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david-akintunde · 3 years

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10 Tips To Boost Your Email Open Rates

Here is a simple talisman for success if you’re an email marketer — higher email open rates mean more conversions. Sounds obvious? Even then, many organizations don’t end up writing emails that subscribers want to open. A study by MailChimp found that email open rates are just at 21.33% across all industries.

In a quick glance, this figure looks ok. But is it really? Suppose you have an email list comprising a whopping 15,000 subscribers. With a 21.33% conversion rate, only a mere 3199 leads are ever going to see your emails, and fewer will take any action.

Remember, there comes a point, when it doesn’t matter how extensive your email list is, but how many prospects within that list open your emails. If within the same list of 15,000 subscribers, your open rates go up to 50%, you end up with 7500 leads engaging with your pitch.

So, how do you get here? By following these 10 hacks that are sure to improve your email open rates:

1. Don’t Forget to Segment your Email List

Without email list segmentation, you cannot personalize your emails. While you can categorize your email list under parameters most relevant to you, try these three segments for starters.

Segment based on:

Demography

Challenges and pain points

Like and dislikes

2. Get your Subject Line Right

Your subject line alone is what encourages prospects to open your email. It also helps form your brand’s first impression. So, craft it well! How?

Personalize it for your target audience. Write more than one subject sentence for, say, different age groups, even if the product you’re pitching is the same.

Hold back on using too many punctuations like exclamation marks. You’d be surprised how commonly marketers use more than one exclamation point in subject lines for emphasis. Choose to emphasize with your words instead.

Keep it concise and avoid vagueness.

Draft it in the form of a question, if you can.

Use powerful words and phrases. These stir emotion and arouse curiosity. For example, the image below uses a power word like “sanity-saving.”

Source: Smart Blogger

3. Get your Email Timing Right

Remember, leads will read your emails at different times in different parts of the world. Some will read them late at night, while others will do so in the morning. Leverage whichever email automation tool you use to track the time most of your prospects read your emails.

Once you have an optimal time, send emails accordingly to boost open as well as click-through rates. Also, as a general rule of thumb, avoid sending marketing emails over weekends. Several studies have now revealed that weekends are the most inopportune time to send promotional communication.

4. Get your Email Frequency Right

Nobody, and that even includes you wants their inbox to be bombarded with too many promotional emails from one brand. Not only does this single-handedly bring down your open rates, but the prospect can blacklist you or mark you as spam.

Simply put, strike the right balance with your audience. Generally, sending emails twice or thrice and no more makes for a healthy frequency that doesn’t annoy prospects.

5. Re-engage with the Dormant Prospects

All email lists have prospects who haven’t opened promotional emails from certain brands in months. Your list is likely no different. Weed them out! And scout for new prospects.

But, before identifying and deleting them from your email list, make sure to draft and deploy a re-engagement campaign. Maybe, this campaign contains time-limited offers or personalized deals to re-engage passive leads.

6. Send Emails using an Official Email ID

No matter how small your business is at this point, don’t use your Gmail or Hotmail ids to send out marketing communication. Such a practice will likely land you in the prospect’s junk pile. Use a domain email address that carries your brand name to stay out of spam filters and boost your open rates.

7. Ensure a High Deliverability Rate

Unfortunately, over 20% of marketing emails don’t land up in your prospects’ inboxes. These emails bounce because of:

Temporary server issues on both ends

Sending emails to abandoned or obsolete email ids

Prospects who accidentally blacklist you

Upping your deliverability rate will automatically boost open rates. You can do this by:

Sending reminder emails requesting your subscribers to whitelist you.

Confirm if a prospect has willingly subscribed to your list by asking them to click on a link sent to their inbox.

8. Avoid using Certain Words in Email Subject Line and Body

Stay away from phrases and words that make your email seem less authentic. For instance, “Urgent,” “free stuff for you,” “you have won,” and several others. Think of these phrases similar to swear words in email marketing.

9. Send the Same Email Once More

Sometimes your prospects want to open your email, but they simply forget or get distracted. And, once they do, they won’t revisit your email. To avoid this situation, resend the same email to subscribers who didn’t open your first email.

Don’t worry about being too intrusive here. You’d be happy to know that this is not an uncommon practice used by marketers to boost their open rates.

10. Don’t only Send Promotional Content

Sure, the ultimate goal for your brand is to sell its wares, but this doesn’t mean all your emails must carry a sales pitch. Share informational or educational content to make your email campaigns more engaging. Help them gain light on their challenges through blogs, case studies, etc. When you send a mixed bag of email content, you are more likely to increase your open rates.

Conclusion

With these 10 tips, you can undoubtedly experience higher open rates, eventually translating into more conversions. As for subscribers who, even after all the attempts, don’t open your emails, it’s best to let them go! After all, not all subscribers turn into qualified leads, and that’s ok.

Three Tips For Writing Marketing Email Subject Lines People Actually Want To Open

Sales, marketing and branding expert. CEO of GoPromotional, distributor of promotional products with a focus on online business development.

When was the last time you sent an email? Did you know that, according to Statista, roughly 306 billion emails were estimated to have been sent and received every single day in 2020? There are only about 7.7 billion people on Earth. Let that sink in. Now, ask yourself this: How many of the emails you receive every day do you actually read? More specifically, how many of the promotional emails you receive do you open at all?

With all the benefits of the information age, it’s important to remember that we’re utterly swamped with information to an extent we’ve never experienced before. So if you want to get through to people — if you’re an e-marketer whose goal is to reach as many targets as possible via mass emails — you’ll have to put in some thought and get creative. This is a game of subject lines, and your job is to master it by crafting engaging, inviting, tempting and even daring email subject lines that will grab attention — even if it’s just long enough for a click.

The fear of missing out is your ally.

FOMO is real, and it’s powerful. For the uninitiated, “FOMO” stands for “fear of missing out,” and while it may be a behavioral trend brought about by our rapidly developing internet infrastructure, it is a valuable marketing tool. No matter what you’re missing — a new blow dryer, a different kind of juice or a wedding — the point is that you’re missing something. Maybe you just don’t know about it yet.

FOMO will be of great use to you as you draft up effective subject lines. Don’t just stop with basic additions such as “act fast,” “for a limited time” or “while supplies last.” Go all the way and use numbers. What makes you want to move faster: “while supplies last” or “three hours left?” The fewer details, the better. This is all about getting your target to open the email. Don’t worry about telling them what ends in three hours. Let them find out for themselves.

Less is sometimes more.

We’re all busy. Nobody has time to read your spiel. Yes, that even includes your 10-word subject line. How many of the hundred emails you received today had 10 words in their subject lines? It adds up, and, at some point, it just looks like alphabet soup. Crafting an email subject line is all about visuals. In my experience, a short, quippy subject line can catch the eye of someone looking at their email inbox because it helps break up the sea of text.

Consider shortening a subject line such as “New jeans from Lucky Brand, Calvin Klein, Collection by Michael Strahan and more” to something more like, “Lucky. Calvin. Strahan.” You can call it a laconic method if you want, but when you treat every word like it’s a scarce commodity, they instantly appear more important.

Laugh it up.

I think we can all agree that email is no longer the stuffy, daunting, formal affair it may have once been. Email is something we do without even thinking. It’s on our phones. It’s how we confirm toothpaste orders. It’s like socks: totally ubiquitous. And consider this: More and more, your target audience is made up of people who weren’t even born before email was invented. These consumers grew up in the beginnings of a post-advertising era, when I believe traditional advertising began to lose its grip. They know a promotional email when they see one.

