch and each group shared their ideas therefore helping each group get inspiration from one another, it was also useful as it gave people more experience in pitching ideas with a time limit. 

Film Work

After days of stand-still my group and I decided the best way to move forward and continue with this project would be to separate into two different groups to become way more efficient and actually make real progression with the many tasks at hand. We have had difficulty coming together and agreeing on creative opinions and ideas and as much as we tried it has become evident that in the creative industry getting on perfectly with every other creator and sharing ideas together can not always happen and for some working alone is what they know best and what they excel at. I am relieved this has been solved but am highly concerned with how far behind my group of three now is so these next few weeks are going to be extremely busy and stressful but I believe with my group we can do it to the best of our ability. I have taken the job of compiling all the ideas we had ourselves on our film storyline and re making a storyboard and planning over our group chat what props, equipment, locations, actors, set etc we need for the few days we have left for filming and capturing the shots we require. An idea came from our research task at the start of the project where Emily discussed the possible idea of ida looking small, trapped, isolated and afraid in the interior painting and how we could explore this idea to which I said an abusive relationship could be an interesting, very dark theme to explore and portray. We knew we wanted a very dark, eerie, simple tone to the film as this is how we all interpret the original image itself as seen on my moodboards. There wasn’t actually many inspiration/ video references we used all the shots came from our minds and I took control of the filming process to ensure we were on track and being the most efficient we could possibly be. A lot of the shots I thought of just fit the theme of being very eerie and disturbing but in a unique yet professional manner. one thing we all agreed to steer clear of was horror film clichés, so jumpscares, blood and serial killer plot lines were out of the picture and I actually really like a lot of the shots we captured. 

Conclusion

Sadly this project has been rather stressful with many issues involved but I believe it has been a very useful learning process. I have learnt new skills about working in groups, how in the real world not everyone will be able to agree on creative ideas yet persevering does not always solve all problems and being mature and focused on the project at hand is what must be put first. I am happy with my editing developments and how much I am improving and know now about the processes and programs themselves. I do not mind my final film but also envisioned it a lot differently but I like how unique it is and how my group got to a good result in the end.

[kokiafans]

Via Real Sound: more pictures at the source!

Live best album ‘ALIVE -the live history-’ interview

KOKIA talks about her first live best album and her pride in the songs she’s built up over 20 years: ‘I want to be with everyone’s lives’

KOKIA has celebrated her 20th anniversary since she debuted in 1998 with the single Ai shite iru kara (’because I love you’). In this commemorative past year, she’s released all kinds of items, such as an original album and an all time best, as well as a DVD collection. She’s also been very active with concerts, of course in Japan but also with great success abroad, including a performance in Paris for the first time in a long time. Having run throughout this anniversary year, KOKIA herself also calls it a ‘20th anniversary marathon’. Topping it off is ‘ALIVE -the live history-’, surprisingly KOKIA’s first live best album. What did she feel through the works for this album, having listened to a great many live show sound sources once more? And so, I tried asking her not just about being a singer-songwriter, but also about her current superhuman way of working as she started her own personal office and produces all of her own works by herself. (Kuniko Yamada)

Songs as my own lifework

KOKIA, congratulations on your 20th anniversary year. I feel like it was just yesterday when we celebrated your 15th anniversary (laughs). Time passes quickly, doesn’t it.

KOKIA: It sure does (laughs). I was surprised too.

In this year, which you titled your ‘20th anniversary marathon’, you’ve worked on all kinds of releases and live shows.

KOKIA: Yes. There are also people who say an anniversary is just a checkpoint, but I am of the idea that it’s something I want to do a memorial for. It’s not limited to anniversaries; by properly preparing the points to make them last in people’s hearts, I feel it becomes easier for both me and the audience to participate in each commemoration. With KOKIA music, maybe you don’t feel like going ‘I’m supporting her! Yay!’ at full speed constantly, but you feel like going in fast at times when you want to listen excessively or when your mental state calls for it. So, depending on the person, they might not listen for a while, or they might not go to concerts so often; I think it’s fine if they have periods like that. But in this way, they go ‘Ah? It’s KOKIA’s 20th anniversary’, ‘Seems like she’s doing all kinds of things’ and once they hear about my anniversary year activities in one way or another or get to join, they think about listening to my music again for the first time in a while, or about trying to go to a concert. Doesn’t that turn into a chance?

It sure seems so.

KOKIA: I think it’s incredibly interesting that my activities start intersecting with the pace of these people’s lives again as time passes. Without getting overly eager, I think an anniversary surely is a place I’d like to create where guests can support me or easily return.

And at the opening of your 20th anniversary year, your original album ‘Tokyo Mermaid’ came out?

KOKIA: The release before that one was my all time best album ‘EVOLVE to LOVE -20 years Anniversary BEST-’. I held a concert at Tokyo Opera City as a 20th anniversary memorial, and I also held an orchestra concert and a performance in Paris. I also had live DVDs like the 3-disc collection DVD titled ‘Bird Watching’ that came out, right. I’ve considered all kinds of things in order to create these one by one, and it’s been a year in which I really organized my feelings as myself too, about the road from now on and the things yet to come, by talking and writing articles about these items again.

And then there’s the final icing on the cake for this memorial year, your Live Best Album ‘ALIVE -The live history-’.

KOKIA: In any case, everyone tells me how they like KOKIA live, and I got told my lives are life-like, but yet, when it comes to live CDs, I had only recorded my previous 15th anniversary concert ‘Color of Life’. I thought it was strange too that it was the only one I had brought out (laughs). Just as I was thinking that, I got into the talks for this.

Although it’s called a live recording, it’s completely different from when you bring out a concert on one DVD or make a live best as a DVD, as you bring it out as sound sources, right.

KOKIA: in the case of a DVD, of course there’s video. Visual effects are wonderful, and even if it’s not such a good take if you just listen to the sound, due to the entire atmosphere from the feelings from facial expressions, movement and light, it can still feel like a wonderful play and performance. But when you just listen to the sound, sometimes the sensation is disconnected, and sometimes you wonder if it could be a better performance. On the contrary, you might also luck out and go, I sang that song better than I thought! (laughs). With the visual support ending and scraped away, the ways you see and perceive things change, which was also interesting.

This time, you’ve chosen songs from sound sources from lives between 2010 and 2018, right.

KOKIA: Right. Since I arrange and connect to my concerts like I’m creating a scenario from the start to the end, I figured they wouldn’t be able to survive in me if I cut just one song from them. But this time, since I was extracting songs from each concert, I had to create an album out of an assembly of clippings like that, so at first I had to get used to it and felt uncomfortable. However, once I was thinking about the song order, once putting those songs in order like I was assembling one set list made with these scattered pieces, I felt it became a set list like the live show History, which I walked through in the past. All put together like that, it felt like the penny dropped in me.

But you had such a huge number of sound sources.

KOKIA: I felt like, how do I start on this? At first, I did nothing but listen, but that was quite a chore. I didn’t think it would be that tough, but it was (laughs). 

This time, you compiled 24 songs in total for 2 discs; the first of those songs is Arigatou... (’Thank you...’), recorded last year at Tokyo Opera City. No matter how often I hear that song, I get choked up.

KOKIA: It’s a song I’ve sung countless times since my debut for sure, but it’s a song for which I’ve changed the arrangement through the ages and for which I’ve changed my way of singing too, so I wanted to put in this newest version of Arigatou... no matter what. It’s a title that I straight-up delivered during my 20th anniversary as a feeling, it’s also reflected in the lyrics. What’s more, to me, it’s my debut song in a sense. That’s because even though it’s not my actual debut song, it is the first song I wrote and composed myself that was made into a CD.

For the second song, you picked the oldest song from these sound sources, the 2010 performance of Saishuu jouei (’final screening’).

KOKIA: That’s a thing I liked to pride myself on as a pretty great one (laughs). This time I’m choosing from sound sources from a period of around 9 years, but before that, in short around the time of my debut, I sang things that I hadn’t written myself, and when you listen to them, how should I put it... you really feel they’re not my own, and I was shy and embarrassed. But for this live CD, I don’t feel uncomfortable even with the 2010 song Saishuu jouei being next after the 2018 version of Arigatou..., and I can listen to it normally. I feel that might probably be because I was unwavering in the things I want to say through my songs, even after many years. My style and way of singing have changed a little in that long period of time, but I guess it’s admirable that the things I want to do with my songs has hardly changed (laughs). I always keep thinking about exploring to become a better, more ideal KOKIA, just like how I think about that evolution and so on. However, I felt like the direction I’m heading in isn’t a mistake.

KOKIA, you went independent in 2006; that was something big too, right?

KOKIA: Yes. To me, my independence might be one reason why I’m still singing now. If you’re connected to a place and you end up singing under some stress as a singer for a long time, then you might choose a different life. But I think I would have gone independent sooner or later. Because I feel that songs are my own life work. I hate being told all kinds of things by my surroundings (laughs). So thinking about what I like, I want to do my stage performances, my albums, and my way of doing things at my own pace. I’m headstrong like that (laughs).

I don’t think you’d have come this far if you’d just been headstrong (laughs).

KOKIA: If I would praise myself, then perhaps it’s for the fact I can look at myself from a bird’s-eye view. It’s my belief that I know at a glance what I can and can’t do myself. Also, as the KOKIA my audience wants and the KOKIA I want to become myself nicely coincide, I intend to be serious about how to cultivate that.  That’s why I love my job, and I’m really happy even though it’s busy.

What do you mean by ‘coincide’?

KOKIA: there are many musicians, and there’s a great amount of music in the world, but the audience that would hate it if there was no KOKIA music feels something from my songs. When they thought about something they were trying to get, my songs became a push against their shoulder at a big turning point in their lives, or hearing my songs put their minds at ease, or makes them wonder to themselves. I myself, too, keep writing with the feeling that it’d be nice to have a song at certain big turning points or scenes in life, something like a theme song in life like it is for everyone. I can’t express it well, but I create music while thinking very seriously about wanting to leave something behind in the hearts of my audience one by one, and so, I think that people who caught that at the same channel are the people who are listening to my music now.

So it doesn’t matter whether it’s Japan or abroad, does it. This time, you also have sound sources that were recorded at your performances in Paris and Shanghai. 

KOKIA: When speaking of things I can say through my voice or through concerts, I guess you can divide them into 2 big parts. One part is like what I mentioned now, the physical part. That’s something in my Japanese lyrics that I convey, so I guess my Japanese audience can catch that directly. However, when I perform abroad, the part supplemented by the lyrics disappears, and I wonder how to resonate with my audience; separated from the realm of words, there are the vibrations and sensations I hold in my voice. I call those ‘sound waves’ (otonami); there are places where I use the power of those sound waves and the texture of the sounds, and it’s like I communicate that. I also feel that the change in my tone of voice is one of my own inherent flavors, so I try to make a set list that values songs that are easy to convey through things like the variations in my voice or in my way of singing. I think that for this album, the songs I chose are ones that you can enjoy in both of those ways.

I show my own merits by myself

You talked about it earlier already; you’ve gone independent, and over 10 years have passed since. Isn’t there a person who acts like a sort of manager?

KOKIA: There isn’t. It’s the Kirin Kiki method. (t/n: Kirin Kiki a Japanese actress.)

So you’re saying that you also answer phone calls about job requests by yourself.

KOKIA: That’s right. People from the recording companies and so on are hesitant, like ‘may I have your phone number?’, but I say that if  they don’t have my phone numbers, the talks won’t advance. ‘Who should I talk to about the money?’, that’s really well put (laughs). Of course, that person is me as well. I will draw up the invoices and so on.

Well then, you also take on jobs abroad by yourself?

KOKIA: That’s right. Since I also do the matters abroad first-hand, I first translate the contracts and sign them. I’m already very busy when I mail with French people or get mail from China, as that was absolutely necessary to organize my concerts in the past year.

To put it simply, you have quite the work load.

KOKIA: But I realized it, myself. If I can do it, I can do it. I noticed that my own specifications were going through the roof, and honestly, it’s a really good feeling (laughs).

Though I guess it’s tiresome, the feeling of achievement outweighs that?

KOKIA: That’s right. I’m very much a demon for memos. As there’s a lot to do and I always forget, I write everything down, right. The things to do today, to do tomorrow, things to do within a week, and things to do within a month I all write down, and it feels pleasant when I get to cross those out one by one.

However, when there are more than 10 items of things to do, ithen they increase when I can’t process them at just as high a speed myself. Normally I don’t think it’s tiresome or something at all, but at those moments, at first I go ‘Wahh!’ as I can’t allow myself to be late with work (laughs). Aside from that, I feel like I’m overcoming the tough challenges one by one as I perform them one after the other as if they’re quests in a game, and I enjoy myself (laughs).

You’re facing forward no matter what. Surely you love your job.

KOKIA: I love it. I do all of my work and house tasks completely, somehow without a drop. But still, there are times like today when I want to hire some horse power. In an interview on the DVD I recently released, I said ‘I won’t give up anything!’ in response to a question about what will become of KOKIA from now on. I said ‘I’m someone who won’t give up a single thing, neither childcare nor my job nor having fun!’ (laughs). I myself thought it too, that this person really seems like someone who won’t give up (laughs).

(Laughs)

KOKIA: Right, that’s why I won’t give up. After having a child, I decided that I won’t work at all after 18:00 unless I have a concert or a business meeting that can’t be postponed. To put it in a way that’s easy to understand, if I handle the workload for 6 or 8 people by myself, then there is an extra barrier of having to finish in a shorter amount of time than those people. But on the contrary, it becomes fun. Like, ‘if that’s the case, why don’t I do it!’ (laughs). And I guess productivity might also go up? I guess there might be many people who think that KOKIA does all kinds of things or has come up with all kinds of things, but there are still so many more things I want to do from now on, so it’s gotten to the point where I wonder if I have enough time; I’ll get in trouble, I keep coming up with more and more ideas (laughs).

That power and those inexhaustible ideas surely come from somewhere? (laughs)

KOKIA: I wrote about it in my blog the other day, but since I’m constantly just producing output, I don’t really know where that’s coming from. I think that my audience already knows the music, but I don’t listen to it at all. I don’t have a CD rack at home, you see (laughs).

Is that so!

KOKIA: Lately I’ve been asked a lot what kind of music I listen to, but now that you mention it, I don’t really listen to music? Nay, on the other hand, why do you all listen to music? When I thought about it like that, to me, music comes out even if I don’t listen to it, so I feared that I might get influenced if I listen to music by others. Also, because I’m a person who produces and creates all kinds of things like music and words and expresses, I’ll always want space in my head. Extra room. It seems like sound doesn’t take space because it’s not words, but actually, it takes up a lot of space. So, when the sounds flow, I can hear them like distracting thoughts (laughs). If you always put yourself in the sounds, you might lose sight of something. That’s why my surroundings are mostly relatively silent. I might be a pretty old person (laughs).

I don’t think you’re old, though (laughs).

KOKIA: Moreover, in the current age, even if you block it to some extend because there’s news or disorder, what comes in comes in after all, doesn’t it? That’s why I personally feel that it might be okay even if I don’t take it  in myself. But well, simply because I handle such a huge workload, I just don’t have the time to listen to music (laughs).

(Laughs) But I wonder, is that fundamental attitude connected in a way to what you called ‘unwavering’ a while ago?

