#had truly such a wonderful experience getting to work alongside such incredibly talented artists!!

[exotic-inquiry]

real excited to get to share the Mel piece I worked on for the wayfarer 2023 calendar 🍑 

@idrellegames <3

[chuwenjie]

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse comes out later today so I wanted to write a post reflecting on my journey and experience working on this movie. So many people have supported me through this and I am so thankful to each and every one of you!

Text version of this post under the cut:

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse comes out tonight. It feels really weird to be typing that out right now. I worked on the movie as a visdev artist for the last 2.5 years, from 2020 to 2023. Long post incoming.

There are a lot of reasons why I'd consider this film to be one of the most ambitious animated films to ever be made. As artists, we were asked to push ourselves far beyond our comfort zones and do things that had never been done before in animation.

Every time we reached a point where most people would say "this must possibly be as creative and weird as it gets," our entire team of artists and animators would smash right through the ceiling. The driving direction for the visuals of the film was to push the limits of every single frame; to challenge audience expectations and make something truly original.

The best thing about this film was that there wasn't a single boring day working on this movie. The hardest thing about this film was also that there wasn't a single boring day working on this movie.

There were times while working on this where the imposter syndrome hit me hard. This was my first big movie, and what a hell of a first movie to get thrust into.

I came in only a few years out of school with absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing. I constantly feared that someone had made a mistake in bringing me onto this film, and I was going to let everyone down. There was a solid chunk of those 2.5 years where I wasn't sure if animation was the right path for me.

If there's anything I could tell my past self it would be this: there are so many people who love you and believe in you. There will be a time when you get to stand on the other side of it, look back on everything and see how far you came.

I'm still working on self-acceptance every day (it will be a lifelong struggle, I'm sure), but I'm glad I didn't give up on myself. I'm proud of myself and my contributions to this film, and I'm certain that this movie will continue to change and shape the animation landscape just as the first one did. That's truly a special feeling to have been a part of. I am so incredibly grateful to every single person who helped me along this journey.

Here come the thanks:

To the ENTIRE visdev & art crew- it's been an honor getting to work alongside each and every one of you. My jaw is literally still on the floor from seeing your incredible talent day after day.

I want to thank Tiffany and Felicia especially for being there for me through tough times- I admire and respect you both so much as artists, and even better than that, my life is greatly enriched for being able to call you my friends.

Thank you Patrick and Dean for taking chances on me, teaching me so much about art and what I'm capable of, and encouraging me along the way. To Aymeric, your art is one of the reasons I initially became interested in animation and you have been one of the kindest & most empathetic mentors I could ever have asked for.

I want to thank my wonderful parents for believing in me always and raising me into the person I am today: everything I do in life is to make you proud. To my brother Andrew who is perpetually awake at 3 AM when I need someone to talk to- thank you for always picking up the phone and making me laugh.

And finally to my partner Luke for making me grilled cheeses on all of the difficult days, for never getting sick of me even when all I would ever talk about was work, and for patiently and steadfastly loving me throughout this entire thing. I don't think I could've done it without you.

Starting tomorrow I will begin posting and sharing some of the art I made for this movie; I'm looking forward to sharing some of my personal favorites with you. I hope each and every one of you enjoys Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse when it hits theaters later today!

[ignis-scientia-estrogen-brigade]

Tomb Raiders

After sitting on the finished piece since March of this year, I can finally reveal my contribution to @cosmogonyzine​! While it was admittedly tough to keep this under wraps for so long, the wait was 10000000% percent worth it—the final book is a truly a work of art and I feel honored to have my art included alongside the rest of the incredibly talented writers and artists featured in it. More details and photos under the cut!

My goal for 2019 was to get into a zine, and an opportunity presented itself in January of this year when @cosmogonyzine​ opened up their applications. I had my doubts that I would get in because my sole concept—Ignis and Talcott raiding the royal tombs during the Long Night—revolved around characters that I didn’t initially associate with the topic of Cosmogony. But the mods assured me they could make my concept work for the zine, and I am sincerely indebted to them for their support and belief in my idea!

At first, my idea was to have them wading through water (perhaps in Cartanica’s tomb?). But when I actually opened up the game and surveyed the layout of the tombs, I realized everything I wanted to include (the entrance, the sarcophagus, the statues) would require too much real estate on the page to make rendering water worth it. Although I quickly abandoned the water idea, you can see in the image above that many other elements—Talcott carrying a book and flashlight, Ignis reaching out to touch a statue—carried through to the end.

The inside of the Royal Tombs are actually quite interesting with some exquisites architectural features that I really wanted to include in the final piece (especially the ceiling). I have to give credit to both @dizzymoogle​ and @metapoodle​ for capturing some reference images for me using Ansel—they were invaluable, thank you!

I took a painterly approach with this piece, which is an effect I love but something that is pretty far outside my comfort zone. I could point out all the things I would have done differently, but I’m still really proud of how it all came together and if I had more time I would definitely practice this style more. As you can see above, Talcott was initially much smaller—I became more mindful of how hard it would be to see things that were too small once the final piece was printed in the book, so I eventually increased the size of both Ignis and Talcott as well as the sarcophagus.

I do feel like the final composition came out a bit cramped on behalf of making everyone a little bigger, but this whole piece was a great learning experience for me and I definitely took a lot away from it that I can apply to future pieces. This was how it looked right before I added the final colors—I think the sepia tone has its own bit of charm!

Once again, I can’t thank the mods of this wonderful zine enough and I really hope to work again with everyone in the future! ♡♡♡

[entertainment]

Entertainment Spotlight: Brooke Lewis Bellas

Brooke Lewis Bellas can currently be seen in the film The Mourning. She also brought her talent to the role of Pam Deluca in the comedy ½ New Year, about a tight-knit group of friends letting loose at their annual Half New Year Party. Brooke is a veteran of the horror genre and is returning to those roots with a role in the upcoming zombie film set in 1950’s Hollywood, The Day of The Living Dead. Her other film credits include the critically-acclaimed films Psycho Therapy, iMurders, and Sinatra Club, opposite Danny Nucci. Brooke’s TV credits include Fox’s Quintuplets. She will next be seen in the steaming series Red Rooms, which she also produced. Alongside her acting work, Brooke is a life coach and author of Coaching From A Professed Hot Mess, is a Celebrity Ambassador for the Breaking The Chains Foundation, participates in LA Mission Feed The Homeless, and is a staunch LGBTQ and AIDS Activist.

You have worked extensively in the horror genre—what is it that draws you to that particular genre?

I have always embraced my inner detective and have loved solving mysteries. No wonder I have been a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma most of my life! I was also obsessed with vampires as a young girl and loved the ‘80s horror films when I was growing up. I have always been drawn to the darkness, unknown, mystery and escapism that horror offers. I also love how the horror genre embraces women of all body types (and curves) and offers strong roles for women!

If you could, is there anything that you would want to change about the horror genre?

If I could change anything about the horror genre, it would be the mainstream and public perception. Horror is often perceived as B-movie quality, evil, cultish, or less respectful than comedy or other genres, and that can be a false perception. There are many mainstream movies that we have all loved throughout the history of cinema and these are the type of horror genre films that I grew up watching. I have never been a fan of gratuitous horror and I could reference my favorites, from Alfred Hitchcock to Agatha Christie to Stephen King to Brian De Palma to the current thrillers and mainstream entertainment brought to us by Blumhouse or Jordan Peele, that are timeless. I wish people would understand how smart some of these screenplays are, the subtext of the stories being told. I wish the judgment and stigma of a lot of horror would be removed.

What would you say makes for a good scene partner?

I have been fortunate to act opposite some veteran greats and brilliantly talented actors, and I would, humbly, say that the most important components that make for a good scene partner are generosity, vulnerability, and openness—a partnership in which we listen and support each other. I have worked for over 20 years as an actress in this crazy industry, and there is little I have not experienced. I cannot say that working opposite the most “talented” or trained actors have necessarily been the best scene partner experiences for me. But working opposite generous actors who give and who support you, as you do for them, and you become like a well-oiled machine where the parts work better together...those actors who want you to succeed, who want to bring out the best in you, and you and them, a give and take—that is when movie magic is created!

1/2 New Year is a comedy, so can you tell us what drew you to the project? Can you tell us a little bit about the role of Pam?

½ New Year is an indie film with heart about a group of young people in their 20s who come to Hollywood, not necessarily for the entertainment industry but to live the life…live their best life…live their dreams…live that excitement that we all grow up seeing in movies, and yet, it is not always that simple. And, it is not always that glamorous or fun. We see how these relationships and people are glued together. I think the tagline sums it up best: "Friends are the family you get to choose." So, it is about a group of friends that go through the ups and downs of young life in Hollywood, and they learn that all you really have is love and friendship. I play Pam DeLuca, the big sister of Reed DeLuca (Drew McAnany). The film displays how sometimes we have family out here that is far away from our biological family, and it is what we go through, and the support we need to get from the worst of times to the best of times. It is very 80’s throwback and I think that's what I love so much about it. I met our star, writer, and producer, Drew McAnany, in Hollywood over ten years ago. Drew originally started out hosting in LA, and he was working at E! Entertainment when he interviewed me on the red carpet. He asked me about Philly, and we quickly bonded during that meeting, so he really became like a little brother to me. Like so many young actors in Hollywood, Drew was fighting to get a break for himself as an actor, so he created ½ New Year as a vehicle for himself to star in. He also wrote the role of his big sister, Pam DeLuca (from Philly), for me to act in. We had worked through a few years of table reads and different directors and producers, then Georgia Menides jumped on board, did the re-write on the script, then became the producer who made it happen. Along with producer Zach Block, they hired Tom Morash as our director to creatively guide this project.

I am honored and grateful to have had Pam DeLuca written specifically for me. I think that is something every actor and actress wants in their career. Pam is in her 30’s, and a bit older than her brother Reed and his friends. They are Italian from South Philly, so they argue, but are very close. Pam is part of the gang, but she is like the "mother hen" to them. Her journey is about protecting her brother and giving guiding advice to the girls they hang out with, including the gorgeous leads, played by Bo Youngblood, Shanley Caswell, and Rebecca Vinagro. She also likes to have flings with Reed's young, handsome buddies, including Marty (played by Jermain Alverez Martin). Pam is an on-screen example of what we go through in "Hollywood life”: She is single and all about her career, she loves to party and doesn't want to grow up! The film released in the USA on all TV On Demand and has just been released on Amazon Prime and Tubi TV.

What’s the funniest/weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you on a film?

Oh, I have had many! I truly feel that being an actor and producer in the independent film world involves a whole other level of funny and weird experiences! When you do not have big budgets to deal with, you have to get creative in other ways. So, one funny story that I would love to share was my experience of being one of the producers on a film titled Sinatra Club, that I was fortunate to get to act in, opposite Danny Nucci from Titanic, Jason Gedrick from Iron Eagle, Ellen Hollman from Spartacus, Michael Nouri from Flashdance, and the list goes on and on, with an incredible cast of talent we assembled. And, what was so cool was I found the script in 2004, we filmed in 2009, and it was distributed in 2011, so it was a very long and challenging development period for an indie project, but one of the wildest memories I have was the fact that the story is based on a true story about the night John Gotti became John Gotti, so for all of the mobster history and movie buffs who are reading this, I was so fortunate to be a part of history in the making with this film. This film is based on Sal ‘Ubatz’ Polisi who went into the witness protection program for releasing information on John Gotti and his crew, and when he came out of the witness protection he wrote the story of his life in the Mafia. It was so wild to work on a project for so many years where we would literally meet at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock at night in privacy and secrecy at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City, California, in hotel suites and we would hold our production meetings there!

You actively support many varied causes, how did you get involved in activism?

I was born with a philanthropist's heart and have always been a supporter of giving back in whatever way we can. I was spearheading events in college to run around Philadelphia and feed the homeless with my sorority sisters. Now, I am so grateful to have whatever little “celebrity” status or recognition I have that can help make a difference. I feel blessed and responsible to give back through my artistic endeavors and through my work. I am a believer in activism and I typically work with numerous charities at a time. I am a celebrity ambassador for the Breaking the Chains Foundation that cultivates healing through art for those who have experienced eating disorders, self-esteem issues, and body image issues. I am active in charity work with the Los Angeles Mission on Skid Row and helping to feed the homeless. I have been active in several Breast Cancer charities and events, as I have lost people whom I loved to breast cancer over the years. I have also been active in quite a few charities and philanthropies to support AIDS research. I authored and have donated my book, titled Ms. Vampy’s Teen Tawk: There’s A Lotta Power In Ya Choices, to support teen girls. And, in giving back to the world, I find that it brings so much fulfillment and gratitude to my own heart.

What does your allyship mean to you?

My allyship means everything to me, both personally and professionally. My empathic heart has always been wired to help others. I do not perceive myself as a person with power or fame, but I am incredibly grateful that I have been afforded the opportunities throughout my career to give back, to take a stand, and to help those who have been marginalized in some way. I am a proud philanthropist and activist, and I feel it is my duty to serve. Throughout my life, I have often felt misunderstood or that I did not belong, and I have dealt with my own challenges and struggles, so I am known to “fight for the underdog” and support those in need.

You are a certified life coach, what’s the best advice you have ever received, and, in your opinion, the best advice you’ve ever given to somebody?

As an actress and life coach, I am a huge proponent of having a strong support system of professionals in my stable. I feel that all creatives and health professionals should have their own support system and professionals to turn to. At the end of the day, I have received such incredible advice from my professionals—my life coach of many years, Lori Bertazzon, and my actress empowerment coach, Michelle Colt. One of my favorite pieces of advice that Lori Bertazzon has given me occurred a few years back when she supported me in creating my own set of personal commandments at the beginning of the year. These are commandments that I consistently refer back to, that help to empower me and help to create breakthroughs when I am having breakdowns in my life or career. Michelle Colt has also given me unbelievable advice and support in her workshops to strengthen my soul as an actress, and I have to reference a recent funny one because I love it so, and she knows me so well: our mantra, “No more shenanigans!”. It is something that I hold near and dear to my heart daily. 

Humbly, I think the best advice I have given over the years was born from my Ms. Vampy web series for teen girls, where I created a catchphrase that I cherish: “When faced with fear, dig deep inside, find your inner Vamp, and… Vamp It Out!”. To this day, my now-adult cast will send me messages that they used this catchphrase. I use it as an adult (you do not have to be a teenage girl to appreciate it) and when I am fearful or trying to have a breakthrough, I dig deep inside and I Vamp It Out! My other favorite catchphrase advice was so powerful for me, I actually named my life coaching business after it: “Be You… And, Be Fearless!” 

