#if you line up enough skills of the same Sin you can activate Resonance

[throughpatchesofviolet]

Girl who's played Limbus Company since launch finally learns to appreciate the power that comes with Absolute Resonance.

[wyrd-weaver]

"𝔏𝔢𝔱 𝔐𝔢 𝔖𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔅𝔲𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔫."

Trigger Warnings: Suicidal Ideation, Mention of Self-Harm, Mention of Rape (That Resulted in Pregnancy), Mention of Binge Eating, Mention of Weight (By a Disgusting Man), Depression, Anxiety.

⤷ Remember: Every body type is beautiful, and you're legally allowed to maim those who say otherwise! The brief few sentences in this story are not accurate of any decent, sane individual.

Word Count: 1887

～～～～～～～～～～

Depression had you caged, shackled to the memories...the all-consuming sensations of horror and disgust. The very same that were forced upon you, that iced all your muscles twelve hellish months ago. Twelve! And yet, the nightmares refused to cease. Every evening, you battled demons most powerful and foul, acquiring scar after scar after scar. If you stumbled, if you lay down your weapon or lost...could you really be faulted? If this was Heaven's retribution, a cleansing of your contaminated, sinful body, then...was it not misguided? Surely a void replaced the evidence against you?

Blame should never have befallen you! This child, despite his mask of innocence, attested to humanity's ugliest side. Your heart was unravelling - you needed him, as an extension of yourself, as someone to cherish, but...you didn't want him. He wasn't the product of consent. He was loathsome...and a burden. He was so young, so dependent.

Casting him to the mercy of the streets would be more than a mere violation of morality. You already felt criminal - convicted on thoughts and false claims, serving a life sentence in the bowels of Hell. There was an escape, of course. Although...it wasn't accompanied by a light, or the gentle touch of a loved one. No...this escape was advertised as selfish, shameful...weak. And maybe so. Maybe life's greatest demand was the forgoing of happiness. But...to such an extent seemed excessive, and deliberately cruel. You shouldn't have been so dirty, so broken...an embarrassing stain on your family's name.

A single mother. A victim. A failure.

Plagued with flashbacks that favoured spontaneity above calculation, you carved miserable little lines on to your arms. Nobody knew - not your son, nor the Avengers...nor even Loki. They all harboured some form of trauma, however deep-rooted, and so...they had no need for your sob story. Who would care for someone so violated? Someone so...afraid? Your mind, weakened by fatigue and chronic worry, was simply too weak to resist those thoughts, and all hope had been drained from your heart. Why should you be tethered to life, if only for your child? Should you instead seek liberation, peace...joy? Decency discouraged it, but pain stood its ground.

With your dignity in shambles, your disowning, your binging...nothing felt right anymore! Nothing felt...clean. Loki had noticed, observant as he was. Here, sequestered within the walls of the Avengers' Compound, he was the closest to a friend...maybe even more.

No, no, no! I can't think like that! He's a man! A man! I shouldn't even be going near him anymore! Why, oh god...why is he the only one I'm not afraid of? The only one who can comfort me when I break? I can't...! I haven't even told him about...about...Well, I haven't told anyone! They all just think I slept with someone recklessly! And now...now I'm tainted, unlovable! This is...it's all my fault...I should have defended myself. I should have done something! Anything! Why...why did I freeze...? Why? Why?! Why?!!

Loki understood mental anguish and the torture of dissimilarity, as his birth-rights. Perhaps that was reason enough for your breathing to even, in his embrace. It had taken moths to allow such a privilege, and Loki's persistence, how his voice quivered as he begged to help you in any form...

You, whom he held so very dear...

You might have assumed his affections romantic, once upon a time. Yet...no longer. An ailment had struck you - one that rendered both eyes and ears ignorant to his double meanings, his implications...his love. You couldn't process them over the fear and paranoia. Didn't all relationships entail force, and...activities of a sexual nature? You never wanted to experience that again. Never! So, while sleep washed over the Compound, you crept to the kitchen, intent on expanding your waistline evermore. That your size may, to some, be cause for revulsion, had never previously occurred. It was only when the words danced on the tongue of that godforsaken man...

Eat, eat more! Who cares if you're sick? Keep eating! He said...he said that excess was unattractive. So - so maybe he won't...maybe I won't be...again...?

It had been dominance play, a show of superiority.

Loki would never steal something so sacred, unless you willed it.

He was a gentle soul, manipulated into committing an atrocity, and scorned - by the Avengers, especially. He wouldn't find any resonance in your tale (and you hoped he never would), but as a companion, a patient listener...surely there would be no judgement in his heart? He wouldn't be so quick to abandon you...right? Still, a single utterance of that day, of that most fright-inducing event...required courage far surpassing your own. Maybe...just a word? A sign? Something...?

Lonely was the path you wandered, in spite of Loki's presence. Alone, he failed to drown your demons. He held them under the waves, but they always returned.

You appreciated the effort. Plasters may cover your scars, but they could never heal your heart. Could Loki?...In time? If distorted thoughts of him were enough to ground you in the midst of panic...could he aid your recovery?

He also wondered that. Your deception wasn't half as masterful as you had hoped. Or perhaps you were simply the target of Loki's observations, and therefore came under frequent scrutiny. He had, of course, picked up on the subtle changes in your demeanour - particularly post-pregnancy. He idled at your side, throwing neither intrusive question nor accusation. This was at the behest of his conscience, although he longed desperately to ignore it. He wanted to know...what exactly happened last year, when your transformation began?

Your lips were sealed, but his very essence ached - sorrow, curiosity, love, sympathy and compassion all melding together within him. They ran amuck, refusing any whisper of sleep. His concentration had flown alongside it, rendering him unable to enjoy the book that rested in his palm. It had maintained a decent level of interest until now, but duty called. He would pry open your chamber door, glimpse your ethereal, sleeping form...and finally feel content. If you were strolling through dreamland, then his concern could dissipate. At least for a while. If not...he would discover why.

Loki hesitated outside your door, for if you were truly non-the-wiser, asleep...vulnerable, then a mere survey of yourself and the room would leave, on his tongue, a terrible aftertaste.

But, lo and behold, only your young son slept soundly, in his crib.

Loki was grappled now with a sense of alarm - where in Odin's name were you? And, pray tell...why was your child on his lonesome, cleansing himself of the prior day, in such a frigid room? He was wrought with grief upon recalling your distaste for the babe, and again when he realised there was no option to remove him, bring him to a warmer space, rock him and sing soft melodies...

Loki's primary goal was to find you, and perhaps...coerce you into confessing everything. From a true account of the day that always replayed in your mind, to your innermost feelings and thoughts...he needed to know, and to understand.

He had scoured half the building before laying eyes upon you. However...relief proved elusive. There were an endless number of questions, but none dared to grace the air. Why was your beautiful face stained with tears? Why were you eating, despite looking so sickly? What had troubled you so? And...could he kill it? He was unsure of the proper manner in which to approach you. He had always tread lightly, but complete silence and delicacy were more fortes of his mother. He swallowed down the nerves.