The solution? Laugh it up. Be a little self-aware. I’ve found that millennials and Generation Z pick up on self-awareness, and they appreciate it. Make fun of yourself a little; it can’t hurt. Switch out your stock enthusiasm for deadpan humor. Be honest. Instead of, “This week’s top picks just for you,” for example, you could try, “We want your money.” The content matters, but what matters more is getting your target interested.

Remember, the meat and potatoes are in the body of your email, but the subject is your alluring dessert. You can have dessert before dinner — as long as you eat.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

Your Email Marketing Is Destined To Fail Without These 3 Essentials

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Think email marketing is all spam? Think again! In a world where marketing pitches come at us from all angles and on every device, email marketing has held steady as the favored channel for consumers. When used well, this platform can help you attract, convert, close and delight your buyers. Don’t underestimate it — your company’s email strategy can make or break you.

When it comes to building a successful email-marketing strategy, there are three specific elements that will help you achieve your business goals or move you further away from them, depending on how well you use them.

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

1. Frequency

Nobody wants to get ten emails a day from a subscription. It doesn’t matter if the content is brilliant, useful or undeniably accurate. Your leads will get annoyed if you send them too much information. Even though they might read it (with some luck), at some point, they’ll feel bothered and eventually click the unsubscribe button.

Avoid losing contacts by not only asking their desired frequency to get your emails, but also by relying on your metrics. Don’t pay too much attention to your open rate alone — look closely at your click-through rate too. This will indicate how interested your leads are and how often they take action to prove it.

While every industry and situation is different, a good place to start with email-marketing cadence is about once per week. This establishes a relationship with your subscribers that can turn into a habit-forming routine. Being too timid about frequency can lead to a sporadic cadence that will end up irritating recipients. If you wait too long between emails, even opt-in subscribers may report you for spam — simply because you’ve let them forget all about you!

2. Relevance

While subscribers may certainly become frustrated by the frequency of your emails, they are more likely to become annoyed if your content is not relevant to their interests and needs.

Relevance is a tricky concept because it depends on many factors like the consumer’s knowledge level, his or her stage in the buyer’s journey and good timing. You must know your audience in order to understand what type of content they want.

Specifically, you need to know what they want from you, which is often dictated by where they are in the buyer’s journey. Are they ready to buy? Are they trying to get valuable information? Are they looking to solve a problem? Are you able to solve that problem?

In every industry, there are two types of buyers: “now” buyers, who are progressing down the purchase funnel, and future buyers, who have no interest in or need for your product currently, but may down the road. For future buyers, the relevance of your content is what’s most important to them; it’s what builds the brand trust that will bring them back to you when they are ready to buy.

Finally, timing is everything. Relevance is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time.

3. Action

We receive emails basically everywhere — at home, work and while on the go. When receiving an email, we may take a look at it immediately, but sometimes it requires further action like submitting a form, watching a video or visiting a website. Try to reduce or streamline required actions in order to make it easy for contacts to follow through at any time of day.

First and foremost, make your offers simple. Your buyers don’t like to be given too many choices; when they are, they often won’t buy anything at all. Even in the physical world, this is the case. In the famous “jam study” by Columbia Business School Professor Sheena Iyengar, for example, she set out two tasting booths for a brand of jam. One table offered six flavors to choose from; the other offered 24.

While the tasting booth with 24 flavors attracted more people, the booth with six flavors sold much more jam — 30% of those who stopped at the booth bought a jar, compared to just 3% of those who stopped at the table with 24 varieties. These visitors were too confused and overwhelmed to make a purchase decision.

The difference between stopping at a booth and buying from a booth is similar to the difference between opening an email and clicking through to an offer. Your email campaigns must be able to achieve both to be successful. The more personalized and concise you can be in your offers, the simpler the choice will be for your email subscribers.

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malarkay · 3 years

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To Walk With Dreams and Darkness: Chapter One

Summary: The year: 1982. The place: Brixton, London, England. Piper is a normal 11-year-old kid trying to enjoy the summer holiday with her foster brothers, Aaron and Finn. But when a stranger shows up bearing an acceptance letter to a place called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she’s swept away to a magical world, one that is just beginning to heal from a brutal, decade-long war. There she will make new friends and new enemies. And she just might find herself a part of something bigger than she ever imagined.

Chapter 1:

Minerva studied him with a tight-lipped look of disapproval. "I trust you aren't planning on delivering this letter dressed like that."

Arygyn made a show of looking down at his outfit, a deep aqua robe trimmed in red, with billowy sleeves and metallic gold feathers embroidered around the cuffs and high collar, "Not colourful enough?"

Minerva's stern façade didn't crack. "I see that your time away from us has not granted you any more maturity. Or humility."

"I know how terribly disappointed you'd be if it had," he said, grinning at her.

She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "Given the circumstances of your resignation, I had foolishly assumed you'd be on your best behaviour to prove to the Headmaster that he made the right decision in inviting you back."

"Oh? And what do you know of the 'circumstances of my resignation'?" he asked airily.

"Need I remind you that I am Deputy Headmistress of this school? There aren't many secrets the Headmaster keeps from me. Do you think I don't know what prompted your departure?"

That sobered him up. "Minerva," he began, but she held up a hand.

"What's done is done. We cannot change the past. We can only strive to do better moving forward."

He felt his face flush. He wasn't easily embarrassed, but Minerva McGonagall had always possessed the rare ability to discomfit him, even as children.

"Back to the matter at hand, I took the liberty of choosing a Muggle outfit for you to wear on this assignment." She nodded to the folding screen that blocked off a small corner of her office.

He walked behind the screen to discover a brown tweed suit with a white button-down shirt and matching brown tie.

"Minerva, no!"

His protestation was met with a soft noise of amused satisfaction from her.

Grudgingly, he changed into the suit. Emerging from the privacy of the screen, he frowned at her as she smiled in open amusement now. "I think you forget something," she pointed out, her gaze flicking up to his hair.

He sighed, retrieving his wand from the inner pocket of his jacket and pointing it at his head. "Colovaria!" He looked at the mirror she had hanging on the wall, watching as his hair and beard faded from their glorious green and purple to his natural dirty blond.

"Well, I hope you're happy," he said, carding his fingers through his hair self-consciously.

"Oh, you have no idea," she responded, holding out an envelope sealed with the Hogwarts crest in red wax. "I won't keep you any longer. This letter is already late."

~*~*~

"I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"Aww, c'mon, Piper! They're bullies! They deserve this!"

Piper frowned. Finn, one of her foster brothers, had a point. The gang of older kids had caused them nothing but grief since they'd known them, constantly picking on them for no other reason than the fact that they were younger and smaller than them. And now here they were, clowning around in the corner shop while their bikes laid unlocked and unattended outside. Still….

"I know they're bullies, but we're not thieves."

She looked over to her other foster brother, confident that he would back her up. But he was staring at the bikes with a mischievous gleam in his green eyes. She nudged him with her elbow to get his attention. "Right, Aaron?"

"Let's do this!" Aaron said with finality, and Finn pumped his fist in the air, certain that the matter was settled with Aaron on board with his plan.

"I can't believe you two!" she hissed.

"What's the matter? Do you not know how to ride a bike or something?" Finn challenged.