KOKIA: In these 20 years, the music scene itself has really changed.  For example, the amount of people who simply become like musicians has increased, right? At first, I feel that if it’s to enjoy music,  then that’s alright. Because when it comes to music, I’d like it if it was something casual that people can do wonderfully simply for their own enjoyment or the enjoyment of the people around them. However, as on the other hand all kinds of people can now make music or play instruments, there are times when I’m really worried about the uncertainty of professional musicians. I started to feel that if we’re all evaluated in the same playing field, then we might get buried in the numbers if one can’t find something that’s ‘how they want it’. I suppose I started thinking about what my own individuality is like. Because there is no such thing as a license for musicians, you might say that you’re a professional as long as you say you’re a professional, but surely that’s not the case. So, for me it seems to be troubling to all be together in just one color, and I keep singing with pride that I do my own thing. So what I came back to wasn’t trying hard, but being myself. And if you speak of that, not trying hard but being yourself, then certainly we’re now in a time in which everyone wants to connect in some way or another, or wants to do a collaboration in some way. However, I often think about the strength of times when I’m alone, or of a power that doesn’t connect. So, I’m not even connected with people (laughs). I show my own merits by myself. I don’t feel sorry. By doing that, you might feel or appear to be temporarily left, but I think it’s absolutely different.

I see.

KOKIA: And about singing? When I went back to the ultimate point for singing, the people from long ago apparently communicated all kinds of things through song. While they change a little on the way like in a telephone game, the message in the song stays the same. I think that there’s something romantic like that in songs. Times change, but the very primitive points for people - the heart and intuition, those haven’t changed in thousands of years. Though genres and instruments in music all evolve, and though they evolve into amazing things, is there a kind of craving for music in a place where everything is scraped off? That craving of people. There, I think nothing has truly changed at all.

Meaning?

KOKIA: I think that when telling the ultimate story, for example when you face death, the thing that heals you is wonderful music... isn’t that what songs are?

Because there’s a trend among people in Japan to avoid and not talk about ominous things such as death, there hasn’t really been a chance so far to talk about it, but when a life ends, my own included, I wonder if you can’t trace the music and songs inside heart and head at the moment of passing or when the time of death is close, even if physical freedom has been taken away? It’s possible to yearn for all kinds of things, and memories can get revived. Can’t you remember scenes, people and places just by a melody playing inside your head?

I understand that feeling well.

KOKIA: My own life has been like in those KOKIA lyrics, and I will pass while the melodies play inside my head - ultimately, I’d like to offer that to everyone’s lives to that extent.

Surely that’s why in the MC of the album’s final stage Jinsei wa uta no you ne (’life is like a song, isn’t it’), you talked about your determination to keep singing while valuing the power of language in the future, too.

KOKIA: that’s right. That’s exactly how it is. Because I think it’d be really nice to think that in the end, one is happy to get to come across KOKIA’s songs in one’s life.

Your current project also is released on your day of debut, April 29. I’d surely like to enjoy it carefully until the end. By the way, this product is the last cherry on the cake of your 20th anniversary, right.

KOKIA: I feel like we’ve been talking about ‘20th anniversary, 20th anniversary’ for quite a long time now (laughs), but with this, it’s finished.

It’d be nice to continue for just a little longer, though (laughs).

KOKIA: No, no, that’s quite alright already (laughs). Because I’m heading for my 25th anniversary next!

(Interview/text: Kuniko Yamada / Photos: Yumiko Mitsuhashi)

■ Release information “ALIVE -The live history-” Release date: April 29, 2019

[limited first edition] VIZL-1584/ ¥4,167 + tax＊ anniversary LP size cover work (31cm×31cm) [normal edition] VICL-65188～9/ ¥ 3,704 + tax ※ PlayPASS supported, which allows all songs to be played by smartphone right away Track list

[DISC 1] 1. Arigatou… (’thank you…’) (April 29-30, 2018, ‘Beyond Imagination’ at Tokyo Opera City) 2. Saishuu jouei (’final screening’) (April 30, 2010, Oto no tabibito(’sound traveler’) at Tokyo Bunkamura Orchard Hall) 3. Family Tree (January 14, 2017, ‘UTA-Live2017 Shanghai concert Vol.1′ at Shanghai Majestic Theater) 4. Pinku no zou (’pink elephant’) (June 21-22, 2015, Oishii oto o tabeta nara (’when eating delicious sounds’) at Tokyo International Forum) 5. tomoni (’together’) (August 11, 2017, ‘The Soloist’ at Tokyo Bunkamura Orchard Hall) 6. Kaba ~Madamu Hippo no Yume~ (’Hippo ~madam Hippo’s dream~’) (November 11, 2018, ‘20 YEARS ANNIVERSARY STAGE’ at Paris La Cigale) 7. il mare dei suoni (April 4, 2017, ‘Mangiare Cantare Amore’ with Orchestra Sinfonica della RAI Roma at Tokyo Opera City) 8. Ai wa kodama suru (’Love echoes’) (December 6 &8, 2011, ‘music like a prayer’ at Shinagawa Church Gloria Chapel) 8. Obake ga kowai nante (’ghosts are pretty scary’) (November 24, 2018, ‘I remember YOU’ at Billboard Live OSAKA) 10. Everytime We Say Goodbye (October 29, 2014, ‘Billboard Live’ at Billboard Live TOKYO) 11. Utau hito (’singing people’) (April 28-29, 2013, ‘COLOR OF LIFE’ at Tokyo Bunkamura Orchard Hall) 12. The woman (April 30, 2010, Oto no tabibito (’sound traveler’) at Tokyo Bunkamura Orchard Hall)

[DISC 2] 1. Make Sense (December 24, 2016, ‘Christmas Party!!’ at Daikanyama Haremame) 2. The rule of the universe (June 21-22, 2015, Oishii oto o tabeta nara (’when eating delicious sounds’) at Tokyo International Forum) 3. something blue & something red (November 24, 2018, ‘I remember YOU’ at Billboard Live OSAKA) 4. Independent ~dokuritsu~ (’independence’) (November 5, 2016, ‘LAYERS Shinrabanshou (’all of creation’)  at Tokyo International Forum) 5. Chouwa oto (’sound of harmony’)  (August 11, 2017, ‘The Soloist’ at Tokyo Bunkamura Orchard Hall) 6. Chiisana uta (’small song’) (December 6 & 8, 2011, ‘music like a prayer’ at Shinagawa Church Gloria Chapel) 7. moment ~ima o ikiru~ (’live in the now’)  (April 28-29, 2013, ‘COLOR OF LIFE” at Tokyo Bunkamura Orchard Hall) 8. Remember the kiss (November 11, 2018, ‘20 YEARS ANNIVERSARY STAGE’ at Paris La Cigale) 9. Kokoro no rousoku (’candle in the heart’) (December 6 & 8, 2011, ‘music like a prayer’ at Shinagawa Church Gloria Chapel) 10. Yume no tochuu (’on my way to my dream’) (April 29-30, 2018, ‘Beyond Imagination’ at Tokyo Opera City) 11. Jinsei wa uta no you ne (’life is like a song, isn’t it’) (November 5, 2016, ‘LAYERS Shinrabanshou (’all of creation’) at Tokyo International Forum) 12. Moon River (October 29, 2014, ‘Billboard Live’ at Billboard Live TOKYO)

■ KOKIA, live best album release commemorative special program (link expired) April 29, 19:00~

[kwamiwayzz]

Citrus Fanfic (Rec-ish) Masterpost

Hello Hello! It’s been about two weeks since the Citrus manga ended and while it leaves some of us fans thirsty for more content, Saburouta did say she’s planning for a spin-off that’s coming up in Winter 2019 :D 

But since that’s 4 months away, I figured I could create this fanfic list that could keep y’all busy in the next few months ^^ 

Keep in mind, I actually haven’t read some of the fics on this list, but have added them here since I’ve heard good reviews from other people and thought why not add them on here too~ 

Also, if any of y’all are starting out reading Citrus fic you should definitely start here lol I actually have this a top rec on this list and have recommended it before but everything smx writes is absolutely amazing and in-character

Alright, I’ll possibly add some of my thoughts and opinions on some of the fics included in this list so...here we go~ 

Valentine’s Day by mikotyzini

Citrus: Fantasies by epitomeofdisaster

Milk and its Derivatives by Joebagadonut & WhyMeiTalksWithPigeons

Warmth by Ennju

Into the Gremlin’s Den by AlexIsOkay

A Fresh Coat by mizutanitony 

Citrus - A Compilation by mikotyzini 

My Papa by Shmehua1

Sweet and Sour by Cynical-Banshee

Tenderness by ArcanicSoul 

Market Fresh Citrics by MCMulch

Dates Like Detentions by AlexIsOkay

The Price of Pretending by AlexIsOkay

[More under the cut since I know it’ll get really long]

Citrus schtuffs by angel0wonder - Yeah, I know I’ve recommended this before countless times in the past, but honestly, I can’t help it. I love it too much and it was the Citrus fic collection that introduced me to Citrus fic and eventually inspired me to write my own. Every chapter has nice little moments of fluff and comedy that the manga is in dire need of and every character included is in character that I can almost imagine Saburouta writing this herself! There’s some angst in it too, like chapter 41, but even those ones are a great read! If you want to know my favorites to start with, I can suggest reading chapter 9, chapter 16, chapter 25, chapter 33, CHAPTER 39 (pls read this one), chapter 41, and chapter 43. There’s a lot more and I love this collection dearly, but those chapters are my absolute favorites ^^ 

Uncomfortable Truths by mizutanitony - Okay, so confession time. I was actually really, and I mean REALLY hesitant to read this fic at first because of the premise. It’s basically a sequel to a bad end if Mei chose to marry her fiance Udagawa, leaving her and Yuzu separated for almost 2 years. The fic itself actually takes place 5 years after those events transpire and Yuzu and Mei are engaged and taking care of their son who’s the biological son of Udagawa. One thing I can say to why I was hesitant in reading this at first is because I thought the drama would be way too drawn out and/or I thought the premise was mostly going to heavily focus on flashbacks that have Yuzu and Mei still be separared and Mei trying to deal with herself being married to Udagawa. But when I did give this fanfic a shot, I was surprised and honestly glad I read it. The characters are all in character, and while there’s heavy drama here and there I feel like with the situation presented, it’s necessary and justified without being too overblown. Much of the focus on this fic is Yuzu and Mei trying to manage their relationship as adults, their respective jobs, and how to take care of a child. I could actually see this be a potential route if Mei did end up marrying Udagawa at the end of the manga and did try to do everything she could to win Yuzu back. And honestly, the parts where Mei and Yuzu talk out their relationship, the parts where they’re struggling mentally (especially) in figuring out where to go from where they are, especially knowing how much their past still hurts them, is the best thing I love out of this fic. Also 12/10 the smut scenes are hot. The fic itself is almost over but the chapters themselves are really long and can give y’all something to keep yourselves busy! Give it a shot! 

Skipping a Beat by BluBerserker - I binged this fic during my stressful first week of school and I really like the direction the author is taking this story! I’m not really sure how it’s gonna pan out, but I was interested in the premise. Yuzu being sick and learning how to deal with living with a heart condition? Mmmmyes I can feel the angst. One thing I love about this fic is the chemistry established between Yuzu and Mei, especially after Mei finds out about Yuzu’s brugada syndrome and ends up feeling guilty for causing her more pain than necessary. She really starts to loosen up around Yuzu and comes to terms with her feelings a little faster and earlier than where the manga went ^^

Neapolitan Ice Cream & Secrets by DoorIsAjar - aAAAAAAAAAA, this one!! I love this one! This is the kind of fluff that I used to write during my earlier days getting used to writing Citrus fic for this fandom. It’s basically about Yuzu taking care of Mei after Mei gets her wisdom teeth pulled out and is loopy on nitrous-oxide. There’s just a charm and endearing appeal to this fic in particular, and while Mei has a more childlike demeanor because of how loopy she is, it’s actually very in character and just absolutely adorable. I’m just surprised Yuzu didn’t drop dead after the many times Mei has been too cute for her! >u<

Grandes Esperanzas by YuzuAihara1993 - I actually have not read this for the sole reason that...well, it’s in Spanish and I can’t read Spanish ^^; BUT don’t let that stop you! The reason I’m adding this on this list is because I’ve heard from different people, mainly smxmuffinpeddling, how amazing this fanfic is and how it made her cry. She actually translated a portion of this fic and even said she’s in the process of translating the fic itself! As for those who already can read Spanish, try this one out!

Studies With Wolves by punklobster - I just really like this one, okay? i wrote a gigantic ass review on AO3 detailing how much I loved it. It’s basically a Wolf Children-esque AU where Yuzu meets Mei in college but notices she’s not a student there. Just read it. Please, it’s amazing 12/10 in character and 20/10 would read again.

Dinner at Aihara’s by fishnspice - This was one of the very first Citrus fanfics I read on AO3 and it has this nice atmosphere established between Yuzu and Mei that I sometimes find myself reading over and over again. 

Daughters and Lovers by LittleElisa - Okay, I need to recommend this one. This one, while kind of intimidating to read at first because of the formatting, is actually really nice and really in-character. I found myself re-reading this fanfic about 4-5 times after the first time I gave it a chance. It takes place around Volume 3 (back before we knew what the heck would happen, so this fic is pretty old), and takes a route where Ume finds out about their relationship pretty early on and...does not take it well, leading her to separate Yuzu and Mei. She doesn’t play the “non-understanding” parent and does actually feel bad for separating her daughters like that, but realistically I felt like this is what she would do after dealing with the shock that...well, her two daughters are making out behind closed doors. Everything else about this fic is actually amazing. I think I even remembered smxmuffinpeddling beta-ing this fic at one point! Give this one a shot! Unfortunately, the fic is unfinished and hasn’t been updated in years so like...if you like cliffhangers, well...good luck ;u;

Love Like You’ll Never be Hurt by vyoria - This one takes a bit of a different route compared to most other Citrus fics I’ve read so far. It’s basically where Yuzu and Mei don’t meet until they’re much older, like possibly in their late 20s, early 30s, and Mei is married to Amamiya. Unfortunately, because of the author’s busy schedule, there’s only been 1 chapter out so far. But the premise is nice and even if it is just one chapter I suggest y’all check it out! 

i have died everyday (waiting for you) by forbiddenquill - This fic...boi, back when I read this fic I didn’t really know what to expect from it aside from it was named after a really cheesy and endearing love song from Twilight. I think the thing that gravitated me the most towards this fic was the atmosphere the author set up between Yuzu and Mei. It had been a couple months since they’d last seen each other, and you can really feel for that sense of longing they both crave while also understanding the tense atmosphere they feel around each other because of the awkwardness from being apart for so long. You know Mei wants to be with Yuzu but doesn’t know how and yet Yuzu still reaches out to her one more time just to talk. Honestly, I don’t know where this author has been but they pretty much predicted the last chapter through this fic (almost). Spoiler alert: you kinda have to read it through to know what I mean XD 

And that’s the most I could think of so far! ^^; If you guys have any other fics you feel should be on this list let me know! 

I’ve also written my own Citrus fics, but like...it feels weird self-promoting myself XD. I’ll just say that if you’re curious to read some of my stuff, I’m Zoop Top on fanfiction.net and Rolex on AO3 

;D 

[your-brother-crutchie]

Spooky Special

So, I know that there’s already a Youtuber au but I was thinking about Dan and Phil’s Spooky Week and Sprace in their place. Basically, this is one big ‘Phan Proof’ video in a story because I needed to watch a bunch of videos of things that viewers would see and claim is proof of a relationship, even though I don’t ship it.

This is the first of my Halloween fics! The second is going to be coming out in real time EST over the next few days so look out for that!