"(Y/n), darling...why aren't you sleeping?"

You startled, eyes bloodshot and a biscuit lodged between your lips. "U-Uh..."

He walked forward. "Is there something weighing on your mind?"

"...No?" This was mumbled, as though credence escaped you.

"My dear, you aren't a skilled liar. Talk to me, please." The heartache nearly tore him apart.

You wouldn't meet his gaze. "I...I can't."

"Please?" Both of your voices cracked, in unison.

Oh god, alright. Okay. This if fine...right? It's fine. I'm fine...Am I? What if I'm not?! I can't tell him just yet! But he looks so upset...I did this! I caused this! Oh god...just stay - stay calm! Calm down...calm down...

A tear trickled down your cheek, then another. "I-I've never...I don't want to - to relive it."

He brought you into a protective embrace. "Then you won't. I swear, by all the beings in the Nine Realms, that I will keep you safe. Please, let me share your burden."

Three sentences. Who was so weak-willed, that a mere three sentences shattered all their defences? You cursed his silver tongue. "(S-S/n)...! He - he's...I didn't...I-I don't want him! J-Just because I didn't fight back...I didn't try to run, he...t-that man, he did...things. To me. And now...now I'm so dirty! I'm disgusting...unclean, weak. B-But...sometimes - sometimes I think it's all in my head. But it isn't! I-It happened, and (S/n)! He's...he's the proof! He reminds me...o-of that..."

Loki froze. "What...?"

"But I-I couldn't - I couldn't tell anyone! They wouldn't...believe me, o-or care! People like me, they don't - this...this doesn't happen! Why...why did this happen?? A-And now...there's (S/n). And every...every minute is Hell! I can't take it anymore...I don't w-want to be here. I don't want to be...to be alive anymore..."

Loki could almost see the threads of rationality thinning. Who would...defile you, hurt you? You were so important, so genuine and...lovely. "I will find this man, and personally deliver his comeuppance. He never deserved your voice, let alone your touch."

"No!" You stiffened in his arms. "Then he'll...he'll come back..."

"If he does, I shall slay him." Yet, Loki made no attempt to leave. Instead, he slipped into a mask of composure, enough to continue speaking without seething. "I apologise...if you thought I wouldn't care. I do - more than you could ever imagine. You are the most stunning creature I have had the honour of meeting, in all my lifetime. I was resolved to spend my days at your side, never professing my love, but after hearing that...I..."

You panicked. "Loki...don't. Please-"

"I know it would be impudent to assume that you could accept me right now, but consider that...I can protect you. I will never let him, or anyone, hurt you again." Loki wiped away your crystalline sadness. "But, please...when you can't see worth or joy in this life...please come to me. I will be here to remind you of your victory - you survived such torture, and delivered a child. You are far from weak, (Y/n)."

Loki's fingers darted along your wrist. He yearned to kiss every scar, every inch of your skin.

Though, he would do nothing without permission. "Now, my dear...let's put these treats away. I would suggest that, henceforth, you eat balanced meals and partake in some fun activities. Perhaps I could read to you, one day? And venturing out for a walk - we can do that together. I...um, hope I'm not overstepping any boundaries. I'm simply thinking of ways to occupy your mind...and your time. You can do these things alone, of course..."

You nodded. "But...you'd - you'd do them with me?"

"I would gladly do anything with you, my love." Loki's words were empty of duplicity.

You were angelic - the only one safe from his lies.

[gretagerwigarchive]

Greta Gerwig on Cinema

Interview by Rebecca Conroy

source: http://www.crash.fr/greta-gerwig-on-cinema/

I have so many questions. I love the fact that you’re a female in NY not falling into some kind of comedic trap in a SNL way

Oh, Thanks!

That you’re kind of forging some sort of your own stamp on things. I notice in your films that there’s a character quest. Tell me about that. Tell me about your… the characters that you write and that you play they’re not quite sure of themselves…

In the films I’ve written- like Francis and Mistress America, I’m interested in kind of very date-old story structures that have to do with grace and epiphany, and those story structures are generally reserved for male characters. For me- this sounds crazy- it has to resonate with some more archetypical story, and then the specificity of it makes it sing. It’s something that emerges to me about the form of the story that feels as if it fits into something that’s bigger. In Francis Ha, the last place she is before the end of the movie is she goes back to the college she went to for the summer, and it opens with her in the woods. To me, that’s connected with being cast out into the wilderness and to all the stories of when people hit their low point they’re cast out into the wilderness. I like it when you can take real things from life, and give them a kind of mythic quality. People are largely unconscious of it, but it’s operating underneath the story and I always have to find how it grafts onto something like that.

When you used the term “low point,” people love to watch characters going through some situation that’s not perfect. As a character, as a writer, you are probably looking for something inspirational to pull you out of the low point or A person, a friendship, or a job… something that is an inspiration… but often with those inspirational things you almost have to kill them once you are accepted by them so do you find that you have a certain something that really inspires you as a writer or for your characters when you act. What’s that idea for you? I do notice that often your characters have to ruin what inspires them. What’s that all about?

I am very interested in the moments when people are still pursuing the thing they’ve actually moved past. In Mistress, that Brook can’t see that she’s moved past this moment, but she’s still going for it and that she genuinely thinks it will provide salvation in an economic way and she has a place in the world that makes sense. I think with Francis, she wants Sophie to live with her for the rest of her life and she wants to be a modern dancer. For both of them, they’re beating back against a current, and I find it heartbreaking and very true. In a way, in Mistress I feel that the epiphany happens less for Brook and more for Lola’s character of Tracey. She wants to be a writer, but I think this is the first time she’s really hurt an adult. That’s such a vivid moment, when you’re around that age and you realize, “I can hurt people, I’m not a child any longer, my power to injure another exists, and that writing isn’t just a frivolous activity.” One of the things I love about that movie is that it’s not OK between them. She says, “I know you came to apologize,” and Lola says, “No I’m really not that sorry,” and she says, “Oh well, fuck this then…” and then they kind of move on, and it’s like nobody was forgiven, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t get absolved for your sins, but that’s OK. And I think I’m interested in how that transforms. To be it’s all very mysterious, and I kind of stumble towards it, and then it becomes clear to me and then I go back and try to make it clear to the audience, but I never want the audience to feel like they can totally articulate it. I want it to be existing a little under the surface. So that it creates less of a thesis, and more of a feeling.

Sometimes when you’re writing you can get an idea of little vignettes and sometimes you get a whole story arch. I know you’re interersted in playwrighting. How do your stories come to you? Do they come in little more architypical storyline first?

My experience of it is that it comes in almost a collection of scenes and moments, and I’ll start building a world. I don’t know how other people do it, but I always need to generate almost too much material, and then it’s almost like a magic eye picture where you look at it, and it seems as a mess, and then all of a sudden the picture comes out at you.

Do you tape stuff to the wall or write in a notebook, or how do you siphon out the useless scenes?