"Of course I know how to ride a bike! Probably better than you! I…" she stopped abruptly when she noticed his triumphant grin. "Finnegan Fletcher! I will not be goaded into going along with your stupid plan!"

"God, Piper, why do you always have to be such a goody-goody?"

"I wouldn't have to be if you'd stop being such a screw-up!"

He mouthed her words mockingly back at her, and she was about to really lay into him when he suddenly grinned. "Hey Piper, guess what?"

"What?" she spat at him.

"Too late," he said, punctuating his words with a pair of finger guns. She looked to where he was pointing. While they were busy bickering, Aaron had gone and nicked one of the bikes, mounting it. Finn laughed and ran over to do the same, and she had no choice but to follow or be left behind to deal with the consequences.

She glanced through the glass door of the shop as she took a bike, making sure no one had noticed them. Luckily, the two leaders of the gang seemed to be embroiled in an argument of their own, which wasn't an uncommon occurrence. They were a brother-sister duo, a pair of upper-middle-class kids in their late teens who tried to cultivate a working-class punk image but couldn't quite pull it off. Nonetheless, they had managed to amass a following of half a dozen townies who followed them wherever they went. It was their bikes that she and Aaron had been sure to pick. She wasn't sure who Finn's belonged to.

"Let's get out of here before they figure out what's going on," she said.

"You don't have to tell me twice!"

With that, they pedalled like mad all the way home. Between their front garden and their neighbour's was a tall privacy hedge with a large hollow spot in the centre. It had made for a great little secret hideout when they were younger, and it was the perfect place to stash their contraband bicycles now. With the bikes hidden, she began walking up to their house when she spotted the white sedan parked out front and froze in her tracks. "Um, guys, was Ms Davies supposed to visit today?"

"No, she's not supposed to come until Monday," Aaron answered.

"They know about the bikes!" she yelped. She wheeled on Finn and poked him hard in the chest with a finger. "This is all your fault! What if she's here to take us away from the Wrights because of this? We'll be separated and never see each other again!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Aaron cut in, putting a hand on Piper's shoulder. "Piper, calm down! There's no way they know about the bikes. It's only been twenty minutes."

"Well, she's here early for some reason, and that can't be good," Piper said, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.

"What if she is here to take one of us away?" Finn asked, sounding worried now. "Not 'cause of the bikes, but just because."

"There's no reason to think that," Aaron said confidently.

"No reason to think that? Mate, when was the last time she ever came for an unscheduled visit?" Finn pointed out.

Aaron opened his mouth to answer, but he must have realized he didn't have a good response because he closed it again.

"Listen, standing here and worrying isn't going to do us any good," Piper decided. Taking a deep breath, she marched up the walkway to the front door before she lost her nerve. Pushing open the door, she was greeted by the sight of her foster mother, social worker, and a tall, suited man she had never seen before sitting in the parlour sharing a pot of tea.

"And that," the man said with a dramatic flourish of one hand. "Is how I narrowly avoided getting expelled from H-ah, Saint Cyprian's, myself!" He had a flamboyant, lilting way of speaking that didn't fit his stuffy appearance. She and her brothers stood gaping in the doorway as Agatha Wright and Florence Davies burst into scandalized laughter at his tale.

"Oh my," Agatha said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. "Well, I don't expect our Piper will be getting into such mischief. She's never been any trouble."

"Speak of the dickens!" the mysterious man said, eyes falling upon the trio. Putting his teacup down, he stood and swept over to them. "Piper Cochran, I presume?"

She nodded hesitantly, and he gave a bow that was every bit as dramatic as his earlier flourish had been. "I am Professor Skeelur, and I represent Saint Cyprian's School for Gifted Children."

Beside her, Finn giggled and nudged Aaron. "Is it just me, or does that sound like something straight out of the X-Men?"

"You two strapping lads must be Aaron and Finnegan!"

Aaron grinned, and Finn puffed out his chest. No one had ever called them strapping before, certainly not skinny little Finn. "Yes, sir," Aaron answered for them. "If you don't mind my asking, why are you here?"

"I don't mind at all. I am here to offer Ms Cochran here a spot at our school. You see, her excellent marks make her just the kind of pupil we look for."

Piper's eyes lit up. "Really? I've never heard of this school. Is it here in London?"

"Scotland, actually. It's a boarding school."

"Oh," Piper said, her face falling. "Sounds expensive."

Ms Davies spoke up from her spot on the sofa. "The school covers tuition, room, and board. Money's no issue. And should you choose to attend, you'll receive the stipend the Wrights receive for your care during the time school is in session, for school supplies, and anything else you might need while you're away."

Piper looked hopeful, "And I'll get to come back here when school isn't in session?"

"Of course," Agatha said, beckoning her over and pulling her into a hug. "You will always have a place here. You know that."

Professor Skeelur clapped his hands together, bringing their attention back to him. "Now, there are a few details that need to be discussed before Piper makes her decision. Is there somewhere that Ms Davies and I can speak to Piper privately?"

Agatha nodded. "She has her own room; you can speak in there."

Piper led them to her room. The professor shut the door and then, much to her confusion, he pulled a pale, slightly gnarled stick from the inside pocket of his jacket and pointed it at the door. "Sanctum impervius!"

"Now then, we can speak freely," he said, turning to her. "I must confess that I wasn't entirely honest with you back there. There is no Saint Cyprian's. I'm here on behalf of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Smile, kid! Your life just got a whole lot more interesting! You're a witch."

She frowned.

"Is this a joke? Because if it is, it's not funny." She had actually been stupid enough to believe that she had gotten accepted into a good school. She should have known better.

"Piper," Ms Davies said gently. "It's not a joke."

She scoffed, and the professor – if that's what he really was – added, "And I can prove it."

"What are you going to do? Pull a rabbit out of a hat? Saw Ms Davies in half?" Piper asked sarcastically.

If anything, her mockery just made his grin widen. "You misunderstand. You're not going to be learning parlour tricks. You're going to be learning real magic. Like this! Well, not exactly like this. There aren't many witches and wizards who can do this. But it'll give you an idea."

He stepped back, giving himself room, and then…well, then she couldn't quite believe her eyes. He began to warp and shift until suddenly the man was gone, and in his place was a bird. It had iridescent blue-green feathers, a red underbelly, and a tail over twice its body length. It launched itself into the air and flew around the room.

Ms Davies gasped. Piper could only stare wide-eyed as the bird landed and transformed back into the professor.

"Close your mouth, kid. You'll catch flies," he told her. "Do you believe me now?"

"I'm dreaming," she decided.

Professor Skeelur stepped forward and delivered a sharp pinch to her arm.

"Ow! Why'd you do that?"

"To help you decide if you're dreaming or not. And what d'you know, it looks like you aren't!"

"So, you're really a wizard?"

"Yes."

"And I'm a witch?"

"Yes."

"And is Ms Davies a witch?" She looked curiously at the woman she thought she had known for half her life.

"No," Ms Davies said.

"She's a Muggle."

"Oh no, what's that?" Piper asked, wondering if her social worker would transform into some strange creature now, too.

"I don't have any magic," Ms Davies explained. "But you aren't the first case I've had who ended up being magical, so this didn't come as a complete shock to me. At least, not until he turned into a bird. I haven't seen that before!"

"Does Agatha know?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"The fewer Muggles who know about us, the better," Professor Skeelur explained. "We have pretty strict laws against revealing ourselves unnecessarily."

"But what about other people like me? Don't their families know?"