Race finished setting the camera up above the desk as Spot came in with a beer and a Fruit Shoot. Race, ever the five-year-old at heart, always argued that Fruit Shoot was superior to any other kind of drink made for adults. Their viewers were always baffled by his childishness whenever he forgot to edit out when he took a drink.

He took the purple bottle from Spot, watching him drop into his chair and spin around casually with his drink, watching his boyfriend lazily before pulling himself into the desk and pulling the game up on the screen.

They were gaming YouTubers. They usually played cutesy, casual games (definitely not because Race couldn’t handle jump-scares) but it was Halloween soon and they had to make some kind of themed video. It had become a thing over the three years of their channel, only growing in anticipation every year. Their viewers knew that, on Halloween, they posted a forty minute Spooky Special. Forty minutes of Race jumping out of his skin and clinging to Spot as though his life depended on it.

Every year, about fifty different ‘Sprace’ compilations filled their recommended afterwards as every moment of those 2,400 seconds was poured over and analysed and turned into some kind of proof that they were, secretly, together.

At first, it had made Race laugh. Spot had been a little uncomfortable but he accepted it, ignoring the comments and acting the same as ever. When it started getting worse, however, neither were particularly okay with it. Fans started invading their privacy, asking lewd questions and bringing it up when they met them in person.

A whole year went by when Spot and Race barely touched. They hardly even looked at each other in their videos and they sat a whole foot apart at their desk, desperate to deter the comments about their supposed relationship. Race tried to stop them, he even made a Tumblr post saying that it was uncomfortable and that he didn’t approve but it took a whole year of barely any physical contact for the shippers to stop.

It had been torture for Race. He knew that it hadn’t exactly been pleasant for Spot either but he didn’t mind too much. For Race, though, who was completely infatuated with his best friend, having to act completely platonic for a whole year almost drove him insane. He hadn’t been able to talk to Spot because then he would know but he’d spent many a night ranting to Jojo as he helped him film his weird but creative short films.

The other night, however, Spot had sat down and told Race that he was sick of hiding. They were both very tactile friends and he knew that Race didn’t like it either. They just decided to forget this pathetic attempt at deterrence and decided to be themselves because they’d started that channel to have fun. Neither of them were having fun.

“Ready?” Spot grinned as he took a swig of his beer, setting it down just outside of the frame. It may have been the Spooky Special but Race was adamant about putting up a ‘wholesome’ and ‘please-don’t-demonetise-us’ front.

Race nodded and dropped down beside him, pulling his notebook over to him with the script that he had, ready for the intro, “First Spooky Special since the stalemate was broken.” He chuckled, resting his Fruit Shoot between his teeth as he flipped pages, finding what he had already written up and pointing out Spot’s lines to him.

As he read through them quickly, Spot nodded. Their videos weren’t scripted, they just wanted a coherent intro as they usually just devolved into tickling and chaos without words to follow. He chuckled at Race, reaching across and pushing at him playfully as he teased him for what had happened the year before, “Gonna scream and grab me again instead of falling out of your chair?”

Shrugging, Race ignored Spot’s taunt and refused to rise to it. He gave a simple, “perhaps,” in reply but settled on just elbowing him casually as he quickly checked to make sure that the mic was on.

Holding up his fingers to count down from three, Race quickly made sure that Spot was ready before chiming together, “Hey Newsies!”

When they’d started their channel, Race and Spot did the local paper round for extra money. When they’d gathered a small fanbase, they did a live show where Race was wearing the newsie cap he’d bought as a joke when they started the paper round and Spot had continuously made jokes about it. Their fans had adopted the word and it had stuck, even being used for the fans of some of their friends who had done paper rounds with them, like Jack (aplaceisee), Jojo (yeahright) and Davey (goandlookitup).

“Wait, Race, you’ve got an eyelash.” Spot paused quickly, reaching over and brushing the small hair away from Race’s eye gingerly, turning his hand over to make sure he’d got it before blowing it away.

Race laughed, jokingly plucking at Spot’s eyelashes as he rolled his eyes, “Excuse us whilst we just groom each other like bloody primates.” He grinned, pushing at Spot as he rubbed almost nervously at his eyes himself. Race did trust that Spot had got the eyelash but they’d barely touched in a video in so long and Race just needed a moment, “Onto the question of the video!”

Since they’d had enough viewers to do it, Race and Spot had answered one weird fan question they received on Twitter in every video, giving infuriatingly vague answers if they ever picked anything serious.

Spot looked over Race’s shoulder at the question he’d written down, glancing almost nervously at the camera as he chuckled, “You sure about this one?” He looked to Race, shrugging as the smaller boy nodded and held his hand up for a second to make it easier for when Race was editing, “Is Race’s hair a wig?”

Reaching across to tug at Race’s sandy curls gently, Spot laughed as Race let out a whined, “owww!” and grabbed at Spot’s hand to push it away. He forgot to let go of Spot’s hand for a moment as he rubbed at his sore scalp, merely holding the other boy’s hand up and away from his head before reaching across to pull at Spot’s thick hair.

“Apparently not!” Eventually managing to prise his hand away from Race’s grip, Spot laughed as Race could tell he was struggling not to show discomfort on camera. He let go quickly, not wanting to make Spot uncomfortable and just flashing him a smile instead.

Race grinned, biting his lip to stop it as he looked nervously down at his notebook and began to introduce the game, “So, it’s the annual Spooky Special and today we are playing-! … Some stupid horror game that I don’t remember the name of … “ Scanning the screen quickly, Race found the name before handing over for Spot to explain exactly what they were playing and exactly what they had to do.

Zoning out slightly as Spot described the game, Race started thinking about all of the backlash they’d probably get from this video. He didn’t want it to become awkward between them again like it had been before but, sometimes, he couldn’t help but feel that maybe Spot, deep down, felt the same way that he did. He couldn’t take the awkward sexual tension that he felt sometimes but, what was worse was knowing that he was probably making it all up in his head.

After turning the lights down for the atmosphere, they started the game and Race grounded himself once again to focus on the lilting voice of the narrator, explaining that they had to be quiet as he made eye contact with Spot. There was a moment, where Race forgot that they were filming and thought he saw Spot’s eyes flicker down to his lips. He quickly looked nervously to the camera, realising that, if he’d been right, they couldn’t play the voiceover again and couldn’t edit that out. Making awkward eye contact with Spot for a moment as the shorter boy smirked at him, Race decided to ignore it and struggled to focus on what was being said.

The game continued on and Race jumped at near enough everything, whether it was meant to be a jump-scare or not. He turned quickly to look at something that he thought he’d seen moving in the room behind them, mumbling as he turned back around, “Sorry. Just a bit jumpy-“

A scream rang from Race’s lips and he went to swing as Spot jumped at him, spooking him and laughing as he fell backwards and would have tumbled from his chair if Spot hadn’t caught him, “You bi-!” Stopping himself just before he could swear, Race remembered that they were filming and was quick to censor himself. He refused to swear on camera and you could always tell when he edited the videos as opposed to when Spot did as he always beeped every profane word that Spot slung around.

“You went to hit me!” Spot’s wild laughter only grew as Race flung his arms at him jokingly to bat at him with the sides of his fists.

Falling still, Race pouted slightly as he stared at Spot with narrowed eyes, “I hate you.” After a few more moments, he finally broke and fell into the joking hug that Spot was offering, “My best friend is a bully.” Rolling his eyes at the camera, Race laughed, trying to pull away with disgust as Spot tried to kiss his cheek, having to hide just how much he wanted to lean into it.

During the next cutscene, Race narrowed his eyes as Spot reached across the desk for the pen pot and shook his head slightly as he picked out the small rubbers that they had in the shape of ducks, knowing what was coming next.

He stared into the camera, eyes going dead, as Spot began to throw the tiny rubbers at his face, trying his best not to flinch or laugh but failing every time and, instead, collecting a handful of them to retaliate with. Race launched them at Spot’s face, laughing as he dodged them all but stopping to cradle his face when one of Spot’s hit him directly in the eye.

“Oh, shit, Race! You okay?” Dropping his rubbers and reaching forward to take Race’s face, the game on the screen was ignored as he tried to prise Race’s hands away, “Come on, let me see … Ouch. Yeah, okay, you can slap me in the face.” When Race eventually pulled his hands away, he blinked a few times before looking in the monitor to see that his eye was red and slightly bloodshot.

Rolling his eyes, Race looked to Spot, knowing that he was probably joking so deciding to go along with it, “Really?” He absentmindedly collected the tiny ducks on the keyboard in front of him, sweeping them away before looking back at Spot.

He nodded quickly, presenting the right side of his face and gesturing for Race to hit him with his left arm, “Yeah, go on, do it. Go on, Race.” Spot’s words became quick and almost flustered as Race recognised that he was tensing his muscles and steeling himself, as if Race was about to hit him hard enough to knock him clean out of the chair. Sure, Race liked to scrap and fight occasionally but his branding™ was the innocent one.

“I don’t wanna do it!” Testing the swing a little, Race made a show of being uncertain, actually realising that he really didn’t want to hurt Spot, even after he’d launched a rubber into his eyeball. He scrunched his nose up, closing his eyes and trying not to think about what he was about to do.

Spot’s laugh almost stopped him, the laugh and the teasing, “Go on, do it, do it, do it,” that left him at about a mile a minute. Race steeled himself, knowing that he was going to need it before going for it. The sound was pitiful as Race’s slap barely touched Spot, making the tougher boy laugh and grab at Race’s hands. He jokingly rubbed at his cheek as Race pouted.

Chuckling, Spot set Race’s hands down as he started teasingly practising his swing in the same way that Race had, “Okay, now let me do it to you!” He reached forwards as soon as he noticed Race backing away, holding him in place with a grin.

“Nooo!” Race tried to pull back, laughing but eventually falling still when Spot wouldn’t give up. He tensed his face, scrunching up every feature as he waited. At the very last second, however, Race darted backwards. It was only by a millimetre or so but it was enough for him to miss Spot’s terrible pathetic swipe at his cheek.

Spot laughed as he shook his head at Race, “Well that was one attractive face you pulled. Couldn’t even sit through one little baby slap.” He chuckled, turning back to the game when he realised that the cutscene had ended long ago.

When a puzzle round came up, Race felt like there was finally an aspect to this game that he could be helpful with. He ranted to Spot about being fair and letting him have a turn, trying not to blush as Spot just stared at him, terribly close to his face. He thought he saw his eyes flicker down to his lips before coming back up again but Race put it down to a trick of the light.

He had almost made it through the level when he felt the urge to sneeze, deciding that he had enough time to make the final click beforehand, Race went for it. However, he’d misjudged himself as just as he was about to press the correct button, he sneezed. The mouse careened towards the other corner of the screen and settled on one of the buttons that would kill them. Race’s finger came down and, before he could stop himself, he’d clicked on it and they lost their penultimate life.

An exhausted roar came from Spot as he noticed what Race had done, swiping the mouse away and reaching out to wrap his fingers loosely around Race’s neck. They’d been playing the game for thirty minutes and if they lost because of Race’s arrogance in his ability to hold a sneeze, Race knew that Spot would probably lost it.

Reaching up to grab at his hand to hold him back, Race laughed as Spot shook him around lightly and gritted his teeth in frustration, eventually managing to push Spot’s arms away slightly, “Stop touching me!”

Spot scoffed, narrowing his eyes at Race with the usual sparkle of mischief as he stroked a hand down his face, “I’ll touch you when I please.” Although it was a weird joke that most of their audience would take as ‘proof,’ Race knew why Spot had said it. This was the end of the sitting on opposite sides of the frame in videos, it was the end of never appearing in one another’s live shows. Race and Spot were going to be just as close as they wanted to be, regardless of what anyone said about their supposed relationship, no matter how much Race wanted it to exist.

[thecourtreportersportedjorts]

Top 10 Best Hit Songs of 2017

In December of each year, Billboard publishes its list of the 100 biggest hit songs of the last 12 months. In response, I take it upon myself to decide which of these songs were the real hits, and which were the biggest misses. Last week, I tackled the worst, so here are the best. Let’s get started:

10. “Love Galore” by SZA feat. Travis Scott

When I see a fellow New Jersey artist rising up the charts and building a name for themselves, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a little too quick to douse them in praise. In 2015, I did it for Fetty Wap and Charlie Puth before they respectively waned in relevance and proceeded to pump out some of the decade’s worst music. SZA grew up mere minutes away from me, and after a few years just shy of the spotlight, she finally released her critically beloved debut album Ctrl in June. I took a few months to finally get to it, but once I listened to it, I found a beautifully produced, unflinchingly sincere record that delves into the nuances of youth, romance, mental health, and the various ways they intersect.

I wouldn’t even consider “Love Galore” an immediate highlight from the record, and yet it’s still an excellent song. I do have to take a point off for Travis Scott rambling about “ass and titties” in his verse, a needlessly juvenile moment in what’s otherwise a great slice of left-of-center-but-still-grown-and-sexy R&B. Still, his verse is fine altogether, and he sounds right at home over ThankGod4Cody’s production, which is built on off-kilter, reverb-soaked percussion and analog synths that aren’t too far removed from the Stranger Things score.

This is all well and good, but SZA steals the show all on her own, exploring the complications of reconvening with a former fling. There’s a core of darkness to the lyrics, making passing references to Valium and fetishes as she zeroes in on her partner’s seeming infidelity, but she can nevertheless enjoy the situation as “long as [they] got love.” And in a year chock full of godawful vocals excused for their “authenticity,” it’s so refreshing to hear a singer in the mainstream who sounds both organic and skilled. While I may not like this quite as much as “The Weekend” or “Drew Barrymore” or “20 Something,” it’s no less worth your time.

9. “Passionfruit” by Drake

It’s easy for me to start this entry the same way I did for “Too Good” last year, addressing how “Passionfruit” was a diamond in the relative rough of the lopsided More Life “playlist.” While there is some truth to that assessment, More Life is still a noticeable improvement over last year’s uncomfortable, overhyped VIEWS. Sure, it’s still questionable to hear Drizzy put on another new accent (I’d personally like to hear him attempt a Russian accent), but his curation of global sounds is sharper and more generous than ever, and with the exception of truly annoying cuts like “Nothings Into Somethings,” the lyrics are a lot less patronizing this time around. Despite this net positive, it still remains that “Passionfruit” is easily More Life’s best offering, and perhaps Drake’s best single since “Hold On, We’re Going Home.”

For one, “Passionfruit” is built on the same sort of subdued, late-night disco groove that made “Hold On” an instant classic. But the song goes for a stark contrast from the 2013 smash’s optimistic hookup, which is mirrored by the somber minor chords, gorgeous, muted synths, and what is apparently the manipulated sound of a flute. With the tempos of his songs seemingly dropping by the year, it’s good to hear Drake over something with a more propulsive groove again, and yet it still manages to mesh with his trademark atmospherics.

Of course, the lyrical content will always be the most contentious part of any Drake song, and it’s understandable to read “Passionfruit” as yet another retread of “Hotline Bling.” But where that song may have precariously toed the line between genuine concern and alarming possessiveness, the lyrics land a lot more comfortably this time. Even a lyric like “you got issues that I won’t mention” works far better as he seems to finally understand the consequences behind his words and his actions. The end result is Drake at his finest, low-key and calm while still navigating through the most challenging of emotions.

