#imagine him playing violin in all his lonesome

[sleepypandazzz09]

Twstober day 1: overture

What happens after not drawing traditionally for so long. This is terrible

Btw I don’t really understand what overture is so this came out. I searched it up it’s the opening music piece to an orchestra or opera so imagine he’s playing that.

Also the prompts were made by @raven-at-the-writing-desk

[deafsignifcantother]

if music be the food of love, chapter one

♥ chapter two! ♥ relationships: aroace Alastor x deaf female reader (queerplatonic) ♥ word count: 2.1k ♥ pinterest board ♥ warnings: reader got hurt by someone they loved before death, reader is shorter than him, bickering, reader loves tea, lonesome reader, alastor invading space ♥ my idea is that reader has a small stereo on her chest that lets out classical music based on her mood. I imagine that it comes from both her chest (softly) and the outside of her manor (loud as fuck).

Your manor is only visible to the town when the lights are on a tall hill and covered in trees. However, even if all the lights were off, people would at least know it's there.

There are two reasons: the tale and the music.

Tale, a story for the newcomers. They speak of a demon who plays music all day, doomed to play music forever. Oh, the music. The music can be heard from even miles away.

It's refined and dainty, and it reeks of misery. The classical music never seems to repeat itself; it goes on and on and on and on. The demons hear you only through your music. When you cry, the violins and cellos grow with a cruel crescendo. When you sleep, the music is soft, almost quiet. Everyone comes to an understanding, assumption, that if the music were to stop, you would be dead.

The demons who try to step closer to your manor will find themselves experiencing unfathomable sorrow and guilt. The sound of your music is the demonic ability you possess, and it's out of your control. Due to the sadness of your death, you are forced into misery in the afterlife. When you were alive, those you loved and devoted yourself to only broke your heart.

Everybody affected by your music feels that grief.

Alastor doesn't understand why people fear your manor. Your love-related pain doesn't affect him at all.

He starts up the hill, moving both on his feet and through the shadows. On his way to your manor, he focuses on the landscape. The landscape is beautiful; the forest below is so dense that the red sky disappears. Personally, he loves the music. He loves tuning in on you and hearing how you're doing. He sparsely gets to visit, so hearing the song of your heart is always so welcoming.

The worst thing to him is how long the damn walk is.

You're in your house, passing through the dining room, when the lights flicker. The people from the nearby town stutter when the usual sad music suddenly becomes upbeat.

Opening the door, you are greeted by Alastor's traditional smile. You're the one that initiates the hug. He gently wraps his hand around you, only for a short time before he pulls away and establishes his distance.

"Long time no see, my dear." He signs, his claws adding a flare to the simple signs. Truthfully, his sign for "my dear" translates directly to "sweetheart," which he's aware of, just putting faith into you understanding what he means.

"I'll start some tea." You sign, turning immediately to the kitchen.

He smiles at the jazz sneaking its way into your music. The people outside know what it means.

Alastor looks around at the new decor; the place is different every time he enters. It's all the things that you enjoyed when you were alive. That's what is most noticeable about you beyond the aura you possess and how stuck you are to the past; you refuse to acknowledge your situation, which is both a curse and a blessing.

From the kitchen counter, you look at him, seeing him behind you, his staff out of his hands.

He leans a bit forward. "I have news! Have you heard of the new buzz, the new project from the princess of hell?"

A small smile forms. "Charlie?" You remember many years ago when she appeared at your door, in tears due to your involuntary magic, begging you to teach her ASL. You politely declined, though you wrote her a long paper about Deaf Culture (often derailing to rant about your opinion on common debates/crazy events). You've never seen her again, but you're confident she's read it.

You continue, "Her projects are... sweet?"

"Sweet and quite peculiar. She believes that demons can be redeemed. How absurd!" His smile grows, his eyes squinting in interest. He knows you're devoted to being good and staying away from violence. He's here to convince you to join her cause.

"Fascinating," you can't help but show your pure astonishment. "She's on our side."

"Oh, how kind you are!"

The tea is ready. You turn entirely away from Alastor, and he lets you. Your thoughts are apparent; he has spent weeks excited about this conversation. He's absolutely fighting the urge to spill out every argument he has; he wants to mention that if you participate, you'll see each other daily. That hasn't even crossed your mind yet.

You pour the tea and take your time, a little nervous to continue the convo. Alastor's eyes remain on your frame, your casual clothing. The last time he saw you, you were dressed up despite spending your days alone.

You hand a cup to him. Neither sign; you stand still, staring at each other and drinking. Both of you already know what the other will try to say next. Your eyes are deep in thought while he is locked on you. The only reason you are doubting being involved with everything yourself is that you know your aura makes others depressed. It is not very good, isolating. On the opposite stance, Alastor always noticed how your music gets positive whenever he's around. He knows (guesses) that in the hotel, with his presence, your saddening demeanor would be no more.

He moves abruptly, you follow, and he sits on a heavily cushioned couch, dipping deeply, which makes him smile. Your soft smile grows—more piano.

"What are your thoughts?" He prompts with one hand. You take a very long sip of your tea before putting it down.

"I wouldn't make them feel comfortable," you explain. "That's all I think about."

"Ever so pessimistic, my dear. You never know unless you come to visit. What do you say?" He grabs his mic and jokingly reaches it to your face, "A simple visit?"

You put a hand to your temple. "My love," you sign without noticing how his lids droop in comfort, "do you really think I would belong?"

He puts his hand to his chin in faux thought. "Of course I do! The princess will approach you with open arms."

You let out a small, broken groan. You're not going to be winning this little debate. Alastor's going to be able to rebuttal everything you say. Knowing that, why is it still so hard to give in?

You put your hands in your lap before returning them to your temples. His smile grows, and the static radiating off him grows ever so prominent, tickling your skin. You look up at him when you notice the change in the air.

The way he looks at you gives away his intentions. He is standing tall in his usual formal way in his seat, but his eyes are ever so casual. He gazes at you more than anything. His smile is still wide and prideful.

You wiggle a finger at him. "Ah."

He squints.

You continue, "You want to see me more, don't you?"

"Who wouldn't?" He plays off, shrugging. "Your captivating presence has every demon in hell dropping their jaws agape."

"Youuuuuu," you smile mischievously, "you want to see me more."

He continues to wave his hands. "Your accusations are futile, go ahead and fill your pretty head with things such as affection," his shoulders bounce as he chuckles, "dreams about how I miss you."

A breathless laugh leaves your lips. Rather than continue the teasing, you let the positive atmosphere linger in the air. You lift your chin with confidence. "Practically admitting it."

"I know what you want me from me." He signs. You smile at how he interpreted it. You don't bother responding. Instead, you give him a sly smile and lift your cup, taking another long sip; his bottom eyelid is twitching.

The last time he saw you, he signed you many compliments and even danced with you to the rhythm of your music. He let you put your hand on his face as he leaned his forehead against yours.

Admittedly, you only started teasing him because you wanted him to tell you that he missed you. Obviously, he did. You didn't expect him to be so stubborn about it.

When you don't respond, he continues. "When I'm here, your heart sings in happiness."

You nod and sign with one hand. "Very true."

"Well, I find the sound lovely."

"Very appreciated."

You watch as he leans back and crosses his legs, lifting and finishing the teacup. You both spend a few seconds without conversation, just looking at each other. In an attempt to hide how flustered you are starting to look, you lean your head back and gulp down the tea to the point where the cup is hiding your face. But you can only keep it in that position for a short time. After finishing the drink, you place it back down, finding that Alastor is already sitting with his fingers intertwined and waiting for you. His eyes sparkle.

"My dear, I missed you very much." And as quickly as the affection comes, it disappears. "I must give the little lady what she wants. There, are you happy?"

"I missed you too, Alastor. Thank you for coming up again."

Sappy, sappy, sappy. Will you agree to return to the hotel with him now?

He straights his bowtie and stands. "My dear, I'm afraid our time here will be cut short; I have a hotel to show you, don't I?"

You stay seated, just eyeing him. Peer pressure, you sigh and try not to roll your eyes. A simple nose exhaling is enough to show him how you feel.

He leans his head to the side. "Is there anything I can do to convince you?"

You finally stand and meet his eyes. His eyes are gorgeous; you love the way he looks at you. He doesn't take his eyes off you when you step close to him. Your hands reach for his overcoat, and you adjust it fruitlessly, only wanting an excuse to touch him.