"Well, yes. Most Muggle-born children's immediate families are told."

"Then why can't Agatha, and Robert, and Aaron and Finn know? They're my family."

Professor Skeelur took a moment to consider her words, then shrugged. "Well, if you consider them family, then I suppose you can tell them if you want and if you think they can keep it to themselves. I leave that decision up to you. Oh! I almost forgot."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, handing it to her. She looked at the front, finding her name and address written in green ink. Flipping it over, she saw that it was closed with a wax seal. Snapping the seal, she pulled out the letter within. The first sheet of paper was an acceptance letter that rehashed what the professor had already told her. The second page was a list of school supplies she would need.

"Work robes, dragonhide gloves, pewter cauldron, a wand," she read aloud before skimming over the rest of the list, eyebrows raising. "Where am I supposed to get all this?"

"Diagon Alley."

"I don't know where that is."

"Well, of course you don't. That's part of the reason I'm here."

"You'll take me?"

"Yes. This very afternoon if Ms Davies doesn't mind driving us. I'd Apparate us there, but you're new to magic. I don't know how you'd respond, and frankly, I'd rather not have you getting sick on me."

Piper nodded. She didn't want to get sick on him, either.

When Ms Davies agreed, they told Agatha that she had accepted her spot at the school and that they were off to purchase school supplies, and then the three of them piled into Ms Davies' car. She drove them to Charing Cross Road, and the professor led them into and through a dilapidated pub and out into a back alley.

Taking out his wand, he tapped a series of bricks and, to Piper's amazement, the wall rearranged itself into an archway, revealing a whole new world beyond.

"Wow," she breathed.

Their first stop was to Gringotts Wizarding Bank, where Professor Skeelur and Ms Davies helped her set up an account and get her stipend money exchanged into wizarding currency. She tried not to stare too hard at the bankers, who the professor told her were goblins, during the transaction. She didn't want to be rude.

"Where to next?" the professor asked once they left the bank.

"Back near the entrance was a shop with a stack of cauldrons outside. I need one of those."

The professor nodded and led the way to the shop. He ended up negotiating a reasonable price for a display model that had no flaws other than a darker patina that suggested that it had been sitting there for some time.

Next door, they purchased a set of brass scales and a telescope before heading to the apothecary across the street to pick up a set of glass phials.

They passed a shop called Quality Quidditch Supplies that had a large window display showing off brooms, an odd assortment of balls, and protective gear. "What are the brooms for?" she asked.

"Flying, of course."

She stopped walking and stared at him before bursting into laughter. "You're telling me that witches actually do fly around on broomsticks?"

"All the time."

"Why haven't we ever seen any, then?"

"I told you, we're cautious about not revealing magic to Muggles."

They stopped off at the stationary store, where she purchased some quills, ink, and a pack of parchment rolls, along with some notebooks. Next came Flourish & Blotts. Stepping into the store, Piper felt her pulse jump. It was the most glorious bookshop she had ever seen in her life. The store was two stories tall, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves ran along the perimeter of each floor. Smaller bookcases and tables stacked precariously high with books dotted the first floor, and even more books surrounded the checkout counter. The shop was large but was so cluttered that it felt cosy, warm, and inviting.

She slowly worked her way around the shop, perusing the books. There were hardcover and paperback books that were no different from those you'd find in a regular bookshop. But there were also ones bound in what Professor Skeelur claimed was dragon hide, as well as books bound in silk. There were giant books she could barely lift and tiny books with print so small she couldn't read it without a magnifying glass.

Eventually, she came across a section of second-hand textbooks. She carefully selected the best cared for ones she could find. In line at the checkout counter, she picked up a copy of a book called The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She flipped through the pages and asked, "Is this a book of fables?"

Professor Skeelur nodded, and Piper added it to her pile. "Aren't you a little old for children's stories?" he joked.

"Well, in the Muggle world, you can actually learn a lot about a culture by reading their fables. I imagine it's the same with the wizarding world. And I want to learn about you. About us."

The professor smiled a genuine smile and excused himself. After a moment, he came back with another book, this one titled Hogwarts: A History. "I think you'll like this one, too. I'll buy it for you."

"You don't have to do that," she told him.

"Of course I don't, kid. I want to. You're welcome."

She grinned as they paid for her books and reluctantly left the shop.

Next, they stopped at the professor's behest at Cranville Quincey's Magical Junk Shop shop. "All this stuff of yours is getting heavy," he complained. "Even split between the three of us. And by the three of us, I mean mostly me. Don't think I haven't noticed that I'm the one doing all the heavy lifting here."

He set down the bags he had been carrying, the ones with her books and cauldron, before searching through the small, cluttered shop. "Luck is on our side today!" he said, as he yanked a battered leather steamer trunk free from where it was wedged between an old wardrobe and an armchair that had seen better days. He checked the price tag and, satisfied with it, paid the shopkeeper and ushered them back outside.

Once out in the light of the sun, the trunk looked even less impressive. It was beyond beat up, with tears in the leather, a sagging lid, and a broken latch.

"Thanks," she said with as much politeness as she could muster.

Professor Skeelur smirked. "Nothing a little spit-shine won't fix."

"Please don't spit on it. It's been through enough."

"Piper!" Ms Davies said reproachfully.

But Professor Skeelur just laughed it off. "Watch and learn, Little Miss Sassy Pants!" He pointed his wand at the trunk and said, "Reparo!"

The trunk began to mend. The tears in the leather closed, the latch realigned itself and firmly reattached to the trunk, and the structural integrity of the lid was restored.

"Wow!"

"Oh, I'm not done." He pointed his wand again. "Installare rotae!"

The trunk rose a few centimetres off the ground. She looked closer and discovered that it was because locking wheels had been added to each corner of the trunk.

"Capacious extremis!" Piper watched but didn't notice anything different about the trunk. She looked at him quizzically. "Extension Charm," he explained. "It gives you more room on the inside. Now then, what's your favourite colour?"

"Blue."

"Colovaria!"

The dull brown leather of the chest transformed into a deep, royal blue that really made the brass fixtures pop.

"Wow…." She was getting a lot of use out of that word today.

"How do you like it now?" he asked smugly.

"I love it!"

"Good. Now pack your things away, and let's continue. We still need your robes and your wand."

They went to a second-hand robe shop next, where she found three sets of school uniforms and work robes in good shape for half the price the professor said Madam Malkin's would cost.

All that was left was her wand. The professor led them to a little shop toward the end of the street. "Ollivander," the professor told her, "is the best wandmaker in all of Britain. If there's one area you don't want to skimp on, it's your wand." Ms Davies elected to stay outside with her trunk so that things wouldn't get too cramped inside.

Ollivander's was a small, dimly lit shop. The air was stuffy and smelt faintly of dust. Shelves lined the wall behind the counter, each one stacked high with long, narrow boxes.

Behind the counter was a man with unruly white hair. Piper assumed he must be Mr Ollivander. He had his back turned as he searched the shelves, running his finger along a row of boxes before choosing one.

Setting it on the counter, he opened the lid, taking out a wand and offering it to the only other customer in the shop, a dark-haired girl her age.

"This one is blackthorn and unicorn hair, 11 inches, fairly flexible. A very loyal combination. Once the wand bonds with its owner, it's very unlikely to be won by another. Good for duelists."

The girl gave the wand a wave. When nothing happened, Mr Ollivander took the wand back, setting it aside with others that formed a small discard pile on the counter.