8. “Castle on the Hill” by Ed Sheeran

Now I know this pick will likely come as a surprise to anyone who saw my previous list, where I gave Ed Sheeran the thorough bashing he deserved. I ragged on him for his appearance, his awkward lyricism and his uninspired compositions. I’m sick of the guy at this point, but that’s because I genuinely want to like him. Ed has always shown a genuine talent for crafting songs with memorable hooks and interesting concepts, so doling out plodding love ballads like “Photograph” and cringeworthy radio ploys like “Shape of You” feels like the biggest possible waste of potential. So as tired as I am of hearing songs like these in 2017, “Castle on the Hill” was good enough to remind me why I cared in the first place.

If I could sum up the sound of “Castle on the Hill” in one sentence, it’d be that it sounds like what that mediocre last Mumford and Sons album wanted to be. Built on an insistent drum groove, warm bass, ghostly organs and guitar strumming that hurts my wrist just listening to it, the verses build up to a triumphant chorus indebted to Springsteen and U2. This is one of Sheeran’s more directly rock-flavored endeavors, so his aggressive howls on the chorus sound a lot better here than on “Thinking Out Loud,” and even his falsetto sounds more vivacious than usual.

And in the midst of an album cycle dominated by anonymous songs about sex and TV montage fodder that even Queen B couldn’t salvage, “Castle on the Hill” is the only (good) single that showcases Sheeran’s distinctive songwriting flair. It’s essentially a song about growing up, but where Lukas Graham got it all wrong, this song gets it right. Like on “7 Years,” Ed recounts his younger, troublesome self, running from authority and drinking with his friends. The difference is that he learns from his mistakes, thanks to the people and the town he was sought to defy in the first place. It’s the kind of vivid songwriting that Sheeran excels at, and if he keeps at it (which is a real possibility), he might very well regain a lost fan.

7. “HUMBLE.” by Kendrick Lamar / “LOYALTY.” by Kendrick Lamar feat. Rihanna

As I stated in my previous list, it’s been really interesting to see what the Billboard charts look like with streaming becoming a bigger part of the equation. I already addressed how album tracks can perform just as well as lower-tier singles. Kendrick Lamar’s excellent fourth album DAMN. boasts the best first week streaming numbers of any album released in 2017, and as a result, multiple cuts from the album remained on the charts for weeks on end. “ELEMENT.” and current single “LOVE.” charted high enough that if they had received the proper push as singles, I would probably be talking about them alongside the two singles that actually made the year end Hot 100, chart-topping “HUMBLE.” and the Rihanna collaboration “LOYALTY.”

“HUMBLE.” was the first proper taste of DAMN., which admittedly took some time to grow on me. Sure, the blisteringly sparse, piano-driven beat by Mike Will Made It commands direct attention to Kendrick’s coded, throne-claiming bars, but it’s a far cry from the rich history and experimentation that made To Pimp a Butterfly an all-time great rap album. Still, it’s important to remember that Kendrick - at least when he’s trying - infuses his songs with some really heady subtext. It’s easy to interpret this as K-Dot proving that he can do trap just as well as Future or Migos, if not better thanks to his skillful lyricism. In the context of DAMN., it’s also a warning from the Compton rapper to himself to not let his remarkable success eclipse his message or his roots. Coupled with an instantly memorable hook and quotables like “my left stroke just went viral,” “HUMBLE.” is a well-deserved first #1 for Kendrick.

Like its predecessor, followup single “LOYALTY.” is fairly skeletal in its production, based around a warped sample of “24K Magic” (of all things!). This time, Kendrick teams up with Rihanna, who continues to prove that she can come through with an impressive flow after “Bitch Better Have My Money” and “Needed Me.” The pair explore loyalty in regards to one’s friendships, relationships, faith and ambitions, creatively quoting Jay-Z and Ol’ Dirty Bastard in the process. While the lyrical content is certainly worthwhile, the main takeaway is that Kendrick and Rihanna have truly fantastic musical chemistry, which becomes all the more apparent when they trade bars during the verses. Like “HUMBLE.,” this track is further evidence that even with sights set squarely on the mainstream, Kendrick always aims high.

6. “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B

When compiling these lists, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the critical acclaim or the social value a song might have. This works both ways - maybe this is what influenced me to place “7 Years” and “Treat You Better” as high I did on my worst list last year. But when Cardi B’s breakout single “Bodak Yellow” became the first single from a solo female rapper to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Lauryn Hill in 1998, I immediately wondered: is it a worthy successor? Considering how many critical outlets have named “Bodak Yellow” one of the best songs of the year (including Pitchfork and The Washington Post, who both named it the best song of the year), a lot of people seem to think so. And even though I wasn’t totally sold on the song at first, I’m now more than happy to join that chorus, because this song is fucking awesome.

In one of her legendary interviews, Cardi has stated that the title “Bodak Yellow” is a reference to rapper and awful human being Kodak Black, whose flow on “No Flockin” serves as the foundation for Cardi’s song. Unsurprisingly, she does an infinitely better job with his flow, not only because she doesn’t sound like she’s having an asthma attack, but because she also delivers each bar with such boundless energy. Unlike Kodak, she also knows when to switch up her flow, capping off both verses with an impressive, Migos-esque (!) flow. A lot of hip hop traditionalists might deride “Bodak Yellow” for a lack of originality, but it’s not about who did it first, it’s about who did it right.

Even the production on “Bodak Yellow” stands out from the trap pack. Sure, it’s built on a simplistic 3-note melody, but it alternates between octaves, creating an alluring sense of unease against the changing hi-hat progressions. But what really surprises is how restrained the song first seems in its low end, using the trademark sub bass kicks fairly conservatively. It gives you the impression that it’s building up to something, and then it happens: as Cardi speeds up her flow, the kicks return in full force, resulting in one of the hardest-hitting moments rap had to offer in 2017. In a year where women deserved so much better, Cardi B is a true force of good, proving that she can go harder than so many of her male contemporaries.

5. “I Feel It Coming” by The Weeknd feat. Daft Punk

If you’ve read any of my lists in the past two years, you probably felt this coming (pun very obviously intended). I’ve raved about The Weeknd so much since then that writing a fifth (sixth if you include “The Hills” from my honorable mentions in 2015) entry about him probably scans as blind fandom or ass-kissing. Truth be told, his 2013 major label debut Kiss Land hasn’t exactly aged well, and Starboy was an overlong, frequently redundant affair with occasional flashes of innovation. But the latter album’s closing track, “I Feel It Coming,” feels like a major change of pace, and perhaps a premonition of The Weeknd’s future.

Like the previous single, the chart-topping title track from Starboy, “I Feel It Coming” is yet another collaboration with famed French house duo. While “Starboy” sounded a lot like the duo’s own “Doin’ It Right,” a collab with Animal Collective’s Panda Bear and a notable outlier on Random Access Memories, this song is more akin to the warm, nostalgic disco that dominated the rest of that album. Hell, the robots even use their trademark vocoders on their own voices this time! As unstoppable as the groove of “Can’t Feel My Face” is to this day, never has Abel sung over something that sounded so happy.

Fortunately, he seems up to the challenge of matching this energy. Normally, The Weeknd albums end on a dour note - even the bombastic “Angel” was profoundly melancholic. In one of his most effortless vocal performances to date, Abel shows that he is finally ready to commit to a serious relationship. And while the potent sexuality is still right there in the goddamn title, it comes across as a moment of real, unadulterated joy rather than simply going through the motions of tour life. The Weeknd has proven time and time again that he can switch up his sound and still come through with smash hits, and if “I Feel It Coming” is any indication, that’s not changing any time soon.

4. “Redbone” by Childish Gambino

Holy shit, have I been waiting for this. I’m not necessarily talking about “Redbone,” Childish Gambino’s greatest success to date, but rather that success in and of itself. Like so many people, I discovered Donald Glover’s hip hop project after enjoying him as Troy in NBC’s Community, one of my all-time favorite TV shows. But despite his knack for solid hooks, colorful instrumentals and outright hilarious bars, it always felt like he was close to breaking into the mainstream without ever getting there. Maybe it was the polarized critical response to Camp or the obtuse production of Because the Internet, but it was only with last year’s funk departure “Awaken, My Love!” that his music clicked more universally.

“Redbone” wasn’t that album’s lead single, but it was by far its most successful, charting for nearly a whole year and peaking just outside Billboard’s Top 10. Arguably, it’s the weirdest hit song we’ve had this year: weird enough that it spawned one of the year’s more creative memes. As a whole, the song maintains a rare balance of paranoia and sensuality, the former of which is felt instantly with the intro’s distant strings and gently thumping kicks. But any sense of dread is mitigated by the slap bass, glockenspiel and the generally lush atmosphere. With perhaps the exception of SZA, mainstream R&B in 2017 hasn’t sounded this organic and alluring, even with the inclusion of the crunchy guitar leads or the muted, creepy-as-fuck background vocals in the intro.

Amidst all the window-dressing, this is still undoubtedly Donald Glover’s song, and his vocal and lyrical contributions capture the same balance just as exquisitely. Many have pointed out that he doesn’t even sound much like himself on “Redbone,” rather emulating Macy Gray’s trademark rasp. Despite the obvious point of influence, it’s still one of the many vocal performances on “Awaken, My Love!” that oozes with color and personality. It doesn’t distract from the unsettling lyrics, though, which double down on Gambino’s oft-critiqued insecurities about relationships and racial identity, but through a more mature and knowing lens, with a chilling mantra of “stay woke.”

And while it didn’t have an impact on its placement on this list, the particular case of the song’s success is worth celebrating. “Redbone” first charted out of anticipation for the album, but it returned to the hit parade thanks to its masterful use in Jordan Peele’s excellent film Get Out. Then came the memes, where the song was sung by various characters and played from a range of different spaces. It had a distinctive sound that somehow suited it to both uses, thus making it Glover’s highest charting song. This is the rare case where a great song isn’t rejected for its idiosyncrasies, but instead rightfully embraced.

3. “Slide” by Calvin Harris feat. Frank Ocean and Migos

But then again, Childish Gambino wasn’t the only one finding long-overdue chart success this year. Obviously, I’m not referring to Calvin Harris or Migos - the former has been pumping out hits since the turn of the decade to diminishing returns, and the latter had a banner year in 2017, with their very good single “Bad and Boujee” topping the Hot 100 for three weeks. “Slide” was partially Frank Ocean’s affair, too. After last year’s excellent, understated Blonde seemingly rebuked any desire for conventional pop stardom, the R&B crooner and former Odd Future affiliate proved that he can still write a fantastic pop song that can stick with just about anyone.

What’s particularly interesting about Frank’s contributions to “Slide” is that they aren’t even far removed from the music on Blonde. He still favors a more low-key vocal delivery, and he still manages to draw compelling character portraits in his lyrics. This time, it’s about a one-night stand where the protagonist isn’t so much interested in the sex itself, but vicariously living their partner’s more opulent lifestyle, referencing jewelery and Picasso’s famous Garçon à la pipe painting. But there’s still an underlying feeling of emptiness, exemplified in the line “wrist on a wrist, a link of charms, yeah / laying, we’re still a link apart.”

Complicated emotional situations have always been a characteristic of Ocean’s lyricism, for which he sets the scene with details that frequently read as non-sequiturs. But what makes “Slide” particularly interesting is how everybody else around him is up to the same task. Quavo and Offset of Migos appear for two insanely catchy and energetic verses, but the content feels peripheral to the established theme of the song. But these guys are part of one of the most in-demand rap acts of the year, so for Frank’s character to be rubbing shoulders with them does more to establish the scene. “Slide” is also further evidence of Offset’s skillful, malleable flow, and if his recent joint album with 21 Savage is any indication, he has great potential as a solo artist.

But what about Calvin Harris, the main artist responsible for this song? “Slide” was the lead single for his excellent album Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1, and served as a dramatic departure from the more conventional EDM he’d been producing for years. Sure, singles like “This Is What You Came For” and “How Deep Is Your Love” flirted with organic instrumentation and classic dance grooves, but the shimmering keys, palm-muted funk guitars, and the irresistible bassline add up to one of his best tracks to date. It’s a perfect summer song that provides an opulent backdrop for Frank and Migos, and it still sounds fantastic in the dead of winter.

2. “DNA.” by Kendrick Lamar

Don’t think I forgot about this one. Over the course of this year’s lists, I’ve already gone on multiple times about the impact of streaming on the year-end charts. All of this is especially true when it comes to “DNA.,” the first full track from DAMN. Despite receiving an incredible music video starring Don Cheadle, it was never released as a single. And considering the aggression on display, as well as the lack of a real hook, why would it be? Nevertheless, thanks to Kendrick Lamar’s staggering popularity on streaming services, it landed a respectable spot midway on the year-end Hot 100. It’s another landmark worth discussing, but more importantly, “DNA.” is just a goddamn incredible song.

Rather than just dissecting the individual components of the song, I’m going to do my best to explain “DNA.” in a more linear fashion. Kendrick breaks through the gate in full-force, once again accompanied by Mike Will’s hard-hitting blend of trap drums, warped synths and ominous guitar loops. The first half of the song can be boiled down to K-Dot asserting that he was born for his current status as a rap god, even comparing his own birth to the immaculate conception. He recalls all his struggles growing up, living in the projects of Compton and encountering all the “murder, conviction, burners, booster, burglars, ballers,” etc. the city had to offer, crossing everything off as effortlessly as one would do for a shopping list.

Then, “DNA.” nears its two-minute mark. After a dazzling extended verse packed with personal detail, a sample of sleazy Fox-News-correspondent-cum-sexual-harrasser Geraldo Rivera actively dismisses Kendrick’s self-justification. He claims that Kendrick exemplifies everything wrong with young black culture in an unabashed show of victim-blaming. Then another sample comes in: the countdown from Freedom 7’s takeoff in 1961. As this happens, Kendrick speeds up his flow, and the beat changes, leading into what might be one of the greatest musical moments of the decade.

At this point, the production becomes even more sparse and dissonant, built mainly on a Rick James sample and the thickest, most face-melting sub bass imaginable. K-Dot offers an intense, well-deserved rebuttal to the thinly-veiled bullshit his critics ever-so-gleefully dole out. He knows that his success was earned through blood, sweat and tears, not “sex, money, murder,” and proceeds to “[curve] all the fakes” and others who seek to undermine him or his message. In an age where Donald Trump and the GOP have been nearly given carte blanche to oppress whoever the hell they want on any given day, it’s so cathartic to hear some resistance to their rhetoric in our popular music, especially when it’s this stunningly well-crafted.

And, just like last time, before I unveil my pick for the best hit song of 2017, here are eight honorable mentions:

“XO Tour Llif3″ by Lil Uzi Vert: “XO Tour Llif3” marks the first time Uzi’s music truly connected with me, capturing both the hedonism and the mental trauma he experienced while on tour with The Weeknd atop a fittingly off-kilter beat. His vocals are among the most impassioned I’ve heard all year, making the decision to nudge this off the list in favor of SZA a particularly tough one.

“1-800-273-8255″ by Logic feat. Alessia Cara and Khalid: Speaking of mental trauma, Logic’s breakout hit exists to lend a hand to those dealing with suicidal feelings. It sees the rapper and guest Alessia Cara acting respectively as a caller and a receptionist for the titular suicide hotline. Top that off with dramatic string swells and Khalid’s potent outro, and you have a song whose impact can’t be undermined, even by the shouts of “who can relate?”

“Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles: This is undoubtedly the best solo single to come out of the 1D camp, a power ballad reminiscent of David Bowie’s best that nails the particular desire to escape that we’ve all felt at some point this year. Cut the runtime by about a minute and you’ve got the perfect template for what mainstream rock should sound like in years to come, rather than whatever commercial filler comes from Imagine Dragons.