Has your training as a life coach ever helped you to prepare for a role/project? How?

I really love this question, because one may think that different careers or skill sets cannot help the other, but I have found that my training as a board-certified life coach has helped me tremendously to prepare for a role or project in a few ways. First, I am now very mindful and aware of the “mind chatter” and I am more able to catch myself in it. When I enter a space of fear or anxiety, I am able to coach myself off the ledge. Even more compelling, is that when I went to school at the Life Purpose Institute to become a board-certified life coach, I learned early on that a very important component of life coaching is “listening without an agenda”. This has helped me exponentially as an actress, because when you are acting and you're truly in the moment, you need to be listening without an agenda, as well. A true response should come from your instincts and that is so wild to me because now I am able to catch myself when I am preparing for a project and I am anticipating what the character will say to me next, and I can catch myself listening with an agenda of what they will say, and I know that I'm not in the moment as an actress.

How can mental well-being and self-care help to sustain activism/advocacy/allyship?

I cannot stress enough how strongly I believe that mental well-being and self-care can help to sustain activism/advocacy/allyship and our own personal strength—mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I actually speak about this in my book Coaching From A Professed Hot Mess: “When you give to yourself and allow yourself to replenish, you have so much more to give to others and will feel so much stronger inside.” I am still working on this, diligently, but when we learn to take care of ourselves and focus on our mental, spiritual, and emotional strength, we understand what it means to feel and give from our hearts. We become inspired to give back and to support people, causes, and have a passion, purpose, and mission, outside of ourselves.

What can you tell us about your latest projects The Second Age of Aquarius, Stripped, The Mourning, and Red Rooms?

At a time when the world is upside down and we do not really know where our next jobs will come from, I feel very blessed that I had acted in, and produced, a few projects that wrapped prior to COVID-19. My Psycho Therapy (Amazon Prime) film director, Staci Layne Wilson, wrote a film with Darren Gordon Smith (Repo! The Genetic Opera). Those two are so crazy talented. It is a fun indie gem. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but it’s The Second Age of Aquarius. It is a comedy, with a little bit of a Sci-Fi twist and a lot of music. It’s really sweet and clever. I’m an Executive Producer and I act in it. I play Tawny Stevens. She’s a young mom, stuck in the eighties, as an eighties, New Jersey, rocker mom. Wait until you see my hair, my make-up, and my leopard pants. I did the Jersey accent. I can’t wait for the film to come out! We also wrapped a TV pilot Stripped. It is a Comedy/Drama. It is a TV pilot that was written and directed by Marc Clebanoff, who also directed the film The Mourning, which stars Michael Walton, Louis Mandylor, Dominique Swain, and Larry Hankin. I was both an actress and a co-producer. The Mourning is a cool Sci-Fi/Love Story that just released on the new Tubi TV streaming channel. Stripped was a passion project. I was also one of the producers with Marc and Frank Krueger (also stars in it). I played Jules, the publicist to the star, Chris Cameron, played by Casper Van Dien. It was created by Mark Clebanoff and late actor, Kristoff St. John. They had created the concept before he passed on, which is such a sad situation, but Marc wanted to carry on his legacy, and he did, and we did. It is such an incredible cast, and series, we are all proud of. Lastly, at the start of COVID-19, my creative instinct kicked in and I knew I had to create to stay somewhat “sane”, so I spent most of the quarantine producing and filming a virtual streaming series. Red Rooms was conceived and completed out of “isolation inspiration”! Joshua Butler and I had been in development on a project and had been reminiscing about our favorite industry days of yesteryear when we met on the horror film circuit. I had already been a superfan of Joshua’s work for years. In 2019, we shot a proof of concept for our project, which paid homage to his hugely successful film VLOG (2008) from the producers of SAW, which went on to become a hit TV series. When COVID-19 hit Hollywood and we were all in isolation, I called for a production meeting, then suggested we use the footage we shot and attempt to experiment by filming each character virtually from their homes. Red Rooms stars horror film and TV veterans Brooke Lewis Bellas (iMurders), David Alpay (The Vampire Diaries), Suze Lanier-Bramlett (The Hills Have Eyes), Ricky Dean Logan (Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare), and Noah Blake (Teen Witch). We are currently working on post-production and cannot wait to see where we end up!

Thanks for taking the time, Brooke! 

Photographer: Birdie Thompson | Hair and Makeup: Allison Noelle

[jrmcwilliam]

The Real Reason the Blue Power Ranger Was Killed Off So Abruptly

The real reason Billy Cranston – The Blue Power Ranger – was killed off the 1990’s epic – Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers

David Yost

The longest running Blue Power Ranger of all time The second longest-running Power Ranger of all time The most memorable hero in my entire life - Billy, played by David Yost

“You know the funny thing about morphin’? You don’t appreciate it until you can’t do it anymore!” – Billy Cranston/David Yost

I’ve spent 25 years of my life, off and on, wondering why Billy, the greatest Blue Ranger and Superhero of all time (in my humbled opinion) left the show so abruptly and why the way they “killed” him off was so out of the blue (no pun intended). Until now, I had no idea why. Which is why technology and the internet have become such an incredible way of learning information and connecting with the entire world.            The story, as I understand it, and as I read more about what happened, makes me so mad inside that it makes me want to turn back time so that he could have continued on his projected trajectory. I’ll let Billy tell you first, in his own words, what happened, and then we will discuss it further.

“Um, I, I walked off set one day, during the middle of lunch, halfway through the day, I just made a decision, I’d been thinking about it for a good week, and the reason that I walked off is because I was called a “fa**ot” one too many times. So, um, I had just heard that several times while working on the show from creators, producers, writers, directors.” -David Yost (Source – David Yost, IMBD) *-I will be sharing the entire IMBD Interview at the end of this piece.

So, let me get this straight. A creative team for one of the most prestigious stand-alone superhero franchises made one of their most talented and devoted cast members walk off the set because they continuously called him a faggot!?            This, to me and a lot of other people, is absolutely flabbergasting. According to David, the creators would pull other members of the cast into a private room to ask about his sexuality. While David hadn’t known it was happening. This is too much. It was 1993. How could it have been so surprising that a cast member was gay to a bunch of artistically inclined producers? Furthermore, why would it have caused them to belittle him about it and isolate him within the team that he worked in? This is what David said,

“And I know that my co-stars were called in a couple of times to different producers’ offices and questioned about my sexuality, which is kind of a humiliating experience to hear that and to find that out.” -David Yost (Source – David Yost, IMBD)

           I cannot believe that this happened during the production of a television show that would go on to teach me and the rest of my generation how to be fair to everyone as individuals, work as a team, respect our planet, help others, and ultimately save the world. This show made me who I am today. What I’m starting to realize is that maybe it was the actors all along that taught me these things. I mean, I must give the writers their due credit, but I will not be about to credit them for ultimately pushing out the best part of the show, in my eyes. Billy was my hero. Billy was the one I inspired to be. Is the one I inspire to be.            When we watch these shows as children, we interact with the shows as if we were in them ourselves. We become friends with the characters, and we aspire to be them. We truly believe that we can be them. We do carry that into adulthood and throughout our lives. We never forget. Never…forget.

I am a gay man. I never even knew that Billy/David was even gay! (though, I don’t believe Billy was a gay character. I’m starting to think otherwise) It didn’t matter to me. I mean, I was seven when Power Rangers came out, but it was only another year of my life before I knew I was gay. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have continued watching the show and then devoted my time, instead, to fighting a battle worth fighting right along-side my real hero – David Yost.

This is something else David said,

“It’s not that people can’t talk about me and have their opinion about me, but continuing to work in an environment like that is really difficult, and I myself was struggling with who I was or what I was, and to be …made fun of on some level or to be stereotyped or put into a category in sort of saying ‘you’re not’ – basically, I just felt like I was continually being told that I’m not worthy of where I am because I’m a gay person and I’m not supposed to be an actor and you can’t be a superhero.” -David Yost (Source – David Yost, IMBD)

           Let’s let that sink in for a bit. Just replay it in your mind – “I’m not supposed to be an actor and you can’t be a superhero.” This blows my mind. And not in a great way. In a flabbergasted kind-of-way. Can’t be a superhero. Well, if anything, it makes him more of a superhero to me that he would give up his place as a leading Superhero just to be able to tell my generation that it is not okay to allow people to tell you what you can and cannot be just because of who you are, and/or what you are. Because it’s not. It’s not okay. He was, is, and always will be The Superhero in my mind. Billy Cranston, the Blue Power Ranger, will always be my Superhero of choice. Why?            Because he was nerdy and smart. He wasn’t a karate genius. He didn’t have the brick-shit-house body that the other Rangers had. He was exactly who he was and still managed to be an integral part of an incredible team of Superheroes that saved the world. Gay or not – he was the sole reason that the team was able to modernize, communicate, and understand their purpose. So, what in the hell did they mean when they told him that he would never be an actor or a Superhero?

I vividly remember watching this very episode where they killed off Billy Cranston. I gasped. As did my friends. It came out of nowhere. In fact, Billy was to go on for much longer alongside Tommy and Jason. So why would he so suddenly be taken out of the show?            But it was the 90’s. We didn’t have immediate access to news about things like this. This moment broke the kid’s hearts and we were supposed to just sit around and accept it. It was so sad that it wasn’t long after Billy’s demise (David’s demise) that I stopped watching the show. Tommy Oliver was also a leading hero in my life, but it wasn’t enough. I was an aspiring Power Ranger because of Billy. And Billy was never to return. I was heartbroken. And I didn’t even get the courtesy of understanding why.

This story is something I am greatly passionate about. I really hope one day to meet David Yost at a Comic Con. I hope one day to be able to shake his hand and tell him how grateful I am that he helped shape the person I became and continue to grow into. I hope, one day, that kids will get to see their heroes in the way that they are supposed to – just like them.            I hope one day, that these pathetic judgments dissipate into thin air. I really do. I hope one day that we can all move on from these stereotypes and isolations. I really do hope that one day we can all just be free to be ourselves without having to worry about what someone else is thinking about it. Unless we choose to go onto American Idol, there is no need to have people judge you for being who you are.

David Yost will always be in my heart, soul, and mind because he was the one that taught me to always do your best, give it your all, and allow people to come around and realize that you are worthy of being on the team. He taught me that being who I am is worthy of anything I set my mind to. Whether that be an actor, a human or – A Superhero.

As promised, here is the full interview with David Yost via IMBD: (I have copied and pasted it so that it is 100% quoted from him)

 [Being asked on why he left the Power Rangers franchise] That's a good question and it's actually a really serious question for me, so if I cry, I apologize in advance. All that me getting old and going off to some foreign planet or something ... I don't know - I wasn't there for any of that. I don't know anything about it, I've never watched the episodes. Um, I, I walked off set one day, during the middle of lunch, halfway through the day, I just had made a decision, I'd been thinking about it for a good week, and the reason that I walked off is because I was called "f***ot" one too many times. So, um, I had just heard that several times while working on the show from creators, producers, writers, directors. It's not that people can't talk about me and have their opinion about me, but continuing to work in an environment like that is really difficult, and I myself was struggling with who I was or what I was, and to be ... made fun of on some level or to be stereotyped or put into a category in sort of saying 'you're not' - basically, I just felt like I was continually being told that I'm not worthy of where I am because I'm a gay person and I'm not supposed to be an actor and you can't be a superhero. And I know that my costars were called in a couple of times to different producers' offices and questioned about my sexuality, which is kind of a humiliating experience to hear that and to find that out. So there was just a lot of issues; it just felt like a bad marriage. And I could either stay and do the second movie and finish six more months of the show or just - I don't know, I guess I was kind of worried about my life. I was worried that I might take my own life. So in order for me to get a handle on what was going on, I needed to leave when I left. And so that's sort of why I left the show.

Please stop judging people for who they are. Please stop making people feel isolated because they are different from you. Please allow people that could really change your life, be your best friend, and really do some good for the world. Allow it. Because it could be the best thing you ever did.

Remove the negativity and move into the reality of freedom. We all want freedom. We all want to help. We all want to do good. We all want to just be. Just be.

You are beautiful no matter what they say. Live it. Inspire.

Thank you for listening,

Allow this story to help you become a better you.

 JR McWilliam

Credits

 David Yost – for being honest and sharing your story. I am at least one person who will share this story and continue to fight this battle with you – because some battles are necessary and should be fought. But much like the expectation of the Power Rangers, I will not instigate these fights and I won’t use my powers for my own gain.

 IMBD – for the interview. I would never have known this story without it. I have done my absolute best to make sure I didn’t paraphrase.

Google Images – to a multitude of artists and the original photographs from the show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers circa 1993-1996, thank you.

The Artists – thank you for continuing to capture the beauty of the Power Rangers – you are recognized and appreciated.

 Note

*-This has not been approved by David Yost or the creators of the Power Rangers. If I was able to communicate this with them my life would be much different. But I hope I have only stated facts, my opinion to the best of my ability, and done David justice by sharing this story.            -To the creators, producers, and writers of the Power Rangers – please know that I forgive you, you were clearly misinformed. All I can hope is that you go on with your careers and your lives without ever making that same mistake again.

JR McWilliam

[ahsporn]

Cody Fern Interview for Out Nagazine

Out: What is it like to play the Antichrist?

Cody: It’s been the greatest privilege of my acting career so far. Between this and Versace, if for some reason the apocalypse came tonight, I’d be pretty happy with what I’ve done.

Out: How much did you know going into the season?

Cody: I didn’t know anything, I didn’t even know the theme, we found out when everybody else found out. We did know obviously that there had been an apocalypse, but I found out that I was playing Michael Langdon two days before we started filming. My first scene was the interrogation with Venable. All that Ryan had told me was that I’d be wearing a long, blonde wig and that I would have an affinity for capes. I went into the piece thinking I was the protagonist.

Out: Do you think that in a way, Michael is the protagonist of Apocalypse?

Cody: I think he is, but that’s from my perspective. I understand that the witches are the protagonists, particularly Cordelia. It’s in many ways a continuation of the Coven story, but running parallel is the story of how I see Michael, which is this very betrayed, broken, lost young man who finds his way into the apocalypse because of circumstance, not because of destiny.