The man resumed his search of the shelves, choosing another. "Birch and phoenix feather, 12 inches, unyielding. Phoenix feather wands favour your family. Your father and grandmother were both chosen by them. Give it a try."

Piper looked up at Professor Skeelur. She wanted to ask him what the man meant by the wand choosing people, but he had his attention focused elsewhere. She followed his gaze to where a woman stood silently off to the side. She was an older, aristocratic woman dressed in black, Victorian-era clothing. Her long, sleek hair was either pure white or platinum blonde; Piper couldn't tell which. Her eyes were an icy blue and just as cold as she stared back at the professor with a level of antipathy that he matched.

"No?" Ollivander's voice drew her attention back to him and the girl. "Let's try this one. Elm and phoenix feather, 10 inches, pliable."

Again, nothing seemed to happen when the girl waved the wand, and the man added it to the pile of rejected wands.

Ollivander scanned the shelves, stroking his chin. A full minute of silence stretched out before he chose another box.

"Yew and dragon heartstring, 12 inches, rigid."

The girl perked up the moment the wand touched her hand. She raised the wand, and Piper jumped as a shower of silver sparks shot into the air, bathing the room in a ghostly glow before fading.

"Excellent!" Ollivander exclaimed. "I'll box this up for you."

The woman stepped up to the counter to pay for the wand, and the girl turned, finally noticing that they weren't alone. Casting a surreptitious glance toward the woman, making sure her attention was elsewhere, she walked over to them.

Face to face, Piper was able to get a better look at her. She was of a similar height to Piper with a pale, heart-shaped face and, unusually, deep violet eyes.

"What are you doing here?" she asked the professor without preamble.

"Hogwarts business."

"Oh," the girl said, disappointment apparent in her tone. "I thought perhaps..." her eyes cut to Piper, and she elected not to finish her sentence. Instead, she studied Piper, eyeing her from head to toe and back again. "You're Muggle-born." It wasn't a question.

Piper nodded. "And you're," she hesitated for just a moment, realizing she wasn't sure of the proper terminology, but took a deep breath and ploughed on ahead anyway. "Witch-born."

Beside her, Professor Skeelur coughed, pressing a fist to his mouth. By the way his eyes sparkled, she could tell his cough was covering laughter.

The girl laughed outright, not bothering to hide her amusement. She stuck out a hand, "I'm Lark Cyclonis."

Before Piper could introduce herself, the woman was at Lark's side, slapping down her offered hand.

"Merlin's beard, Anarchis," Professor Skeelur said heatedly. “Is she not allowed to make new friends?”

"Don't be absurd, Arygyn. Befriend a Muggle-born? Out of the question.”

Piper's jaw tightened. Unlike when Lark had said it, Anarchis' use of the word 'Muggle-born' was filled with disdain. She was no stranger to that tone. She had heard it often enough from people who couldn't keep their opinions to themselves when it came to her living situation or heritage.

Professor Skeelur narrowed his eyes at the woman, and when he spoke, his voice was as cool as hers. "Why don't you just use the word we all know you really want to use?"

Anarchis sneered. "Watch your tongue with me, boy. This is precisely why you are to have nothing to do with this family. I don't need you teaching Larkspur how to be a disrespectful blood traitor."

"Grandmother, please," Lark's voice was tight, her face carefully blank.

"Not another word," Anarchis snapped at her. She handed Lark the bag with her wand before gripping the back of her neck. "Now come along. We still need your books." Without another glance at either Professor Skeelur or herself, the woman marched the girl out of the shop.

Piper crossed her arms as she watched them go. "Good to know I'm not good enough for some people in this world, either," she said, aiming for a light tone, but the lump in her throat got in the way.

"Kid," Professor Skeelur said, putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. "Anyone here who thinks you're not good enough isn't worth knowing. Now let's get you your wand."

She nodded, giving him a weak smile.

He walked her up to the counter. "Mr Ollivander, this is Piper Cochran. She'll be starting her first year at Hogwarts this fall."

"It's nice to meet you, sir," she greeted him as he peered at her with luminous, silvery eyes. If it weren't for Professor Skeelur and that awful Anarchis woman both having blue eyes, she'd seriously be starting to wonder if odd-coloured eyes were the norm in this strange world.

"The pleasure is all mine," he replied. He walked around the counter with a tape measure in hand. "Now, let's see what we're working with."

He released the tape measure, and it went to work on its own. It measured her height, the length of her arms, wrist circumference, palm width, the distance between her eyes, and a dozen other nonsensical measurements. A quill jotted down the information for Ollivander as he asked her about her dominant hand and when, where, and at what time she was born.

By the end of it, she wasn't quite sure if he meant to sell her a wand, tailor her school uniform, or write up her astrological chart.

He walked back around to the other side of the counter and searched the shelves, speaking to her as he went. "Each wand has its own unique personality," he explained. "The different wood types and wand cores have certain characteristics they bring to the table, with each individual tree and creature adding their own flair. Length and flexibility each play their parts. And, of course, the personality of the wizard the wand bonds with is the final ingredient. When you put all those pieces together, you get a wand that is unlike any that has ever existed or will exist again. The choosing of a wand is one of the most important moments in a young witch or wizard's life."

Plucking a box from the shelf, he turned and smiled at her. Opening the box, he offered her the wand within. "Grapevine and dragon heartstring, 11", swishy."

She took the wand and, having watched this process play out with Lark before her, gave it a little wave. Nothing happened, and Ollivander took the wand back, placing it back into the box before setting it aside. "You see, the wand chooses the wizard. If the wand decides you're not a good fit for it, it will refuse to perform for you or will perform poorly. You can use another's wand in a pinch, but neither you nor the wand will reach your full potential that way. Here, my goal is to match you with the perfect wand. I hate wasted potential."

"How will I know if a wand is a perfect match?"

"Oh, it will let you know. Now then, try this one on for size. Alder and unicorn hair, 13 inches, supple."

Again, she tried waving the wand, and again nothing happened. Nothing happened with cedar and unicorn hair or aspen and dragon heartstring, either.

As the pile of discarded wands grew, Piper began to wonder if Professor Skeelur had made a mistake. Maybe there was another Piper Cochran out there somewhere who was the real witch, waiting on a Hogwarts letter that would never come because it had been handed to her imposter, instead.

"Maple and phoenix feather, 12 and a half inches, reasonably supple."

Piper took the wand, and a feeling of warmth spread through her. She waved the wand, and a glowing ball of blue light shot from it, flew around the perimeter of the shop, and right out the window.

Ollivander smiled, "An excellent wand! And an auspicious start to your new life as a witch. Both maple and phoenix feather are highly prized. For a wand of such calibre to choose you tells me that you can achieve greatness. But never rest on your laurels. Maple demands an adventurous and innovative spirit in its owner, or it will languish."

"Really?" Piper breathed. "You aren't just saying that to make me feel better about myself?"

"Why would I do that? I take my craft very seriously. If I believed you to be a mediocre witch in the making, I'd simply say nothing at all," Ollivander said matter-of-factly.

"What about that last wand you sold?"

"Yew and dragon heartstring? Why do you want to know? Taking a shine to wand lore already?"

"Just curious."

"Well, it's a powerful combination."

"More powerful than maple and phoenix feather?"