“Mask Off” by Future: I wasn’t wild about Future’s decision to release two overlong albums in the span of a week, but both albums had their highlights, and “Mask Off” was one of them. The beautiful “Prison Song” sample is the closest thing to old school hip hop in the mainstream this year, and Future delivers a sticky hook and the sort of secretly personal lyrics that have become his forte.

“Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane: Mike Will Made It hit a stride of excellence between “Formation” and “DNA,” and this song was caught in the middle of that period, boasting a dark, pounding beat topped with alien synths that sounded like little else in the Hot 100. Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane don’t really do much different from the norm, but the hook has an insanely catchy melody, and I’ll take anything over “Swang” at this point.

“That’s What I Like” by Bruno Mars: Look, pretty much everybody was hopping onto the trap bandwagon this year, but Bruno Mars made the sound his own by incorporating more organic percussion and a classic soul chord progression. The same goes for the lyrics about “strawberry champagne on ice” and “everything 24 karats.” You know, because the album and its lead single were both called “24K Magic”...

“Love on the Brain” by Rihanna: It’s the final single from Rihanna’s great comeback album Anti, and while I still think “Kiss It Better” should have been a lot bigger than it was, this is a perfectly fine piece of retro soul. 2016 was the end of the Meghan Trainor era, so it was only fitting that we ushered the new year in with what a song of hers might sound like if it were any good.

“Green Light” by Lorde: This didn’t make the year end Hot 100, so by my own arbitrary rules, I can’t formally include it, so I’ll just include it in the honorable mentions out of spite. How the fuck was this not a hit?

And now, for what I consider to be the best hit song of 2017:

1. “Praying” by Kesha

When I wrote my entry on the loathsome waste of space known as Kodak Black, I introduced it by addressing that content doesn’t exist without context. Sure, “Tunnel Vision” is a thoroughly unpleasant listening experience, but what makes it all the more abhorrent is how he lackadaisically prods at the very real allegations against him, all the while taunting those who want to see him lose. While that song is a very unfortunate reminder that rape culture is very much a real thing, it’s at least comforting to see a song from the other side of the spectrum.

Of the few criticisms I’ve seen of Kesha’s triumphant comeback single “Praying,” the only one that comes close to holding any water is if the song would hit nearly as hard if the details of the singer’s abuse at the hands of human shitstain producer Dr. Luke weren’t so well publicized. But for me, a song of this caliber can’t really be performed - let alone written - without this kind of experience. Over somber piano chords, Kesha recounts the feelings of uselessness and trickery she felt under Luke’s wing, only to overcome these feelings and make herself stronger as the haunting mellotron swells behind her. Her message is made all the more stark in the line “I hope you find your peace fallin’ on your knees.”

If this were all “Praying” was, I’d still adore it for its bold sincerity, but what certifies this song as the best of the year is the way the song builds. About halfway through the second verse, Kesha’s voice leaps an octave, and her tone shifts from vulnerable to utterly strident. Gradually, strings, backing vocals, pounding drums and horns enter the fold, giving way to the deeply moving second repeat of the chorus. And then the bridge happens, and after her crushing conclusion that “some things only God can forgive,” she lets out the note heard around the world. Though Kesha’s brand was established on semi-satirical autotune pop, it’s this moment that proves all her detractors horribly wrong in their assertion that she had “no talent.”

And while the high note is remarkable in and of its self, its potency is matched by the very end of the song, where the music fades away. As Kesha delivers her final lines, you can hear her crying as she steps away from the microphone. This moment is one of the rawest concentrations of lived-in emotion I’ve heard in the mainstream in years, and all the more evidence that this is real. Some people might call “Praying” the best Adele song that she never sang, but this is Kesha’s story. Unfortunately, it’s the story of far too many women in our society as well, but as more and more powerful men are being exposed and cancelled for their unacceptable treatment of women, this song couldn’t exist at a better time.

Thank you for reading! I’m considering writing about my favorite albums of the year, so if you’d like to see something like that, please let me know!

[pavotime]

@handsomepeacock

Coiling warmth ebbed with confusing darkness. Screeching. Gunfire. Sounds of shouting voices blurring out, falling further and further away.

Falling.

No. Not falling.

Pulled.

He was being pulled… somewhere on Helios. It was too bright to open his eyes. He needed to see where. He needed to. There was something important he was being dragged away from.

Jack coughed as he came to amidst landing just barely above the burning rubble of a cafe. It crackled feebly around him while the smoke burned at his lungs. The alien brightness had finally disappeared as his sight returned to normal. He recognized the area he was in to be… Hub of Helios? Something didn’t look right. Several things in fact.

For one, were those posters and billboards of his face everywhere? No. Not quite. The skin was definitely lighter and for some reason there were metal grips. He couldn’t see himself ever getting some weird bone grafting piercing thing… for the sake of being hip.

Jack felt at his well defined chin - just in case.

“Alll right… Nooot entirely getting what’s going on but-” he started with a slight groan as he tried to roll himself off the torn cloth canopy that he had miraculously landed on, “Eeeyuugh! No, no! Don’t you-!”  

Just his luck, however, it tore from all his wriggling.

But of course it couldn’t tear perfectly to free him entirely. The evil lining of cloth just had to get another hit in as it caught Jack’s boot in another torn hole, suspending the already aggravated avian just a few feet above the ground.

“Oh, come on!” he yelled before hearing the distant gunfire.

Jack silenced himself a moment as he heard the fighting getting closer. An awful cracking sound stole away his attention, however, as he quickly grasped his head. His ears were ringing painfully while his vision blurred. All he could see was another bright light that seemed to rip through the atmosphere nearby.

When it finally left, the pounding of military grade boots and safeties clicking had him breaking into a sweat. Their grey moonscape camo hustled through the area for cover, and Jack could already tell that he was in for a very up close and personal firefight the second the dark glass of their helmets turned toward him.  

The one taking point stopped immediately, throwing a hand up at the glowering programmer to indicate to take immediate fire.

“There's Jack! Commands are to terminate on sight!”

Jack wasn’t about to let himself die here, but like hell if he didn’t miss his vault hunters right about now. He reactivated the lasers at his wrists, blasting madly at the irritating cloth before being dropped down. The Hyperion employee felt the wind knocked out of him the second his back collided into the hard floor, but it was better than his shield getting torn apart - along with himself.

“He’s getting away!”

“For Zarpedon!”

He considered making a snappy comeback about their lack of good intelligence in learning that Zarpedon was no longer among the living, but he figured crawling for some decent cover made for a much better strategy. Jack fired a few defensive shots back, though blindly, as he quickly huddled behind some- Or he tried to hide behind something at least until a giant turret appeared from out of friggin nowhere.

“Son of a taaaaint…” he whined as the barrel loomed like some sort of gun deity before peering directly down at him, “No! I’m not Dahl! See? Hyperion! Hy-per-i-on!”

Jack pulled open his jacket while gesturing to the apparent logo on his company shirt, but the turret from hell seemed to lack any interest as the barrel proceeded to warm up its rotation.  

“Come on! I work here, you assholes!!” he yelled angrily just before barely leaping out of the way.

“Hostile!”

“Fire at will!”

Finally, things were starting to look up. The idiot jarheads had decided to target the turret which probably assess them as a greater threat which meant sneaking away would be much easier now. But Jack was still rooting that they’d all just kill each other somehow.

He kept close to the ground, ignoring the bodies of many of the other employees, as he crawled on his stomach for some sort of egress route. But there was a certain something he couldn’t ignore…

“When the hell did everyone get so well armed? Are these… These are all Hyperion?! But… But I don’t even remember any of these? New prototypes?”

Jack insisted on taking a sweet yellow pistol that had the appearance of a quad of fins that would extend to better both accuracy and recoil. He did his best not to gush over the thing too long, but he was in a hell of a better mood now that he found it. It wasn’t like the dead accountant was going to mind.

He carried on mid-crawl to removed himself from the Hub of Helios only to regretfully find even more Dahl troops heading in his direction.

The programmer vehemently cursed while quickly ducking from the hail of gunfire. As if teleporting troops weren't weird, the avian caught sight of even more strange portals… only they weren't just tossing out soldiers. There was debris that seemed to spontaneously fly from just about everywhere - from walls, the air, and even the nearby steps spewed flaming metal chunks.  

But as if that was the end of it, things just had to get crazier… or just insanely more awesome than before.

While Jack deliberated on taking out a few Dahl soldiers himself in order to make for a better escape, he was stunned to feel the station quake as a giant more advanced version of the Constructor appeared. Loaderbot after Loaderbot was digistructed for war and their voices almost seemed to sing for destruction - in that monotonous, unfeeling death robot way.

“Located hostile.”

“Disabling First Law.”

“Target acquired.”

“Murderer detected.”

“Target death imminent.”

But what perplexed him even more was how there were different types. There were yellow ones with rifles, red ones with flamethrowers, and even those that just seemed to charge like an intelligent grenade at the enemy. The screams of dying Dahl soldiers never tasted so sweet. Yet Jack still couldn’t get over all these changes. Where had they all come from?

Gripping his new favorite pistol between his hands, he debated yet again on making a break for it. But to where? The elevator to his office was clearly blocked off as more Dahl idiots kept pouring in. Or… so he thought.

The synchronized shots of sniper rounds exploded through the air and the soldiers began to drop beautifully with every headshot. Bits of skull and brains flew everywhere while making the best sounds. Jack felt himself getting a little too excited… Not that there really was such a thing, but he still had an agenda to commit to.

He had finally remembered.

The Eye of Helios.  

Jack was determined in deactivating it to save Elpis once and for all. He just had to get back to his office, use the Fast Travel, rendezvous with his Vault Hunters, and everything would be golden. But in compiling his newfound plan, the programmer made a fatal mistake.

He failed to check his sixth… or his everywhere as he became very uncomfortably aware of the numerous red dots that danced across the surface of his chest and head. Wincing, he tried not to give away any sort of notion that he might have had anything to do with Dahl. Wherever this rescue cavalry was coming from, Jack wasn’t about to take them on.

“Oh… Heeeey, guuuuuys. So the fight’s over? Looks pretty over to me. I mean, there’s a lot of dead Dahl. Since you know, there’s no better Dahl soldier than a dead one, am I right? Eh?”

The unfazed silence chipped at his shrinking ego slightly, so he quickly chose to change tactics.

“Well… That’s great. Helios is safe again, thanks to you. Good work, everybody!” the peacock congratulated emptily while clapping his hand against the side of the pistol.

He didn’t anticipate it would fire by accident. The sudden unexpected shot had everyone to stiffening up, guns clicking nervously, while even the loaders were shifting quickly into attention. Jack immediately put his hands up. His back straightened, taut as ever, as sweat slid in full beads down his neck.    

Great. Fan-friggin-tastic. Somehow he managed to make things worse. He could already hear Tassiter’s stream of vitriolic verbal sewage pouring over him. 

“Ah ha… Sorry about that! Just ah… Not super familiar with it, you know?”

Jack waited a moment while wondering what it was these guys were waiting for. Why were they all just staring him down like he was some sort of terrorist? A few lead types seemed to be making special calls to their Echos but Jack couldn’t tell for what. Did they honestly think he was with them?

He flicked his gaze back to the partially broken billboard that definitely bore his likeness. 

What the hell was going on? 

[passportandplates]

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” –Samuel Johnson

Even the most seasoned traveler is not immune to misconceptions and stereotypes. We all have a certain idea about what a country will be like before hitting the “book now” button.

Some of our ideas come from photos or other travelers, but the majority are born from the media…and they aren’t always pretty.

Egypt is one such country. Its tourism is suffering, thanks to frequent negative headlines about safety. I’m not one listen to sensationalist headlines, so I decided to go see Egypt for myself and document my experience.

Although I quickly realized that the reality of traveling in Egypt is far different than what the media claims, I was curious to see what other travelers thought about Egypt, both before and after visiting.

I surveyed fellow travelers who have visited the land of mummies and camels in the last six years and asked them two questions: What were some of your misconceptions of Egypt?  And how have those changed now that you’ve visited?

Before traveling to Egypt, it’s important to know that it can be exhilarating, frustrating, and enriching – especially for a first timer. You will experience culture shock. I know I did, and my family is part Egyptian! Keep reading to learn the best Egypt travel tips for the first time visitor, directly from travelers who have visited recently!

  First Time Visitors: Expectation vs. Reality

The Media and Tourism

Photo Credit: Getting Stamped

Photo Credit: Travel Eat Enjoy Repeat

“I didn’t think it would affect tourism so much (hotels are empty, almost no people at the historical sights of Karnak Temple or the Valley of the Kings).” –Sharon, Travel Eat Enjoy Repeat

“It was sad to hear stories from the locals about the damage their tourism industry has suffered, but it definitely gave me the motivation to make sure I was spreading my word of positivity as a tourist in Egypt.” –Travis, Traveler

“I was surprised to see how poorly their travel industry is doing. I thought everyone wanted to go see the Pyramids.” –Olga, Traveler

“I expected Egypt to be quite an expensive travel option, but it’s actually quite affordable.” –Louise, Traveler

My experience:

Unfortunately, the media has painted a dark picture of travel in Egypt, and its tourism is suffering accordingly. Tourist sites are virtually empty compared to their pre-revolution crowds. Thanks to the current exchange rate and low tourism numbers, traveling to Egypt has become much more affordable, and getting photos without people in them is a given. I am aware that there have been several incidents in Egypt over the last few years, and of course, safety is never guaranteed, anywhere. However, the incidents in Egypt have been few and far between and only a couple of them have actually targeted tourists. Crimes happen anywhere and everywhere, and as it says on the UK Government foreign travel website “most visits to Egypt are trouble-free.”

  Safety Worries

Photo Credit: The Wayfaring Voyager

“I was worried I’d be concerned for my safety, but I never felt unsafe on my group tour.” –Louise, Traveler

“The security throughout the country and at all the ‘touristy’ locations was phenomenal. I always felt safe, even walking around the streets alone at night.” –Travis, Traveler

“When I thought about traveling, the first thing I worried about was whether I was going to be able to do so safely. Although I did get a bit of attention for being a female Caucasian traveler, I wasn’t harassed due to my gender or skin color. I never felt unsafe in Egypt. In fact, the Egyptians took my safety very seriously.” –Josie, Traveler

“I felt uncomfortable walking down the street alone as a woman. Part of it is that I stood out quite clearly with blonde hair and blue eyes, but another part is just the culture and not being totally aware before arriving.” –Alex, The Wayfaring Voyager

“Traveling to Luxor and being in Luxor, there is much more security than 10 years ago. We never felt unsafe; on the contrary, people were extremely friendly.” –Sharon, Travel Eat Enjoy Repeat

My experience:

Having visited Egypt several times in my life (both before and after the Arab Spring), I must admit that I never felt unsafe in Egypt. Unfortunately, traveling as a solo female in Egypt does garner a lot of verbal attention from men, especially toward women who appear foreign. While this unwanted attention is annoying, it’s typically harmless. I was surprised to find that traveling with a group helped to eliminate catcalling almost entirely, even when our guide wasn’t around. My tip for first-time travelers to Egypt (especially women): dress conservatively and brace yourself for cat-calling. (Note: I don’t condone this behavior whatsoever but I do think it’s important to be transparent about what it’s like for visiting women). In my experience, booking a guided tour greatly reduced the catcalling issue.