Out: There’s a conversation of nature vs. nurture: we know from Murder House that there was evil in Michael from birth, he wouldn’t have been murdering his babysitters if there wasn't, but it’s become clear in the latter half of the season that he’s lost and is being manipulated by people with their own agendas.

Cody: We see him at 15 when he’s grown 10 years overnight, and the way that I always played Michael was that the murders are an impulse that he can’t control and he doesn’t understand. His consciousness is that of a 6-year-old boy when he’s a teenager, but he’s struggling to come to terms with his body and his desires, but he’s not fully formed. When you follow that, to me Michael’s story is a parable. There’s two ways of looking at the story of the devil: the way that people have interpreted the bible, and this polar opposite that Lucifer so loved god that he refused to bow down before men. Here we have god’s favorite angel in this kingdom of heaven, who was then made to bow down before god’s next making, and ultimately that leads to him being cast out of Heaven, and it wasn’t like Lucifer was wrong. Man then goes about destroying the earth. That’s what we’re doing right now, we’re destroying planet Earth, and it seems that there’s no remorse for it. I really leaned into that with Michael, this young boy who was cast from the kingdom of Heaven, who was cast out of the normal rigors of society, out of what people find acceptable, and then is used and abused and abandoned and broken, and what happens when you have no love in your life, where does that energy go?

Out: One of the ways I’ve been reading this season is a commentary about the state of gender politics. The warlocks essentially bring about Armageddon by attempting to topple the matriarchal power the witches have over the coven. Michael in a way is this avatar for misogyny and male entitlement. Was that intentional?

Cody: I absolutely believe that was intentional. The thing about Ryan Murphy is he’s able to weave these incredible social commentaries into this fascinating world he’s created. Certainly in this season we are looking at bringing down the patriarchy, about what happens when a matriarchal society is enforced and the hubris of men begins to take flight. It’s not dissimilar to what’s happening in society today or what has been happening for hundreds of years. Ryan certainly weaves that into his writing. The gender battle is being fought and Michael is the avatar for it but is certainly not a part of of it. He is manipulated into this gender battle but he himself is not misogynistic, but there’s certainly something to be said for the fact that he needs a very strong mother figure in his life and has mommy issues. His mother tries to kill him in the Murder House, Constance commits suicide, Cordelia takes away Mead and he has this robot who he has to program into loving him. I think he has an enormous respect for Cordelia. He needs strong women in his life, and if he just took Cordelia’s hand when she offered it, if he just overcame his insatiable thirst for revenge, he could’ve gone another way.

Out: One of the standout episodes of the season was “Return to Murder House,” what was it like to find out that not only was Jessica Lange returning but that you’d get to act opposite her?

Cody: My ovaries exploded. I can’t begin to describe to you how overwhelmed I was. The first scene I shot with Jessica was the scene where Michael finds her dead body after she’s committed suicide, and I was so excited and nervous and afraid of that scene that I spent the whole day shaking like a life. When we got to it I was so excited and overwhelmed, it was very hard for me to drop into the chaos around what I needed to go into. Sarah, who is just the most exceptional human being in the world not to mention the hardest working and the most talented, took my hand and said, “Don’t be afraid of this, you’ve got to really go there,” and then jokingly, “Imagine that at the end of this if you didn’t get it that Jessica would think you’re a bad actor.” It was terrifying! I was certainly able to move past a wall, that’s what was blocking me, I was so afraid of judgement, that wasn’t coming from Jessica of course, it was coming from myself and my own process. Working with Jessica will go down as one of my life’s greatest achievements.

Out: What was it like to not only act alongside Sarah Paulson but to be directed by her in “Return to Murder House?”

Cody: One of the greatest joys. As an actor, to step into the director’s chair, you have a certain upper hand because you understand how actors work and how to communicate with actors. Sarah very much comes from a place of absolute respect for the emotional process of the artist. First and foremost she’s looking out for you as an artist, which elicits such extraordinary performances because you have so much trust in her, so you’re willing to give her anything and everything. She’s got such a deft hand as a director, watching it was gobsmacking, and was working under the most extreme pressures imaginable. Not only was she playing Billie Dean and Cordelia in another episode in the same time as this was filming, she had to film 72 scenes. In contrast, the episode before had 32, so she was filming almost double what any other director on the series was filming, while playing two other characters in two other episodes with under one week of preparation, it was truly a feat.

Out: She certainly wears a lot of hats...speaking of which, you had a very special hat yourself. Let’s talk about that wig.

Cody: I loved that wig. If I could wear that wig on a daily basis I would. Wearing that wig was everything.

Out: How long does it take to get into the Rubber Man suit?

Cody: It takes about 20 minutes and a lot of lube, and once you’re in it you’re in it, you can’t take it off. So I was in that suit for 16 hours. I think I held the record for being in the suit the longest.

Out: Can you settle this debate: was Michael the Rubber Man suit who has sex with Gallant?

Cody: No, not physically anyway. The Rubber Man is also a demon, so when someone is wearing the suit, they become the Rubber Man, but when nobody is wearing the suit, Rubber Man — through the power of Murder House — becomes a demon, and that demon is in many aspects controlled by Langdon. Langdon uses every means at his disposal to warp and manipulate and draw out the innermost desires in a human being, he draws out their shadow self and he’s able to play with that shadow and create scenarios that tempt a person into giving into the evil inside of them. Because the Rubber Man is there and then Gallant realizes he’s killed Evie. There’s some mind games going on there in how Michael reveals Gallant’s innermost desire, which is deeply Oedipal, because we [we wonder], is he fucking his grandmother? Because the realization is that the Rubber Man is Evie and he’s just slaughtered her in his bed. There’s so many layers of darkness there. That’s certainly how I thought about it.

Out: I’m sure you can’t reveal anything about the finale tonight, but can you tease a bit about how Michael’s journey ends?

Cody: There’s something deeply beautiful and tragic about the way that the story ends for Michael. It was genuinely one of the hardest scenes that I shot in the series. The end of the series, knowing that this was going to be the last time I — I’m getting sad about it now — I loved Michael so much, the past nine days since we finished filming it have been very hard. I loved Michael so much and I wanted so much for him, I just wanted love for him. The way the series ends for Michael is very moving.

Out: Are you open to returning for another season of AHS?

Cody: Oh my god, in a heartbeat. The experience is beyond comparison. Moving forward there will hopefully be great triumphs in my career, hopefully I’ll get to play characters that are as complex and layered as Michael, but this will forever have been the most formative experience of my acting career and of my development as an artist. To work with these extraordinary women at such an early point in my career, to work with Sarah Paulson and Frances Conroy — fuck me, Frances Conroy is one of the most talented, hard working, fierce actresses. To work with Kathy Bates and Joan Collins, the list goes on and on. To be in the same room as Billy Porter, who is an American treasure. The entire experience was so exceptional and magic. I know I’ll never have that back, that moment, it’s gone. I would come back in a heartbeat.

[bbclesmis]

Lily Collins on overshadowing dad Phil, beating anorexia and starring in the BBC's Les Misérables

As one of the defining voices of the 1980s and a man who remains one of the world’s bestselling artists, it would have been easy for Collins to overshadow his multitalented daughter’s success. Certainly, when I first interviewed Lily five years ago for the romcom Love, Rosie, she was still being defined not just by her famous father, but the Audrey Hepburn-esque looks that had won her modelling contracts as a teenager living in LA.

Since we last saw each other, Lily has redefined herself on her own terms. And when UK audiences are treated to her nuanced, poignant portrayal of Cosette’s desperate mother, Fantine, in the lavish new six-part BBC adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, they won’t see Phil Collins’s daughter but a remarkable British-born talent at the top of her game.

‘I had a few friends in the musical version, and I was so keen to play this part in what’s a very different adaptation,’ says Lily of the role that won Anne Hathaway an Oscar – a role she begged producers to be allowed to audition for, so desperate was she to be involved.

That the director, Tom Shankland, had decided against his being a musical adaptation meant the all-star cast – including Dominic West as Jean Valjean, David Oyelowo as Javert and Olivia Colman as Madame Thénardier – were able to return to Hugo’s original characters, she says. ‘And getting to work through the whole arc of Fantine’s life was incredible. Although in fact the death scene was filmed on day two,’ she adds with a side smile. ‘So it was a case of, “Hi, nice to meet you – I’m about to die”.’

Crushed and betrayed by a pitiless society that demands the most from those to whom it gives the least, Fantine’s character is emblematic of so much. During the six-month shoot in Belgium and northern France, Lily found filming in minus-13C Brussels gruelling (‘I grew up in England, so I should know about cold – but this was something else’), but says it helped put her in the right state of mind.

‘My lips started to go blue and I began to shake. Even in my breaks I wouldn’t keep my jacket on for too long because I had to be at a level of discomfort that I hadn’t experienced before.’ And when a degraded and desperate Fantine is dragged through the snow wearing minimal clothing, ‘I was able to let go and be that vulnerable. It’s those parts that are the most fulfilling: that’s when you can see what you’re made of.’

Lily’s early roles were hardly inconsequential. She starred alongside Sandra Bullock in the Oscar-winning 2009 film The Blind Side, and with Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror in 2012. But it wasn’t until 2013 with her portrayal of Clary Fray in the film adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s bestselling cult fantasy series The Mortal Instruments that Lily seemed to come into her own.

There was a concerted move towards tragic, multi-layered heroines like heartbroken Cecilia Brady in Amazon Prime’s The Last Tycoon in 2016, and recovering anorexic Ellen in Marti Noxon’s To the Bone the following year, and I wonder whether it was the writing of her startlingly honest 2017 memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, that marked the start of Lily’s real evolution.

Five years ago a sweet, wholesome and reticent young woman in dungarees and Dr Martens boots had assured me that prudence had ‘always been my natural feeling’. And yet, outing herself as someone real and flawed in her memoir – someone who had suffered from a debilitating eating disorder as well as self-confidence and relationship issues – was anything but prudent. ‘Writing the book helped me let go of things I was holding on to emotionally,’ Lily says. ‘And in order to take on the baggage of the characters that I wanted to play I had to let go of my own.’

That she chose to play a recovering anorexic in To the Bone the same year she’d detailed her own illness in such detail – the diet-pill and laxative addiction, the bingeing and purging that started at the age of 16 and went on into her 20s – could be seen as brave, foolhardy or both. But her parents (Lily’s mum is American socialite Jill Tavelman) didn’t try to stop her, she says. ‘In fact, they were more like, “Wow, you’re writing a book!” And it turned out to be a form of therapy,’ she insists.

‘Luckily, we shot To the Bone in LA, I worked with a nutritionist to prepare for the part responsibly, and my mum was on set with me, so it was a way for me to harness something that had truly controlled my life for such a long time. Being able to turn the tables and really have control was amazing. Finally I could say to myself: “I am living my life and this is not going to be a part of my story from now on.” I’ll be 30 in March and I’m so glad that I dealt with these things in my 20s, because now I can get excited about what’s to come.’

As part of her research she went to an Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous group, and an LA clinic for eating disorders, ‘where they gave me a lot of the factual information to understand the basics of the disorder’. Does she feel her illness is firmly behind her now – or is it important to remain vigilant? ‘Well it’s never going to be erased because it’s part of who you are, but it doesn’t define how I live my life daily any more,’ she says. ‘When I was going through it, I couldn’t imagine there being a day when I didn’t think about it. So really it’s about seeing myself as a priority.’

She’s in no doubt that doing To the Bone and Unfiltered in the same year was worth it in terms of getting the message out there. ‘We’re all flawed,’ she shrugs. ‘Giving a loud voice to a subject that people are often very ashamed of really inspired me to pour myself into characters that have something to say.’

Her accent may be pure La-La Land, but Lily’s got British steel, our madcap sense of humour – and a love of Topshop. And when she lands at Heathrow and drives out into the country towards her father’s Surrey home, ‘That’s when I feel most myself,’ she says. And yet only-child Lily was just five when her mother moved them back to California, where she was from, and away from the very public fallout of her and Collins’s divorce.

It was the musician’s second marital break-up and the press feasted on every acrimonious detail of the split, from the fax her father reportedly sent Tavelman terminating their 10-year marriage (he denied it) to the reported £17 million he was forced to pay out. But although Lily admits in her book that there was ‘anger’ towards her father and a ‘terrible disconnect’ between them in the subsequent period – Collins went on to marry Swiss translator Orianne Cevey, 20 years his junior, in 1999, whom he later divorced and remarried – she is now very close to the 67-year-old and her four half-siblings. Two of them, Simon and Joely (whose mother is Collins’s first wife, Andrea Bertorelli) live in Canada, and two, Nicholas and Matthew (sons of Orianne), in Geneva, but the family all assembled in London for their father’s 60th birthday.

Lily remembers the advice Phil gave her when she started out: ‘For every positive review you read you’ll probably find two negative ones, so if you’re proud of something, don’t let anyone take that away.

‘And it’s true that being proud of the work matters more than anything,’ she says, adding that growing up immersed in the industry allowed her to ‘see the pros and the cons of it all and really understand what happens when you decide you’re going to be in the public eye. Because of that I feel like I already have this armour built in, which I can use at any moment.’

The armour went on when I asked about her ex-boyfriend, actor Jamie Campbell Bower, and an alleged fling with Zac Efron five years ago – and she’s not about to tell me who she’s dating now. But as well as her book, Instagram – on which Lily has almost 12 million followers – has opened her up in other ways. ‘I used to be quite anti social media,’ she says. ‘But after the book I found that this hugely supportive community was forming around the world.’ Anyone who assumed that the gorgeous LA actress whose circle of friends includes the actors Eddie Redmayne, Jaime Winstone and Sam Claflin couldn’t connect with ordinary people, ‘I wanted to prove wrong,’ she says.

Instagram has also proved to be a great platform for Lily to showcase her love of fashion and photography. The Dr Martens are now long gone and today she loves mixing up pieces by Givenchy, Miu Miu and Chanel with vintage brands and high-street finds. ‘In Brussels there were so many amazing vintage shops,’ she says. ‘I found some incredible old adidas and Fila jackets. But I’m constantly changing when it comes to fashion.’

Many of these experiments have been exhaustively covered by the fashion bloggers who dissect paparazzi pictures of Lily out and about in LA, where she lives – ‘which can be frustrating when I’m just going to the gym’, but is an inevitable part of any coverage involving red carpets.