I do a combination. I write in a notebook and also on a computer. I tend to print everything out and lay it all on the ground, at some point. Once I have enough material and pieces, and the story comes out, I start arranging and culling and putting things together. It’s a very odd process of faith. Underneath the spark of my idea, the character has a story, and that story will be made clear to me if I just follow the breadcrumbs. Your unconscious does a lot of the work for you; you leave a lot of clues for yourself about what the thing is. An then it’s almost as if you’re dechipering the clues you’ve layed for yourself. I overwrite in general, because it’s almost like I don’t know where the story will be, so if I have a character in a certain set of circumstances or in a certain world, I’ll write every scene because maybe she’ll be in a location or something will happen where there’s a secret story door that I didn’t open, and that’s where I’ll find it, but I can’t know until I put them through all of it.

Do you stay alone during your writing, and how long does it take for your bigger projects?

Those take a while. It’s not one straight line of writing. It’s like, you sort of pick it up and put it down, and then there’ll be a period of intensity where I’m really with it and I’m shaping it and major choices are being made, and then I put it down for a little bit and then I look at it again. Those take a very long time from the very first time I started writing them, until the time that they’re done? Two or three years.

How many projects can you have going at one time, mentally, writing-wise?

Writing wise? Well, I’m sort of testing that right now. Whenever I’m engaged in writing it, I can really only be engaged with one. But in terms of having irons in the fire, I can have different things in different stages and then go back to them and play them off each other a little bit, like I’ll work on one, put it down then work on another and procrastinate each one with each other, but I can’t spend half my day writing one thing then half my day writing the other. That doesn’t work.

This is the eternal question for an artist: the schedule and the confidence to stick to the schedule. How you have the confidence to revisit a story and really stick with a story and keep going?

I’m always tinkering with my system and trying to figure out the best way to do it. I spend a lot of my time deeply freaked out by writing, and by the faith required to do it, and I would spend so much time feeling bad about myself and sort of paying penance in an odd way, as if I had to go through these rituals in order to write which is that, “you must spend an hour feeling bad about yourself,” and that “you must spend an hour thinking that what you’ve already written is stupid,” and then at some point I was like “This is taking too much energy,” so I think there’s been a lot of trying to short-circuit that. And I’ve gotten so much better at it. And I’ve been given the confidence, and it does help.

With your success there must come some sort of huge self doubt that didn’t exist before…

That’s true. It sounds totally bonkers, but I do think so much of it comes down to having some amount of crazy faith that the thing will show up for you if you show up to it. And I think it really is faith in that way. I was watching this interview with Mike Nichols last night and he was talking about his background and improv, he said that the whole power of improv is that you come in at zero, and you just trust that it will come and he said the same skill is there as a director. You can have this faith that whatever your unconscious is doing will take care of it. And that’s a very tricky thing, and do I think you have to really build it like a muscle and take care of it. And the schedule is hard. What I do well with is, if I have something pulling on my day. If I have endless time it’s a death trap. If I have limited time, I can do it. Endless time is really hard. Some people work well that way. I feel lonely, and scared and lost, and like the day is stretching before me with no endpoint, just a horizon. And that’s really difficult but luckily I have enough pulling in other directions, that it gains a shape.

You live in New York and not LA. Is there a personal reason why?

I don’t like LA. I don’t like driving. I like walking. And you don’t walk in LA. It really is just a lifestyle thing. I like public transportation and public spaces and being around people. I don’t like the feeling of being in a pod, and I get very depressed in LA because I feel like you go from your house pod, to your car pod, to your office pod, back to your house pod and it’s a hermeticlaly sealed life. There’s no accidents, there’s no happenstance….

And so much of your wirting is about happenstance…

Yes, and I just feel so closed off from what I find nourishing there. There’s amazing things there. So I don’t mean to undercut LA there’s wonderful museums, there’s great arthouse cinemas, there’s great restaurants, there’s the beach. I completely understand why people say they like LA. I just personally feel like I start losing the plot in a pretty major way when I’m there. It makes sense to me. If I did drugs seriously I would love it, it would be a great place. You could be in your house doing drugs. But I don’t. So I feel horrible there.

Do you drink a lot of coffee? What do you do while you write?

I drink a tremendous amount of coffee. I drink too much coffee. I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes. I don’t any longer because I don’t want to die of lung cancer. But now, I still consume nicotene. I think I will wear a nicotene patch for the rest of my life. I didn’t wear it today, because I knew that I couldn’t wear it to a photo shoot …

Does it leave a mark on your skin?

Yes. I went to a psychiatrist who was asking me about my work habits once, because I was trying to quit smoking, and he asked, “How do you work?” And I was like, “So much coffee, so much nicotene…” and he was asking about other things and he was like, “yeah, you have undiagnosed ADHD.” I said “Really?” and he said “Definitely, you’ve been self medicating for your whole life,” and then I was on a drug which was to help me quit smoking, and it was an antidepressant as well, and I felt like it was carpet bombing my brain, and then I talked to a doctor and said, “Listen, I think I just need nicotene. What bad happens to me if I put a patch on for my whole life?” And they were like, “It’s weird, but you can totally do it.” But then I watched the Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock, and Sherlock in that version wears patches- nicotene patches- was like just nicotene patches and I’m like him. It’s just for me, I don’t really know what it does to my brain that makes me normal, and not fall into depression and not lose my bearings so it sounds crazy though. I’ve had doctors tell me that nicotene in and of itself it does the same amount to your brain as caffeine and they were like it’s OK.”

What are the seminal books or plays that you have always loved? The ones that helped you become a writer? And then what are your recent favorites?

I loved Woody Allen and Monty Python and comedians in that way, and then movie musicals like, “American in Paris,” “Singing in the Rain,” “Oklahoma” and the great Agnes de Mille choreography, were really big for me. And then it wasn’t until I got to college that started getting into cinema proper as an art form. I’ve always been a reader, and I think for me that my jam, as it were, were those 19th century novels were really big for me. The Austin, the Brontes, Dickens, Herman Melville, and the Russians. Anna Karinina was a huge one. There’s a section in “Anna Karinina” where he goes into the dog’s mind, it’s so perfect, and I couldn’t believe it. In any case, those were really big for me. And then, because of theater, Shakespeare was everything. We would go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival every year, and I’d see two plays a day for a couple of weeks and that was very formative.

How old were you then?

From about the ages of about seven or eight to eighteen. It was an incredible way to experience theater. In high school, it was all Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard. A Tom Stoppard quote from “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” was my senior quote, which is incredibly nerdy. Albee had a kind of rhythm that I instantly connected to. It’s just awful and funny and wicked, and similarly, Tom Stoppard was just so frothy. For a high school student, it felt like you were part of the insider baseball with him, because he was always with the references, and then you’d go look up the reference, and you’d learn another thing which is the same way I felt about Woody Allen, because he’d always reference movies and books and then I’d go find them. When I got into college, I worked at a theater company downtown- I did lights and sound at Richard Foreman’s theater, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater Company- and through that group (nobody knew who I was, I was just a chubby eighteen year old who was good at lights) but that opened me up to different theater downtown, and Will Eno was a big playwright for me. I was finding my people, and what I was interested in and so those were all very formative. I read Milton, and it killed me- I couldn’t believe it. The idea that even poetry is a state of sin because it’s fallen, because it’s metaphor? I felt like I had to stay inside for the weekend when I read it.