  Bustling Cities and Markets

Aswan Bazaar

“In Egypt, everything is up for barter and nothing is free. Knowing some key words in Arabic is handy (no and thank you in particular), especially when navigating the bazaars.“ –Louise, Traveler

“If you are more introverted, you will have a difficult time with the many pushy street vendors that congregate in the tourist locations.” –Sean, Traveler

“I didn’t know exactly what to expect when traveling to Egypt, but I was definitely surprised by the attempts to fool me into buying things. Egypt stole my heart in a number of ways as a history-lover, but it was much more challenging than I had expected to get around.” –Alex, The Wayfaring Voyager

“What we found was anything but what we had been preconditioned to believe! Arriving in the hustle and bustle of Cairo, the atmosphere was undeniably electric.” –Sarah, Exploring Kiwis

My experience:

Like many countries, Egypt has its fair share of street vendors pushing you to purchase souvenirs, especially in the big cities and at tourist sites. Negotiating and tipping are a big part of the culture, which often comes as a bit of a shock to first time visitors to Egypt. If you love haggling at markets, Egypt is the place to be. If not, usually a firm but polite “lah shokran” (no thank you) wards off even the pushiest of vendors.

  Egyptian Hospitality 

Travis in Aswan

Photo Credit: Olga Z.

“I thought Egyptians may not be hospitable to westerners, but they are actually really welcoming.” –Louise, Traveler

“Almost everyone was friendly and welcoming, which I didn’t expect.” –Olga, Traveler

“As a solo traveler I was nervous but was completely overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of the Egyptian people.” –Travis, Geckos Traveler

“The people were very kind. All in all, Egypt was amazing.” –Josie, Traveler

My experience:

I’m not surprised by the number of people who think Egypt is hostile to foreigners before visiting for the first time, thanks to the mainstream media. Egyptian hospitality may not be making headlines, but it certainly should be. When I went on my group tour, we were welcomed by vendors and locals alike, everywhere we went. Everyone wanted to know where we were from and excitedly took selfies with our group. They made sure to remind us that we (and our friends) are welcome in Egypt.

Book a hotel in Egypt below:

Booking.com (function(d, sc, u) { var s = d.createElement(sc), p = d.getElementsByTagName(sc)[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = u + '?v=' + (+new Date()); p.parentNode.insertBefore(s,p); })(document, 'script', '//aff.bstatic.com/static/affiliate_base/js/flexiproduct.js');

Other surprises

The Food

New on the #blog! A guide to the must eat foods when visiting #Cairo #Egypt! Link in bio. Pictured: homemade #koshary

A post shared by Sally • Food & Travel Writer (@passportandplates) on Nov 24, 2015 at 10:53am PST

“I expected breakfast to resemble something like home (Australia), but it doesn’t. Think lots of carbs, jam, feta style cheese, and beans. Eating gluten-free was a challenge.” –Louise, Geckos Adventurer

Depending on your dietary restrictions, you may have a hard time eating in Egypt. In particular, one of my group tour members was allergic to gluten and he had a difficult time partaking in Egypt’s carb-heavy cuisine. Tip: check out my Egyptian Food Guide to get an idea of what Egyptian food is like and to discover what you need to eat while visiting Egypt for the first time!

  The Nature

I'd never been camping before but you're looking at where I took my first overnight camping trip with @egypttailor! The White Desert in Egypt consists of mixes of limestone rocks that have formed a variety of shapes, colors and textures. Doesn't this look like the landscape of another planet?

A post shared by Sally • Food & Travel Writer (@passportandplates) on Feb 8, 2017 at 2:00pm PST

“Egypt is well known for its ancient wonders, but I would argue that the natural side of Egypt is more worth a traveler’s time. Being in the White and Black Deserts as well as along the Nile were a good taste of what Egypt has to offer in terms of natural beauty, and should not be missed in the itinerary of any worldly traveler.” –Sean, Traveler

I agree wholeheartedly with Sean’s statement. Egypt is more than its ancient temples. Its varying landscapes make it an outdoor lover’s dream! Learn more: check out my guide to camping in the White and Black Deserts: an activity not to be missed when visiting Egypt!

  “Egyptian Time”

“Trains run on Egyptian time, which basically means they’ll leave and arrive whenever they feel like. Definitely take that into account when planning your trip.” –Olga, Traveler

Travel tip: If you’re one of those people that plan an hourly schedule when you travel, throw your plan away and start again. Most things run on Egyptian time, and there’s no point in getting worked up by long lines or transportation delays.

  The Surroundings of the Pyramids

Most photos are taken from the back of the Pyramids

“When visiting the Great Pyramids of Giza, I did not expect to see a Pizza Hut and KFC. Many locals have told me the Pizza Hut has one of the best views for the nightly sound and light show. For some reason, I expect the pyramids to be far outside of the city but instead they are literally in Cairo.” –Hannah, Getting Stamped

This is something I often hear from first time visitors to Egypt and I remember thinking the same when I visited! Surprise: The Giza Pyramids are not in a vast, empty desert in the middle of nowhere. Rather, they’re a quick drive from the city. All the photos you see are taken from the back of the Pyramids.

  Overall impressions of Egypt

Photo Credit: Exploring Kiwis

“Egypt was a pleasant surprise and a place that I would encourage everyone to visit – to be that close to ancient human history is absolutely humbling. Don’t let other people put you off – the world is a good place!” –Sarah, Exploring Kiwis

“I loved discovering North Africa and I am inspired to travel to more Arab countries. Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon are in the cards.” –Louise, Traveler

“All in all, Egypt was amazing! It was safe, fun and I learned so much historically and culturally.“ –Josie, Traveler

“My experience gave me the motivation to make sure I was spreading my word of positivity as a tourist in Egypt. It’s a country of great depths and diversity that I will most definitely visit again soon.” –Travis, Traveler

There you have it. You are now armed with the best Egypt travel tips for your first visit. I highly recommend booking a group tour to Egypt as it is not an easy country to navigate independently. I personally did this combined Egypt/Jordan tour with Geckos Adventures, but you can also book an Egypt only trip here. If you are over 30 or just prefer a lot more options, I recommend these tours by sister company Intrepid Travel. So what are you waiting for? Travel to Egypt and see what this historically-rich country has to offer!

Read more about Egypt below:

Pharaohs and Feluccas: Exploring Egypt with Geckos Adventures

Camping in the White Desert, Egypt: A First Timer’s Guide

My Cairo Travel Guide: Five Experiences Not to Miss

Egyptian Food Guide: Must Eat Foods When Visiting Cairo

  Tell me: have you ever visited Egypt? What was the most surprising part of the country and what did you wish you knew before you went? 

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Egypt Travel Tips for the First Time Visitor: Expectations vs Reality Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” –Samuel Johnson…

[krisiunicornio]

“Antiracism Meditation,” a new album by two lifelong friends, one Black, one white, addresses the full spectrum of systemic racism.

“Racism against black people is not just a white thing,” says Iman Gibson, 32, a dedicated meditation practitioner and founder of the wellness coaching brand Brocollete and one-half of the duo that released a trio of guided meditations for antiracism today. Tori Lund, 33, a yoga teacher, classically trained vocalist, and singer-songwriter in the country rock band Few Miles South is Gibson’s lifelong friend since the seventh grade and spiritual collaborator.

They discovered a shared passion for yoga and meditation during their first yoga class together at their alternative, mostly Jewish middle school in Santa Monica, California, where the teacher played Sade’s “Lovers Rock” album on repeat. They attended life-skills classes where they “sat in a circle, burned sage, and talked about their feelings,” Gibson says, adding that despite their “hippie-ish” upbringing, she was still the only Black kid in school. She considers Lund, who describes her family as the epitome of white American culture and Christianity, as her first white friend. But even then, both Gibson and Lund would describe their childhood as a progressive liberal bubble. It wasn’t until after high school and college when Lund moved to Blakely, Georgia, about three hours south of Atlanta, and Gibson to the Bay Area, that the veil was lifted and they began to see racism in America through what they describe as a 360° perspective.

That perspective, however, is not limited to Black and white. Gibson says she’s been discriminated against by other people of color, or, as she puts it, people who don’t look like her. “The problem I see with a lot of the narrative around anti-Black racism and allyship is that it’s specifically being targeted at white people,” Gibson says.

See also How Restorative Yoga Can Help Heal Racial Wounding

The Catalyst for Collaboration

Following the murder of George Floyd and in wake of the protests and global outrage that ensued, Gibson and Lund became inspired to create a unique trifecta of guided meditations that would help any person, white or otherwise, dismantle their biases, own their allyship, and cultivate compassion. The entire project, a healing salve and labor of love for the two friends, was recorded remotely—Gibson from her broom closet in her Oakland apartment and Lund at her recording studio. The ambient, atmospheric guitar sounds that accompany the meditations are played by Lund’s partner and bandmate, Blake English, who also engineered the sound.

Their album, “Antiracism Meditation,” will be available on iTunes, Spotify, and other streaming platforms, as well as the Insight Timer app, where Gibson and Lund will soon offer an antiracism course. As a bonus, the album also includes several antiracist journaling prompts to deepen self-inquiry. Gibson and Lund say that any profits earned from the album will be donated to a still-to-be-determined nonprofit such as the ACLU or Color of Change. “Antiracism Meditation” follows Gibson’s first guided meditations album, called Re:Fresh and released in 2018.

See also Blogger Mia Caine On Conscious, Inclusive Wellness

A Special Preview of "Antiracism Meditation"

See also Teach Your Child this Meditation for Positive Energy and Keeping an Open Mind

A Q&A With The Creators of "Antiracism Mediation"

We spoke to Gibson and Lund to learn more about their creative process and how their meditation album can help listeners unpack their privilege.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

YJ: How did your friendship provide you with the perspective to create something constructive to address this tough topic?

Lund: We have a deep level of trust. Race and racism have been a part of our conversations for a long time. Some of that is realizing behaviors I've had that have been problematic, or friendships and relationships with people that have exposed things that I've overlooked that are problematic and have been potentially harmful for Iman or for other people of color. I've been able to move through a lot of the discomfort that I think other people who look like me experience when they're trying to have these conversations, or when they look at themselves deeply and realize how they might be contributing to racism in our society. I could relate to that again when we were making these meditations and I wanted to make sure that piece was in there. I think it prevents a lot of action from people when you don't deal with feelings of defensiveness, guilt, or shame. If I had not had this friendship, I don't think I would have been able to look at privilege honestly.

Gibson: My mother grew up in the segregated South in Texarkana, Texas, where she had to drink out of different water fountains from other children. Before she moved to California, I think my family had this view of what America was and that there were so much racism and discrimination toward people who looked like me. They wanted to protect me so that I wasn’t mistreated. I grew up in West LA, so I didn't really believe that America was as racist as it is until I got older. But institutionalized racism exists in California as well, it’s just harder to see. Even if you look at some yoga studios; I would rarely see people who looked like me at studios in Santa Monica, even the donation-based ones. When I moved to the Bay Area and really started to open my eyes to racism, I’d notice it in schools, in places I’ve worked, and in the wellness industry where you have the appropriation of Indigenous healing cultures. Even in my spiritual and Buddhist studies, people of color are often overlooked. That's been emotionally very hard for me, but having a friend like Tori who cares about me, my life, my culture, and my people, I think what we've been able to explore in our relationship and our sisterhood—being able to use the wisdom from our spiritual practices—is so much more powerful together than anything we could do on our own. And not just because we're a Black woman and a white woman, but because we’ve both lived in the same place and then gone our separate ways to experience very different parts of the country.

What was the process of cowriting remotely from opposite coasts like?

Lund: We collaborated on every meditation. I could speak to the first one because I have privilege and internalized racism—and I didn’t realize it as deeply until I did this project and was in a constant state of asking questions and hearing perspectives. We tried to provide as many viewpoints as possible, so it was a lot of editing and back and forth.

Gibson: Both of us have been equally dedicated and committed to this process. Tori did the bulk of the research on racism, privilege, and allyship, and we’ve got a 40-page document of notes that we compiled before we whittled it down to what's most important; the specific themes. What's most interesting, we’ve found, is that a lot of racist behavior is shielded under a coating of kindness. It’s something that people may not realize; they don't have the intention to be racist or to “other” someone. For example, I've gone to a meditation center and someone said, “Oh, we're so happy that you're here! We want more of you here!” That singles me out and makes me uncomfortable. So we tried to get at some of the more subtle elements that people often don't realize.

See also 4 Ways to Communicate Effectively This Week

The first meditation on privilege may be uncomfortable for some to hear. Why did you decide to lead with the most difficult meditation on the album?

Gibson: There's this messaging of “do the inner work,” but what exactly is the inner work? Mindfulness meditation can help you build the compassion and the fortitude to not only keep showing up, but to feel supported as you do the inner work. This meditation helps you work through some of the shame and guilt you might feel so that you can show up with more impact. It was important for us to be direct and offer specific examples, so instead of using a broad generalization, I wrote the things that I've directly heard or experienced. We were also thoughtful about who said which part of the script—as a Black woman, I didn’t want people to hear my voice and feel guilty. We also wanted to be supportive and compassionate. I have a lot of compassion for Tori as she's going through this difficult process—I don't want her to feel bad or beat herself up. We were intentional about who said what, so that whomever is listening would feel cared for, loved, supported, and held.

Lund: I don't know if there's an easy way to handhold yourself once you decide to do this work. You have to take responsibility, which is uncomfortable, and then you have to stick with it. You have to dive right in and feel it. It gets easier the more that you do it—but you’re not going to somehow ease your way into the discomfort. I hope that doesn't scare people away—but the privilege meditation is delivered with compassion and offers multiple perspectives to address how people might be feeling or confronted. People need to take responsibility for their part in the suffering and their part in creating healing.

See also The Time to Rest is Now

Do you think the allyship and sacral chakra meditation offers subtle guidance for effective, non-performative allyship ?

Gibson: We wanted to give people practices that train them to stand up for others as they would for themselves, and retrain their gut response from inaction to the right action. So when you apply mindfulness to this topic, and see something that’s unjust, you can recognize it because your eyes are awake—before you were asleep, and you didn’t notice, but you see it now—and you recognize it as an opportunity to do something about it. We want to help make taking action more automatic and less performative.

Lund: There's not really anything we can do to make sure that somebody's intention is truly in the right place—but people standing up is better than people not standing up at all. Hopefully their intentions are there and they can start to look at themselves and question, Am I doing this to appease my ego and to feel good? Or am I doing this because I really see a deep need to acknowledge my contribution—because I want to prevent it from creating more problems? I hope the meditations get people to look at themselves more deeply and ask those kinds of questions, but I don't know that we can ensure it's going to prevent more performative action.

The loving-kindness meditation might not have been as powerful on its own without the other two, since we can’t just sit and meditate the world’s problems away and pray for equality. Would you agree?

Gibson: It’s about building compassion toward yourself for the times you may not have said the right thing and feel guilty. There's no room for guilt, which only hinders one from improving oneself, taking appropriate action, and showing up in real life. That's why we were intentional about including a meditation that was supportive in building compassion for oneself, for others who were not doing the right thing, and for those who are suffering. I’ve observed a big problem among certain mindfulness and yoga communities with this sort of, Oh, this really awful thing is happening. Let's sit on our mats and say a metta and wish them well. But then when you get up off your mat, are you being equitable to Black people and to people of color? That’s why we offered specific, real-life examples to bring in the compassion work and provide something that made it tangible and show the different opportunities to create change.

Lund: It's so easy to want to just go there—we just want to love everyone and say that love is the answer. But people have to stand up. And sometimes you can do that in a way that has a lot of love and sweetness behind it. But other times, you have to be more stern and maybe hurt someone's feelings and maybe risk a relationship over it. But it's necessary and worth it. This is for the sake of humanity.