You smile. "I can cook you something for your long trip back."

"Our."

"Your."

You both lean in, smiles straining.

He tries again. "Our."

"Biscuits, I assume," you turn your heels and motion for him to follow you. The motion you make is beckoning, and when you flick your wrist, he grabs it and pulls you into him. He lets you go to see your response. Your heart is beating out of your chest. You fall for people too easily. His touch is demanding, yet his face is calm, and with how close he is, all you can do is stare up at him. Your feet stumble a bit to adjust to your new stance. He will fight tooth and nail to get you to follow him back; throughout his days, he always wonders what you're doing and your music might sound like. He'll close his eyes and try to imagine the melody in moments of silence at the hotel.

You can't find yourself stepping back. "I'm perfectly okay with where I am." A lie. "Nobody will bother me if I'm out here."

"And nobody will bother you when you're next to me, get it?" After he signs, both of his hands hold your cheeks. He tilts your head back and forth to try and lighten the mood that's getting a little serious.

You try to hold his wrists and pull his hands down, but he fights against you. He lifts your face so he can look at you head-on. The waist bends his body; he curls himself up to you. Your touch falls to his sleeves and then moves to his biceps, your fingers grazing him gently.

The music is fast-paced, like your heart. It sounds almost angelic, a new ethereal sound surrounding it.

"Okay," you fold but then immediately chew on the inside of your lip.

"Perfect!" He presses his forehead to yours quickly before pulling away. He's taking this win. He turns and eyes the room, motioning. "Packing anything?"

With a small sigh of defeat, you place your hands on your temples again. What would you even need? Like a spoiled child, you realize that if you did need something in particular, Alastor would get it for you. You smiled and shook your head to yourself. "I don't think I need anything at all."

"Spectacular!" Another dramatic sign. "Come along then." The fast twirling of his staff blows air onto you when you start to walk behind him, eyeing how his fingers twist. His head turns as he glances at you from the corner of his eye, his head dipping as his smile widens. The static in the air becomes thicker.

You take a deep breath. If you can say 'I told you so' to him, you will be bringing it up until the end of time. He knows that, so it's good that he's confident in himself and his deductions. He'll ensure you won't be leaving and isolating yourself any longer.

[tsvestidiabolus]

the melody never changes

commission for @snurps

➵ my COMMISSIONS are open!

SUMMARY:  Robin's reflection on their newest crewmate, from Thriller Bark to Fishman Island, and Brook's growth from solitude to rockstar.

WORDCOUNT: 2529

CHARACTERS: Brook & Nico Robin

ALSO FOUND AT: ao3

Thank you for the commission!  I had a blast writing for Brook and Robin.  Theirs is a friendship that is immensely underrated.

To the charming skeleton gentleman,

First off, I’m afraid I must deny your inevitable request to see my panties.  I have self-respect, and I don’t think they would suit you.  Secondly, while we are not currently crewmates, our captain has declared you as part of the Straw Hats, and you’ll find him to be very persuasive.  Doubtless we’ll be spending more time together in the future.  In order to give you a warm welcome to the crew, I’ve decided to write a personal letter from me to you.  Partly because I know how it feels coming into this ship as a newcomer, and partly because I’m frankly interested in you.

As an archaeologist, of course.

We’ve recovered the three strongest of our crew, and those who were in the crew all the way back in the East Blue seemed to recognise the whale you mentioned.  It’s funny how life turns out that way - coincidences upon coincidences, friends meeting with friends again.  He’s called Laboon, right?  I certainly hope you’ll introduce me to him when we arrive at Twin Cape.

Nami is calling out to the crew - I believe she wants us to plan before we inevitably scrap any semblance of strategy and enter the main castle again - so I’ll have to cut this short.  If we somehow don’t survive and our mangled corpses rot on the island, which would be a shame, I’d have to hope this letter finds its way to you.

From,

Nico Robin

---

“Yohoho!”

Even now, despite all the hardships and suffering the crew had gone through in the past day, Brook laughed.  Such a melodic sound - one could almost mistake it for a song - yet it carried with it fifty years worth of promises.

The pirates were spread out across the castle of Thriller Bark, exhausted from their ordeal (yet at the moment that Luffy would shout it’s time for a party, they would be bouncing with energy) and taking their time to rest.  Some of them had been tending to their wounds with the help of Chopper, while others decided to help out those who’d been lost for years.  The Straw Hats in particular were fretting with worry over Zoro, even though they all were confident in his survival.

Brook practically danced past most of the Straw Hats, tipping his skull to those he passed by, before he settled right in front of the archaeologist of the crew, her nose stuck in a book.  Robin flipped to the next page of her novel, making no indication that she had noticed his arrival.  

“Ah, Miss Robin -”

“If you’re about to ask to see my panties, I’ll have to say no,” said Robin.  

Brook laughed. “Well, it was worth a shot!  But that’s not the reason I’m here.”

Her eyes never leaving the page, Robin arched a brow, the corners of her lips twitching upwards. “Oh?”  

“I wanted to give my thanks.  You’ve made me feel welcome to the ship already.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Robin said, smiling.

“Yohoho!  I’ve never felt so honoured to call someone so beautiful a friend!”

With a tip of his hat, and a blank eyeless stare for a brief moment (which Robin later found out was Brook attempting to wink), Brook danced away from her, his skeletal legs skittling across the ground.  It was almost inhumane, the amount of speed the man carried in his light body, but then again their crew was full of monsters.  A living skeleton was far from the most terrifying thing in their crew.

As for the most terrifying thing?

Brook was bound to discover, sooner or later. 

---

To Brook,

Music has no language; it cannot be misinterpreted.  One strum of a guitar can tell a thousand stories and a thousand promises.  One beat of the drum speaks of a hundred wars.  One note of a violin can sing a song of sorrow in the drifting seas of time.  It is the one universal truth.

I see you sometimes, when I’m on watch duty, humming a solo that sounds so… lonely, and so melancholic, that it takes all of my effort not to climb down the mast and join you.  But I am a coward, so I leave you alone to your own devices.  To that, I am sorry.

How lonely must you have been, drifting alone on those waters for fifty years.  Only with your thoughts and determination to keep you going.  I’m amazed you can still smile, despite that (at least, I assume you’re smiling. It would be pretty strange for you to laugh without smiling).  In fact, I admire you.  And while I’m sure my words would have a better effect for you if I said them aloud, as I said before - I’m a coward.  It’s easier for me to write this down in ink.

But yet, you were on the cusp of madness, and you persevered.  You lived.  Sort of.

And to that, I want to know more.

Please, tell me your story.

From your crewmate,

Nico Robin.

---

Quietly, as the eve turned to night and the night to the dead hour, Robin slipped down the ladder from the mast.  It was Zoro’s turn now to keep watch, and she knew the swordsman would be perceptive enough to protect them in the instance of danger, despite his injuries and constant napping.  But it was not yet time to sleep, for as usual their newly appointed musician was out by his lonesome in the night, a gentle lul of the violin playing a song that reminded her of Ohara.  The song was enough to drift the boys and Nami to sleep, and Robin would have dozed off to the melody had she not felt so lonely just from the strings alone.  But it was not her loneliness that made her feel this way - she had long since accepted she was part of this crew.  That she wasn’t alone anymore.

It was Brook’s.

So, once she was safely down on the lawn of the Sunny, she joined him by the railing, leaning against the wood while he continued his solo.  His skeletal hands played the tune delicately, and in time she hummed along to it.  The nostalgia washed over her like a wave.  She closed her eyes and imagined Ohara again.  She could only imagine what Brook was thinking of.

As the last notes of the melody rang out and the song stopped, Robin opened her eyes and smiled at Brook.  He bowed his head back, setting the violin down the grass.

“Is that song known outside the West Blue?” she asked. “I’ve only ever heard it there.”

“It’s a West Blue classic!” Brook exclaimed. “Well, I say it’s a classic.  It was written by yours truly!”

Robin blinked.

“I would’ve like to tweak it before I left, but sadly there was no time.  The original music sheet must be lost as well!  I must rely on my ears now to complete it - but alas, I have no ears!  Yohoho!  Skull jo-”

“You’re from the West Blue?”