Asked whether she minds the ‘Who are you wearing?’ question that many A-listers have railed against post #AskHerMore, she deliberates for a moment. ‘Well, I like to give credit where credit’s due, and if I’m wearing something a designer has created, they deserve the credit. One hopes there’s going to be more than one question – and if it is just the one, I’d rather be asked what I’m doing there.’

To see how quickly her industry has changed since #MeToo went viral just over a year ago has been fascinating, she says. ‘And I feel very fortunate that the films I’ve been in have always involved very strong independent women – whether it’s Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock,Julianne Moore, Annette Bening or Jennifer Connelly: they all took me under their wing.’

Watching #MeToo filter down into other industries has been one of the most wondrous things about it, she enthuses. ‘But whereas this year has been about trying to level the playing field, I keep hoping that one day we won’t have to start conversations with, “Well, it’s great because she’s a woman…”’

In her next big screen role, Lily will star as Edith Tolkien – the wife and muse of Lord of the Rings creator JRR Tolkien – opposite Nicholas Hoult in Dome Karukoski’s biopic, Tolkien. ‘And what an amazing experience to shoot in Liverpool with someone like Nicholas, and be able to play a character that really inspired a series of stories I grew up loving.’ But prior to that, and also due out next year – she filmed Joe Berlinger’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, in which she plays the long-term girlfriend of mass-murderer Ted Bundy, Elizabeth Kloepfer – with whom she spent time.

‘The preparation to that – and meeting Elizabeth and her daughter – was so unsettling that I kept being woken up by all these images,’ she says. ‘And I had tried not to read the harshest and most visceral information out there because in truth my character didn’t know anything, and the story is from her perspective. But it’s such a fascinating story – and in the end storytelling is what connects us all.’

Les Misérables begins on 30 December at 9pm on BBC One (x)

[geethasomayajula]

Halfway there: Fulbright Mid-Year Conference, Kochi

Every year, in addition to Fulbright orientation, most Fulbright commissions will also host a mid-year conference for research scholars to present their work. India falls under the South & Central Asia Fulbright family, so our mid-year conference included researchers from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Sri Lanka, and was held in beautiful Kochi, Kerala.

The conference was held at the gorgeous Le Meridien resort in Kochi, and it was such a blessing to wake up every day to palm trees, tropical flowers, blue skies, and calm backwaters. The resort was actually built on the backwaters of Kerala, so to get to my hotel room, I had to hop on a little motorboat! :)

When I look back on the conference, I am struck most by the love that enveloped me from the minute I walked through the hotel front doors until I hopped in my Uber to leave. Staff members from my local Fulbright office were so warm and embraced me the moment I got there (love you Monika and Pranitha!). It was so wonderful to meet with Fulbright friends I hadn’t seen since our orientation in Delhi, and to catch up with friends that I had just seen during my travels too! Fulbrighters truly treat one another as family, and I feel so proud to be a part of a cohort of such brilliant and compassionate people. <3

The 4 days of the conference followed a similar format- full days of presentations blocked into different categories followed by a break, and then a cultural activity in the evening. On the first evening of the conference, we enjoyed the keynote speech from former Indian ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Nirupama Menon. I was so surprised, but the Fubrigt director asked me and a few other Fulbrighters to sit at her table which was such a gift.

Ambassador Menon talked about historical US India relations in her presentation, which honestly, I knew nothing about. She showed us pictures of JFK, LBJ, MLK in India and talked about the rich relationship India and the US have had over the years. I especially loved hearing about MLK’s visit to India in 1963- I wish we had learned about this in school! It was so powerful to see American figures and India culture and history align— growing up, we never touched Indian history or culture in any academic setting, and it was powerful to see that there is a vibrant and storied history of US and India relations. It was such a special evening. I was so lucky to have been invited to sit at the head table with Ambassador Menon, Fulbright director Adam, and other staff from the US Embassy along with my friends Ben and Lauren. I’ve never laughed so much, and learned so much in one evening!

On the third day, I presented my research during the ethnomusicology panel, alongside Yasha from Kazakhstan, and Chris, based in New Delhi. My talk was titled “Cross-Continental Choir Room” and I tried to make sure that every part of the session was as interactive as possible. I talked about key differences between Western classical music and Indian music, including melody/harmony, tala/time, secular/sacred and more. At the end of the presentation, I taught the audience to sing a simple Indian raga and to keep time in the traditional Indian way too! I had so much fun sharing what I learned with my colleagues, and I can’t wait to conduct similar lecture demonstrations in the US.

In addition to academic sessions, the conference was full of art and music. On one of the evenings, former Fulbrighter, Lalitha Sindhuri performed a breathtaking Kuchipudi dance program. I was so inspired and moved by her artistry. On the last evening of the conference, we held a talent show-esque performance evening. I sang two Carnatic songs, and enjoyed a violin performance, hip hop and Bollywood dance performances, Bollywood singing, and an electric spoken word performance. I was so blown away by the talent in the room, and inspired by how my colleagues make time to practice and hone their artistic talents in addition to their rigorous project work. It was a testament to the passion and work ethic of Fulbrighters!

Saying goodbye was so hard— Fulbrighters are some of the most incredible people I’ve ever known, but I’m looking forward to having 50 new friends to visit when I return to the US! Post-conference, I took two restful days with Delhi friends, Preethiya, Unnati and Tanvee to explore the Kerala backwaters and Fort Kochi. A rejuvenating day on a houseboat, and the Kochi biennale art show were exactly the break I needed to reset and prepare for the second half of my Fulbright experience!

[shemakesmusic-uk]

Liverpool based artist and new name to the music scene - Amber Jay ended 2020 by giving us the first teaser of her debut EP with her single ‘Pencilled Brims’ - a futuristic synth fueled bedroom-pop adventure. Now, Amber Jay is delighted to be able to share the stunning visuals for ‘Pencilled Brims’ with her new 80s themed sci-fi video:  "It all begins at a dinner table. We see the image of a 'nuclear' family tucking into stacks of waffles with syrup but it is clear that something is not quite right. After stumbling across a ‘how to know if you're an alien' quiz in a magazine, hiding under the kitchen table at night I take the quiz searching for answers. Everything starts to make sense as matters appear to take an extraterrestrial turn."

London-born Dublin-based singer-songwriter Anna B Savage is sharing new track, 'Baby Grand,' the final single from her debut album A Common Turn, to be released Jan 29 via City Slang. 'Baby Grand' is both the title of Anna B Savage’s latest single from her debut LP and the title of a short film she has been working on with ex-boyfriend and filmmaker, Jem Talbot, to be released later this year. The pair have co-directed the 'Baby Grand' music video, which reworks a scene from the film and blurs the lines of reality where art imitates life imitating art imitating life. The cross-discipline, cross-genre piece seamlessly blends real life footage with actors portraying the pair’s younger selves. Savage says of the music video: “Jem was my first love. For three years we’ve been working on a film together about our past relationship. This song is written about a night Jem and I had, just after we’d started work on the film. This night was – like much of the filmmaking process – very confusing. Taut with unexpressed emotions, vulnerability, and miscommunication. 'Baby Grand' (the film) and A Common Turn (album) are companion pieces: woven together in subject, inspiration and time. Jem was, for want of a better word, a muse for A Common Turn. Expressing ourselves through our different mediums (mine: music, his: film) became a way for our disciplines to talk, perhaps in place of us.” Talbot says, “Having not spoken to me in seven years, Anna sent me a text out of the blue saying she’d had a dream about me. Perhaps by chance, or by cosmic serendipity, I’d been listening to her EP and already dreaming up a film idea the two of us could collaborate on. Three years later, she’s releasing her debut album and I’ve finished that film. In that time, both our mediums have been in a constantly shifting dialogue with each other, a dialogue that has mirrored the ebbs and flows of our connectedness in the present day."

Anna Leone releases a new single ‘Once’, produced by Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Hurray For The Riff Raff) and released via AllPoints/Half Awake. Released alongside a stunning video shot on The Azores, the new single follows 2020’s ‘Wondering’ - also produced by Butler - which arrived close on the tail of Stockholm native Anna’s win at the 2020 Music Moves Talent Awards (alongside Flohio, girl in red and Pongo). Rueful but unmistakably hopeful, ‘Once’ considers naivety, regret and efforts to break certain patterns of behaviour with Leone’s disarming candor and the bell-like clarity of her voice. The track’s quietly insistent urging to move past impulses to close off from the world is brought to life in Savannah Setten’s startlingly surreal video, created with Anna on The Azores. With the changeable weather systems of the Portuguese archipelago mirroring the tender, dream-like sequence, Anna notes; "The narrative loop comes from the idea of being stuck in your ways, going through the same patterns, but then choosing to break out of that and do things differently. Towards the end I reconcile with the past, symbolised by the little girl. I choose to embrace what once was in order to move forward. It was incredible getting to shoot the video in that beautiful environment. The weather was really unpredictable - we went through almost all four seasons in one day."

London-based Danish-born singer-songwriter Amalie Bryde has revealed her powerful new single ‘Lay Down’. A bold commentary on gender inequality, ‘Lay Down’ confronts what it means to be a woman in the 21st century and sees Amalie refuse to surrender to stereotypes. With a catchy jazz sound at its core, Amalie’s elegant vocals are layered with playful whistles that create a vibrant track with bags of confidence. It’s video - directed by Luke Logan - is equally striking, and sees many different versions of Amalie joined together by a rope that restricts their movement before they’re finally able to break free and stand up. It’s an empowering representation of the song's message, and perfectly demonstrates Amalie’s promise as an artist - she’s original, driven and not afraid to express herself. Speaking of the release, Amalie explains: “In ‘Lay Down’ I sing about a man only wanting to have sex with me, but it’s so much more than that. ‘Lay Down’ is a commentary on gender inequality and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century; religiously, politically, professionally etc. In the music video we see hundreds of versions of me all lying in a field, linked together with rope to represent the universal nature of the issues addressed in the song. The video starts with me lying down in the field revealing all the different Amalie's (all the different situations where I had to lay down) and ends with all of the versions standing up and walking away at the end, representing Woman’s refusal to accept the gender disparity in society.”

Yawn has unveiled the video to her latest single ‘Wasting Time’. The video features incredibly lush and moody visuals, coupled with a dancing flower monster. Bordering the realm between art and pop, it reflects the song’s message about carrying on against the odds, accepting who we are as artists, and persevering in spite of everything.

Belgian-Bolivian artist IMAINA presents new track 'Glass Box', as the lead single from her upcoming debut EP. Using her signature melancholic sounds and lyrics, 'Glass Box' uncovers the hidden symbolism behind the toxic ideal of love. This electropop track confronts you with the violence and the dynamics of a suffocating relationship, characterised by layered and lush instrumentation, elegant moments and engaging percussion, setting the tone for her debut EP Wounds, which will be released on February 19. True to her cinematic style and passion of storytelling, IMAINA reveals a thrilling music video that tackles the ‘Madonna-Whore Complex' and explores the idea that women are expected to be many things. Inspired by the intimate confidences of a close friend, IMAINA has transformed herself into a vessel to translate experiences into a strong haunting song and video. “I feel like we all have a tendency to worship an unrealistic idea of love. We search for love and have high expectations but we don’t always accept, and really want to know the person in front of us. We end up projecting our desires, wants and wishes onto the person, locking them up in this glass box where they can be admired but never truly loved or known,” she says.

In the music video for Anna Akana’s ‘Run,’ Akana appears as an opulent demon. She dances alone in the shadows, donning golden headdresses and draped fabrics. “Why meet my demons when I know you’re gonna run?” she sings over an eerie pop beat. ‘Run’ is featured on Akana’s upcoming EP, slated to release February 19. [via Forbes]

Celeste has treated fans by releasing the official video for her single ‘Love is Back'. The video features a quirky 1960s office theme based around a newspaper headline stating that ‘Love is Back,’ and featuring Celeste herself in an office singing the lyrics of the song into a bright red telephone in a montage with some stylish animation which echoes the live action scenes in a stylised fashion. The video’s retro styling which takes us back to the dusty days of paper, desks and telephones are a breath of fresh air in a music industry saturated with hypermodern cliches or equally gadget laden 80s throwbacks and gives us something to really think about. The gentle nostalgia evoked by the video combines perfectly with the simple yet emotive song which tugs at the heart strings in both its musicality and its lyrical content and marks Celeste once again as a master of combining music with the moving image, a skill she first demonstrated with her incredible song composed for the Waitrose & John Lewis Partnership’s Christmas advert 2020 ‘A Little Love.’ While the John Lewis Christmas ad showed Celeste’s talent for writing to a brief, the work she has done on ‘Love Is Back,’ is very much her own, with the laid back R&B style fitting perfectly to her dusty, emotive vocal style which is in all ways unique and incredibly powerful. The video comes just over a week before Celeste’s debut album Not Your Muse, is due to be released a month earlier than planned. [via mxdwn]

Ayra Starr is the afro-pop princess up-ending expectations. Signed to the taste-maker imprint Mavin Records, her emphatically creative, hugely soulful blend comes straight from the heart. At times, it seems like the entire world is listening. Her new EP is out now, a five track statement that illustrates her depth, and her incredible potential. Take 'Away'. Mellifluous, potent, and dynamic, the vocal touches on R&B while retaining elements of that alté sound. It's cool as hell, in other words, a song that affords Ayra space to truly connect with her audience. Discussing the track, she says: “I freestyled half of ‘Away’ at a time I was feeling down. It was like therapy. Singing the song out loud was like freeing myself from my burden. ‘Away’ is not just a heartbreak song, it’s a song that empowers you to stand up to that thing or person that is causing you sadness.” We're able to share the sensational 'Away' video, a depiction of a star coming into being. Ambitious, stylish, and incredibly well shot, it's the perfect platform from which to launch Ayra Starr into the cosmos. [via Clash]

[hmel78]

In conversation with Andy Jackson ...

73 DAYS AT SEA (2016)

At the mention of ‘Pink Floyd’, people often, perhaps immediately, identify with a certain sound - you could argue that there’s nothing throughout the annals of modern music that quite matches it. Over the past 35 years, of most things pertaining to ‘Pink Floyd’, that sound has been shaped and polished to perfection with the help of Andy Jackson.  As senior engineer at David Gilmour’s studios, he has also worked on all of Gilmour's solo recordings / multimedia projects ( as an engineer and/or co-producer) since 1984. 