What would you say right now would be your favorite authors?

I’ve really gotten much more interested in female writers and artists, and playwrights, and filmmakers -and I don’t think this is unusual- but I think I had sort of unconsciously internalized that the the way I think of when someone says, “Do you want wine?” I automatically think “they meant red wine. If they meant white wine they would have said white wine. Wine is red wine, is that artists are men. If it’s a woman artist, they’ll tell you it’s a woman artist.” I haven’t even totally started dismantling it until really recently. There’s the biggies of course – Austin, the Brontes, Virginia Wolf, but I really didn’t have a sense of who the women were who were my heroes and I think now, I have had the privilege to work with some of these people… the French filmmaker Claire Denis and Agnes Varda, and now Mia Hansen-Love, she’s amazing, and I recently those Ferrante books holy shit… those Ferrante books destroyed me. As a poet, Eileen Myles and Kay Ryan and for fiction Renada Adler, I felt like there was a whole world that I was stepping into. My then favorite playwright right now is Annie Baker. I felt like when I saw her play for the first time in like 2007, “Circle Mirror,” I had that feeling that was “This is not the best play by a woman, this is the best play… she is the best writer. It’s not a B-side. It’s she is better. She is better than them” I felt this surge of pride and jealousy. I’m almost, at this point, excluseively interested in what women are doing, and I’m sure that it will change in a way and of course I love male writers. I mean I think, I feel very lucky to be at the time I’m in. Living through what’s happening. I still can’t believe how unequal it is.

What’s your opinion about men everywhere in film, on film sets, etc? When you first started, were you intimidated? I don’t mind talking about it. It’s a boys’ club. And I think that part of it is that boys are given- not to be too sociological- but I feel like boys are given machines to play with. Girls are not given machines. Boys are given computers and cameras and tools, and I think there’s an immediate intimidation factor with girls with the tools that they don’t… But I’ll tell you… I know a lot of male filmmakers and most of them don’t know anything about those tools, they just feel confident about it, but they don’t know more about lenses than you do. They don’t know. I mean, the DP knows about lenses. But a lot of them don’t know what they’re what they’re talking about- not really. And it’s a really, I mean its an invisible thing.

Do you construct your crews, now that you have some say in the matter, around picking really nice people, or talented, or…

I always want the best people to be the people. The reason that I am attracted to both film and theater and dance for that matter, and music, is that they’re so incredibly collaborative, and that they are always made by groups. You’re never just executing something, you’re bringing your whole self to it, and I want people who bring their whole selves, and feel ownership over it. I still hate, I shouldn’t say it because maybe I’ll eventially take one, but I’m not crazy about the “film by” credit. I think you directed it, and you wrote it, but the film is not by you. It’s not. That’s an absurd statement to make. It’s by the people that made it. And I think what I look for is people that have a little spark of the commune in them because for me that’s what I’m drawn to. People tend to construct film sets as if they’re military operations with a pyramid power structure with the director at the top and then you go on down. I’m much more interested in “everybody owns the factory.”

So as a pretty blonde, you could go down the road if you were offered. I’m sure you are offered the opportunity to work with those male directors.  Have you ever kind of decided, “Eh, I don’t think so,” or do you do it just for the experience? What s your thought on going down those roads, but also maintaining your identity?

When I started beginning to make my living as an actor and I was in Greenberg, and things started presenting themselves to me, I did not go for a certain aspect of it. I stepped away. Part of me thought, “why can’t you go for this? Why can’t you go for this? What’s wrong with you? Are you self-sabotaging?” I gained a solid twenty pounds. Because there was something in me that felt very much like, if I somehow tried to be identified with my looks and my youth, what the fuck are my forties gonna be like? And I think for me, it was a false binary, and it is a false binary. At that moment when I was twenty six through twenty seven, I just couldn’t do that. And I think that it felt very lonely and strange. To be honest, you can do all of it. You don’t have to make that choice. But for me, it was something I just couldn’t totally do.

I know that so many people fell in love with you in Greenberg. What do you think the qualities of your character had in that movie that were breakthrough? Nobody really saw that before. There was something…

I don’t know. I was completely unaware of what it was. I just knew that I knew who Florence was and I knew how to… I was so sure that this sounds completely arrogant but I was so sure that I was the only person who could do it justice in the way that I felt her. And I mean it’s one of those things, I just felt like I owned it very quickly. When I read it, it was a feeling of, “I didn’t write this but I’m so angry that I didn’t write this because I couldn’t write this,” and that’s a good feeling to get. I just had an instant ownership of it. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I’m very glad that it was true.

Do you do yoga, or anything spiritual like that? Oh, Yeah. I’m a ‘theist.’ So, I’m a major I mean I’m not…I get uncomfortable around “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior stuff,” I find that creepy, but I go to church every Sunday. I had a weird method for a while where I was going to the Quaker meeting at 9am and sit silently for an hour, and then go to a Protestant church where I liked the choir, and then at noon there was a Jesuit service I liked, and then I was like “You’re going to church for five hours on Sunday. This is weird” ..but I went to catholic school when I was in high school. I wasn’t raised Catholic. My main attraction to Catholicism is I love the Jesuits, I love the rigor, I love the mystery, I love the ceremony and I love that as a religion and as a sect of Christianity the emphasis on worshipping the Virgin Mary – it’s a woman and I know it’s complicated, because I don’t like the position of women in the Catholic church but also, they pray to the Virgin Mary. That’s not something Protestants do, and it feels like this ‘God the Father’ thing is a bit alienating for me, but to engage with the idea of a woman of the mother, it seems like it’s connected to a more pagan type of religion and also the multiplicity of saints in Catholicism feels very old to me. It doesn’t feel quite monotheistic it is from a tradition of more that theres all different sides. So yeah.

Do you still go to Church?

Oh yeah. I think it’s largely based on Catholicism rather than Christianity because that was the education I was raised in, and I feel that Buddhism is beautiful, Judaism is beautiful, and Islam. But that wasn’t the tradition I came up through, so I think I heard the Dalai Lama say, “You don’t need to become a Buddhist. Be what you are. Just be kind,” and I thought, “Oh that’s right.” It always felt like a bit of an act to me, to take on a religion. I think whatever works for people then good.

What kind of dance do you do?

I take a lot of hip hop, Jamaican dance hall, and house dancing and it’s really hard and I’m not good at it. I’m just the awkward tall blonde girl standing in the back, but it’s good for the soul. It’s hard for me to exercise just for the purpose of exercising, I’m like, “what are we doing?” It always felt like doing math to me like the way it’s taught like, “I can solve this equation for you but why? What are we doing? I’m just moving these numbers around, this is dumb. There’s no higher purpose.”