It certainly came as a surprise - after all, a majority of their crew had come from the East or the Grand Line, and she had no idea there was someone else onboard the ship that hailed from the West.  Even if he was the most recent addition.  Robin felt her curiosity peak up the more Brook revealed about himself.  His past was becoming more and more of a mystery to her, a clash between his demeanor and his tragedy.

Brook nodded his head in response, his afro bouncing as he did. “I served a royal kingdom there for sometime before I decided piracy was a better career.  Of course, I was a musician as well!”

She imagined him flashing her a grin.

“But yes, West Blue, born and raised - ah!  Miss Robin, if I recall correctly, you were from the West too, no?” he asked.

“That’s correct.”

“May I ask which is-”

“Ohara.”

She definitely said that too quickly, with too much of a snap in her tongue, that Brook paused and gave her enough time to regret it.  Before she could utter an apology, Brook picked up the bow of his violin and held it out to her.  Naturally, she was confused.  

Brook bowed his head down.

“I understand if you do not wish to talk about it,” he says. “I can assume from personal experience a deep tragedy has occurred there.”

Still, he held out the bow. 

“But know that Ohara is wonderful, and that its legacy - whatever that may be - is you.”

Curious, Robin took the bow and inspected it.  It seemed ordinary enough.  She couldn’t understand what Brook was -

Prof. Clover

Without realising, her hand had begun trembling from the overwhelming everything coming over her, and she looked up to Brook with glistening eyes.  The musician panicked.

“Miss Robin, I - I’m dreadfully sorry!” he sputtered. “I didn’t mean to upset you!  I merely - I wanted to explain that tragedies don’t have to - I’m sorry!”

“You knew the professor?” She was surprised she could manage to get even that out. “You knew Ohara?”

A relieved sigh passed through his nonexistent lips. “I stayed there for a couple years, back when I was a young man.  This violin was a parting gift from my dear friend at the time.  He’d just gotten his doctorate, and I think he wanted to show off.  Yohoho!”

Robin chuckled, wiping away a tear. 

“Ah!  But of course, this explains why you know my song!” Brook exclaimed. “Miss Robin, I knew I felt a kinship for you when I boarded this ship.  Us both being from the West Blue gives me a sense of familiarity in the crew.  I’ve never been more grateful to be alive - ah!  But I’m not alive!  Yohoho, skull joke!”

Robin was amazed, not for the first time, that Brook could joke and even dare to imply that she was the one being welcoming, when here he was, passing on Robin wisdom that she took twenty years to even consider.  It was often easy to forget that Brook had thirty years of experience out on the sea before the tragedy of the Rumbar Pirates occurred, but it was clear that those years were enough to sharpen the man’s mind and strengthen his heart.  But his heart was not made of stone, nor iron - it was laid out bare to the world, soft and beating, and his gentle lullabies sung of sorrows from his past that he dare not speak of.

So, she leaned against the railing, a slight smile gracing her lips. “Please, tell me more stories.”

And so he did.

---

Be alive.

---

She’d written the message in the dirt of the prison, pleading with whatever divine powers existed to ensure that the rest of her crew had lived.

After all, Brook owed her a concert.  One that would declare to the World that he was alright despite all the pain he’d been through.  That humans were resilient.

He’d better keep that promise.\

---

To Brook,

I do not expect this message to reach you.  The Government is constantly attempting to interfere with letters from the RA, and no doubt they’ll be trying to decipher any clues about their plans in this message (good luck, cowards).

It’s been almost two years already.  No doubt we will meet each other again soon.  I’ve been looking forward to this immensely, as no doubt you have too.  I think - I understand you, a little more.  Now that I’ve been infected with the Straw Hats’ boundless enthusiasm and joy, I can understand how you lived in isolation for all that time.  Not just because of the promise you kept to Laboon, but because dying would be spitting on their smiles, right?

Can you hear the waves crash against the shore where you are?  Do you hear seagulls, do you smell the salt?

Can you see the moon?

One day we’ll meet again.  I look forward to that day.

From Robin.

P.S. I keep hearing about this new rockstar that some of the Revolutionaries are raving about.  You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?

---

It wasn’t a soft strum that the bony hand had passed over the strings, yet it was strangely nostalgic all the same.  No, it was a thunderous sound, booming across the concert hall and somehow could be heard over the screams of adoring fans.  It was unlike anything Robin had ever heard before.  No - she never felt anything like this before.  The vibrations shook her very body, making her suddenly aware of the blood rushing through her veins, of her heart pounding against her chest.  The feeling was exhilarating.

She stared from the back of the concert hall to the star of the show.  As always, his feathered boa and skeleton-figure was instantly recognisable, as was his laugh.

“Soul King Brook, hm?” she whispered under her breath.  She couldn’t hear herself over the sound of the music.

There was something different about his music now.  She would have to ask him if he changed his muse.  Later, perhaps.

Now, it was time to find the Sunny.

---

It wasn’t hard to find Brook after the battle at Fishman Island.  Where there were cheers and melodies, there was Brook.  Robin waited by an alley, listening to the sound of Brook’s guitar as he sang a victory song for the pirates.  The tune was new, unlike anything she had ever heard before.  But there was a certain gentleness to it, despite the upbeat and heart-pounding vibrations it made.  Like Brook was unleashing happiness to the world.

When the imprupto-concert was over, and Robin could finally approach Brook, he tipped his hat and stared blankly at her.  She assumed he was grinning.

“Miss Robin!  Did you enjoy the show?” he asked. “I wasn’t sure about this song, but it looks to be a hit with the crowd!  Yohoho!”

Robin smiled back. “It was happy,” she noted.

“Mmhm!” he said. “It was inspired by our captain.”

“Luffy?” 

Brook nodded. “I suppose that’s why you picked up on the feelings I was conveying.  It’s an honour to sail under his flag, don’t you think?”  His voice took on a melancholic tone. “I would’ve never expected to find such a crew years ago.”

Neither did she.

“Are you happy, Brook?” Robin asked.  The question had just slipped out, but she was curious to know the answer.  

Brook looked at her, tilting his head. “Of course I am, Miss Robin.  How could I create such a song if I weren’t?”

Robin paused for a moment, before nodding her head slowly.  It made sense.  Brook’s music reflected his feelings at the time.  And now, as part of the Straw Hats, his tune had become one much like their captain’s.

“Now, shall we return to the party?” Brook said. “I’m sure Luffy would want to hear this too.”

Not a thing could crush Brook’s spirit.  Not being alone, not despair, not even death.  

He was alive, and he was happy, and he would make sure the world knew.

Robin couldn’t be more proud to call him a crewmate.

[pink-imagines]

reach me behind your voice

chapter 1: harmonize

summary: Shoto, your childhood friend, has grown distant towards you despite your history and Bakugo, the seemingly no-good rebel, has an interesting secret.

a/n: i’m not great at summaries, but you get the jist. this chapter is shorter since it’s more of a try-out. the other chapters will probably be longer and therefore take longer time to make.

warnings: none, yet

masterlist

requesting rules

You can remember clearly how throughout your childhood you’d always be dancing, no matter what the situation. It easily gained you nicknames like “ballerina” or “sugar plum fairy”. As soon as you could, you took any dance class that was available to you. Street dance, break dance, jazz, modern and, your favorite, ballet.  So of course when you heard someone playing the violin solo from the Swan Lake theme, Op. 20: No. 18, in the house next to yours you tried to find out who it was. The neighbour who lived next door was the Todoroki family, you had seen little of them at all but knew that they had a son the same age as you. Your eight year old self made it a mission to figure out if it was him who was playing. Luckily, your window to your bedroom faced his so it wasn’t hard to figure out. The hard part was getting him to notice you. Knocking as hard as you could on the window didn’t seem to help, he was probably wearing ear plugs.

The first time he noticed that you were there was when he for once opened his window. It was a hot  day so your window stood wide open as well. Shoto had never thought about looking into his neighbour’s window before but the music made him look a bit closer. You were playing some sort of hip hop song, practicing for your latest recital. He liked watching you move like that, it seemed as if you had fun. But as soon as you caught him he went to close the window. “No! Wait!”, you exclaimed and almost threw yourself out the window, “Could you play me Op. 20: No. 18?” He didn’t answer, he could only nod. With an eye still on you he started playing, and of course you started dancing. His smile grew and grew, sure you messed up at some parts but it was still fun to see someone dance to his music. “I’m not great at ballet but I’ll practice more if you play for me!”, you promised.