Andy Jackson’s talents, however, do not rest solely with ‘Pink Floyd’ - he has also worked with artists such as ‘Heatwave’, ’The Strawbs’, ‘The Boomtown Rats’ (most notably mixing their hit "I Don't Like Mondays"), ‘Incredible Kidda Band’and goth rock group ‘Fields of the Nephilim’– he was also guitar player in the live band version of ‘The Eden House’. Originally trained in the sound engineering profession by producer/engineer James Guthrie, at Utopia Studios,  Andy served  as his assistant for several years, and began work as an engineer for Pink Floyd in 1980 - assisting in the recording of the performances of “The Wall” at Earls Court ; He was also the Front of House engineer on the band's 1994 world tour. Jackson also engineered Roger Waters' first solo album “The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking”, and worked Front of House on the subsequent tour in 1984.  As Guthrie's assistant, Andy worked on the film soundtrack recordings for “The Wall” and the studio album “The Final Cut”.  When Guthrie relocated to Los Angeles, Andy became the band's primary engineer beginning with “A Momentary Lapse of Reason”, and then “The Division Bell”;  receiving three Grammy Award nominations for Best Engineered Album - for ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’ - and Best Engineered / Best Surround Sound album - for ‘The Division Bell’.

In collaboration with engineer Damon Iddings, Andy remastered the majority of the bonus features material on the Immersion editions of “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here” for the "Why Pink Floyd...?" reissue campaign ; plus the material recorded for the soundtrack to the band's 1992 auto racing documentary film “La Carrera Panamericana”, as well as engineering, producing, AND playing bass on two of the tracks on their last album “Endless River”, in 2014. Inbetween times, Andy continues to work on his own solo albums - his debut “Signal To Noise” received nothing but rave reviews, and his latest release “73 Days At Sea” looks to be achieving more of the same. We caught up with Andy, on one of his rare hours off ...

HR : When we spoke in 2014, about your debut album “Signal To Noise”, you hinted that one day there may be a second offering of songs - and here it is! “73 Days At Sea”. It’s a truly incredible album Andy, are you happy with it? Andy Jackson : Thanks! I’m sure for anyone involved in any creative process, there’s always a degree of doubt - could it be better? Having said that, I’ve learnt over the years that there is a point where you have to put it away, accept that you are into microscopic changes that no one but yourself will perceive. I feel pretty comfortable that the album was the best I had in me at that time.  The next one will be better! HR : What came first this time, the music or the lyrics?

AJ : One of the things that I decided last time, on ”Signal To Noise”, was that I wouldn’t record anything that wasn’t finished being written, having seen at first hand (many times) the pitfalls of recording backing tracks with no idea what the song is vocally.   That is, after all, the single most important element.  I didn’t change my opinion about that this time.   There again, I can’t say necessarily that anything came first. I tend to knock around lyrical ideas & musical ideas independently, and at some point it becomes clear that one particular lyric belongs with a particular piece of music. Then the evolution starts, when the two things become interactive.   I do allow myself to start on a piece without the lyrics necessarily being totally finished, not least of all, all sorts of minor tweaks are needed once I actually start to sing them, just to make them scan well. HR : Across both albums, some of your song writing is quite personal - although I’m sure many listeners will connect with your philosophy, and the snapshots of your life experiences that are shared in the songs. Do you listen to them and hear your heart on your sleeve, or do you just hear some really great music? AJ : I’ve tried writing from other perspectives, but it always feels like I’m being dishonest.   I don’t think that, that is something that can’t be done - Plenty of great writers write about things outside themselves, I just don’t find that I can do that.  ‘The Gyre’ is a good example - I originally wrote it from a totally different perspective, but in the end it felt contrived, and I needed to write it from the perspective of ‘me’.   The ‘me’ isn’t necessarily totally me, but I just like writing in the first person.   Drownings is a bit of a departure that way, that has bits written as other people, but even then, I needed to totally get under their skin to do it, including a section which I ‘method improvised’, ad lib’d in character.

It’s in my nature to listen to the music primarily, but if I’m going to write lyrics I want them to be worthwhile, I want to be able to read them as if they are someone else’s and to like them.

HR : Has making the recordings somehow aided your own ‘journey’? AJ : Absolutely.   It’s in the act of making them, of doing things that are difficult, that the value lies. “Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort” -Theodore Roosevelt. HR : The songs on “73 Days At Sea” are linked by a theme - primarily the ocean ... Was the inspiration down to a lifelong affinity with being beside the sea - say, a love of eating ice-cream in the salty air -  are they musings, or is there a deeper connection?

AJ : As I allude to on the album notes, it comes from spending a bit of time working next to the sea at David Gilmour’s studio. I kept feeling a sense of nostalgia when ever I left there, as if it were somewhere that was significant in my past, which it isn’t. I wrote about that in a song (Type 1 error) and found that I kept making reference to the sea in lyrics, without necessarily realising I was doing it until afterwards. I thought about a suite of songs linked by the sea, but it kept getting bigger & bigger, until it became the whole album.  I went down onto the beach one day & recorded the waves, which made a lovely link between songs.  There is no huge significance to it really, or maybe there is on an unconscious level, I can’t know ... HR : Do you have a favourite track on the album? AJ : Same answer as everyone gives – they’re all my babies!   I actually have a fondness for the segue of songs that start the album, that’s the original ‘sea suite’ and works well as the Soft Machine Volume 2 inspired idea.  ‘The Gyre’ was the last one I wrote & recorded, and is probably the most sophisticated musically, so I’m proud of that one too.  The best one is always the next one though, so you’ll have to wait for that! HR : “Drownings” is nothing short of a masterpiece ; some may pick up on a bit of  a ‘Pink Floyd’ vibe - would you embrace that comparison? AJ : People are inevitably always going to hear ‘Pink Floyd’ in what I do.   I often wonder if chance had meant that my career was most associated with, say, ‘Genesis’ or ‘King Crimson’ or even ‘Steve Hillage’, if people would say I sounded like that.  Frankly I don’t worry about it, I just make music I like.

HR : I’m curious about the significance of the dates, detailed alongside the lyrics in the booklet ...

AJ : The dates in ‘Drownings’ really serve to help understand the chronology in the song.  I thought of Part 1, Part 2 etc (although not in that order), but I like the dates as it makes it like diary entries. I also ended up with having 2 of the sections being the same date, but from different perspectives, which I like, what 2 different people are thinking at the same time.  The specifics of the dates are arbitrary, although I did look them up to make sure they were all mundane dates, so they all feel like rainy Tuesdays.

HR : “Signal To Noise” was a complete solo effort, but you invited some guest artists to perform on “73 Days At Sea”; namely David Jackson from ‘Van Der Graaf Generator’, and  Anne Marie Helder from ‘Panic Room’, who both feature on ‘Drownings’ - did you envisage their involvement from the beginning? AJ : No, it evolved as I was making the song, and for different reasons.   Once ‘Drownings’ became written from the different perspectives of the people in it, it became obvious that I needed to have a female voice to sing the female role (there is a version with me singing it, but it’s a bit ridiculous).   Anne-Marie came about just because I knew her work and thought she’d be good, so I asked her, simple as that.   David Jackson was just because I have always been a huge fan of his playing, and thought it’d be great to have him on the song.   If he’d said no I wouldn’t have got a different sax player, it was specific to David.  Again it was just a matter of asking him.   I definitely envisage doing something with David again, on the next album probably ...

HR : Did ALL of your guitars make it onto this album? AJ : No they didn’t this time. It was a much more limited palate than I used before, somewhat deliberately.   Pretty much one electric (which was new for me, a PRS with P90s), one for slide, a 12 string electric and one 6 string and one 12 string acoustic.  No real reason, just keeping it simpler this time, there’s a bit of trying to give it a ‘band’ feel to the album, even though it’s 4 incarnations of me. HR : The cover artwork on both “Signal To Noise”, and “73 Days At Sea” are pieces by Michael Bergt, and they’re an absolutely  perfect fit -  how did you come across his work? What is it about his art that you admire? AJ : It was a chance find when I was doing Signal to noise.  I googled for ‘Sisyphus’, while writing the lyrics to ‘One More Push’, and the painting that I used on the cover for that album came up. It immediately struck me as perfect for the album cover, so I emailed Michael and asked him.  He was more than happy for me to use it, and for a very minimal price.   It seemed obvious to go back to him again for 73 days at sea.  If anything, I think that one is even better & more appropriate.   One fluke is the balloon in that painting, I already had the instrumental piece called ‘Ballooning’ (in fact that’s a very old piece of music & was always called that).  Couldn’t be more perfect!   I should mention the ‘barbie on the beach’ picture, which I love, was kindly provided by you!!

HR : [laughs] Indeed! I feel very honoured ...

AJ : I had a conversation with Anne-Marie about the fact that, as ‘cottage industry’ artists, we end up doing our own artwork, with no Storm Thorgerson type bringing in brilliant ideas & craftsmanship.  Makes the whole thing even more ‘mine’ though.

HR : Totally - and it is perfect. I think you get a real sense of how much of YOU has gone into the whole album ;  the sound, and the way the physical copies look. Both of them  - you should be incredibly proud! Since we last caught up, you’ve worked on David Gilmour’s latest album “Rattle That Lock” -  it’s quite an eclectic album, was it demanding to record?

AJ : It was a slightly odd album to work on. The way David works these days, he does a lot of work of putting the songs together on his own. We’ve set up the Brighton studio so he can come in & tinker and record anything he likes.  I get brought in when we do the ‘serious bits’.  This was doubly unusual inasmuch as we broke off this album to do ‘Endless River’, so it was a couple of years between my first stint on it, recording drums with Steve, to the final overdubs and mix. In the middle, David had built the album, so I came into half finished songs that I didn’t know.   One of the issues that many ‘big stars’ have is that no one is prepared to tell them that anything they do is no good.   That’s not a problem for me, we’ve worked together for 35 years now.  He really needs someone to be able to say yes/ no do it again, let’s drop in this bit and so on, which is a role that I do for him. As ever, with Protools sprawl, the toughest thing was that in the end some of the songs were 120 tracks or so, just because it’s so easy to defer decisions. Took a bit of sorting out!! HR : What projects have you got lined up for the coming year - are you planning  a 3rd solo album? Any live shows?

AJ : Well I’m halfway through a stint on a project I can’t really talk about. Let me just say it’s a whole heap of archive recordings for a well known band who I’m associated with!

As for my own music, when I get the time I’ll start on my next project. I want to explore a particular dynamic I have in mind. I’ve often thought that in recording or rehearsing situations I’ve been in, either working with others or as part of a band, sometimes someone will play something that I think is great, and that everything else should be built around that thing, to let it be the most important thing. Too often I see that idea lost, buried under other people’s opinions or lack of vision.  As, with my own music, I am in the position of being able to make all the choices, I have the opportunity to absolutely follow my vision.   I’m going to try a methodology of working with other people (such as David Jackson) and giving them the chance to be the defining element on something (by being ‘first’).  Hopefully this way I can get an album that is made of extraordinary things.

Live shows, I don’t know.  It’d need to coalesce into a band really for that to be viable. I’d like to do it one day, but who knows when.

[Andy spotted one of my more bizarre photos one day, and it features within the inlay booklet artwork of 73 Days At Sea]

[onestowatch]

Get High On Life with Maude Latour’s “Ride My Bike” [Q&A]

Credit: Mikayla Kitsanpolis

Have you ever hit the gym hard enough to get that intoxicating rush of endorphins? Some describe it as pure ecstasy, others as the moment they feel most alive. The runner’s high is the purest natural state of euphoria, so it’s no wonder that it inspired Maude Latour to compose an incredibly transcendent piece of music. The burgeoning 19-year-old songstress has an uncanny talent for capturing the intangible in the palm of her hands and turning it into a sonic delicacy. Latour’s new single is no exception. The track starts out with moody yet articulate lyricism, as the siren croons, “My mind's on fire so I ride my bike / I'm riding harder than a hurricane." The moment Latour’s chorus hits, listeners are catapulted into that blissful runner’s high right alongside her. 

The accompanying visual delights fans with an enchanting aesthetic, featuring Latour riding her bike in front of a technicolor green screen. Shimmering rainbows and heavenly animations flash behind her, as a high powered fan blows wind wildly through her blond hair. Latour’s verses are laden with vocoded harmonies, and her choruses hit the ground running with an irresistibly danceable house beat. The song itself is a euphoric experience, but listen to it on the home stretch of your bike ride and you might just enter a powerfully addictive state of cosmic exhilaration. 

Latour reveals the key to hitting her runner’s high:

“When I bike, I feel truly alive. Spinning up and down the hills of Central Park and weaving down the avenues through Manhattan (which is dangerous! I don't condone - please wear a helmet!) are the moments that bring me sanity. This song captures the sacredness of the freedom that comes from hitting a runner's high. Please remember to go outside and break a sweat-- it'll remind you that you are so incredibly alive and breathing.”

In celebration of the new release, Ones To Watch sat down with Maude Latour to chat about her bike ride route, her international upbringing, and the time her parents called the cops on her. 

OTW: How did you discover your passion for singing/songwriting?

Maude Latour: I guess songwriting happened after my first heartbreak. It was the way to sum it up in three minutes, to cope with it and find closure with it. It was also a way for me to create stories and make them into finished products. So that’s when songwriting got more serious.

OTW: Since your debut project High School High (2018), how has your musical trajectory changed?

ML: It’s changed so much. I feel like I’ve learned so much more about production and my genre, and lack thereof. I think I’ve gotten so much more lyrical and I’ve started thinking about so many new topics. I think now I know a lot more about what I want from music and writing. And a lot more about what I want my ideal song to be.

OTW: What initially inspired “Ride My Bike”?

ML: I had this feeling in my head, I knew exactly what the song was going to be about, I knew exactly what it was going to sound like. Riding my bike has always been the only physical way that I’ve ever been able to feel free and feel runner’s high the way that people describe.  I’ve always I’ve had a Citi Bike membership and I bike all around New York in the summers. It’s my freest state, always. It was initially based on this one day that I was so lost, and fuming. I just ran away from home and got on this bike, biked all the way across Manhattan, and got so much of my energy out. And my parents freaked out. I didn’t bring my phone, and when I got back they had called the police, and the police were like, “She’s been gone for two hours, chill.” So it’s about that freedom. I love riding my bike, even these past few weeks when I’ve had so much drama in my life. I had a bike while I was on vacation and it was such an amazing way to feel free.