What do you see for yourself in your future?

I think in the short term, I’m directing a movie I’ve written this summer.

What’s that about?

It’s sort of a Mother-daughter movie, and it’s about an eighteen year-old, and her last year living at home before she goes to college, and her mother and their family and their town and it’s starring sioirse tonana and she’s great, and she’ll be great. I direct that in August and September, and I think what I’ve been doing and what I’ll continue to do is that I want to write and direct films about women. That’s what I want to do. I’ve been writing them, and acting in them and producing them, but think it’s sort of the next step and I’d like to make a bunch of them. I really think that the last ten years, about 2006 around when I graduated from college until now, I apprenticed in film and I feel like it’s time. I’m ready.

[theadventuresoflazerbeast-blog]

One year later - The official year in review blog post (2016)

Ready for takeoff. 

The pilots voice comes over the intercom on the plane as the engines turn on and we finally start moving. It’s January 4th, 2017 which is exactly 365 days from when I first arrived in Germany. As I had expected when I first came to Berlin, one year from arriving I would likely be on a plane leaving Berlin as my VISA expires. And just how my journey began, so it seemed it would end in similar fashion – but you would be the fool if you were to think my journey was over. Before we get into where I am going, and what is happening – I think it would be a great time to catch you up on the recent events.

I will warn you – being a very important day for me, and with a lot of hours of travel ahead of me – this will be a very long post. However, just like a 15 course home cooked Italian meal, feel free to take a view readings to finish it or digest it.

A tiny heart beat of success

As I finished off with my last post about the HACK-A-SONG workshop, I had finished a track near the end of the workshop that I felt was really really good. I didn’t see it nor understand it then, but the stars were aligning for me. The song – which I had made most of in about 20 minutes  - woke something up in me. A fury, a passion, a shouting voice yelling at the top of it’s lungs this is really good and I believe in my music. It is important to note that I do not mean really good by your standards, nor by some third party, nor by your slightly deaf Grandma with hearing in one ear – no – I really mean good by MY standards. When I finished the tracks for my last EP I felt a feeling of relief that I had finally gotten things done for the deadline I had set out. I had met my goal, and with it, explored a genre of music that I was interested in. You see, I still was very un-sure about what ‘genre’ I wanted to make – a state of mind for most musicians these days I call ‘genre ambiguity’.

I feel almost every moden musician has struggled with this question, and continues to grapple with it (even changing their musical identities from time to time). At first I thought genre was the end goal. Pick a genre, have an identity, perform your function. Robotical. Mechanical. This whole idea represented my old ways of thinking, my old cravings to be just fitting into one image of a person – with specific likes and dislikes – instead of a mosaic of things. It’s not a good way to view yourself or the world, and throughout growing up I continually tried to suppress the things that made me unique in order to try and fit in better. My thinking for music was along the same lines – if I could just say I make X style of music then I will be happy and people will know what I am doing. Also, if I knew the genre I want to make music in, it substantially limits the amount I need to learn as genres themselves are just groupings of musical constraints that when summed together sound like pop music, or jazz music, or underground-Norweigen-ethno-jazz-techno. But thanks to SIN (the music collective I started) I had an open community and venue to experiment without attaching my musical identity to soemthing as a ‘release’. I could simply make these 1 minute bite sized pieces of music exploring ideas from week to week without having to worry about trying to share them to the world. Through those 44 one minute beats that I created in 2016, I began to really feel a sense of settling on my vision. However, it was not a specific genre, but more a mindset. The mindset that finding what genre of music I wanted to make music in was not going to come to me no matter how many zen monk chanting tapes I listened to, no, it was going to come to me like most things do – through action. And more importantly – making music in one genre was not important, what was more important was making music I liked despite what genre it is, or what I have made before – and then releasing it. Through active production and experimentation in different genres, I now became aware I would eventually find my voice. So, as such, my first EP was an exploration. I liked it, I enjoyed it, but I knew deep down it wasn’t the real music that was resonating with me – which is OK – and a huge step forward.

Fast forward the tape a bit, and there I was at a hyper-version of our weekly meetings making 8 tracks in 10 hours (HACK-A-SONG). The last track I made of my 8 tracks caused me to feel something new even as I was creating it. As if for the first time, my vision was becoming reality – a skill that takes a lot of time to get to. I was trying to make a LO-FI Hip Hop sound that I was really listening to at the time, and strangely enough, it was materialising in front of me. The track I made used a sample from an old Italian folk song. Old Italian folk song hey? If you are an avid reader of this blog, maybe you are starting to see the stars aligning, or at least connecting. If not, let me explain:

In the summer I had a friend (a new friend at the time)  from my German class that was from Italy and was going back in August with his partner and their daughter to visit family. He openly invited me to come with them – and well knowing these chances are rare to experience a country from someone who knows it – I agreed. It was one of the best vacations I have ever taken (and the highlights you can find in this blog if  you scroll far enough). However, one moment (which at the time was, well, very trivial) ended up becoming so pivotal 5 months later.

We were staying at Roberta’s father’s house near Pescara (she is Diego’s partner). He lived on a quaint Italian hill overlooking a bunch of vineyards, and drove a white something rather car (I must admit, the car brands over here in Europe are hella confusing – I think it was a “PANDA” which made me think of that song PANDA which my friend back home Ko told me was playing everywhere). In the car was an mp3 disc that he played anytime he drove anywhere for the last 10 years. On this disc was about 200 songs (as mp3 discs store a lot of music) all of which were 99% old Italian songs. Everytime we filed into the car and drove through the meandering Italian hills, the music would come on. And everytime I would interrupt the listening experience demanding WHO they just played. I wrote down all of the names in my phone, and looked Diego square in the eyes and said, “Diego – there are some seriously good samples in this music. Samples that, well, if they were used with a kind of hip hop beat would be really really cool! I am totally going to make a LOFI Hip Hop EP one of these days with this music.” He was so excited and told me to tell him when I did.

Now fast forward back to the HACKASONG and the track I was instantly falling in love with had used one of the songs from Italy that I had written down. Strange how life unfolds, but also sometimes beautiful.