That promise was kept until the present of today. Shoto and you became close friends, first from your windows and then up close. Soon enough you did everything together, you had even fixed a can and string phone between your windows. The phone was still up, but rarely used- seeing as you had real phones now. You had been through a lot with Shoto, and you had supported each other every step of the way. Music is what kept you together, and it seemed as if other people could see that too. The two of you put on a lot of shows together, and whenever either of you needed to practice the other would be there too. Shoto would play for you and you would dance for him. 

Your senior year of high school is when you started drifting apart. Shoto had too many competitions and you had too many performances... other than that it seemed as if he wanted to give up on his talent, and was only hanging on a thread made by his father’s approval. Dancing had become a thing that only happened in a studio or on stage, and playing the violin had become a thing that was only supposed to be played in his room or on stage. 

From time to time you’d walk to school together. You made sure he was eating, and he made sure you didn’t have to walk home alone later. The smallest reasons gave you hope that you still cared about each other. “We’re having a live performer during my next ballet recital.”, you told him on your walk to school, “Kind of like how you used to play for me.” You knew it was useless to try to grasp at something so far away, but you couldn’t help but to try. The chilly air only fueled your want for the warm feeling of Shoto’s embrace. You never thought about how much you’d miss his hugs, but the late-September weather only made it worse.  “Oh really?”, Shoto kept his eyes on the road, “What is it about then?” Of course he completely ignored your last statement, but there was nothing to do about it unless you wanted to make things worse. “The pianist had composed it himself, we’re gonna get to know about it today.”, you explained. “What’s the pianist n-” “Hey, Y/N!”, one of your close friends interrupted Shoto mid-sentance. “Hi, Mina.”, you waved at her but she still engulfed you in a hug. “Cute scarf, it even matches the uniform!”, she smiled and then looked over at Shoto, “Sorry, I didn’t interrupt anything right?” “No, I was on my way anyways.”, he put on a charming smile, “Have a good day- and don’t walk home alone if it gets too dark, Y/N.” “I won’t.”, you waved and watched him walk away. “I totally interrupted something, didn’t I? You look disappointed-” “Just forget about it, Mina.”, you smiled at her even though you were kind of disappointed. “I told you, you should tell him that you have a crush on him. Then he’d totally pay more attention to you.”, she wrapped her left arm around your shoulders. “I don’t have a crush on him!”, you exclaimed even though she gave you a very unbelieving look, “Even if I did, it doesn’t mean that he’d actually like me back.”

School went on like usual; you had your morning classes, ate lunch with Mina and Kyoka and then had your afternoon classes. During the entire day you didn’t talk to Shoto, whenever you tried he always had somewhere else to be. So it was like every other day, though at the end of the day he approached you. It was right when you were about to leave, you has just taken out your outdoor shoes from your locker. “It says it’s gonna rain later.”, he held out his umbrella to you, “You shouldn’t be catching a cold before your performance.” “Thank you.”, you took the umbrella from him and gave him a soft smile, “Are you sure you shouldn’t have it though?” “I’ll be fine... just take it.”, he scratched the back of his head and looked away from you, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” “Sure.”, you nodded. “Bye, then.”, he huffed and walked away. “Bye, Shoto.”, you said and followed him with your eyes as he left.

Like Shoto said, it started raining. It wasn’t a lot of rain but he was overly careful like that at times. You skipped over the puddles forming on the uneven road and hummed the tune to singing in the rain. No one was out on the road so you lost yourself in your own imagination as you danced down the lonesome path.  You were thinking about why things with Shoto had turned out the way they did, if you really just did fine different friendgroups. He couldn’t be completely blamed for the distance that had been put between you since you had taken a few steps back when you realised you had feelings for him. You didn’t even want to think about it, your own feelings could ruin your entire friendship. He probably just distanced himself because he saw you did the same... You didn’t have time to think much longer as you bumped into someone. “Hey, watch it.”, the boy hissed. “Sorry!”, you quickly backed up and looked up at him. It was the boy from your school, Bakugo. You didn’t know much about him, just that he seemed kind of rude and that he hung out with the very nice Kirishima. You never quite understood their dynamic, they were really the opposite when it came to personality.  He let out an irritated sigh before he kept walking... in the same direction you were going. After a while he stopped suddenly, making you accidentally walk into his back. “Are you following me or something?”, he turned around to you. “No, I’m going this way too.”, you huffed and walked past him. You could feel his eyes on you as you walked, and honestly it grew tiring. “Do you have a staring problem or something?”, you turned around to him. “Huh? Why would I look at you?”, he walked up next to you, “You skip when you walk, of course you draw attention to yourself when you walk weird.” “Oh, sure!”, you shook your head and kept walking, faster this time. Bakugo quickened his pace, making it obvious that this was some sort of competition. So of course you walked faster.

This lasted until you were both power walking to your destination. You hadn’t even realised that you got to the dance studio until you almost walked into the door. You pulled out your card to open the door, but Bakugo already had his out and opened the door. “What are you doing? Why do you have a key card?”, you asked. “I’m working here.”, he looked away from you as he held open the door, “Are you gonna walk in or what?” You skeptically walked in, keeping an eye on him during the entire time. He wasn’t a dancer, was he? If he was then you’d know it. He wouldn’t look you in the eye no matter how hard you stared and his ears were turning slightly red. “What are you staring at!?”, he exclaimed. “I’m just trying to figure out if you’re a dancer.”, you muttered. “I’m not a dancer.”, he said. You stared at him with squinted eyes, trying to see if he was lying. “Fine then.”, you said and walked to the changing rooms, “I wouldn’t care if you were, you know.” “I’m not!” “Okay, okay!”, you walked into the changing rooms.

When you got out into the dance studio you saw Bakugo talk with your dance teacher. You pulled your pants up higher over your leotard, making sure that they sat at just the right place, and went to stretch. While stretching you kept an eye on Bakugo, noticing the piano in the background... slowly pieces started to fall together. As soon as they stopped talking the teacher walked out of the studio, probably to get changed, and Bakugo walked up to you. “You better do well, I’m partly in charge of choosing the roles today.”, he grinned. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”, you sat down in a split and looked up at him, “Whether you like me or not, it has nothing to do with my dancing and I’m sure that my teacher wouldn’t be fond of you picking favorites because of their personality.” “Whatever...”, he huffed and walked over to the piano.

When all the dancers had gathered the teacher walked back in and quickly counted all the students. “Seems like we’re all here. I hope everybody has warmed up and stretched, we’ll begin immediately.”, mrs. Takahashi said in a stern tone, “This is Bakugo Katsuki, a well known pianist whom has won many competitions.” You looked at Bakugo as he bowed in a greeting... you had no idea that he had won competitions, let alone that he was well known. Then again, you never really cared about where the music came from unless it was from Shoto. “He’s composed a few pieces, which put together becomes an hour long performance.”, she explained further, “So it won’t be the longest performance we’ve done, but it’s new and exciting. I’m expecting all of you to do your best at these auditions, but for today we’ll be learning the parts.” Mrs. Takahashi motioned for Bakugo to start playing, which he did. It was quick, nothing that you hadn’t done before but it’d always be harder to learn when the beat is quicker. There was no time for slacking, and your interest had peaked. “That was a part of the introduction.”, mrs. Takahashi said as Bakugo stopped playing, “As you can tell, it’s quick. This is a story of tragedy, a young boy who’s invisible to everyone around him no matter what he does. He falls in love with a girl, and though she cannot see him he still tries his best to save her from different situations. I’ll be giving you a short story, so that you can read through it later. For now, let’s get to work.” And so the practicing started. Bakugo never looked away from the notes, he was extremely focused... it was probably the first time you had seen him this quiet and calm. You couldn’t let yourself be distracted, though- afterall, hadn’t you kind of challenged him. Details were to be perfected, steps were to be remembered, and your energy needed to be focused on doing the best you possibly could.