OTW: Take us on your typical bike ride route.

ML: Oh my god! That’s the best question. Ok, so we’re starting at my house, we go down 82nd street, then we hit Central Park, and we enter the 72nd street entrance. And then there are these amazing hills through the whole thing. We get out at 59th street, and then we ride up the west side, all the way north, back up the Hudson River. Woah, that’s a great question, that’s awesome.

OTW: Beautiful. I love it. And then you go back home?

ML: Um, I guess so, or we continue into infinity.

OTW: How has growing up in two metropolitan cities on opposite sides of the world, New York and Hong Kong, influenced your music?

ML: I think it has helped me to view my life in stories and chapters, and things worthy of capturing. I have very clear arrows in my head, and grades and interactions and dramas. I think its because I’ve left places quite a few times, that I saw how a storybook could close and I saw how there could be an ending to a story. That’s something that I would sing about, stories that were succinct. A lot of people don’t realize that they’ve been through stuff. And when I would leave places, I saw those chapters close.

Credit: Mikayla Kitsanpolis

OTW: If you had to describe the main message you want to send with your music, in a few sentences or less, what would it be?

ML: This song is definitely about when you’re in that low spot, take charge of it. Go on a bike ride. Do it. Force yourself. You have the power to do that. But then I think the song gets into the broader message of the music. It’s tapping into this shared human experience, of the fact that we are all so afraid of death and we go through these romances and heartbreaks, and much worse things for some people. And this human human-ness that comes out if it is tragic and beautiful and it’s something that’s strong enough to bring us together. It’s bigger than you, and we’re all part of this shared universal experience. And no matter what you’re going through, you can get through it. I hope so. No, I believe it.

OTW: Who do you look up to most in the music industry?

ML: At this moment, Lana Del Rey. She just put out a song and video, “Looking for America,” and I think it so eloquently addresses the shootings that have been happening in our country. She pays homage to what music truly is supposed to be for, of getting us through these times. Right now she is just making what she wants to make after building these crazy worlds for so long. She is such a true writer and artist, and citizen.

OTW: Who is your dream collaborator?

ML: Of course I’d love to work with Lana or Lorde, but I would love to see the song that I would make with The Strokes. I want to see the music that comes out of that.

OTW: Can we look forward to a new EP or project any time soon?

ML: Oh my god, I cannot predict the future. I have no idea. I don’t know, it depends on what the people want.

OTW: What about what you want?

ML: When the story book is ready to close it will close. When the chapter starts to end. Could be in two months, could be in six months, who knows?

OTW: Any last words about the new song and video?

ML: I hope people freaking exercise to this song. Just be outside, use it to get you out of bed in the morning. Scream it the heck out. We’re all in pain! At least we can sing about it.

OTW: And finally, who are your Ones To Watch?

ML: Samia. She’s so great, I’m her biggest fan. I come to every single one of her shows. You should listen to her. I’ll support her forever. Chloe Lilac, always. She’s another NYC chick. She’s so awesome and I’m so proud of her.

Want more Maude Latour? Check out her last single here. 

[meltedmagazine]

AN INTERVIEW WITH IAN RIDENHOUR

I spent the weekend with alternative rock soloist Ian Ridenhour and his band as they prepared for and performed at Panoply Music Festival in Huntsville, Alabama. Ian took on the main stage of the downtown art festival at 3:45 PM, and was the first performer of the day to play original music. His energetic set lasted until around 5:00 PM. Afterwards, we hung out for a few hours as I photographed him and his recently-added vocalist Rain Lupia on my Nikon F3 Camera with a roll of 400 ISO Kodak gold film. In fact, I took photos of Ian and his band (which comprised of Ian Ridenhour, Rain Lupia, Jameson Ridenhour, James Kylen, and Brennan Dugan) over the span of three days: the Friday before, the Saturday of, and the Sunday after. On Friday, I loaded up my camera with 24 exposures of Holga black and white film and shot relaxation after preparation. After finishing that roll on Saturday morning, I decided to go with my tried and true Kodak gold film. On Sunday, as we drove away from Huntsville and back to our town of Asheville, I kept the gold in my Nikon and shot some frames at rest stops and gas stations.

Who are you?

Some asshole. Naaah I’m Ian Ridenhour. I’m a 16 year-old, Asheville-based musician. I’ve been playing music for about ten years. This is what I’ve always done, this is what I always want to do.

What are your roots? When did you begin writing, playing with a band, and performing?

I was primarily a drummer. At age one and a half or two, I started beating on pots and pans, really more around three I guess. Just pretending to be Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac. I loved it. For my fourth christmas, my parents got me a drum set and I took off. I played drums all the time, it was my favorite thing to do. When I was around six, my dad decided it would be fun to start playing in a band. My dad and I played as a duo for a while, just doing tiny little shows, and it was more of a novelty than anything else, like “Look at this six year old kid who can play the drums! Isn’t that cool?” And then, at age seven I wrote my first song, which is difficult without a melodic instrument. It’s really really hard. When I wrote that first song I knew I had to learn something else so that I was able to songwrite, as well. It took me forever not just to write it but to explain what was happening in my head. So I taught myself piano at age eight or nine. I fell in love with the piano. And just as a band leader, that’s much easier to write and perform on.  That has become my main instrument recently. We added a saxophone player to the band that my dad and I were in. We called it “Blind Mice”. We played around Bismarck, ND where I was living at the time. Super fun. Later on i was paying with different bands and experimenting more with different combinations of musicians and started working as a solo artist around age 13 or 14.

Right, because you wrote some songs for your first album at that time, around 13 or 14?

Yeah, I recorded the first album in 2014, and the first song off of the album, Along the Lines of Fairytales, I recorded when I was 14 and wrote it when I was 12. It wasn’t the first song I ever released but we’re going to pretend like that first song never existed.

What do you want out of music/ the music industry? What does success look like to you?

Man, it could be a lot of different things. Honestly, right now, I’m just having fun. Music is so much fun, and playing with the people that I play with is just a gift. I feel really truly honored to be able to play with such incredible musicians and have people feel like my music is worth listening to. It feels so good, being on stage feels so good. Ultimately, as long as I’m doing that, I’m going to be happy. The goal is to, y’know, I want to be touring, I want to be playing on a bigger level, for wider audiences across the country and the world. I’ve always wanted to travel with my music. Honestly, the music industry, especially in Asheville, is incredibly kind and welcoming and supportive and I just want to be a part of it. And I’m really happy that I am.

Asheville! What’s the music scene like there?

It’s super kind and compassionate. There are so many talented musicians, and in towns where you’ve got so much talent, it’s hyper competitive. When you get into towns with bigger music scenes, everyone is looking out for themselves. And I can’t really blame them for that, I get it. In Asheville, it’s so not that vibe at all. Everyone is so kind and generous and want s to support each other.I feel like I've said that in three or four different phrasings already, but it’s true! All of the people in the scene here are just the most compassionate people. They’re so willing to accept you into their environment, an take your under their wing. As a younger musician where it’s traditionally much harder to get into venues, and harder to be treated as a professional, it’s a gift to have such a wonderful community around me. And these guys are crazy talented. Asheville is just full of killer players. It’s a blast playing with them.

What bands/artists influence your sound the most?

Like everything? Haha! The obvious comparisons that a lot of people make are Ben Folds, Billy Joel (to a degree). There’s some weirder influences. One of the quotes that we use in press kits is, a friend of mine described my sound as “like Jack White and Ben Folds had a baby”. I listen to a lot of -- honestly it’s harder to describe specific influences and more just things that I listen to. I feel like I try to incorporate little pieces of everything that I listen to into my music. So, The Accidentals, for sure. Elbow is an influence, Fall Out Boy, Panic at The Disco, all of the emo bands that everyone used to listen to. I still listen to them. But they’ve got merit to them. They’ve got interesting songwriting, and that style is something I take from. Even bands like Twenty-One Pilots or whatever. My sound is nothing like them. But lyrically, they’re very interesting. I take from Icarus the Owl, in terms of rhythmic feel. I listen to Alt-J, July Talk, Dead Sara, Wolf Alice, I just try to listen to  a lot of different styles. I listen to--  I’m sure I could go on for hours -- older bands, too, like I grew up on The Police, Rush, and stuff like that. That was definitely an influence.

I saw a guy, in the audience of the band who performed before you at Panoply, who had a Rush T-Shirt on --

Doing all of the air drumming! Dude that was awesome. I love people like that. He was super cool.

Tell us about the “National Public Mother Fucking Radio” sticker on your piano. What does it mean to you?

That was a birthday gift from David LaMotte. It was a birthday show I was playing at the White Horse, and he was guesting on the set. I’m friends with BJ Leiderman who composes a fair amount of the National Public Radio theme songs.  He’s a super cool guy. David is friends with him, and he’s a part of the community. David thought it would be funny to give me that sticker for my birthday. I loved it! I stuck it on my piano. I’m want to get more sticker for my piano. So if you have any cool band stickers and you want to send them my way, anyone who is reading this, please do.

You mentioned the White Horse. Is that your favorite venue or do you have any other venues that you love?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Each venue has its merits, and there’s definitely things that I like about other venues in Asheville but The White Horse has always been a home for me. I live really close to there, I’m really really good friends with the owners, I helped run social media there for a while. The White Horse is so cool. They've got such a welcoming environment. They do so much for the community. They are absolutely incredible. If you’re in Asheville, and the white horse is a bit of a drive, you should still go. It’s worth the drive. It’s a great sounding room. My band sounds the best they ever do in that room.

You recently added another singer, Rain Lupia, to the mix. Why did you decide to incorporate another voice? How’s it been with another vocal performer alongside you?

I have always worked with vocalists. I have always liked working with vocalists. I’ve been doing that since I first started out as a solo artist. I’d have people come in and guest on a couple of tunes, and it was more convenience than anything. I’ve thought about adding harmonies for a while, but I’ve never had a consistent singer to do that because I’ve been working around with other people. But Rain lives close, she knows the music, and she sounds awesome on it. So it was more of a logical step. And it’s great. I love having the backup vocals. It’s great. And I want to add more as we work with her more. It’s really super fun having that extra piece to the band.  

How was Panoply?

It was fun! It was super fun. I had a lot of fun. It was so hot, man it was really hot. But it was fun! Yeah it was not exactly what I expected but I’m not really sure what I expected so that’s not really an accurate reference point. But the crowds were great, the people were really friendly, the art was super cool. It was a lot of fun walking around and seeing everything that was going on. I saw a martial arts display where they were breaking through wooden boards that had “bullying” and “peer pressure” painted on them, which is a cool little touch, I saw a street magician pull a specific card out of a deck with his mouth and fold it over in his mouth, my drummer almost bought a shark on a stick. Outside of the actual festival itself, which was super cool, it was a blast. It was the biggest stage I’ve ever performed on. I was super honored to be there. We’ve never really played festivals before. It was great. I got to perform in front of a lot of my family who had never seen me perform before. My cousin was going to go to a wedding and ditched at the last second because she wanted to see me perform.

That’s dedication. And that’s dedication for you, too. You’re at a point now to where you and your extended family will drive six hours to perform.

Yea! I’ve been out of school for several years now, and this is just what I've always wanted to do. The fact that we get to do it now is just -- well my dad is in the band, my mom is essentially my manager. I don’t think its ever really been a question that if we could do it we would do it. It’s wonderful to have their support, and I’m really grateful that they made the drive. Because, y’know, I’m not driving at all, I’m just sitting in a car for six hours, which is easy for me.I get to sleep! But yeah we’re really committed to this and we want to see it go far.

Do you listen to more tangible means of music, like cassettes, records, or CD’s or are you more of a digital guy?

Y’know, I really am more of a digital guy. I understand the merit of the older stuff, an I’ve always been fascinated by the analog vs. digital argument. Overall, digital is much easier. It allows me to store more music with me at a time. It’s primarily convenience. I just love having my iPod with a ton of music on me. I do most of my recordings for other musicians [who will play in the band]  on my voice memos to just send it over, I’ve got the album on there, which we were listening on the way down [to Panoply] to get familiar with it. We’ve also got CDs, and my family does listen to records in the living room,  which is super fun. I get the appeal of records, it’s a much warmer sound. It provides a good atmosphere, and it’s an experience. Digital music is more . . . it’s anywhere, it’s anytime, it’s more flexible.

An artist, album, or song that makes you feel a heavy dose of nostalgia?

Fall out Boy. I listened to Fall out Boy in my senior year of high school. And that was right before I moved to North Carolina, so it was with all of my friends in North Dakota. It was just a blast hanging out and just blasting Folie à deux. It brings me back to them, and the people that I miss there. Rush.  I grew up listening to Rush. Listening to Rush brings me back, which has its pros and cons. I usually don’t reminisce about my childhood, but it’s cool to be transported back to there.

Based on that, would you call yourself more of a nostalgic guy, or are you more forward-driven?

It’s always been drive forward. Not to be shitting all over your focus on nostalgia, but nostalgia for me just makes me sad. I lived in North Dakota for ten years, and I made a lot of friends there. Still, a lot of that nostalgia is like “aww . . .  I miss those people.” But it’s easier for me to focus on the forward. There’s a lot that’s happening in the near future, and it’s overwhelming if I don’t think about it. Not that nostalgia is bad. I’ll still play Magic the Gathering now and then, and remember “aww. . . I used to do this all the time in high school.”

What’s next for Ian Ridenhour?

After I get back, I've got three shows lined up in the next two weeks, and it’s finals week at UNCA. So shit’s crazy. But it’s fun. I’m going to keep goin’, keep playing shows, I’ve got to look at college tours soon. I’m just sort of seeing where everything takes me. I want to keep booking shows, for sure, and continue to play with people. I don’t know if and when I’m recording again, but I’ve got a lot of new music that I would love to record, so hopefully that’s in the future. We’ll see where it goes.Tune in, to, y’know, my website! It’s just my name. ianridenhour.com

LISTEN TO IAN RIDENHOUR HERE INTERVIEW + PHOTOS by AUDREY KEELIN

[amethystiridescence]

I am so happy.

My life has always been very relatively fortunate. I know there’s no comparison to all sides of a spectrum so its only with my limited perspective and subjective opinion that I can reflect on my circumstances. Its just for the sake of juxtaposition that I mention any of my subjectively negative life-affecting things. With some warning this is to be a very indulgent ramble as I just want to savour how impossibly incredibly wonderful life is right now.