See also Even Interrupted Meditation Benefits the Mind, Body, and Soul—Here, How to Embrace Distraction

3 Anti-Racism Journaling Prompts for Self-Reflection

Deepen your inner work with these journaling prompts from Gibson and Lund, written exclusively for Yoga Journal readers.

1. Racism: Do I truly treat all beings equally? Do I prefer some over others?

Do all of my friends look like me? Do I learn from Black and other diverse teachers? Do I incorporate diverse perspectives into my work?

2. Privilege: How does it feel to know that I have privilege? What can I do differently, now that I know?

Do I recognize my privilege if I am a POC whose culture experiences less or non-life threatening racism? How can I use my privilege to speak up for others?

3. Allyship: Will I speak up even when it's uncomfortable?

I will ensure Black people and other people of color are heard and represented in the spaces I patron and at work. I will speak up when I notice or am notified of systemic racism, especially when I’m uncomfortable. 

See also 31 Yoga and Self-Care Resources for Black Yogis (Especially if Social Media Has You Overwhelmed)

[cedarrrun]

“Antiracism Meditation,” a new album by two lifelong friends, one Black, one white, addresses the full spectrum of systemic racism.

“Racism against black people is not just a white thing,” says Iman Gibson, 32, a dedicated meditation practitioner and founder of the wellness coaching brand Brocollete and one-half of the duo that released a trio of guided meditations for antiracism today. Tori Lund, 33, a yoga teacher, classically trained vocalist, and singer-songwriter in the country rock band Few Miles South is Gibson’s lifelong friend since the seventh grade and spiritual collaborator.

They discovered a shared passion for yoga and meditation during their first yoga class together at their alternative, mostly Jewish middle school in Santa Monica, California, where the teacher played Sade’s “Lovers Rock” album on repeat. They attended life-skills classes where they “sat in a circle, burned sage, and talked about their feelings,” Gibson says, adding that despite their “hippie-ish” upbringing, she was still the only Black kid in school. She considers Lund, who describes her family as the epitome of white American culture and Christianity, as her first white friend. But even then, both Gibson and Lund would describe their childhood as a progressive liberal bubble. It wasn’t until after high school and college when Lund moved to Blakely, Georgia, about three hours south of Atlanta, and Gibson to the Bay Area, that the veil was lifted and they began to see racism in America through what they describe as a 360° perspective.

That perspective, however, is not limited to Black and white. Gibson says she’s been discriminated against by other people of color, or, as she puts it, people who don’t look like her. “The problem I see with a lot of the narrative around anti-Black racism and allyship is that it’s specifically being targeted at white people,” Gibson says.

See also How Restorative Yoga Can Help Heal Racial Wounding

The Catalyst for Collaboration

Following the murder of George Floyd and in wake of the protests and global outrage that ensued, Gibson and Lund became inspired to create a unique trifecta of guided meditations that would help any person, white or otherwise, dismantle their privilege, own their allyship, and cultivate compassion. The entire project, a healing salve and labor of love for the two friends, was recorded remotely—Gibson from her broom closet in her Oakland apartment and Lund at her recording studio. The ambient, atmospheric guitar sounds that accompany the meditations are played by Lund’s partner and bandmate, Blake English, who also engineered the sound.

Their album, “Antiracism Meditation,” will be available on iTunes, Spotify, and other streaming platforms, as well as the Insight Timer app, where Gibson and Lund will soon offer an antiracism course. As a bonus, the album also includes several antiracist journaling prompts to deepen self-inquiry. Gibson and Lund say that any profits earned from the album will be donated to a still-to-be-determined nonprofit such as the ACLU or Color of Change. “Antiracism Meditation” follows Gibson’s first guided meditations album, called Re:Fresh and released in 2018.

See also Blogger Mia Caine On Conscious, Inclusive Wellness

A Special Preview of "Antiracism Meditation"

See also Teach Your Child this Meditation for Positive Energy and Keeping an Open Mind

A Q&A With The Creators of "Antiracism Mediation"

We spoke to Gibson and Lund to learn more about their creative process and how their meditation album can help listeners unpack their privilege.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

YJ: How did your friendship provide you with the perspective to create something constructive to address this tough topic?

Lund: We have a deep level of trust. Race and racism have been a part of our conversations for a long time. Some of that is realizing behaviors I've had that have been problematic, or friendships and relationships with people that have exposed things that I've overlooked that are problematic and have been potentially harmful for Iman or for other people of color. I've been able to move through a lot of the discomfort that I think other people who look like me experience when they're trying to have these conversations, or when they look at themselves deeply and realize how they might be contributing to racism in our society. I could relate to that again when we were making these meditations and I wanted to make sure that piece was in there. I think it prevents a lot of action from people when you don't deal with feelings of defensiveness, guilt, or shame. If I had not had this friendship, I don't think I would have been able to look at privilege honestly.

Gibson: My mother grew up in the segregated South in Texarkana, Texas, where she had to drink out of different water fountains from other children. Before she moved to California, I think my family had this view of what America was and that there were so much racism and discrimination toward people who looked like me. They wanted to protect me so that I wasn’t mistreated. I grew up in West LA, so I didn't really believe that America was as racist as it is until I got older. But institutionalized racism exists in California as well, it’s just harder to see. Even if you look at some yoga studios; I would rarely see people who looked like me at studios in Santa Monica, even the donation-based ones. When I moved to the Bay Area and really started to open my eyes to racism, I’d notice it in schools, in places I’ve worked, and in the wellness industry where you have the appropriation of Indigenous healing cultures. Even in my spiritual and Buddhist studies, people of color are often overlooked. That's been emotionally very hard for me, but having a friend like Tori who cares about me, my life, my culture, and my people, I think what we've been able to explore in our relationship and our sisterhood—being able to use the wisdom from our spiritual practices—is so much more powerful together than anything we could do on our own. And not just because we're a Black woman and a white woman, but because we’ve both lived in the same place and then gone our separate ways to experience very different parts of the country.

What was the process of cowriting remotely from opposite coasts like?

Lund: We collaborated on every meditation. I could speak to the first one because I have privilege and internalized racism—and I didn’t realize it as deeply until I did this project and was in a constant state of asking questions and hearing perspectives. We tried to provide as many viewpoints as possible, so it was a lot of editing a lot of back and forth.

Gibson: Both of us have been equally dedicated and committed to this process. Tori did the bulk of the research on racism, privilege, and allyship, and we’ve got a 40-page document of notes that we compiled before we whittled it down to what's most important; the specific themes. What's most interesting, we’ve found, is that a lot of racist behavior is shielded under a coating of kindness. It’s something that people may not realize; they don't have the intention to be racist or to “other” someone. For example, I've gone to a meditation center and someone said, “Oh, we're so happy that you're here! We want more of you here!” That singles me out and makes me uncomfortable. So we tried to get at some of the more subtle elements that people often don't realize.

See also 4 Ways to Communicate Effectively This Week

The first meditation on privilege may be uncomfortable for some to hear. Why did you decide to lead with the most difficult meditation on the album?

Gibson: There's this messaging of “do the inner work,” but what exactly is the inner work? Mindfulness meditation can help you build the compassion and the fortitude to not only keep showing up, but to feel supported as you do the inner work. This meditation helps you work through some of the shame and guilt you might feel so that you can show up with more impact. It was important for us to be direct and offer specific examples, so instead of using a broad generalization, I wrote the things that I've directly heard or experienced. We were also thoughtful about who said which part of the script—as a Black woman, I didn’t want people to hear my voice and feel guilty. We also wanted to be supportive and compassionate. I have a lot of compassion for Tori as she's going through this difficult process—I don't want her to feel bad or beat herself up. We were intentional about who said what, so that whomever is listening would feel cared for, loved, supported, and held.

Lund: I don't know if there's an easy way to handhold yourself once you decide to do this work. You have to take responsibility, which is uncomfortable, and then you have to stick with it. You have to dive right in and feel it. It gets easier the more that you do it—but you’re not going to somehow ease your way into the discomfort. I hope that doesn't scare people away—but the privilege meditation is delivered with compassion and offers multiple perspectives to address how people might be feeling or confronted. People need to take responsibility for their part in the suffering and their part in creating healing.

See also The Time to Rest is Now

Do you think the allyship and sacral chakra meditation offers subtle guidance for effective, non-performative allyship ?

Gibson: We wanted to give people practices that train them to stand up for others as they would for themselves, and retrain their gut response from inaction to the right action. So when you apply mindfulness to this topic, and see something that’s unjust, you can recognize it because your eyes are awake—before you were asleep, and you didn’t notice, but you see it now—and you recognize it as an opportunity to do something about it. We want to help make taking action more automatic and less performative.

Lund: There's not really anything we can do to make sure that somebody's intention is truly in the right place—but people standing up is better than people not standing up at all. Hopefully their intentions are there and they can start to look at themselves and question, Am I doing this to appease my ego and to feel good? Or am I doing this because I really see a deep need to acknowledge my contribution—because I want to prevent it from creating more problems? I hope the meditations get people to look at themselves more deeply and ask those kinds of questions, but I don't know that we can ensure it's going to prevent more performative action.

The loving-kindness meditation might not have been as powerful on its own without the other two, since we can’t just sit and meditate the world’s problems away and pray for equality. Would you agree?

Gibson: It’s about building compassion toward yourself for the times you may not have said the right thing and feel guilty. There's no room for guilt, which only hinders one from improving oneself, taking appropriate action, and showing up in real life. That's why we were intentional about including a meditation that was supportive in building compassion for oneself, for others who were not doing the right thing, and for those who are suffering. I’ve observed a big problem among certain mindfulness and yoga communities with this sort of, Oh, this really awful thing is happening. Let's sit on our mats and say a metta and wish them well. But then when you get up off your mat, are you being equitable to Black people and to people of color? That’s why we offered specific, real-life examples to bring in the compassion work and provide something that made it tangible and show the different opportunities to create change.

Lund: It's so easy to want to just go there—we just want to love everyone and say that love is the answer. But people have to stand up. And sometimes you can do that in a way that has a lot of love and sweetness behind it. But other times, you have to be more stern and maybe hurt someone's feelings and maybe risk a relationship over it. But it's necessary and worth it. This is for the sake of humanity.

See also Even Interrupted Meditation Benefits the Mind, Body, and Soul—Here, How to Embrace Distraction

3 Anti-Racism Journaling Prompts for Self-Reflection

Deepen your inner work with these journaling prompts from Gibson and Lund, written exclusively for Yoga Journal readers.

1. Racism: Do I truly treat all beings equally? Do I prefer some over others?

Do all of my friends look like me? Do I learn from Black and other diverse teachers? Do I incorporate diverse perspectives into my work?

2. Privilege: How does it feel to know that I have privilege? What can I do differently, now that I know?

Do I recognize my privilege if I am a POC whose culture experiences less or non-life threatening racism? How can I use my privilege to speak up for others?

3. Allyship: Will I speak up even when it's uncomfortable?

I will ensure Black people and other people of color are heard and represented in the spaces I patron and at work. I will speak up when I notice or am notified of systemic racism, especially when I’m uncomfortable. 

See also 31 Yoga and Self-Care Resources for Black Yogis (Especially if Social Media Has You Overwhelmed)

[amyddaniels]

These Antiracism Meditations on Privilege, Allyship, and Compassion Will Help You Unlearn Bias and Stand Up for What’s Right

“Antiracism Meditation,” a new album by two lifelong friends, one Black, one white, addresses the full spectrum of systemic racism.

“Racism against black people is not just a white thing,” says Iman Gibson, 32, a dedicated meditation practitioner and founder of the wellness coaching brand Brocollete and one-half of the duo that released a trio of guided meditations for antiracism today. Tori Lund, 33, a yoga teacher, classically trained vocalist, and singer-songwriter in the country rock band Few Miles South is Gibson’s lifelong friend since the seventh grade and spiritual collaborator.

They discovered a shared passion for yoga and meditation during their first yoga class together at their alternative, mostly Jewish middle school in Santa Monica, California, where the teacher played Sade’s “Lovers Rock” album on repeat. They attended life-skills classes where they “sat in a circle, burned sage, and talked about their feelings,” Gibson says, adding that despite their “hippie-ish” upbringing, she was still the only Black kid in school. She considers Lund, who describes her family as the epitome of white American culture and Christianity, as her first white friend. But even then, both Gibson and Lund would describe their childhood as a progressive liberal bubble. It wasn’t until after high school and college when Lund moved to Blakely, Georgia, about three hours south of Atlanta, and Gibson to the Bay Area, that the veil was lifted and they began to see racism in America through what they describe as a 360° perspective.

That perspective, however, is not limited to Black and white. Gibson says she’s been discriminated against by other people of color, or, as she puts it, people who don’t look like her. “The problem I see with a lot of the narrative around anti-Black racism and allyship is that it’s specifically being targeted at white people,” Gibson says.

See also How Restorative Yoga Can Help Heal Racial Wounding

The Catalyst for Collaboration

Following the murder of George Floyd and in wake of the protests and global outrage that ensued, Gibson and Lund became inspired to create a unique trifecta of guided meditations that would help any person, white or otherwise, dismantle their privilege, own their allyship, and cultivate compassion. The entire project, a healing salve and labor of love for the two friends, was recorded remotely—Gibson from her broom closet in her Oakland apartment and Lund at her recording studio. The ambient, atmospheric guitar sounds that accompany the meditations are played by Lund’s partner and bandmate, Blake English, who also engineered the sound.

Their album, “Antiracism Meditation,” will be available on iTunes, Spotify, and other streaming platforms, as well as the Insight Timer app, where Gibson and Lund will soon offer an antiracism course. As a bonus, the album also includes several antiracist journaling prompts to deepen self-inquiry. Gibson and Lund say that any profits earned from the album will be donated to a still-to-be-determined nonprofit such as the ACLU or Color of Change. “Antiracism Meditation” follows Gibson’s first guided meditations album, called Re:Fresh and released in 2018.

See also Blogger Mia Caine On Conscious, Inclusive Wellness

A Special Preview of "Antiracism Meditation"

See also Teach Your Child this Meditation for Positive Energy and Keeping an Open Mind

A Q&A With The Creators of "Antiracism Mediation"

We spoke to Gibson and Lund to learn more about their creative process and how their meditation album can help listeners unpack their privilege.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

YJ: How did your friendship provide you with the perspective to create something constructive to address this tough topic?

Lund: We have a deep level of trust. Race and racism have been a part of our conversations for a long time. Some of that is realizing behaviors I've had that have been problematic, or friendships and relationships with people that have exposed things that I've overlooked that are problematic and have been potentially harmful for Iman or for other people of color. I've been able to move through a lot of the discomfort that I think other people who look like me experience when they're trying to have these conversations, or when they look at themselves deeply and realize how they might be contributing to racism in our society. I could relate to that again when we were making these meditations and I wanted to make sure that piece was in there. I think it prevents a lot of action from people when you don't deal with feelings of defensiveness, guilt, or shame. If I had not had this friendship, I don't think I would have been able to look at privilege honestly.