At the end of the lesson, while you were stretching before you got to go home, mrs. Takahashi gathered your attention by clapping harshly twice. “Listen up! You all did fantastic today!”, she sounded proud for once, “Next time we meet will be in two days, for our next lesson. You’ll get an email with the right location, that’s where you’ll audition and that’s where we’ll later hold the performance. Be on time, alright?” “Yes, ma’am.”, all the students answered. “Great work, you’re free to go.”, she nodded and everybody made their way to the changing rooms. You went to grab your waterbottle and when you stood back up mrs. Takahashi stood beside you. “You did well today, Y/L/N.”, she said, “I’m expecting a lot for you in the near future.” “Thank you, ma’am.”, you bowed your head and walked over to the changing room. Before leaving you grabbed the last pile of papers, which had the story written on it. It felt unbelieveable that Bakugo Katsuki had written his own short story, let alone composed music for it.

When you got out you were just about to call Shoto to tell you about it, but then you saw Bakugo standing by the entrance. “I’ll give you this, Bakugo.”, you said as you walked up to him, “You’re pretty good at piano.” “Pretty good?”, he scoffed, “You sure are cocky, aren’t you princess?” “What’s with the nickname?”, you folded your arms over your chest. “Prancing around like that in the studio, I might as well call you a princess.”, he chuckled, “Or do you prefer idiot?” “I’d like to see you ‘prance around’ like I did.”, you huffed. “I didn’t say you were bad.”, he looked away from you, “Whatever, I’m leaving. I’m counting on you to get the lead, princess.” He started walking away.

-

Now it’s your turn to choose: follow Bakugo or call Shoto? Click here to choose

permanent taglist: @theoceanphoenixhasrisen | @raven-r0ses | @darkbeautyswife | @sondering-thoughts | @gowoneandonlyone | @bnhabadass | @queenblackcat | @jayetheanimefreek101 | @witchy-anna | @cutest-celestial-princess | @missymysa | @karebear5118 | @weebartistinc | @crystal-lilac |

[odysseywritings]

Hot and Cold

( for @sunday-romance​​ )

#sundaylove

The festival allowed for masked vigilantes of all allegiances to cease violence for the sake of armistice. Outside the law and organized crime, it was a safe masquerade to relax together and avoid property damage. Food was prepared sweet, sour, and spicy for every preference while the enigmatic DJ Comic performs a diverse playlist.

Energy from the last upbeat song shifted as a slower song with a violin lead playing a melancholic tune. Most of the crowd followed along except for the restless Scarlet Hellion. Untamed dyed hair, claw-like fingernails, theater mask, and dress all blood red as her normal boundless passion stood out. Seemingly uncaring about the eyes on her, she sprinted around couples in search of a single partner.

She bumped into a lonesome figure dressed in a blue suit with a cape worn around it.. He wore a blue hawk helmet concealing his forehead aside from his blue eyes and navy lips. The enigmatic man gave a cool smile and extended his hand. Her grin showed a row of powerful fangs that intensified her emotion as she mixed with her partner.

“Never took the frosty Blue Wing for someone interested in social events. Guess you’re not too cool for   ‘shallow’ meetings after all.”

“I like them. It just takes a lot for me to burst with joy.”

“Well, when that happens, I want a snapshot in case anyone thinks I’m lying.”

The violin sound soothed Wing as he led with a graceful smile, while Hellion fidgeted and shuffled without a beat. He raised a brow at her jittery motions.

“I’m like a shark!” she frowned with her jaws showing. “If I stop dancing, I’ll die!”

Wing chuckled. “Is that why no one can catch you? Always too fast for them?”

“That a challenge?”

“No. I like that you’re full of life.”

She scoffed as he steadily moved to the cascading piano and bass as it carried him with ease, appreciating the warmth from Hellion’s grip. The two swayed as she tapped her feet to the rhythm as percussion, and Wing smiled at the action.

“Think I’m funny?” she prodded.

“I’m thinking about how you dance in your own environment. You seem like a tango type.”

“This isn’t music I listen to normally, you’re right. It’s a shame it’s the last one. You missed out on a wild time!”

“I’ll live,” he said. He noticed her legs moving effortlessly. “Feel at ease?”

“Eh, a bit. I’m imagining you trying to dance in a rave and it’s doing wonders for my brain activity!”

“Glad to assist.”

The last minute of the song had the climatic flourish of strings and a surprise saxophone to guide the pair as they locked eyes. Wing felt his heart pump faster than normal from her eyes, while she softly fluttered her own. Subconscious actions as the two forgot their aliases and saw each other as two people locked in a close connection. Neither felt hot or cold, only a breezy warmth coursing in their bodies as they approached further. The song ended with a last piano note and the two cleared their throats and resumed their normal distance.

“Well,” Wing sputtered. “This was a fine dance. I’m glad you enjoyed it more than you’d thought.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m just glad someone had the guts to dance with me. Guess I’m too much for anyone to handle.”

“All the more reason to call this an achievement on my end. Though, you’re more fun than any other vigilante I’ve danced with.” He bowed and started walking away.

“What an honor,” she snickered with her large fangs exposed. “Too bad it was only one dance.”

Wing turned around and smiled. “Only for tonight.” He winked and disappeared into the blue yonder.

Her expression was frozen in confusion as her eyes widened. Her vision caught something below and she bent down to hold a violet. She grinned that toothy grin as she held onto the flower while the party slowly ended. She’d pass by flowers any given day, yet this one she took her time taking in the fragrance and softness.

[the-gory-gardner]

Nightingale Part Six: Fragile

(The Meeting Between A Huntsman And A Lonesome Kitten One Year Ago)

Jonathan West x Katrina Evans

It took a moment for Jonathan to remember his suggestion to his little guest when he woke up. He probably only remembered so quickly because sometime during the night he’d turned over and draped his hand over the pillow divider. Waking up a bit more he realized that not only had he crossed the barrier he’d also rested his hand on Katrina’s head. 

He assumed she hadn’t woken up when he’d placed it there otherwise she would have woken up. Still as he processed his actions he couldn’t help but note how soft curls were. Then again everything about Katrina seemed soft and fragile. Jonathan moved his hand away carefully and he slowly scooted to the edge of the bed. He knew if it hadn’t been for the pillows he’d more than likely ended up holding the girl and he couldn’t imagine how startled that would have made her had she’d woken up first. 

Jonathan shook his head from the thoughts deciding he should get ready for the day. Though it’s not like there was much to do, still he grabbed some clothes from his drawers before heading to the bathroom. He took a quick shower that only lasted ten minutes before getting out and drying off. Once he was dressed he left the bathroom and headed back to his room just to peek in on Katrina. The small girl was still asleep and curled up in the blankets. Though at some point in the last ten minutes she’d taken one of the pillows from the barrier and pulled it to her chest. 

After watching her for a few more minutes, just to see if she’d wake up, Jonathan closed the door and headed off to the kitchen. He wouldn’t have much to do today except for some work on his blog. For now he could get started on breakfast since his stomach had began growing in the shower. As he looks inside his fridge debating what to cook again he thinks of how small Katrina is, how light, thin and just fragile she is. 

He decides that since she seemed better the night before that a big breakfast wouldn’t hurt. If it did he’d make her something else. So he pulls out eggs, hash browns, sausage links, bacon and a box of waffles. He’s not sure if Katrina can eat it all but hopefully she’ll eat what she can and that would be good enough for him. With all of the ingredients out he starts cooking deciding to make scrambled instead of fried, he cooks the sausage in the same pan as the bacon and throws the hash browns into the oven. 

Jonathan had just thrown two waffles into the toaster when Katrina comes off yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Morning”. Jonathan greets still a bit nervous at interacting with someone especially when he remembers the softness of her hair. “Good morning, are you making breakfast”? Katrina asked looking at the food he’d began to plate with only the waffles left to cook now. “Yeah I hope you don’t mind a big breakfast”. Jonathan answered before turning away from her slightly as the toaster dinging and the waffles popped out. 

“Not at all I usually don’t eat breakfast”. She’d admitted. It was true usually her parents rarely made breakfast and when they did it was never good. She could have eaten breakfast at school but usually she goes right to the music room to play for a bit until it times to get to class. “You should most important meal of the day and all”. Jonathan replies only half serious. He knows he skipped out on his share of breakfasts when he was young, mostly to avoid his dad if he was up that early and only if he didn’t think his mom might be in trouble. 