HACKASONG ended, however, my excitedness for this track didn’t. I decided to finish it immediately and get it mastered at my fast-becoming sensei Idan’s studio. One week later it was done, and then I did the all-too-familiar feeling of letting the track go into the wilderness of online music by posting it on my soundcloud. 20 plays. 30 plays. 38 plays. The plays trickled in as they usually do, with my expectations of achieving maybe 200 plays being a good goal. And as I relished in the afterglow of finishing yet another track, something was wrong. Something was different. As I was going to pick up my metaphorical pen to write the next track, I felt it was too soon and I couldn’t do it. I felt that my track I just made hadn’t been heard by the people that NEEDED to hear it. Not the parents, not the friends, not even the fellow producers. No, the people that actually LISTEN to this kind of music and ENJOY it. I always knew I wasn’t doing any musical promotion, so to think that my music would all of a sudden blow up was foolish. I thought about it a bit, and pictured someone at their computer who really wanted to hear my track (they just didn’t know it yet). Someone who listens to this type of music and would really appreciate what I had made. Then I thought, how would they find it? And there I realized the problem. They couldn’t even if they tried. I was whispering in a room full of disco sirens, shouting people, screaming babies, and one of those guys that seems to exist everywhere with a megaphone on a box saying the END IS HERE. But something triggered these thoughts, the catalyst behind the reaction. That something was that I felt truly behind this music. A sort of…energy that was created by my music, lighting a flame inside me that I have never felt. I wanted people to listen to it. Not for their opinions or feedback, but for their enjoyment. And these people were unlikely people I knew, except my older brother Bo who strangely enough also loves this music genre (he’s always been a huge influence on my musica nd media tastes). Now with this flame inside me, I had enough energy – enough drive – to setout and finally try marketing my music by myself (a task which an entire profession is devoted to in the music industry). Now…how do I do this?

What happens next for me, well, was truly remarkable.

I had gone on random rants before about how I loved listening to music through YouTube like my older brother did. Something I have recently awakened to is that people listen to music EXTREMELY differently now. Gone are the days where everyone would buy music through one medium such as CDs or Vinyl.  The market has become so fragmented (and ESPECIALLY online). Some people, like my brother and myself, almost exclusively listen to YouTube for music unless we are on the go. Others use Spotify, others iTunes Music streaming, etc… For me though, it was definitely YouTube – I was very familiar with it, had playlists all over the place – and had a lot of channels I liked. I also have always had a fascination about visuals with music (I loved music videos and my favourite music has always come from movies). YouTube was also where I discovered this musical genre of LOFI Hip Hop on a quite big channel called Anime Vibe. Yes Anime as in the Japanese cartoons. Now before I continue I also have to explain (god I am just in a huge explaining mood don’t you think? Well it’s necessary for me to get back to the plane haha) how YouTube works with music.

YouTube for Music

Recently with the advent of music channels YouTube transitioned from being just about videos to also being about music. The coolest part being that all the music needed a visual. Think about it. You can’t just upload a song, no – you have to upload a video. Now there are many ways around this – the most popular of which is to actually just use a still image for the video that most often is a piece of art. And so was born the YouTube music curators like Majestic Casual or Mr. Suicide Sheep with millions of subscribers. These channels basically hand picked new music coupled with art and then made videos showcasing both. They have steadily grown in popularity to where now the BIGGEST artists will sometimes be chosen to be featured on these channels, guaranteeing them millions of views in the span of a days.  So my mission became quite readily to get one of my tracks on Anime Vibe, a channel I personally loved for both the visuals as well as the music. This task though was going to take somet time, as they weren’t a small fish (200k subscribers) and also posted the music of all the artists I was aspiring to and also considered to be the best in the game of LOFI Hip Hop. But I had a clear goal – and knew I was working my way towards it. One last thing on this – I recently read a lot of stuff about goal setting and the ‘Goldilocks zone’. This theory states that if you attempt a task that is too far outside of your capabilities you will be blocked by anxiety and procrastination. Too easy, the task will be put off and de-prioritized. However, JUST RIGHT (aka the Goldilocks zone) and then you will not only get the task done (because it is not easy but also not impossible) but you will ENJOY it and feel a lot of self-victory upon finishing it. This task was perfectly in the Goldilocks zone.

It was in this time of looking up other channels that I stumbled across a website called Submithub. The website, which acts as an intermediary between musicians and record labels/blogs, blew me away. For just $1 I could send my track to a record label or blog and that $1 would guarantee a few things such as: -they must listen to the track in 48 hours.

-they must listen to at least 30 seconds

-they must accept or decline it for posting/use

-if declined they must imply some reasoning

The biggest thing here was a pass/fail system. I excel in these systems (since I spent most of my life in scholastic grading systems). If I know I failed something, I know where to improve, and pick myself up and try again and again and again until I get the pass. The worst thing for me is never knowing, sitting tentatively waiting on a response that may never come. This sytem easily gets rid of that.

So I loaded $10 into the machine and started sending it to blogs, labels, everyone I could find. I also realized you get 2 free submissions every 6 hours – but these submissions come with none of the aforementioned benefits – meaning a response wasn’t guaranteed. But I was here already, so why not?

During that day I fanned out my approach, posting my music on some relevent forums, sending cold calling emails to YouTube channels, and submitting through this new website.

The following days I received a lot of emails like this:

Rough, but I knew this was progress (and that was just the first day). Finally in the last hours I decided to find a way to submit to AnimeVibe – my big goal. I truly felt it was good enough to get on the channel, but knew it would most likely be rejected in the best case, or worse not even listened to due to the amount of submissions they get.

Welcome to the Maze

So I went to YouTube to find how to send it to them. I go to their About page and there is nothing other than an email to send DMCA notices to. I send a message to the email asking how to submit and get nothing back. I am confronted by a maze I thought to myself. Sitting there I realized there must be a way in. I look up a method to google search an entire YouTube channels comments for a key word, and after about 30 minutes of tinkering around I get it to KIND OF WORK. I search for one word, submit, and lo and behold the entrance to the maze opens up. Much like when Frodo spoke ‘Friend’ in elvish in the Lord of the Rings to enter the mines of Moria, I felt a door began to illuminate itself (oh come on, legendary reference).

There was one, yes, ONE comment out of tens of thousands of random banter that was asking how to submit music to the channel. The best part was, they responded. “Send it to our Soundcloud.” What? I never knew they had a soundcloud channel. So I have to submit it to them on Soundcloud to get them to post it on YouTube – alright, I dig it. So I bring up my cold call email that I researched and put my best foot forward. I hit send, and tell myself not to expect anything – and also that if I get a response the I already won. The days went by and I got no response, which was totally fine with me – I tried.

Fireworks

In the next few days something happened that is a kin to the firework videos I posted just recently – like 1000s of fireworks going off simultaneously.

I get a rare email…

What. Wait, what? I start freaking out, it’s 6 am and my girlfriend is getting ready for work.  A blog wrote me saying it was beautiful and they will write a blog post about it. I start sky punching and running back between my sleep deprived girlfriend and my laptop to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. I was so pleased, I felt like my job was done. Mission complete. This was a huge victory and big step forward. As I calmed down and my girlfriend left for work, I sat down to move on to the next track…

Then I realized I got another email from a record label. They said they wanted to make casette tapes out of my last EP (which wasn’t what I sent them, but they checked out my soundcloud in any case) in 2017. DAFUQ. Casette tapes? Are you cereal? I am stoked beyond belief (and again, run around the empty apartment), I guess there is some small revival of casettes going on now. Before you groan about hipsterisms – please just share the excitement – as I would do it just to have a casette tape of my music on it made by someone else.