For a start, I finally live somewhere where I can be relaxed and also call it home. After my parents divorced when I was 10 until I was 25, I lived with my mother. She has taken it upon herself to compensate in a very overbearing way for the lack of a father figure in mine and my brother’s lives. It’s left me paranoid, resentful, strained and absolutely living and breathing anxiety and I desperately needed to move out but money and a stop-start pattern in my career after Uni made it impossible. Through sudden circumstances I suddenly had somewhere I could move into and live in my best friend’s beautiful house. I am eternally grateful and forever in his debt for letting me live in such an amazing place. It’s such a roomy and bright place, and he let me turn it as homely as possible. I got to decorate the kitchen in pink and green and light pine, and I made the living room light and dark blue with tons of nerdy books and old school consoles. I have an old PS1 dance mat and Spyro.

My bedroom is unbelievably gorgeous, and my boyfriend who lives with me across the hallway with his own space built me a window seat which I’ve wanted ever since I read an illustrated copy of the Secret Garden when I was 5. I’ve covered my room in fairy lights, printed polaroids of my Instagram, and I sit on my window seat in the sunshine since it faces south and I read with scented candles. I can actually keep flowers in my bedroom now without them dying from lack of sunlight and I buy different colour carnations every few weeks. My boyfriend is going to put up bird feeders outside my window soon. He makes curries with coconut milk and sticky rice and I cook garlicky seafood noodle broths, and occasionally we all inhale one huge takeaway pizza each whilst watching Friends.

I also live in the most beautiful part of the UK. The sea is less than a mile from where I live to the south, and the moors are less than 10 miles to the north. Everything is wide, green and natural and beautiful on the moors and the wild ponies happily eat from your hands.

I went bodyboarding in the Cornish waves the other weekend and the water was so warm and so blue. I also went swimming in my city’s adorable local seaside lido pool in the hot sun the other week. Eddy bought us hot dogs and slushies.

I now have a huge group of fantastic friends and I’m still not sure how I’ve managed to become part of such a incredible group of people. Thanks to a string of aggressive and manipulative bullying in secondary school, my own socialising skills were shot to pieces and I didn’t make friends easily. When I first moved house I felt lonely and without friends and I was panicking about new people. So when I found the University Amateur Dramatics society by pure accident, I couldn’t believe my luck. For some crazy reason they actually seem to like me and want me to be part of their incredible family. They’re all so talented, passionate and affectionate, and I feel honoured to be able to call them my friends. They even encouraged me to act in plays, and my newfound sense of humour and ability to make people laugh still surprises me after several months.

A few of us went swimming and cliff diving together on the moors in a crystal clear running river in a heatwave a couple of weeks ago. I’m going to a wedding reception party with a few of them soon. They gave me a special creative contribution award on their Awards Night with the most amazing speech even though I’ve only been part of them for a few months. I haven’t felt this confident in myself in years and I owe them all so much for that.

As stated before, my career of choice is very stop-start. I went from no experience to a magazine cover, from waitressing to a stint on Game of Thrones prosthetics team to stacking shelves in Tesco for a couple of months. I seized a more stable less relevant job and held onto it hoping I’d manage to do creative things and unfortunately I ended up much unhappier in the job than I thought as I ended up only really doing computer work. The only solace I had was being able to raise a baby crow from a chick and have his company throughout one of the dullest work summers I’ve ever had.

I was stifled and felt stuck, especially since I kept trying to win this 6 month scholarship at a huge makeup school in Hollywood, and I came so close to winning and kept on just missing the mark. When I came the closet I’ve ever been and lost for a third time this year after getting so hopeful in the light of my work going incredibly viral, I was so deflated and planned to leave the job for the first irrelevant thing I could find just to break the unhappy directionless monotony. And then it all happened. I got contacted by a huge entertainment company requesting me specifically to come work for them as a costume designer and makeup artists for international performances, based half hour away from where I live. I’ve been there 2 weeks and I’ve been feverishly creating everyday with and the days just fly by. I’m even going with my team to Texas next month to do the makeup for the event that I’m creating the costumes for. I might even go places like Kuwait or Dubai as well. I can hardly believe my luck. And as if that wasn’t incredible enough, I’ve had a private sponsor contact me about the failed scholarship attempts and kindly offer to sponsor me for a month’s worth of classes at the school next year. So I’m going to work extra hard and pay for an extra month of classes when I fly to Los Angeles in the spring next year. I can’t believe I’ve actually been granted so much generosity and kindness and that I’m now a professional costumer and that I’m going to Hollywood in less than a year.

I start my VISA application this week.

And honestly, I still look back on the work I’ve achieved off my own back this year and I can truly say I’m so proud of what I’ve made. Cosplay is so important to me and I’m so blessed that I can take it and turn it into a career.

We still go Comic Cons at least once or twice a year and I love every second of them.

The boys got really keenly into cosplay this year and made cosplays they adored wearing so much that they went from wearing them for just the one day to all three days of the Con. I’m so proud of them and I love how much they enjoyed themselves.

I got specially invited to a huge London Comic Con at the end of this month as a cosplay guest and I’m staggered by how generous they’re being with covering all my expenses including a plus one. I feel weirdly famous and humbled by the kindness. I can’t believe I’ll be a guest alongside so many real celebrities such as Christopher Lloyd, Alyson Hannagan, Benedict Cumberbatch and my idol Doug Jones.

I am giddily madly and blissfully in love and I feel so warm and strong and sure of it when I remember how unhappy I used to be. It is a huge shame that my previous and longest relationship ended as needlessly bitter as it did. It really didn’t have to happen that way. I wish I had been mature and less scared of being alone and less inclined to retreat into the devil that I knew for all those years. I had no idea how badly matched we were after growing up differently and growing naturally apart. We just didn’t work together and it was making me so unhappy, frustrated at myself for thinking it must have been something wrong with me when in actual truth I just needed different things from a relationship. Consequently I only realised how badly unhappy I was only after I left it.

But Eddy is everything I’ve been needing and more. He is so patient with my whacky temperament, stubbornness and silly quirks. He is the calming, affectionate, assuring bedrock of my life, and my own self-image is so much better for his constant gentle reminders that I am warmly and passionately loved and always seen and even more importantly I can be totally myself without being resented. He encourages me to keep doing everything that I love doing, and he never misses a trick when I’m feeling upset or distracted. He always looks so happy to see me, and his smiles are infallibly genuine and light up the room. He is so ridiculously intelligent and yet he never ever uses it to make anyone feel inferior or show it off. He is so unbelievably unfazed by how anyone sees him and nothing ever embarrasses him, I’ve never seen someone so chilled in their own image such as him. It doesn’t matter how upset or stressed I am, he can instantly calm me down and break past my aggressive stubbornness or soothe my shame.

I love him for the way he can ballroom dance. I love him for the way he loves to cook and still finds time in between stirring saucepans to wrap his arms around me and dip me towards the floor even if its just to get an indignant squeak out of me. I love him for the way he animatedly talks about facts, history, art and gaming logistics with ease and humour as if its not things to be recited, its things to be actively and keenly discussed. I love him for the way he is shameless about what he loves, whether its a beautiful piece of art or a really bad internet joke.

I have a cupboard specially for all my teas. I have over fifteen types and three types of hot chocolate. I serve the hot chocolates with mini marshmallows. I keep a list on my phone of all the silly stuff Eddy has said that’s made me laugh. I’ll publish it one day.


I got to decorate the house with autumnal decorations last autumn after mum wouldn’t let me do it at hers. I put orange maple leaves everywhere and real pumpkins displayed with dried leaves. I regularly lit cinnamon and apple scented candles. We had a pumpkin party with toffee apples and toasted marshmallows on a bonfire in the garden. I carved the silhouette of a crow into a pumpkin.

One of my friends from the society lent me a book that made me cry. I’ve bought my own copy. She makes amazing cakes and looks like an elf queen. I’m going to her birthday BBQ tomorrow.

My cosplay got featured in a magazine again.

I got a new duvet cover with the Little Mermaid on it, and a phone power bank shaped like a unicorn. I can love pink, girly pastel things again without feeling embarrassed. I love having pink hair.

We had an incredible Christmas tree last year. I made and ate so many Devils On Horseback and drank a lot of mead.

Eddy took me ice skating for my birthday. We went to see his favourite band in concert at the same place a month later. That following evening he massaged my achy post-heels legs. We listen to the same band when we cook together. He loves to sing along to any music.

It snowed before my birthday again. We went up to the moors early in the morning and it was absolutely breathtaking. We rolled around in the snow and I petted the snow-dusted Dartmoor ponies.

I had a phonemail with my best friend of 20 years earlier today. She’s coming to stay with us for a week soon. Her voice hasn’t changed since we were 13. She still smells like she did when we were 6. We went to the Tower of London as invited by the Ravenmaster himself and met one of the ravens. We also went to see a Steven Spielberg tribute Philharmonic Orchestra concert later that day. She drew me whilst sat on the tube.

I caught the cherry blossoms this year on really warm days. Eddy shook the tree over me so I got coated in pink petals. I got iced matcha from Starbucks later that day.

I acted in a play that started with everybody laughing then finished crying. I loved every second of it and I loved my cast and I loved the play itself. I love acting now.

I think Eddy’s family likes me. They took me to Disneyland the other week for Eddy’s sister’s hen party. Eddy’s mum fixed my skirt for the wedding and she also fixed my dress for the wedding of Eddy’s other sister last year. Both his parents cried and hugged me when I told them about Hollywood.

I bought a scrapbook with unicorns on it. I’m going to print of as many polaroids as possible to stick in it with glitter glue. I’ve been covering everything in rainbow, Pokemon and dinosaur stickers.

I never want to forget feeling this happy.

[animalsoffarmsanctuary]

A Special Birthday Party for Our Farm Animal Friends!

At Farm Sanctuary there’s always cause for celebration! Last weekend, guests from far and wide helped us “party till the cows come home” at Farm Sanctuary’s Barnyard Birthday Bash, held at our Southern California Shelter!

A visitor spends some quality time with Jumper pig.

Our birthdays are unique opportunities to celebrate ourselves and reflect upon our journeys. We’re each born with potential to live our best lives possible, and to brighten the world around us by extension. But sadly, there are individuals who are frequently denied this basic right: farm animals — billions of whom never even reach their first birthday.

But it doesn’t have to be this way — and events like our Barnyard Birthday Bash remind us how living compassionately changes all of our lives for the better! With your support, we can help all beings enjoy the rich, fulfilling lives they deserve — now that’s something to celebrate!

What’s a Rebirthday, Anyway?

Due to the circumstances from whence they came, we can’t always pinpoint an animal’s exact date of birth. What we do know, however, is the day their lives truly began: their “rebirthdays,” so to speak. An animal’s rebirthday signifies the date of his or her rescue — which, in many cases, is the day they were first valued as someone, not something.

A guest offers Bruno steer a birthday treat! At Farm Sanctuary, people can get to know farm animals as friends, not food, and spread the word about the difference that compassion makes!

With hundreds of animals across our three sanctuary locations, you can imagine just how much there is to celebrate, each and every day! And while we love sharing updates on our rescued residents’ journeys through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and here on Tumblr, there’s something very special about celebrating alongside them in person! Enter the Barnyard Birthday Bash — a collective celebration for our residents and the “humanimals” who love them. When it comes to living compassionately, it truly is the more the merrier.

For He’s (and She’s) a Jolly Good Fellow — Three Cheers for Farm Sanctuary’s Rescued Residents!

There’s nothing like a beautiful spring day to remind us how we all blossom when we live life from the heart! Our party guests had a great time enjoying party games and crafts, sharing a compassionate meal together — cake and ice cream for dessert! — and of course, spending time with Farm Sanctuary’s rescued residents: the incredible ambassadors for their species whom we celebrate each day.

 Farm Sanctuary Program Coordinator Breezy Rondilone gets the party started with a brief introduction to the day’s festivities — sharing how much we all have to celebrate when we put compassion first!

At Farm Sanctuary, our rescued residents are free to enjoy the rich, vibrant lives they deserve — and our party guests supported this sentiment by donning colorful face paint in their honor!

Farm Sanctuary volunteer Lila Shimizu knows that every farm animal is someone, not something!

The talented artist at work!

And of course, no party is complete without party games! Our younger guests (and the young at heart) played carnival-style games in the courtyard, while others jumped for joy in a bounce house nearby.

But of course, the best part of the day — for staff members, volunteers, and visitors alike — was spending time with our rescued residents!

Caregiver Jessica Due snuggles with Bruno steer. 

Visitors spend quality time with Honky Tonk donkey.

A visitor wishes Pinto steer a happy rebirthday!

Paolo’s “eating up” the attention as well!

Cattle like Paolo are gentle giants — and we’re honored to know and celebrate these incredible beings each day.

Maria goat loves her humanimal friends — and we’re so happy to honor her each and every day!

Thank you to everyone who came out and partied with us! There is so much to celebrate when we put compassion first.

Pinto and a friend enjoy some quality time together!

Couldn’t party with us in person this year? You can relive the festivities through this special feature from Spectrum News! If you’re in the L.A. area, we also host regular tours on the weekends — a wonderful opportunity to celebrate these animal ambassadors and the beautiful lives that your support makes possible. (We also have more special events coming up!) And in just three more weeks, our tour season begins again at our New York Shelter!

Stay tuned tomorrow for a glimpse at a recent rebirthday party across the country in Watkins Glen! And on Monday, we’re celebrating yet another birthday — 31 years since Farm Sanctuary’s incorporation. Thanks to support from friends like you, we can continue our lifesaving rescue, education, and advocacy work to help more animals celebrate the beautiful lives we were all born to have. A compassionate world begins with you!

[blschaos3000-blog]

Its 5:49 pm dark/snowy

Welcome to 8 Questions with…..

     You ever watch one of those big movies that take the viewer to several exotic locales? “From London to Toronto to Detroit (okay,maybe not Murder City),to Toyko,etc…..” as the film goes from place to another.    In meeting the lovely Isra Elsalihie,I felt like I was watching a real life movie. Growing up in Sweden to Iraqi parents to going to university in England to finding her voice in New York City,you need a passport and a GPS device just to keep up with Isra!  Equally as comfortable on stage as in front of a camera,Isra is also quite a talented voice over actor and of course you (well,some of you anyways) know I like a good VO actor. The more I looked at Isra,the more convinced there may be nothing that she can’t do.   I am really quite honored to have been able to slow Isra down long enough to ask her “8 Questions”. I gotta hurry,her next journey is leaving and I want to see where Isra is going next…..