After a minute or two Jonathan finishes plating only needing to add the waffles now before setting the plates down. This time they sit at the kitchen counter to eat which already has a couple rather comfy stools set up. “Wow your a really good cook”. Katrina finds herself saying with a bit of chewed waffle in her mouth. The sight makes Jonathan snort loudly before thanking her. He’d learned some cooking from his mother but not a lot due to a usual lack of food since his dad spent the majority of their money on beer and gambling. 

“Really though I wish I could cook like this”. Katrina remarked. She’d loved to be able to make meals similar to when she was little before all her sisters had moved out. Before her parents had decided that they were done raising children even though one remained under their roof. She wondered if they were home yet, had they realized she was gone, realized she had come down from her room attempting to bond before being brushed off because they were busy with work. Had they realized that the house was painfully quiet without the light strumming of a violin filling it. 

“Katrina, Katrina”? She was startled at the sound of her name and looked up to see Jonathan looking at her with...concern? “Y-Yes”? She asked to let him know she’d heard him. “You zoned out a bit there you okay”? He questioned. “Yeah”. She said with a hesitate nod. “Just got a bit lost in my head is all”. She explained. “Okay if that’s all”. He stated like he didn’t fully believe but didn’t want to upset her. “But I said that maybe I could teach you a bit, probably not a lot but we have a few days until the roads clear up”. He told her. 

Katrina nodded with a strained smile. She was truly happy he offered to teach her to cook but there was an odd pang in her chest at the reminder that in a few days she’d be leaving. She shouldn’t miss the cabin or Jonathan she’d barely been here two days. But she couldn’t deny that two days here had felt warmer than almost two decades with her family. “Yeah I’d like that, might actually be tempted eat breakfast if I could make something half as decent as this”. She finally replied. 

“Oh trust me when you leave here your cooking will be more than decent”. Jonathan remarked. Katrina huffed a laugh before continuing eating. They don’t talk as they did the night before but the silence is comforting instead of awkward like it is with others. They find almost enjoyable and when they finish with their food Katrina insist on helping with the dishes. Jonathan tells her she doesn’t have to but she’s stubborn on the subject. 

Jonathan finds it a bit cute that the timid, shy and stuttering girl can be so stubborn. He wonders if she occasionally gets like this with others or if she’s just more relax here. He couldn’t imagine be relaxed so quickly after everything she’d went though. It made him feel slightly prideful that despite his lack of people skills he’d made her feel so safe so fast. 

After a few more minutes of his musings Jonathan and Katrina finish up the dishes before putting away what little leftovers there were. With that done they go to the living room with him telling Katrina she can chose something to watch. While she’s channel surfing he’d picked up his laptop debating if he wants to update his blog. When he finally opens it and logs in he sees that it’s still on the news website from yesterday. Still on the article on the ‘missing’ sex offender. 

Jonathan wonders if he should look at any updates. See if they’ve discovered the body, if there’s a chance police could be heading towards his cabin. If not if the back road is still covered in snow and too icy to travel than that means his truck has been found. If his truck hasn’t been found then the body might still be out there, stiff and covered in snow. He tells himself he shouldn’t worry that if the cops come he’ll tell the truth he attacked Katrina and Jonathan acted in self-defense. 

But even with the man’s obvious record the police would still ask for a statement and even though she’d be seen as a victim it would be hard for her. Jonathan can vaguely recall being questioned by the police while sitting numbly in the hospital numb and a bit doped up. He was seen as a victim from the start or at least as a scared boy but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard having to explain what happened that night and thinking any moment he’d break. 

He looked up from his computer to look at Katrina. She was sitting in the center of the couch now with her knees pulled up to her chest while she watched an cartoon on the TV. She was so small and his clothes only further showed that fact with how much they dwarfed her. He could almost picture her sitting curled up and meek in a hard plastic chair in a cold police station with two stone faced officer asking she questions as she explained what was possibly the worst day of her life. 

She’d break Jonathan was certain of it. 

And that, that was something he didn’t want. But how could he stop her from breaking. He knew she was fragile and no matter how much better she felt when she left she’d be hysteric if she had to talk to anyone about what happened. That’s when the idea came to him, it was crazy and very stupid but he just had this complete desire to help the small girl curled up on his couch. With a quiet sigh Jonathan went to an updated news page looking for any mention of the dead man. 

What he saw was nothing more than a simple mugshot that just stated the man was wanted. With a small nod Jonathan set up notifications to alert him if there were any updates on the news. If not Jonathan would go out and he’d make sure that the man couldn’t bother Katrina again, even in death. With a plan forming in his head he sat his computer down and walked over to Katrina. He gave her a small smile as he took a seat next to her. 

He was going to keep her safe no matter what. 

[diegoh4rgreeves]

The Polaroid

Story Summary: Diego Hargreeves has a new girlfriend who he just recently made love to. She tries to surprise him with a nude Polaroid which ends up getting lost. They spend their afternoon looking for it. They find it at Griddy’s Doughnuts with Diego’s brother, Five, after spotting Klaus with it because Klaus thought it was a joint paper. The couple gets the Polaroid back, and it prompts Diego and reader to have sex at an unlikely place… After sex, the couple cuddle at the academy and fall asleep together.

Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x Female Reader

Chapter: 1/1

Word Count: 2,447 words

Warning: Fluff, smut, swearing

A/N: I originally wrote this as an imagine where reader simply gives him the Polaroid and he keeps it. Then I thought this would make a cute dilemma and wanted to make them a realistic couple who love each other and still bicker over things. I hope you all enjoy this. I’m passionate about photography and about Diego, so I wanted to put 2 things I love in a story!

I walk into the bathroom of the gym to check myself in the mirror. I’m wearing a yellow-and-white checkered dress, clipped my bangs to one side, applied red lipstick, and I make sure that my winged black eyeliner was set properly. I give one big smile to the mirror and feel confident in approaching my boyfriend, Diego Hargreeves. He’s going to love this outfit! I usually wear all-black clothing which he also loves. I just thought I’d change it up for today.

I walk out of the bathroom and see him fighting at the boxing rink. Diego Hargreeves is Number 2 of the superhero league, the Umbrella Academy. He’s known as The Kraken. His speciality is in throwing knives. I met him at a punk show when his sister Vanya (Number 7, The White Violin) and he were briefly in a band. I didn’t see him for almost a year after that night. Vanya and I kept in touch and she told me that Diego had an urgent mission the last night of their show. She spent her time learning to play the violin and later teaching it to kids.

I’m a music photographer and took their photos the show before they disbanded. I sent the prints of the photos to Vanya by mail, and we’ve gotten coffee together occasionally. Vanya is cool with her frail looks, and dress shirts and jeans. She’s a nervous person. One time she accidentally poured salt in her coffee. She dared me to drink it. I did. It was nasty. It was that same day she took me over to the academy and introduced me to her siblings. That was how I met Diego again. There was an instant spark. We flirted like it was no one’s business. We talked on the phone for weeks. I came to the gym to watch him and took photos of him in action. Then that evolved to taking photos of each other on unintentional dates. This went on for a few months. Finally, he’s my boyfriend, and I am so happy.

I watch him throw punches and put a guy in a headlock. They’re both groaning as they fight. In between all that, he beams up when he sees me and holds up his hand to indicate a wave at me. I grin at him as acknowledgement to the wave.

I’m especially excited to see Diego today because we made love together for the first time a few nights ago. I took a nude Polaroid of myself and decorated the edges of it with lipstick marks, glued-on rose petals, and an ‘i love u’ written from a red Sharpie. I left it underneath the pillow of his bed in the boiler room of the gym, where he lives.

“Winner!” The ref holds up my boyfriend’s arm. Diego heavily breathes as he holds still with his arm up. There’s slow and light clapping for him. It’s only 11am, so not many people are at the gym right now.

He comes down and immediately walks over to me. He’s sweating and he puts his arm around me. “Hey,” he pecks my cheek. “How was that? Did you like the fight?”

I grin and turn slightly towards him. I place the tips of my fingers on his chest. “Why yes, I did. I think you’ll really know my reaction if you check underneath your pillow soon enough…”

He cocks his eyebrow at me.

“You’ll see what I mean.” I giggle.

He smirks and nods. “Okay then. I guess I’ll check this right now!”

I smirk back and grab his arm to lead the way to his bedroom.

He follows suit. I can feel his pulse still going fast. “You don’t mind if I don’t shower first? I mean…” We’re outside his room now. He leans and whispers, “…You look hella good today. Let me look just as presentable for you.”