Ollivander hummed as he mulled the question over. "I would say so, yes. Phoenix feather will excel at any task you put it toward. But it's also stubborn. It makes you earn its excellence. But I find that those who are chosen by it are up to the challenge. Dragon heartstring possesses more brute strength and is easier to work with, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. You're more likely to accidentally blow yourself up with a dragon heartstring wand."

She laughed but stopped when she realized neither Ollivander nor the professor was laughing with her. "You're serious?"

"Quite. There's a reason magic requires so many years of schooling and why underage wizards aren't allowed to use magic outside of school. As for the wood, yew is rare and powerful. Some would say..."

"Dark," Professor Skeelur cut in, and Ollivander frowned.

"Yes, some would say that. Yew's reputation has been unfairly maligned over the centuries. I was going to say that yew is bold. It's attracted to the strong, the resolute. It appreciates a certain level of audacity in its owner. None of those qualities are inherently evil. Does that answer your question?"

"I think so, thank you."

Ollivander smiled again. "If you're still interested in wand lore after your fifth year, come see me. I might be persuaded to offer you a summer apprenticeship."

Grinning, she thanked him again. He packaged up the wand as she counted out the money she owed him. "Your wand registration number is printed on a card inside the wand box. Don't lose it. You may need it someday, especially if you ever plan to travel to the states. They have strict permitting laws over there."

She thanked him for a third time, and Professor Skeelur smirked at her as they left the shop. "Look at you. Your first day in the wizarding world, and you're already getting job offers."

Her smile didn't fade for the rest of the day. This was going to be fun.

~*~*~

A/N: Okay, who made it this far? Really? Great! Scale of 1-10, how interested are you in continuing to read this?

#storm hawks #storm hawks fanfic #storm hawks piper #arygyn the skeelur #cyclonis

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years

Text

1034.

Do you play minesweeper or solitare or anything to pass the time? >> Ah, back in the day... I used to bang out games of solitaire like it was my job. Started with actual cards while I was in the psych ward and then when I got a laptop years later it was over, lmao. Anyway, nowadays my “mindless digital fun” of choice is this Kitten Match game on my phone or playing the flash games on Flight Rising. Also, crosswords, although that’s a little less “mindless”. Like, I could listen to music while playing Kitten Match, but I could not do that with crosswords.

Do you believe in life after death? >> It sounds like a horrible concept, to me. I mean, I’m sure it could go well (Inworld is an example of an afterlife I could get behind), but frankly, one life is so intense and difficult and exhausting that I can’t imagine having to go through another one after this one. And a possibly-eternal one, at that?? Oh, dear god please no.

What do you think of Oprah? >> I don’t have any thoughts about her. I like most of the movies I’ve seen her in and I never really watched her show. She’s mostly a meme to me now, I don’t even know if her show is still on the air or not. (Although, come to think of it, the other day a mutual posted a video of her with Brené Brown, who is a pretty new sensation, so... yeah, maybe she is still on the air.)

Do you write a lot of surveys or do you just take them? >> I don’t make them anymore, I just take them.

What’s something you’re really good at? >> I’m not sure yet.

How big is your bedroom? >> Not very. It’s the smaller of the two bedrooms in this apartment and you feel it pretty quickly once you start putting furniture in. It’s why I only have a twin bed and not a full. But I’ll gladly take a small bedroom of my own over having to share, any day.

Do you like to go bowling? >> No.

Do you usually remember your dreams? >> I usually don’t, unless they’re one of the formulaic “I am homeless in a metropolis that also has weird incongruous natural features in the middle of it like mountain ranges” dreams. The formula is so well-known to my brain that it’s not hard to recall those dreams upon awakening, but anything that deviates from the formula is harder for my brain to hang onto and convert into images that my waking brain can recall.

Do you think they mean anything? >> I don’t know if my dreams mean anything, especially when I so rarely remember them and cannot track patterns or anything.

Have you ever had a crush on a teacher? >> Something like that.

Besides bzoink, which websites do you frequent? >> I don’t frequent bzoink, but I do frequent tumblr, Flight Rising, various streaming websites, reddit (through a third-party app), and the Lifehacker suite of websites.

Who was the last person to come to your house? >> ---

What’s your birthstone? Do you have anything with it? >> Emerald. No.

Have you ever had carpal tunnel? >> No.

Are you one of those people who is really smart but has no common sense? >> No?

Do you think fast? >> I don’t know how fast I think.

What browser do you use? >> Firefox is my default browser, but I use Edge Chromium for tumblr and Flight Rising because they work better here for some reason.

Are you clumsy? >> No.

Paste the last thing you copied. >> The last thing I copied was this survey...

Have you ever eaten at Hooters? >> No. I am completely opposed to eating there.

Do you like turtles? >> Sure.

Do you have to have goggles when you swim? >> ---

How long can you stay awake? >> Nowadays, no longer than about 18 hours. I mean, I could push it if I really had to, I guess, but my well-being would deteriorate pretty rapidly.

Where were you going the first time you were on a plane? >> From North Carolina to New Jersey.

Do you have a good memory? >> My short-term memory is unremarkable in its averageness but my long-term memory is heavily fragmented and unbalanced thanks to both trauma and drug use.

Are you usually more blunt or polite? >> I think I do pretty well balancing assertiveness with tactfulness. Sometimes I’m probably less tactful than I could be, but I do my best.

Does it take a long time to get to know you? >> It depends on how much of me someone wants to know. It’s very easy to gain a superficial knowledge of me, because I have social media accounts and Discord and what-not. But to plumb the depths probably takes a long time. I say “probably” because I have no real data for this since... uh, no one’s really... well, you know.

Is there a specific historical period that you’re interested in? >> Most of them are some level of interesting.

Tell me something funny that happened today. >> Nothing funny happened today. Except stuff on the show I was watching.

Do you know anyone with a really obnoxious laugh? >> No.

Do you hold grudges? >> I mean, sometimes.

How much was your allowance when you were a kid? >> Ha! As if.

Can you do push-ups? >> I can do a few from the knees.

I usually assume people online are girls. Do you do anything like that? >> No...

When you were growing up, did your family move around a lot? >> I wouldn’t say “a lot”, but the few times I did move were traumatic enough, so.

Do you use public transportation? >> Yeah, when it’s not COVID times.

What’s your favorite punctuation mark? >> I don’t have one.

Have you ever had surgery? >> No.

What’s something you’re really proud of? >> I don’t know.