Please introduce yourself and tell us what you are currently working on.

   I’m Isra Elsalihie and I am Iraqi-Swedish actor based in NYC. I’m about to shoot a new short directed by Shu Hirayama and written by Ana Ribero. Arresting God, a feature film which co-starred alongside Agam Darshi just became a part of Sundance Development Lab and will be going on to greater things I can’t mention just yet!

What was it like growing up in Sweden? What was life in your home like? Can you share some of your fondest memories growing up?

   Growing up in Sweden was interesting! I grew up with very loving and supportive family, I truly did have a great home environment, and my hometown of Gothenburg, is a beautiful place to grow up, having said that, Gothenburg was and is really segregated in terms of their communities. Something I fought against by working with many different youth groups as a teenager, such as A Shared Future.

When you did catch the acting bug? Did you attend school to get your training? What are some of your favorite experiences when you first started out?

   I caught the acting bug pretty early on! I think I must have been around 11-12? I was very inspired by the magic of theatre and film, and just knew that one way or another I needed to be a part of that world. I finished my two year acting conservatory at Lee Strasberg theatre and film institute. I’ve gone on to take classes with RSC and at other institutions such as ESPA primary stages.

When did you move to New York City? How did you adjust to the cultural change?

   I moved to NYC in the winter of 2015. I think it was one of the coldest winters in NYC in over 20 years, so that first night in NYC was interesting. I remember getting a ride with the worst cab driver I’ve ever met at JFK, and arriving at a Air bnb with no heat, 1.5 h away from school. That first night I was really questioning my choices haha! But I stuck it out and now NYC feels like home. NYC to me, is truly one of the greatest cities in the world, and I’m very lucky to have ended up here.

Can you tell us about winning a place in the 24 Hour Plays National Company? What did you have to do to win a spot? What the experience like?

   Oh wow, 24 Hour Plays Nationals was an incredible experience. The competition for a spot was pretty fierce, I remember all of us getting our acceptance letter pretty late, and we were told that was because our year, 2017, had more applicants than ever before, which was pretty crazy. I won’t bore you with the details, but involved a lot of self-tapes, essays and in person auditions. What we did with 24 Hour Plays Nationals and what I later got to do with LAByrinth, is what I want to do every day as an actor. You’re put in a room with the best and brightest of emerging theatre creatives and told you’re free to create whatever you like with your peers over the course of 24 Hours! It’s definitely one of my favorite experiences.

 What three things do you like and dislike about live theater?

    I love the fact that with live theatre you’re able to take in your audience directly, you’re truly able to have a shared experience with your audience. When I’m not on stage, I’m usually in the back listening to the audience and taking them in before entering. With live theatre you’re able to live through the entire arch of your character in chronological order, vs. TV & Film that’s usually shot out of order. I love that there are no retakes with theatre, there are no do-overs during the show, no cutting to retake that scene, so it forces you to really be present and listening to your fellow actors. I don’t know if I have any real dislikes with theatre. There are certain things that can be challenging at times, but I embrace the challenge. The challenge of theatre is that you’re doing multiple shows a week, most likely eight shows a week and even though each night is going to be different, you still have to sustain your character throughout the run and keep your character fairly consistent.

In terms of material,do you perfer acting in revivals with known works or doing a fresh original play and putting your own stamp on a new character?

   I don’t really have a strong preference, whether it’s a revival or not, I always believe you should put your own stamp on things and bring something new to the character.

Which has more challenges for you,live theater or a filmed production?

   Well, they’re both very different mediums and I enjoy them equally. Live theatre gives you the opportunity to live through a character from beginning to end without chronological jumps, and it also gives you the chance to interact with your audience directly. TV & Film, doesn’t offer that, but it does give you the opportunity to reach a larger audience, beyond the boundaries of the US.

What has been your favorite role to play to date and what has made it special?

   Maryam, in the Old Globe’s production of Noura. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had as an actor. Noura, is written by Heather Raffo, and incredible Iraqi-American playwright, who’s work I’ve admired for a very long time.    I actually did a monologue from Heather’s play 9 Parts of Desire, for my conservatory show and that’s how I first learned about her work. I met her a few months after my graduation at a reading of Noura and professed my love of her work to her, haha! She gave me her contact info and insisted we have coffee. We since stayed friends over the years, but in August I got a call from the Old Globe and Guthrie saying they wanted me to come in and audition for Maryam in Noura.    Heather had apparently given my name to all these theatres so I auditioned and I ended up booking the Old Globe which was the West coast Premiere of Noura and was directed by the amazing Johanna McKeon.

As an Swedish-Iraqi actress, have you experienced being cast in stereotypical roles and do you have an opinion on how to stop that kind of narrowminded casting?

   I have certainly been asked to audition for stereotypical roles in the past. As an actor I don’t really have power over who gets called in for a project or not, but what I can do is create my own work and be open and inclusive with the casting of that. I also believe that actors always have the power of saying no. If I’m asked to audition for a part I find stereotypical, then I decline that audition.

What do you like to do in your downtime? Do you have causes,activities or hobbies you like to do?

   I really value my time with my friends and family, so whenever I have a spare moment, I try to spending it with them. I love to explore the city, I go to a lot of museums and exhibitions and when I can and I like to paint. That’s a very new passion of mine that’s been fun to explore.

  The cheetah and I are flying over to watch you perform in your next live theater production but we are a day early and now you are playing tour guide,what are we doing?

   Oh wow! So many places to go, I love a good stroll in central park, followed by a visit to the MoMa or Met. The Highline is absolutely beautiful as well and you have the Chelsea market right underneath it, where you can get a wonderful dinner or lunch. If you’re looking for an evening activity I’d visit the older cinemas in NYC, like Angelica film center or Metrograph.

I like to thank Isra for sharing her story with us. The cheetah and I are definitely going to be asking to look at “The Invaders” which looks very good.  I am sure Isra is going to leave her positive mark on this planet as joyfully as she can.    There are many ways to keep up with this very on-the-move young artist and we as always,are happy to share them with you all.

First you can find and follow Isra on her InstaGram page Next you can see which projects Isra has upcoming at her IMDb page. Isra also has her own personal website which you can find here.

If you have missed any of the over 80 “8 Questions with…..” interviews we have done,you can catch up by clicking here.

Thank you for all of your support and readership! Please drop a comment or two as well!

8 Questions with……..actress Isra Elsalihie Its 5:49 pm dark/snowy Welcome to 8 Questions with.....      You ever watch one of those big movies that take the viewer to several exotic locales?

[hauteculturefashion]

Frida fever is burning hotter than ever. More and more people have been falling in love with the woman and her legacy, thanks to retrospectives, novels, biographies and a resurgence in Frida’s iconic style. Have you, like many, already watched the movie, perused the exhibition, and quite literally, got the t-shirt (or even the tattoo)? Perhaps it’s time to take the obsession to the next level: do you hear the wild cry of Mexico calling you to Frida’s motherland?

At Haute Culture, we understand how you feel. We have spent the past few years learning all we can about this incredible woman’s life, art and style. Our obsession culminated in the creation of our annual textile tour Mexico: Frida, Fashions, Fabrics and Fiesta, created in Frida’s honour.

But first things first: You’re heading to Mexico city and straight to Coyoacan, Frida’s own stomping ground. You naturally want to make the most of your time visiting the neighbourhood that Frida’s flamboyant Tehuana skirts tread! Well my friends, you are in luck, as Haute Culture has put together the ultimate guide (for Frida fanatics) to the bohemian and leafy neighbourhood of Coyoacan, including its fascinating museums, bustling markets and Insta-worthy monuments.

Must Visit Frida Kahlo Sights In Coyoacan

1. Frida Kahlo Kahlo Museum

Explore Frida Kahlo’s La Casa Azul and discover more about her fascinating way of life, turbulent history and passionate personality. You can see where she painted, entertained, loved, lived and died. Frida fans should book their tickets in advance and set aside four to five hours to explore the grounds in order to soak in the exhibits and read the supporting literature. Make sure you hire the audio guide and pay for the photo permit. Read our full guide and review of the Frida Kahlo Museum by clicking here. 

  Frida Kahlo Museum.

2. Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Not strictly in Coyoacan but worth the quick taxi ride for hardcore Frida fans to see the houses that Frida and Diego built and lived in during their first marriage. Surrounded by a beautiful yet threatening wall of cacti, the white and red house on the left was Diego’s and the blue house on the right was Frida’s. The houses are connected only by a rooftop bridge. Unfortunately, today, Frida’s house contains little evidence of her habitation on the premises as all of her possessions are now featured in travelling exhibitions or on display at the Frida Kahlo Museum. Diego’s larger-than-life studio is still presented in its original entirety and gives you a wonderful insight into his style of living and working. Closed on Mondays.

Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

3. Museo Anahuacalli

Three miles south of the Frida Kahlo Museum is Museo Anahuacalli, an immense pyramid-shaped museum/national monument built from volcanic lava rock. Designed to house the Rivera’s extraordinary collection of pre-Hispanic artefacts, the build was partly funded by Frida after she sold her apartment on Avenida Insurgentes to buy the land on which it is built. The museum and its artefacts were then donated to the public which gained Frida and Diego great respect and recognition for their contribution to promoting Mexico’s indigenous and artistic heritage.

4. Leon Trotsky House Museum

Frida Kahlo hosted the exiled Russian Revolutionary and his wife Natalia in her family home. As the couple didn’t speak any Spanish, Leon and Frida spoke only in English. Although both married couples spent a great deal of time together, it wasn’t long before Trotsky became infatuated with Frida’s charm and talent and thus an affair quickly blossomed between them. When the affair ended, the Trotskys moved into this house where Leon was later assassinated by a man Frida had previously met in Paris. Although the Leon Trotsky Museum is not specifically about Frida Kahlo, it is a great place to learn about an important relationship in Frida’s life and to understand more about her political ideologies.

5. Frida Kahlo Park (Photo with Frida opportunity)

If you want a break from walking the crazy cobbled streets of Coyoacan then head to the sanctuary of the Frida Kahlo Park. Here, you can not only put your feet up but take your photo alongside life-sized bronze statues of Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. Insider Secret: You can also see and sit alongside another Frida and Diego statue hidden in the grounds of Casa de Cultura Jesús Reyes Heroles.

Frida and Diego statues in the Casa de Cultura Jesús Reyes Heroles.

Life-sized statues of Diego and Frida in the Frida Kahlo Park.

6. Cantina la Guadalupana

This old school Mexican cantina from 1932 still holds much of its traditional rustic charm and was one of Frida and Diego’s favourite local spots for knocking back a bottle or two of tequila. Their no-fuss service and basic Mexican menu attracts locals who populate the tables come lunchtime. Head there for a truly authentic cantina experience, just the way Frida liked it. Just don’t expect the staff to speak English. Insider Secret: Another favourite spot of Frida’s can be found where Matlintzin meets Aguayo.

One of Frida’s favourite bars, Cantina la Guadalupana.

Another Frida hangout at Matlintzin and Aguayo.

  Frida Kahlo Related Sights

  7. Coyoacan Market

Coyoacan Market is bursting and bustling with local life. You can delve deep into the local culture and roam amongst the pocket-sized stalls selling everything from Frida mania memorabilia to festive pinatas and yummy fresh produce. The food court in the centre of the building is the best place to enjoy a fresh tostada at lunchtime. Haute Culture highly recommends Coyoaca Tostadas: look for the big yellow and red signage.

8. Mexican Artisan Market

Not our favourite artisan market in Mexico City (we suggest serious shoppers head to Mercado De Artesanias La Ciudadela) but worth a visit if you are looking to pick up some fun souvenirs for friends at home. Spread over two floors, this market has a range of traditional and replicated Mexican crafts for sale. There is a nice stall at the back right on the first floor selling interesting items and textiles from Chiapas State.

Mercado Artesanal Mexicano (Mexican Artisan Market).

9. National Museum of Popular Culture

If you love Frida then you will know that she would have been a huge fan of this local museum which supports and promotes popular folk art from across all over Mexico. Comprised of three buildings and an outdoor event space, this museum has both free and paid entry exhibits. The last time Haute Culture was there the museum had an incredible display of works by the famous Mexican illustrator and printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada. Closed on Mondays.

National Museum of Popular Culture.

Coyoacan Tours

  10. Coyoacan Free Walking Tour

If you plan to stay in Coyoacan for two or more days (ie. you’re not just sweeping in and out just for the Frida Kahlo Museum), then we strongly suggest taking the Coyoacan Free Walking Tour with Estacion Mexico. Their guides are extremely knowledgable about ancient and local history and they will lead you safely down the cobbled streets on a fascinating walk through some of Mexico City’s most stunning colonial houses and cultural institutions. Guides speak English and Spanish: tips of $5 or more per person are appreciated for this two to three-hour insightful experience by foot.

  11. San Juan Red Trolley Tour

You will no doubt see the vintage red trolley buses (much like the one Frida Kahlo had her accident on in 1925) driving around the back streets and major sights that Coyoacan has to offer. These make a great photo opportunity for tourists but unfortunately for foreigners, the guides only speak in Spanish. We still think it’s a cute way for people who wish to see an overview of the neighbourhood in under one hour without walking. You can board the trolley from in front of the Parroquia San Juan Bautista Church.

Coyoacan Map (click the image to open the map)

Frida Kahlo Lover Guide to Coyoacan

Recommended Reading

THE HOW FRIDA KAHLO USED FASHION TO BUILD HER LEGACY or WHO WAS FRIDA KAHLO? THE ARTIST, LOVER, SUFFERER, FASHIONISTA, ACTIVIST, FEMINIST & ICON

Are you going to Mexico? Why not pin this post and save it for later!

Useful Information 

The best way to fly to Mexico

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We personally recommend using Airbnb, as this style of accommodation can give you more of a local perspective of the city, click here to get £28/$37 in travel credit.

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A Frida Kahlo Lovers guide to Coyoacan in Mexico City! (with free map) Frida fever is burning hotter than ever. More and more people have been falling in love with the woman and her legacy, thanks to retrospectives, novels, biographies and a resurgence in Frida's iconic style.