I blow raspberries and bend my wrist. “You always look good, Diego. In fact…” I hold the knob to the boiler room. I eye him up and down. “You’re not gonna need your clothes soon anyway.”

“Y/N,” he laughs. “Seriously, what’s underneath my pillow?”

“Just wait for it!” I laugh. “I love leaving you in suspense.”

He growls and twists the doorknob. “It better be your panties…” That actually would have been a great idea… I just show up to the gym in a dress and no underwear on. He would have loved that.

“Well, no,” I respond as we walk into the room. “Just check, Diego!” I stop myself a few steps into the room while he walks over to the bed with curiosity.

He lifts his pillow up. “Hmm.”

I furrow my brows. “What is it?”

“I don’t see anything…” He turns around to me and smirks. “Is it invisible?”

I walk over to his bed and check for the spot I left the Polaroid myself. It’s not there.

“Maybe it fell behind my bed.”

I nod. “Okay. You lift the mattress and I’ll check underneath.” He does as he’s told. I check underneath, and on the floor. Nothing. “What the hell…” I whisper.

“Y/N, just tell me what it was, and we’ll go look for it.” Diego looks at me with concern.

I sigh. “It was… a nude Polaroid… of me.” I look at the ground in shame. Maybe this was a bad idea. Fuck knows where it is now and if some pervert beat Diego to it…

He looks at me in bewilderment. “Oh…” he looks to the side.

I nod. “Mmmhm.”

“Okay… Well… I have no idea where it went!” Diego smirks.

“Neither do I!” I retort. “What the fuck do we do about this, Diego!? You can’t just ask the guys if they saw a nude photo of your girlfriend. They already know what I look like, so it’d be awkward as hell.”

“Why did you even have to take a picture!?” Diego argues. “You’re already in my wank bank.”

“Wank bank!? Who says that anymore?”

He sighs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blame you for this problem. We will find the picture, okay?” He puts a hand on my shoulder. I look away from him out of embarrassment. “Okay, Y/N?”

I reluctantly nod. I don’t really believe that we will. I just hope that it’s in the trash by now and grinded up by a truck.

Diego and split up to go and look for the Polaroid. We checked the rest of the room. We checked the bathroom. We checked the boxing rink. He lied to his boss that he might have left some papers in his office, so he checked there.

��When did you leave the Polaroid?” Diego whispers to me when we’re by the entrance of the gym.

“I came in after a show I did a photo gig for at like 3am. I told your boss I had to leave something for you, so he opened the boiler room for me.”

Diego nods. “Okay… It should have stayed put then.”

I throw my hands out in frustration. “You think!?”

“We should just take a break trying to find this,” Diego sighs. “Tell you what, why don’t I go shower and we can go to Griddy’s for some coffee and doughnuts?”

I sigh. “I am getting pretty hungry, so we may as well do that…”

He puts his arm around me. “We will find it.” He kisses my temple. “I promise.” He heads on over to the changing room of the gym and takes his shower.

—

Over at Griddy’s, we see Diego’s brother Number Five all by his lonesome. The thing about Number Five is that he was born the same year as all of Diego and his siblings were, but he grew old from time-travelling. He’s a 60-year-old-man in the body of a 13-year-old boy wearing the uniform for The Umbrella Academy. He’s at the wooden counter and having a cup of black coffee. Five isn’t the most social person. Diego still leads me to him as we hold hands and approach him.

Five gives us a look. Even for him, it’s a strange look. “Y/N… Diego…” He gulps. “This is going to be… very awkward, but I have something that belongs to the both of you.” Diego and I give each other a look. Five pulls out a square white sheet of plastic paper. Both Diego and I gasp. Thankfully, Five keeps the Polaroid face-down.

I snatch it away from Five. “How do you have this, and why!?”

“I’m sorry!” Five holds up his hands. “I truly am! I told Klaus that I wasn’t going to give him money for drugs. The others must have said the same thing because he came home bragging to me about finding joint papers in Diego’s room. When he held it up, I saw a breast and I asked Klaus how he found a printed joint… and that was when we both looked at it more carefully and…” Five clears his throat. “Did I tell you how sorry I am?”

I sigh. “It’s okay. You did the right thing giving it back to me. Thank you, Five.”

He nods. “Now you and my brother go get freaky, whatever it is you kids do these days.”

Diego guffaws. “Oh, we will!”

“Diego.” I clench my teeth and nudge him.

“Later, Five!” Diego calls out and leads us out of Griddy’s.

Diego and I stand by the entry of the doughnut shop. “So, we’re not getting doughnuts and coffee anymore?” I point out.

Diego only exclaims over finally having the Polaroid. “Now come on. Let me see it, let me see it!”

“What happened to the wank bank?” I retort.

His excitement goes down to a sigh. “Y/N, did I tell you how sorry I am earlier? I don’t think I did… I’m sorry I was such an asshole over it. I really do appreciate you spicing things up…” He raises his eyebrows at me and smiles. “You were so shy when we first met…” He takes my hand and pecks it, and then he kisses down my arm.

I laugh wholeheartedly. “You are so lame. But I love you.” I smile.

He smiles back at me. He whispers in my ear with a hot breath. “Now let me see it and we can head to the back of Griddy’s.”

I give him a scandalised look. “Diego! That sweet lady who runs the shop will come out here.”

He shrugs. “Isn’t it exciting when it’s forbidden?”

I hesitate before giggling. “I do like that.” I place the tips of my finger to his chest like I did earlier at the gym. He holds up both my hands and kisses them again.

Diego and I walk on over to the back of Griddy’s. His mouth hangs when he looks at the Polaroid and he tells me how much of a dirty little slut I am for going through all this trouble for him.

He stuffs the Polaroid into the pocket of his black pants before he presses our lips hard together. His mouth is cold not long after his shower. I can smell his aftershave and his cologne which he seemed to have sprayed on excessively after his fight. He is so built that I let my hands roam his chest as we passionately kiss. Suddenly he lifts me up and pins me against the brick walls. I wrap my legs around his waist. He pulls down the top of my dress to massage my breasts and licks and sucks them; then he lifts the skirt of my dress up to my stomach. He grinds on my clit outside my panties and he looks at me. “You like that?”

“Mhmm…” I blush and nod.

He smirks. Then he unbuckles his belt and zips down the fly of his pants. He keeps me up and pulls my panties down to one of my ankles. He puts me back in position and slides on the condom he pulled out from his pocket. “Ready?” he checks with me.

I nod.

He stares me down as he slowly and teasingly slides inside me. He’s so big that the first time we made love, I bled. He seems to wanna be careful of that this time. He manages to still make this sexy. I want him to go at least a little faster. Suddenly he does, and I hump back. He smiles as he takes notice of this. I dig my nails to his back and call out his name. I forget where I am suddenly, and I start chasing my high. He’s so big yet I feel like I’ve adjusted to him already. He groans and tilts his head back as he thrusts faster and harder. He calls out my name as quietly as he can in this public area. I feel like we’re provoking each other, and it feels so good.

I got so into this that I suddenly tense up inside him and squirt. I tilt my head and moan as I let this feeling last. I hear him groan and then he pulls out. He kneels me down by him and tells me to open my mouth. I do as he says, and I shove him in. I move my mouth up and down him and moan. He calls out yes and lets out some groans before he lets out a big load which I struggle on swallowing all of. “Yes, princess. Thank you, princess,” he sighs.

Then he looks down at me. I look up at him. And we giggle profusely.

—

Diego and I spend the rest of the day at the academy. We are in his childhood bedroom. It’s small and dingy inside the old mansion. The walls are painted an army green colour and all his posters cover up some of the cracks on the wall. The floors are dark brown and wooden. His bed is plushy, and the fan in his room gets us to snuggle underneath his covers.

He is so warm. I try to avoid falling asleep on him. He points out me being sleepy and that it’s late anyway. “Would you like to stay over?”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Are you not going back to the gym?”

He blows raspberries. “Not that dump. I wanna spend time with my girlfriend tonight… if she would like to spend time with me.”

“Awww,” I giggle. I kiss the tip of his nose. “It would be my pleasure.”

He grins. “Great.” He pulls me back into his chest. I hold him back and close my eyes with the comfort of getting to spend even more time with him.