#surveys #survey #random survey #not for reblogging *glare*

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joe-england · 5 years

Photo

Working on this last Zebra Girl book is hard. It’s taken a lot of my focus, I haven’t had the motivation to simply make art for months. It’s depressing, but my muse finally perked up when I got the strange urge to do like I never do and draw serious. I’m going to bare my soul here. Okay? I want to be honest. That’s me up there. Notice the baggy jeans, hanging from my belt because I lost weight years ago and I tend to wear old pants that are too big for me now. I’m fairly slender at this point, but I’ve still got a slight spare tire I have yet to shed. See? Well, I may have taken liberties with the ears and such. More to the point, you may know that my brand is “Obsessive Thoughts”. I chose that term as a label because it’s not just a name, it’s a lifestyle. I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the tendency to… well, to compulsively obsess. And not about important things, usually, but in response to a universe full of gremlins. You feel like you have to do certain things, like it’s necessary to do them, like you’re holding the world together, and dropping the ball will have urgent existential consequences. It’s a persistent source of stress. So I’m going to describe my perspective, and bear in mind that on a conscious level I’m well aware of the inherent nonsense. But I want to get this out into the open. This is what some part of my psyche tells me is happening, if not all the time, then for most of my waking hours: I move through the world surrounded by contaminants. I must constantly be on guard against spiritual infection. I dodge, react, and cleanse myself through tiny rituals performed hundreds of times a day. Nearly every part of my body is involved in a clumsy dance. Repetition of movements is cleansing. I move haltingly as my extremities catch on contact points which demand my instinctive tactile attention. My fingers mostly lead, forced to twitch and touch and straighten and flex, casting towards acceptable directions (I observe the spasms as I type this very sentence, words punctuated by stops and starts as a fingertip lightly taps an extra key, or jerks to the side, or briefly hovers in place, or just wriggles a bit towards empty space, all obeying some ritual I can no longer decipher). Like guns, pointing them in the wrong direction at the wrong moment risks compromising myself since they relay the sickness. They are primary soldiers but also prime targets, and they must hide themselves whenever deviant sights or sounds threaten my purity. Objectionable surfaces must also be avoided, such as pictures of people I don’t like. I have to touch some things. I have to avoid touching others. My feet do their part too, tapping the front boards of stairs as I climb them one by one or intentionally bumping a crevice or some panel around my desk in order to banish the bad mojo running through my system. I scuff the bottoms of my shoes as I walk to insure that the ends of my being make appropriate contact with separate boards of wood or concrete panels, whatever I happen to be walking on at the time. Meanwhile, up top, my head is kept on constant alert, my eyes a busy terminal of positive and negative input and output. Abstract moving imagery tends to be a threat, for If a subversive pattern appears before me I must vibrate my sight by summoning pressure through my skull, defeating its hypnotic effect (and a diminutive voice in me frets even now that I am spilling my secrets to the tired old conspiracy running its tendrils through all electronic devices). Meals are more of the same. If dirty energy ever infects my food with stray data (for instance, if an offending name is uttered while I’m looking at what I’m about to eat) then I must negate the pollution by holding the offending morsel up to my eye and matching its transparent double image against an acceptable surface to banish the corruption before I allow it in my mouth (a technique which also applies to my fingers, and which happens often when I watch the news during meal times, horrid politicians constantly threatening to invade my essence with their ugly souls). Whenever a contaminant aura does slip inside of me then I must cough it lightly out, willing it from my guts and off the tip of my tongue. Noises issued from my throat contribute to regular maintenance, further warding against evil spirits. My nostrils serve a likewise function now and then. Similar duties are assigned to my knees, my toes, my elbows, or whatever piece of skin is ever exposed to undesirable elements and conscripted in my never-ending war with the invisible forces. Beside my shuffling feet, my shadow must also avoid contact with any and all acknowledged threats, including my own dialogue. Any word uttered risks assigning its deleterious quality to any part of me caught in my sight at the time of its mention (spoken or otherwise). This includes the insides of my eyelids, which often disrupts my efforts to sleep at night as I must force them open to expunge toxic names that cross my mind. The campaign extends to inanimate objects, which constantly suffer the touch of my overworked fingers “wiping off” phantom sediment, or which serve as conduits for various energies, or as goal posts which must sometimes be met before an arbitrary time limit has expired (for example, a turning point in a song). This was worse when I was a child, and had to race onto a carpet or couch whenever a toilet began to flush. I thankfully managed to shed some of the more overt habits over time. But it should go without saying that the very inner monologue running through my brain must abide by its own arcane set of rules, because words and names cannot be used carelessly, even in my thoughts. As for that, two particular words have special functions in my mental arsenal: “Not” and “Narf.” “Not” is a mantra, since it is a pure expression of expulsion, and I throw it constantly at negative influences, especially bad imagery or text that gets out of hand. Conversely, “Narf”, a noise coined by a cartoon lab mouse named Pinky, is a safety mechanism, since it means nothing, thereby safely absorbing any malign concept and allowing me to make idle unspoken noise without risk. Both words are subject to distortion as the situation requires, ghosting through the roof of my mouth in various ways, shapes, and forms, a single altered syllable sometimes called into play, expressed through the smallest push of saliva hitting my teeth. “Nt, nt, nt. Tt. Unt.” I could go on. Looking at this stuff, it’s hard to believe that I’ve lived with it my entire life. Typing it out really makes it sound crazy. I don’t want to be insensitive to other people with issues like this, but it’s hard not to have that reaction when I put it into writing and recognize that this is what I’m actually doing all the time. I always knew it was odd, but I always figured that I would grow out of it, and when I didn’t I just tried to mitigate it. And I thought I was doing alright, because it used to seem worse! I beat it back when I was younger, and my ego encouraged me to accept what was left as part of my genius, or something. But looking at all this, I find myself wondering if I didn’t just make it more subtle through complexity. Or maybe it’s only gotten worse with the stress of the past few years. I don’t know. But I want people to know about this. Now I’m not sure why I always tried to keep it to myself. I feel like bringing it out into the open might help, might serve as a spark to finally burn away the web and let it all go. There are definitely people out there who have it worse than I do. Maybe you’re one of them! We all have our crosses to bear. And like I said, I’ve managed to cut some of it off. But now I think it’s time I started fighting it again. God only knows how much of my time I could get back if I wasn’t twiddling my fingers. Hey. Thanks for listening.

-Joe

#self portrait #obsessive compulsive disorder #mental health

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pityrodeo · 7 years

Text

On “Alcohol”

This is a 2017 adaptation of an introductory essay I wrote in 2015 for a digital publication produced in response to the song “Alcohol” by the trio Sisyphus, and its accompanying music video.

It is significant enough for a song to accomplish all that rhythm, melody, words, and performance can attain when employed together; for a companion video to lend further artistic merit is a triumph of its own. “Alcohol”—the concluding song on Sisyphus, the self-titled LP by the über-collaboration formerly known as s / s / s—is a force, and quite possibly the fiercest piece that David Cohn (as Serengeti), Ryan Lott (of Son Lux), and Sufjan Stevens have made together in their sporadic encounters. By pairing a disturbing electronic sonic palette and relentlessly vulnerable lyrics with an engaging animation of the human experience, Sisyphus achieves an audio and visual construction in “Alcohol” that is uniquely powerful among their respective eclectic catalogues.

Examining the song’s aural makings is a useful place to start. The lyrics contain a deeply distressing admission by the narrator of the trauma he’s endured with his lips at the glass—“The message in question/ Disease in my knees/ Was it alcohol alcohol alcohol alcohol”—especially due to his parents’ tendencies for drinking and addiction (“They were divisible/ Living invisible/ Clinical/ Pivotal/ Biblical/ Medical pinnacle/ Criminal/ Difficult miracle/ Fucking embarrassing”). Phallic bottles churn poison throughout his body, warp his mind, and twist his soul, yet the chronicler can’t resist the resulting comforts, even as he treads the wake of the terrors his family left him in: “I can feel you beside me/ I feel you around me/ Equation is algebra lesson/ Confession/ I need you/ Be near me/ I kill you/ … I want your protection/ ... I wanted to like you.” The music itself is aggressive for the majority of the track: a robotic beat and a dark, descending bass line grip at the listener’s attention, as Serengeti raps a highly in-rhyming ramble, each line punctuated by the repetition of a single word (e.g. “Tylenol,” “Al-Anon,” “protocol,” etc.). Barely a moment is spared from the spoken triplet eighth-note words for the first quarter, but eventually a more charming progression lightens the drum-and-bass pattern for a while and, bookends a smaller pause of static that ends with an amusing “fuck this shit!” by ‘Geti. Indeed, humor is at times the only balm for processing lasting trauma, which Cohn is especially adept at in his previous releases.