Then more blogs came. Every morning was like a mini-Christmas. Two more blogs wanted to post it. And then an online radio blog that posts streaming music. Finally a record label from Helsinki saying to send them a demo of the track (which never went anywehre but it was still amazing). Side note: Helsinki Finland is actually an epicentre for this LOFI Hip Hop scene, with most of the biggest names coming from there. Then a YouTube channel (very small, about 300-400 average plays on each video) that was like a little brother of AnimeVibe emailed me back.

This guy, well, this guy was probably one of the best parts of the story. He posts my track on his YouTube channel as he describes above, but his write-up referring to me as ‘new blood’ and that he *rises glass* made me feel such  a raw appreciation.

I realized shortly after that this guy was either just starting University or still in high school – yet he was one of these content curators with over 3 million aggregate plays on his channel. I burst into laughter and a feeling of true joy came over me. I felt like the sky was raining skittles. It was an amazing feeling.

And just when I was sure it was over, well, it wasn’t.

The little heartbeat

One new message from Anime Vibe.

My eyes had to double check to make sure it was true. Yes, yes they actually messaged me back. Holy shit. I started the victory parade before reading the message as I knew I had already won – I was on their radar, whether they liked it or not, they listened to it and felt obliged to send me a response. Dripping with anticipation I opened the message. Expecting something of substance, instantly a perplexing look washed over my face.

“Yo. This is fresh.”

Huh? This was the point in an anime where the characters face goes black & white with a bunch of bubble popping sounds playing as red question marks appear around my head.

I started to type a response but then stopped. I felt that this was a confirmation that they enjoyed my music, which for me is almost the best thing that could have happened. It certaintly wasn’t, “Please stop spamming me, your music sucks.” So I thought about it and, well, that was good enough for me. They get enough messages and the last thing I need to do is ruin this good start with a sense of entitlement by asking what their message specifically means. The guy felt that was all he needed to say, so that’s all he said. But now I have a partially open door which I can send some more stuff through knowing it will likely get listened to by the content curator I was targeting. And with that, I closed my browser satisfied that I was already well on my way towards my goal.

Throughout the following days I kept getting these song approved emails I mentioned above, making everyday like a mini-Christmas waking up to new potential opportunities. I will add I got about 10 to 1 declined to approved, but I really just didn’t care about the declined ones as much. It was an exciting time,  but like all good things, it came to pass eventually. Finally, feeling like I had done enough to finally connect myself to someone out there that might like my music, I came back to the pen and began to write my next track.

And then it happened

I still remember it so clearly. It was night, Dina’s living room was lit by the numerous Christmas lights around her room as she was watching the latest episode of Jane the Virgin, a ridiculous drama which I got hopelessly addicted to while I was working on my laptop as she watched it – at times bouncing furtive glances at the TV to only make me rip out my headphones and demand an answer about what happened to one of the main characters and why is he doing what he is doing, or yelling at the TV for Jane to leave person X because she was better than that. Everything was normal (at least by my definition haha). That night I was working on a new track idea and needed a reference. In the song writing process I always reference tracks, and to do this I usually go to AnimeVibe. So, as I opened up the all-too-familiar YouTube page, I realized they just posted a new track about 8 hours ago. It was my fucking track.

I started sputtering words out of my mouth randomly incoherently. Tears started rolling down my face.  My girlfriend was shouting at me asking what was wrong. I couldn’t really hear her voice. I was hearing my track being played through Anime Vibe, with a beautiful piece of artwork. I looked at the playcount 7,000 plays in the last 6 hours. Holy. Shit.

Finally I got control of myself to calm my now extremely concerned girlfriend that nothing bad happened, and explained I just got so overwhelmed by something GOOD. Not just good, something truly PHENOMMENAL.

At the writing of this blog post the track is already at 53,000 plays in the last two weeks on the YouTube channel. As a result, it has been picked up (without me even approaching them) by smaller YouTube channels – and I just got word another branch of Anime Vibe just picked it up as well. My Soundcloud page – with the multiple new sources of viewers from blog posts, online streaming pages, and YouTube channels is currently at 7,000 plays – a new record that continues to reset itself for me. Remember I hoped for 200 plays? My followers has quintupled in two weeks. I was starting to build a fan base, and with everything that happened I knew I was in a new phase of my music.

OK so that should catch you up on THAT front. I actually just released my new track “I c e  c r e a m” so that will also be interesting to see how it plays out. But without a doubt, something was born that day deep inside of me – and with it, a heartbeat of success.

Back to the plane

So after a pretty fucking amazing end to my first year in Berlin (with musical success and amazing Christmas markets), I am now on a plane to Ireland. Why? Well, my VISA expires and to reset it I have to leave the Schengen zone which my cousin and I have now renamed to the “Shenanigan” zone and the re-enter. When I re-enter I do so as a tourist, which allows me to stay for up to 90 days. In those 90 days I will apply for a new VISA in hopes to stay in Berlin for another year. Yes, you heard it, I am planning to stay for another year (subject to my bank account not going negative). Recently I moved in with my girlfriend and that has resulted in a huge cut in my costs. Now I live a very modest life (the times of gold flake tooth paste and caviar breakfast had to end), stretching a euro quite a far way in hopes I can stretch it over a year. In the next 90 days I am going to run a kick starter campaign (essentially a fundraiser where you actually get stuff) for my music and to stay in Berlin for the next year. If you love this blog/my music/me? *cries* stay tuned for a way to support the dream (I will 100% write a post about it)with some really cool rewards.

Quick Geo-political Lesson on Shenanigans in the EU

Oh yeah. So random fact, the EU and Shenanigan zone are actually two different things. For example – Norway is in the Shenanigan zone, but not in the EU. What the Shenanigan zone is for, besides shenanigans (AMIRITE), is basically for un-impeded travel between countries that are a part of this zone. Most westerners think this is the EU, but that is le FALSE. The EU has a lot of trade ramifications as well as currency implications etc.. etc… whereas the Shenanigan zone is more like, “hey you guys are cool, you can come here without worries and we can go to your place without worries – but that’s where our plutonic friendship ends”. So it is NOT enough just to leave Germany because, well, I can move around the Schengen zone freely. I have to leave the whole zone, because that requires a passport/VISA check – which allows for them to stamp me out of Germany (closing my VISA) and then stamp me back in as a Tourist (or so I hope *laughs very nervously as he continues to drink his Irish whiskey on the plane).

So I found this all out about 2 weeks ago, prompting me to rapidly find a place that is not into Schenanigans (i.e. a country not in the Schenanaigan zone..ok I will stop) which is Ireland. Ireland is in the EU but not the S zone. Why Ireland? Because a) the flights were relatively cheap at one of the worst times of the year to want to go anywhere and b) my cousin Brian lives there. So time for yet another mini-adventure. Good. Now we are all caught up in about 4,000 words.

Pools of Reflection

Now I am going to take a moment to think about what just happened in the last 365 days. The night of January 3rd I was wide awake, unable to sleep – thinking that exactly one year ago I was nervously drinking a beer writing a letter to my future self and making sure all of my stuff was packed before boarding a plan to a place that I knew no one, didn’t speak the language, and overall had no real idea what I was doing. A year later I was with my girlfriend listening to a German audio book as we fell asleep. I thought how cool it would have been for my past self to have a glimpse of that, as he would have surely been blown away. It would have seemed like an alternative reality, something so magical and unexpected that how could it really actually happen?