Gibson: My mother grew up in the segregated South in Texarkana, Texas, where she had to drink out of different water fountains from other children. Before she moved to California, I think my family had this view of what America was and that there were so much racism and discrimination toward people who looked like me. They wanted to protect me so that I wasn’t mistreated. I grew up in West LA, so I didn't really believe that America was as racist as it is until I got older. But institutionalized racism exists in California as well, it’s just harder to see. Even if you look at some yoga studios; I would rarely see people who looked like me at studios in Santa Monica, even the donation-based ones. When I moved to the Bay Area and really started to open my eyes to racism, I’d notice it in schools, in places I’ve worked, and in the wellness industry where you have the appropriation of Indigenous healing cultures. Even in my spiritual and Buddhist studies, people of color are often overlooked. That's been emotionally very hard for me, but having a friend like Tori who cares about me, my life, my culture, and my people, I think what we've been able to explore in our relationship and our sisterhood—being able to use the wisdom from our spiritual practices—is so much more powerful together than anything we could do on our own. And not just because we're a Black woman and a white woman, but because we’ve both lived in the same place and then gone our separate ways to experience very different parts of the country.

What was the process of cowriting remotely from opposite coasts like?

Lund: We collaborated on every meditation. I could speak to the first one because I have privilege and internalized racism—and I didn’t realize it as deeply until I did this project and was in a constant state of asking questions and hearing perspectives. We tried to provide as many viewpoints as possible, so it was a lot of editing a lot of back and forth.

Gibson: Both of us have been equally dedicated and committed to this process. Tori did the bulk of the research on racism, privilege, and allyship, and we’ve got a 40-page document of notes that we compiled before we whittled it down to what's most important; the specific themes. What's most interesting, we’ve found, is that a lot of racist behavior is shielded under a coating of kindness. It’s something that people may not realize; they don't have the intention to be racist or to “other” someone. For example, I've gone to a meditation center and someone said, “Oh, we're so happy that you're here! We want more of you here!” That singles me out and makes me uncomfortable. So we tried to get at some of the more subtle elements that people often don't realize.

See also 4 Ways to Communicate Effectively This Week

The first meditation on privilege may be uncomfortable for some to hear. Why did you decide to lead with the most difficult meditation on the album?

Gibson: There's this messaging of “do the inner work,” but what exactly is the inner work? Mindfulness meditation can help you build the compassion and the fortitude to not only keep showing up, but to feel supported as you do the inner work. This meditation helps you work through some of the shame and guilt you might feel so that you can show up with more impact. It was important for us to be direct and offer specific examples, so instead of using a broad generalization, I wrote the things that I've directly heard or experienced. We were also thoughtful about who said which part of the script—as a Black woman, I didn’t want people to hear my voice and feel guilty. We also wanted to be supportive and compassionate. I have a lot of compassion for Tori as she's going through this difficult process—I don't want her to feel bad or beat herself up. We were intentional about who said what, so that whomever is listening would feel cared for, loved, supported, and held.

Lund: I don't know if there's an easy way to handhold yourself once you decide to do this work. You have to take responsibility, which is uncomfortable, and then you have to stick with it. You have to dive right in and feel it. It gets easier the more that you do it—but you’re not going to somehow ease your way into the discomfort. I hope that doesn't scare people away—but the privilege meditation is delivered with compassion and offers multiple perspectives to address how people might be feeling or confronted. People need to take responsibility for their part in the suffering and their part in creating healing.

See also The Time to Rest is Now

Do you think the allyship and sacral chakra meditation offers subtle guidance for effective, non-performative allyship ?

Gibson: We wanted to give people practices that train them to stand up for others as they would for themselves, and retrain their gut response from inaction to the right action. So when you apply mindfulness to this topic, and see something that’s unjust, you can recognize it because your eyes are awake—before you were asleep, and you didn’t notice, but you see it now—and you recognize it as an opportunity to do something about it. We want to help make taking action more automatic and less performative.

Lund: There's not really anything we can do to make sure that somebody's intention is truly in the right place—but people standing up is better than people not standing up at all. Hopefully their intentions are there and they can start to look at themselves and question, Am I doing this to appease my ego and to feel good? Or am I doing this because I really see a deep need to acknowledge my contribution—because I want to prevent it from creating more problems? I hope the meditations get people to look at themselves more deeply and ask those kinds of questions, but I don't know that we can ensure it's going to prevent more performative action.

The loving-kindness meditation might not have been as powerful on its own without the other two, since we can’t just sit and meditate the world’s problems away and pray for equality. Would you agree?

Gibson: It’s about building compassion toward yourself for the times you may not have said the right thing and feel guilty. There's no room for guilt, which only hinders one from improving oneself, taking appropriate action, and showing up in real life. That's why we were intentional about including a meditation that was supportive in building compassion for oneself, for others who were not doing the right thing, and for those who are suffering. I’ve observed a big problem among certain mindfulness and yoga communities with this sort of, Oh, this really awful thing is happening. Let's sit on our mats and say a metta and wish them well. But then when you get up off your mat, are you being equitable to Black people and to people of color? That’s why we offered specific, real-life examples to bring in the compassion work and provide something that made it tangible and show the different opportunities to create change.

Lund: It's so easy to want to just go there—we just want to love everyone and say that love is the answer. But people have to stand up. And sometimes you can do that in a way that has a lot of love and sweetness behind it. But other times, you have to be more stern and maybe hurt someone's feelings and maybe risk a relationship over it. But it's necessary and worth it. This is for the sake of humanity.

See also Even Interrupted Meditation Benefits the Mind, Body, and Soul—Here, How to Embrace Distraction

3 Anti-Racism Journaling Prompts for Self-Reflection

Deepen your inner work with these journaling prompts from Gibson and Lund, written exclusively for Yoga Journal readers.

1. Racism: Do I truly treat all beings equally? Do I prefer some over others?

Do all of my friends look like me? Do I learn from Black and other diverse teachers? Do I incorporate diverse perspectives into my work?

2. Privilege: How does it feel to know that I have privilege? What can I do differently, now that I know?

Do I recognize my privilege if I am a POC whose culture experiences less or non-life threatening racism? How can I use my privilege to speak up for others?

3. Allyship: Will I speak up even when it's uncomfortable?

I will ensure Black people and other people of color are heard and represented in the spaces I patron and at work. I will speak up when I notice or am notified of systemic racism, especially when I’m uncomfortable. 

See also 31 Yoga and Self-Care Resources for Black Yogis (Especially if Social Media Has You Overwhelmed)

[aurriii]

10 Books That Will Transport You To The Beach If You Can’t Go IRL

Maybe you’re social distancing. Maybe all of your friends are. Maybe your funds are tight. Many of us have a good reason our summer is not quite like summers of our past. We miss the waves just as much as the next person not within walking distance to the ocean, so we’ve compiled a list of books where we can all escape to a far away island or beach town, no sunscreen needed. Or hey, lather it on. We’re not opposed to a little sensory enhancement.

Click on book in slideshow to see it’s lowest price

Big Summer: A Novel

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

The Vacationers By Emma Straub

The Jetsetters: A Novel By Amanda Eyre Ward

The Guest List: A Novel By Lucy Foley

Beach Read By Emily Henry

Sex and Vanity: A Novel By Kevin Kwan

Hello, Summer By Mary Kay Andrews

The Summer Set Aimee Agresti

  1. Big Summer: A Novel

by Jennifer Weiner

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time—she doesn’t even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media—so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless.

Drue was always the one who had everything—except the ability to hold onto friends. Meanwhile, Daphne’s no longer the same self-effacing sidekick she was back in high school. She’s built a life that she loves, including a growing career as a plus-size Instagram influencer. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.

A sparkling novel about the complexities of female relationships, the pitfalls of living out loud and online, and the resilience of the human heart, Big Summer is a witty, moving story about family, friendship, and figuring out what matters most.

Source: Publisher

2. Beautiful Ruins

by Jess Walter

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio’s back lot, searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion, along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Source: Publisher

3. 28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

A “captivating and bittersweet” novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Summer of ’69: Their secret love affair has lasted for decades — but this could be the summer that changes everything (People). When Mallory Blessing’s son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he’s not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It’s the late spring of 2020 and Jake’s wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother’s bachelor party. Cooper’s friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere — through marriage, children, and Ursula’s stratospheric political rise — until Mallory learns she’s dying. Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

Source: Publisher

  4. The Vacationers

By Emma Straub

For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.

This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.

Source: Publisher

  5. The Jetsetters: A Novel

By Amanda Eyre Ward

When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the Become a Jetsetter contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can’t seem to find a partner; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them.

When she wins the contest, the family packs their baggage—both literal and figurative—and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.

Can four lost adults find the peace they’ve been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back together? In the vein of The Nest and The Vacationers, The Jetsetters is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood.

Source: Publisher

  6. The Guest List: A Novel

By Lucy Foley

A wedding celebration turns dark and deadly in this deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller reminiscent of Agatha Christie from the New York Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party.

The bride – The plus one – The best man – The wedding planner  – The bridesmaid – The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

Source: Publisher

  7. Beach Read

By Emily Henry

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

Source: Publisher

8. Sex and Vanity: A Novel

By Kevin Kwan

The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with the glittering tale of a young woman who finds herself torn between two men: the WASPY fiancé of her family’s dreams and George Zao, the man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.

On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases. The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment building, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world–and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

Source: Publisher

9. Hello, Summer

By Mary Kay Andrews

New York Times bestselling author and Queen of the Beach Reads Mary Kay Andrews delivers her next blockbuster, Hello Summer.

It’s a new season…

Conley Hawkins left her family’s small town newspaper, The Silver Bay Beacon, in the rearview mirror years ago. Now a star reporter for a big-city paper, Conley is exactly where she wants to be and is about to take a fancy new position in Washington, D.C. Or so she thinks.

For small town scandals…

When the new job goes up in smoke, Conley finds herself right back where she started, working for her sister, who is trying to keep The Silver Bay Beacon afloat—and she doesn’t exactly have warm feelings for Conley. Soon she is given the unenviable task of overseeing the local gossip column, “Hello, Summer.”

And big-time secrets.

Then Conley witnesses an accident that ends in the death of a local congressman—a beloved war hero with a shady past. The more she digs into the story, the more dangerous it gets. As an old heartbreaker causes trouble and a new flame ignites, it soon looks like their sleepy beach town is the most scandalous hotspot of the summer.

Source: Publisher

  10. The Summer Set

Aimee Agresti

Recommended by Glamour * Bustle * Popsugar * Booklist * Playbill

Charlie Savoy was once Hollywood’s hottest A-lister. Now, ten years later, she’s pushing forty, exiled from the film world and back at the summer Shakespeare theater in the Berkshires that launched her career—and where her old flame, Nick, is the artistic director.

It’s not exactly her first choice. But as parts are cast and rehearsals begin, Charlie is surprised to find herself getting her groove back, bonding with celebrity actors, forging unexpected new friendships and even reigniting her spark with Nick, who still seems to bring out the best in her despite their complicated history.

Until Charlie’s old rival, Hollywood’s current It Girl, is brought on set, threatening to undo everything she’s built. As the drama amps up both on the stage and behind the curtains, Charlie must put on the show of a lifetime to fight for the second chance she deserves in career and in love.

“A page-turner set in the intoxicating theater world, The Summer Set considers the price of fame, the power of second chances and the enduring nature of love. A truly enjoyable read!” —Elyssa Friedland, author of The Floating Feldmans

Source: Publisher

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[biofunmy]

Living in the Age of Political Memes

Imagine: Two neighboring nuclear powers get into a brawl. Not only do these countries share thousands of miles of border, but also a long history of hostility, outright violence and diplomatic animosity. There’s an imminent threat of war. And a single nuclear strike by one of these players could trigger effects that transcend national borders and threaten the very survival of civilization itself.

Classic meme fodder, right? Well, their citizens sure seem to think so.

Earlier this year, tensions between India and Pakistan reached an unsettling high. The timing of the tussle coincided with the buildup to this year’s Indian elections, which recently began and will last until late May. The prospect of a nuclear war was hovering above South Asia.

It was hardly the first time the two inherent rivals were at odds, but the atmosphere was markedly different because of another contemporary battlefield: social media.

The weaponization of Twitter hashtags was covered thoroughly in the news. (Now that old people finally get hashtags, they sure do like to talk about them.) But we saw another kind of grass-roots warfare online, too, with citizens of both nations exchanging fire through memes.

My parents are both Pakistani diplomats, so I grew up in a lot of different countries. When high school started, my mom got posted to the embassy in D.C. There, as I was getting used to having an iPhone for the first time, I downloaded Twitter and immediately started following a bunch of people from back home in Pakistan. That was when I became a part of Pakistani Twitter, an online community spanning the entire country.

Since then, it’s become clear to me that the way information spreads, especially political information, is changing. Some Democratic staffers in the U.S., for example, are now tasked with making memes to appeal to a younger audience. And that shift toward jokes and composite images has been global. After the India-Pakistan hostilities started, there was a sudden onslaught of humor about the situation, with both the Indian and Pakistani sides of the subcontinent taunting each other with visual and verbal comedy.

In an earlier time, the citizens of both countries might have muttered insults about their neighbor under their breath while reading the morning news, or made bitter comments at dinner parties. Now there is a direct line between enemies as mass communication continues to shift toward social media.

At every development, there was a fresh set of memes being circulated all over the internet, particularly Twitter. Comment sections on Facebook posts related to the conflict were filled with Indians and Pakistanis hurling abuses and colorful memes at each other.

The ability to forward WhatsApp messages got the older demographics involved as well. I noticed when my dad suddenly knew what a meme was (and yes, he sent many to me).

It’s easy to understand, and share, bite-size statements that cater to your political views. This is not to say that all the sharing was aggressive or nationalism-fueled; a lot of the jokes were simply making fun of the prospect of war itself.

Just like other memes, these sometimes veered on the bizarre, and made light of incredibly sensitive topics (like this compilation of Alex Jones yelling as a way to describe the political situation).

At certain points, even I got a little uncomfortable with all of it, because people had actually suffered. Everyone is (or should be) aware that there are hideous repercussions to war, especially between nuclear nations. But maybe that’s exactly why some approached it with levity.

Using humor as a coping mechanism is nothing new, but the millennial and Gen Z tendency to approach serious issues with jokes adds another layer to political discourse — a layer that senior political analysts of the region probably didn’t, or couldn’t, properly factor into their analyses.

It’s just a part of how our generation understands and processes the reality around them. Memes aren’t inherently bad or good, but they do speak to a cultural moment. They take on the character of the people creating and consuming them. This was and is an international conversation, with both locals and even the desi diaspora, like Hasan Minhaj, getting involved.

“You see so much happening around you at that point,” Indian Twitter user @soupykaur told me. “You need to say something because you’re scared of the prospect of war.”

In the age of Twitter diplomacy, the fact that Indo-Pak dynamics have become more cyber should come as no surprise. Realizing the potential of the internet, both BJP, India’s ruling party, and PTI, Pakistan’s ruling party, had notable social media campaigns to get them in power. This is indicative of a larger, more global shift in the nature of political dialogue, even in the most dire of circumstances. The way people now interact with this manifestation of media is something that could come to define our age.

“The language of social media is different than other medias. The younger generations, like millennials and Gen Z, are more likely to use pop culture in their language,” the prominent Pakistani Twitter user @Bluemagicboxes told me. “So pop culture now affects political language.”

Take the popularity of Egg Boy, a teenager who cracked an egg onto the head of a far-right politician that was criticized for blaming Muslim immigration for the New Zealand shootings earlier this year. Acting with his phone in his hand, the teenager quickly became a social media hero who embodied the way politics, youth, and social media meld together to create viral phenomena.

What’s been happening in Pakistan and India recently is an extension of the same concepts. I think it’s safe to say that memes have become a universal language. Whether we’re facing hate speech or nuclear war, there’s apparently nothing that can’t be memed.

Welcome to The Edit newsletter. Each week you’ll hear from college students and recent graduates about issues going on in their lives. You also may hear from me, Lindsey Underwood, editor of the newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

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