And then, abruptly following the final official lyric, “I’ll suck out your soul with the Devil’s integrity/ I’ll suck at your dick with the Devil’s integrity,” the looping beat takes hold again for just over two whole, stubborn minutes—only to bloom into an incredibly cosmic climax. The soundscape flowing around the drums lands somewhere between the glistening piano-pop of Coldplay’s X&Y and Stevens’ and Son Lux’s electro-symphonic albums The Age of Adz and Lanterns, respectively. Stevens begins to sing with an indiscernible, haunting wail, perhaps the subconscious voice behind the narrator’s monologue at an instant of momentous clarity: “I am not my father/ I am not my mother/ You have to discover/ We are sisters, brothers.”* And then, as suddenly as it started, “Alcohol” concludes with a sustained, synthetic tone, ending the album hesitantly.

Yet the song’s life is two-fold, for the companion lyric video made by John Beeler of Asthmatic Kitty Records, with help from John Gilpin, Grey Gordon, and Hannah Riffe, not only stands for itself for its tantalizing power, but amplifies the evocations already generated by the content and nature of the recording. While trimmed somewhat from the album recording—the isolated beat mid-video doesn’t simmer quite as long—the format is simple: for every beat of the meter, a new image is displayed, for about one third of a second each, in continuous succession. It views like a child swiping through an entire photo library as fast as she can, or a lagging, dissonant animation by someone who stumbled upon leftover prints at a one-hour photo department. The images vary widely in quality and content—some are finely rendered photographs, many appear to be pixelated screenshots of online media or scanned prints from family and friends, and a few fall into far less natural categories. There are three images that are sustained for longer than a beat, including the red-on-white all-caps lyrics, frozen TV static, and melting SMPTE color bars. There is but one duplicate image—curiously, a gas-masked protestor with a smoke canister—though it is cropped slightly closer for its second appearance. In all, there are 619 images presented in the “Alcohol” video.

On the one hand, the onslaught of pictures seems random, as if made using automation of some sort; on the other hand, each image had to come from somewhere, ripped from its context, much like a search engine’s results list. Even still, certain themes do appear: glistening newborns, vomiting partiers, portraits with disconcerting facial expressions, Sisyphus paraphernalia, and (most predictably) those engaged in drinking the many forms of the song’s namesake—everyone from animals, to college kids, to the famous actors, presidents, and Internet memes of the modern world, all engaged in toasting, drinking, or making a mess of alcoholic beverages. Despite these few commonalities, the variety of imagery presented throughout the video is overwhelming, to say the least, and part of its emotional impact derives from that pictorial enormity.

Not much is clear about the film’s genesis, what motivated its form and content, or why perennial fashion magazine Vogue debuted the off-putting video on Valentine’s Day, 2014. But most mysterious is the way it manages to produce both immense anxiety and peace during a screening, all at once. The formation of the Sisyphus trio and their work hints at a model they have perfected, with Stevens describing that “the attribution gets blurry from the start. You might think I wrote the hook, but I probably stole it from ’Geti. And you might think ’Geti wrote the rap, but he probably stole it from Ryan.” The filmmakers took perhaps a similar approach, trawling social media or Google. The multi-dimensional nausea and tranquility the film provides with each viewing is real, and it feels original each time—a result of its visual structure.

The video for “Alcohol” is a curated stream, but not an overthought one. It is impulsive, and paced like the memory reel one experiences while drunk: half-second glances, ideas, and feelings flow with less and less connection (or a diminishing willingness to bother connecting) with every additional sip. In both visual and aural forms, the work acknowledges that in these extreme states—depression, drunkenness, euphoria, mania—you may uncover certain truths, some simple and some life altering, but all long sought after. The only risk is that by the time you balance out, sober up, or “calm it down,” you just may not remember them anymore, having slipped through them so freely.

Perhaps that’s where Sisyphus comes in—as “three friends in a room having fun and permitting one another the freedom to get smart and get stupid”: “Alcohol” is their reminder that everyone has to learn these truths for themselves: none of us are our fathers or mothers, who even with the best intentions or resources cannot pass all lessons on to us. Nor can our siblings, lovers, friends, mentors, or passing acquaintances, though they too can be potent sources. That the images embody such a thorough chunk of the human condition and creation is significant in showing how we discover the same truths over and over as the centuries roll on. And in a perfect paradox, these truths both weigh each of us down as heavy stones to hold up unaided, yet strengthen us on our very own feet—all at once.

*The final lyrics presented here are guesswork: nowhere on video, LP print media, nor the wide trove of information that is the Internet was anything other than the suggestion that the ending lyric is “I am not my father” repeated over and over—which is clearly not true, though the third line is indeed far from clear. In any case, these were determined from limited consonant clarity, and slight intuition.

Works Cited

“Alcohol Lyrics.” Genius, 15 Feb. 2014, www.genius.com/Sisyphus-alcohol-lyrics/. Accessed 9 Aug. 2016.

La Force, Thessaly. “Artist Jim Hodges Collaborates with Musicians Sisyphus for His New Survey at the Walker Art Center.” Vogue, 14 Feb. 2014, www.vogue.com/872645/artist-jim-hodges-collaborates-with-musicians-sisyphus-for-his-new-survey-at-the-walker-art-center/. Accessed 13 May 2015.

Lott, Ryan. Interview by Andrew Hannah. “Son Lux on Sisyphus.” The Line of Best Fit. 7 Apr. 2014, www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/lists/son-lux-on-sisyphus-it-sounds-to-me-like-three-friends-in-a-room-having-fun-and-permitting-one-other-the-freedom-to-get-smart-and-get-stupid-148788/. Accessed 13 May 2015.

“Sisyphus - Alcohol (Lyric Video).” Vimeo, uploaded by Sisyphus, 5 Feb. 2014, www.vimeo.com/85938454/. Accessed 13 May 2015.

“Sisyphus - Calm It Down (Lyric Video).” YouTube. uploaded by SisyphusVEVO, 19 Dec. 2013, https://youtu.be/dVVvgFWn14c/. Accessed 13 May 2015.

Stevens, Sufjan. Interview by Dan Johnson, Paul Schmelzer. “On Sisyphus: Sufjan Stevens discusses Jim Hodges’ art and the new name for his S/S/S trio.” Walker Magazine, Walker Art Museum, 19 Dec. 2013, www.walkerart.org/magazine/2013/sufjan-stevens-sisyphus-jim-hodges/. Accessed 13 May 2015.

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jimmy70s384090-blog · 7 years

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Ways to Acquire Inspired And Remain Motivated.

Within this time and also grow older, you could believe that enjoying all the time just isn't possible, however in truth this is. As well as, not merely is it achievable for you, this is actually likewise possible for every person you recognize. If you cherished this article and you would like to receive much more facts relating to yellow pages online advertising (http://bellezadelami1.info) kindly take a look at the web site. Our experts will substitute your automobile along with a brand new among the very same make version as well as requirements if your vehicle is wrecked past affordable repair or swiped and also certainly not recuperated and you got your cars and truck coming from brand new within recent 12 months. If you stop making an effort to receive him back as well as produce him believe you don't wish him any longer, this will definitely speed up things up. Your intellect understands that product factors don't produce you delighted if you are like me. 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