That describes the whole year. From starting an international music collective, to learning German, to dating, and then to the maybe true beginnings of a musical career – none of that was truly in the plan. If there is one thing that I learned from this year that I would like to share, it is this:

Stop acting like you can predict the future, you can’t. I’m sorry, I don’t care how logical or well you think you understand the world, but you really don’t know what is going to happen.

By you I am referring to my past self, who had an obsession with planning out what would happen. Sounds obvious, but I have found a lot of people live their lives a certain way because they a) feel trapped and there is no predictable way out or b) feel they know what is going to happen and thus plan their life around some future event that they feel they have the clairvoyance to predict. In a way I think this behaviour stems from fear of the unknown, which I have grown to relish as if it were a warm blanket. None of this could have ever been planned. The only thing that could be though, was putting myself in a situation where the unexpected could happen, something I felt was necessary. Prior to this life change I was working hard as a chemical engineer. There were ups and downs, of course, but the thing that bothered me the most was the routine. The routine was speeding up time, and that was scaring me. I wanted to mix it up, do something that you only read about in those self-improvement books you secretly hoard and binge read at the chapters near your house with a newspaper in front of your face to hide your identity (me? No I don’t know what you are talking about). Are these experiences I hear and read about real? Or is life so grim that there is no true adventure left in our global world with blog posts and Instagrams of every inch of adventure possible? With that as the technical thesis question of my trip, and I will tell you, that these stories ARE real and true adventures are still well and alive (phew, what a relief). They are just not easy to get, and require work to participate in. Just like a maze, it takes  a lot of work and at times confusion to finally reach the centre of being able to take the plunge of a significant life change. The leap of faith or as I described it to Sebastian, the kick flip.

Kickflips

A kickflip is the first truly dangerous trick you learn skateboarding where you make the skateboard do a full lateral rotation before landing on it upright. The technical part of a kick flip is not hard, it is quite easy to make the skateboard flip and land back upright. The hard part is the commitment to the trick. By slamming your feet down as the board flips beneath you, you don’t know if you the skateboard will be in the right orientation before putting your feed down – potentially resulting in you falling and hurting yourself, or the board. But you have to believe in yourself, and believe that if you don’t slam your feet down, hoping the board is there in the right orientation, then you never will land the kickflip. You will practice day and night, but at the end of it all, it takes that momentary courage – that momentary surrender to the moment – and that momentary acceptance, that if it does go wrong, it was still worth it. Because you will pick yourself off the pavement and try it again, and again, and again – until one day you are the kid who can kick flip amongst your group of “ollie only” friends (ollie is the easiest skateboarding move).

Looking back at the year, I have also met some of the most amazing people. From my godfathers of Berlin (haha) Boyd and Patrick – the first people to break my spiral of doubt and depression that I had just really fucked up my life coming here – to my friend Lukas who I met playing DOTA in German cyber café pub. From all of the friends I made from my German classes – to the friends I met through that fateful Canadian meet-up I went to the first week being here (and then temporarily worked at a pizza shop after). From old friends in Denmark and Paris, to new friends from Italy and Norway and all over the world. From a community that I created which truly cares about helping eachother get better at music from all around the world (yo, love you guys *rises glass hahahahahha) to a cough special lady I met from Tinder. It’s been a wild ride. I  want you to all know that you are all responsible for this magical journey. That without you I would have already gone home, battered, bruised – defeated. Through your friendships I have grown as a person, as a musician, and as a friend. And I just hope one day that the sum total of utility is equal – that I have given something special to you – so that Kant doesn’t toss around in his grave too much.

Season 2 Preview of theadventuresoflazerbeast

A man, seemingly weary, types furiously on his laptop as the plane begins his descent. It is the main character…lazerbeast…as his plane lands in Ireland. A soft piano plays in the background, playing the same chords seperated by syncopated pauses over and over again.

“One ticket to Ennis please.” The man goes to board the bus and trips. His shoe lace has broken. The camera pans to the shoes, seeminly very worn and on the fringes of collapse. Director’s commentary: OH MY GOD THE LUCKY BOOTS ARE BACK!?

He tightens them, smiles, and boards the bus.

Then begins scenes flashing quicker and quicker. All sounds of the scenes are muted, with now just the piano playing the same sequence of notes.

IMAGRY:

Drinking in a pub with his cousin.

Flying back to Berlin.

New message indications on a browser pop-up.

Laughing with his girlfriend.

Clashing beer glasses together with friends new and old.

The scene then cuts to lazerbeast, standing in front of a window in the dark. Flashes of multi-coloured light illuminate his face - fireworks in the distance. Each flash reveals his face looking to the sky with the most subtle smile, a smirk even – as if he knew something that the audience doesn’t.

The piano keys shift down an octave, with the lower bass notes echoing, giving a darker/mysterious feeling.

A voice begins to speak. At the moment it starts to speak it reveals the back of a man standing in a hoodie. Slowly panning up form behind his legs.

When I started this journey… I secretly thought I was going to come running home…

Now the viewer can see people are slowly out of focus but sitting in front of him. He’s on a stage.

…I heard that if you want to take the island, then you must burn your boats…

The camera reveals the all-too-familiar scene of Noize Fabrik. Many people are grabbing chairs coming to sit down.

…so I burned my boats …and now here I stand…

The camera pans up to his head as he takes his hood back

The camera shoots to the face of lazerbeast, half painted blue.

…On this island.

The face remains fixed, no movement is scene even though there is silence after the last quote finishes playing.

Lazerbeast then shouts, FREEEEDOOOMMMMMM as the scottish clans unite behind him to fight for their...freedom..wait what

Fades to black, white text appears in the middle of the screen.

THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED SHOW THAT YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF, NOR WATCHED, NOR IS IT ACTUALLY A SHOW IS BACK FOR A SECOND SEASON.

Hahaha

Trolled you guys so hard.

Fin.

I hope you enjoyed that scene haha. I wrote it because it is stupid for me to try and think what will happen – as I will be wrong – so I won’t even make a conjecture. My closing thoughts about my last year is that some strange universal force has been guiding me, writing this story for me. Instead of thinking in some spiritual force guiding me, I like to think it is the city of Berlin as if it was a living organism – the places, the people, the spätis - that is helping me along through magical interventions and revelations. I picture this organism as a giant turtle with the city on his back, resting under the weight of the city, but wide awake and watching the people living on his back.

OK I need to stop now haha. Thank you, reader, whoever you are – for following along and taking the time to read this blog. It means a lot to me. Now I gotta go, my cousin’s roommate and me are jamming out blasting Glass Animals so loud that I really can’t focus.

To the next year: here we go.

PS here is a link to the soundcloud where you can hear the music:

https://soundcloud.com/bitteplease