[inkyglob]

All He Needed Was a Spark

Commission/Art trade with @axis-intercept!! It took FAR too long, but here it is! My first attempt at Medic x Pyro for the artist that never fails to make me smile ---- Before Pyro, the doctor was an old man. At least, that’s what he told himself- or, rather, that is what the evidence seemed to tell him. Before the Pyro, he was an apathetic divorcee who had very little interest in the world outside of his medical work. 

He woke up in the morning and scrubbed a large hand down his face before he took his vitamins, the large pills old men take, for no other reason but to keep a routine. He fed his doves before he brushed his teeth, cooing quietly to them in affectionately soft tones.

Toothbrush in mouth, he hunted for his glasses, not difficult to find, but a hassle when he forgot to place them in their rightful spot before sleeping. 9 times out of 10, he finds them on the floor beside his bed, puts them on, and walks to spit the foam from his mouth.

Then, he dressed. A monotonous and lonesome procedure, wishing he could call out to ask where his socks where instead of having to trace back his mental steps. 

He was more lonely than he would like to admit, the greatest joy in his life being the experiments he performed on the other mercenaries stationed at his base, discussing theories with Archimedes perched on his shoulder as he operated, earning odd looks from the other 6 mercs who seemed to be unable to comprehend companionship even if it were to crawl from their chest after an operation. 

Days seemed monotonous, nights seemed far too long, accordion was too happy, violin was too sad- the balance of the universe seemed so out of place.

He considered starting over.

He considered social arson.

He considered going back on the run.

When he met the Pyro there was… fascination. There was the figure sitting on his operating table, playing with tongue depressors like faceless puppets- and then there was the man in his file.

The figure was reportedly unwilling to show their face to the world, finding the comfort of the suit to be far more pleasing than properly socializing, though he did try from within the suit, to his credit. 

The muffled murmurs could be translated in time, so far the Spy had been able to make out “Good morning,”, the Scout claims to have heard “I will set fire to all things you hold dear,” (though there is some debate about this,) and the laughter was unmistakable. 

But, here he was, sitting cross legged on the operating table and murmuring to himself as he played with the tongue depressors and made them speak to one another, seeming to believe he was alone in the room. The action was childlike, fitting with the images the team had caught of unicorns and rainbows in their locker, but the phenomenon seemed more interesting than simply a childish... person.

Medic expected the tongue depressors to go flying out of embarrassment when he made himself known, clearing his throat loudly to signal his presence, but the tongue depressors simply stopped loving, his hands finding a nice place in his lap, his head turning to that the reflective glasses of his mask showed the doctor his own nervousness.

He steeled himself up, held his breath for a moment, then let it out. Things might be easier if he used this as a sign. Back in Rottenburg he had been a hit with the children, to his ex-wife’s surprise (since he seemed to complain about them incessantly,) but he hadn’t put on that smile in years-

He let out all the air in his lungs and breathed in a smile, taking a lollipop from inside one of his desk drawers. “Guten Nachmittag! I am so glad you have come, honestly most of zhese mercenaries seem to be frightened of me,” He actually felt an honest smile poking its way through the falso one. “I cannot understand vhy.”  The figure seemed to chuckle a bit and let themselves be distracted by the lollipop in hand “Ah! So you do like sveets! I do too, but I have a proposition for you. If you will take off your suit for zhirty minutes so that I may examine your health, You can have as many lollipops as you would like.” 

The figure’s posture changed and Medic felt an honest laugh squeeze out from his lungs in soft clicks as he imagined the eyes beneath the mask going wide with wonder. 

“Do we have a deal?”

The figure nodded, reached back to unfasten the mask, and froze in hesitation.

“Perhaps I can take off my coat in a show of trust?” He offered softly, and did nothing to hesitate when he watched the Pyro nod. “See?” He gestured to his arms, bare because his shirtsleeves were rolled up. “I’m fine. Now, you try.”

The man under the mask took the doctor’s breath away. A beautiful creature of pallor and freckles, a tuft of auburn curls growing from a darker base of closely cut hair on the sides of his head. Long lashes fluttered as the man’s green eyes focuses on the new level of light they were being allowed, and his posture seemed to correct itself as he took in a deep breath of unfiltered air and let it out with a self calming sigh.

Medic swallowed “See? Zhat vas not so hard. Ve are going to have to remove most of it zhough, I need to do a full physical if you vill be staying vith us, und I hope zhat you are, ja?” 

The redhead looked at the doctor and took another steadying breath before standing and unzipping the suit, letting it fall to the floor, and surprising the doctor when he picked it up and folded it again before he clambered up onto the table once again.

“Very good, very good” The German murmured to himself and pulled his gloves on to begin his medical evaluation.

The younger man jumped when he felt the cold of the stethoscope, huffing out a laugh to himself for that first moment of cold metal shock. He grinned out of one corner of his mouth when he heard the doctor praise him softly for having a strong heart.

“Ve vill have to do some research on your lungs, zhere is a bit of a wheeze zhat shouldn’t necessarily be zhere…” He was taking notes on his clipboard, standing basically between the Pyro’s legs as he did. His eyes found the burn scars on the man’s neck and shoulder, focussing for a moment and then ignoring them completely, a fact that seemed to intrigue the lad being studied.

“You can ask, I don’t mind.” There was no rasp, as one might expect, the Pyro’s voice was obviously used on a regular basis, and it was honestly pure in a honey smooth way.

Medic choked when he heard it. “I vould rather not pry, it looks healed enough to be simply mentioned in a preliminary.”

He walked around the table to view his back, warning him about the cold tool he was using. The Pyro paused in thought “Would you believe I fought a dragon?” He asked curiously.

Medic smiled and chuckled honestly as he scribbled down another note “As fantastic as zhat seems, I doubt you fought a dragon. Lay back?” Pyro did as told and giggled a bit as his body was gently probed for muscle formation notes “Well the dragon was a friend of mine who ate too many spicy candies” The ginger’s grin was infectious, finding the Medic’s mouth and eyes as he quirked a brow 

“Oh?”

“Yeup. A few years back we found a candy that was made from ghost peppers and it was so spicy he breathed FIRE!” there was a mischievousness in his eyes and his brows wagged in a knowing entertaining way. 

To Medic, the transformation from childish to casually entertaining was fascinating, his subject’s mind seemed to work slightly differently behind his mask, or perhaps there was a feeling of accepting anonymity- that was for another time.

“I have to ask, did your friend survive breathing fire?”

“Oh, he had some chocolate milk and was fine. I was the one who ended up in the hospital. That one, there was no nice doctors to offer me candies for sitting still.” He grinned wide, like middle school-er who had told the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

The child and the man were united, the Pyro had a spectrum of behaviors, and it was drawing the Medic in, not simply as a study subject but as a personality. “I think that all doctors should have candies, for adults and children-” he paused with a laugh “And everyone in between.” 

Laughing was an odd sensation now, he did not have many chances to do so since he started with the violence of his current job, but the casual childishness the pyro emitted was intoxicating with his relaxation.

“I think you can put the suit on, but I need to ask you a few questions, so leave the mask off, ja?”

His companion gave him a thumbs up and stood to slide his legs and arms into his suit, zipping it back up before sitting back up on the table. As a reward, the lollipop was given to him and he immediately popped it into his mouth “Do you have any allergies you know of?”

“I’m allergic to bullshit” He said around the stick of the candy and Medic choked on air, doubling over in laughter.

“Vell, I believe ve share zhat allergy. But I meant food or medicinal, along those lines” He removed his glasses to wipe his eyes.

“Um, I think I’m allergic to bees, shellfish, and probably the French because my trigger finger itches when that spy is around.”

“Gütt Gott” he whispered with a smile “You are witty, I vill give you zhat.”

“Well, most just call me hot headed, but I’ll take the compliment.” He shot finger guns at the Medic with a sly smile and he crunched the lollipop “Oh, damn, I always do that-”

“Any past injuries zhat I should know about before ve do your x-rays tomorrow?” “I suppose you mean if I've broken bones?”

“Ja”

“I assume I am to exclude in bodies other than my own?”

Medic snorted and the glint in the green eyes told him he was looking to find what made him laugh, as if he liked to watch the sight. “Ja. In your own body.” “I broke my arm at 5, my leg at 10, and a rib at 15. With the pattern I’m following, I shouldn't be in danger again for another 3 years. I’ve avoided it the last three cycles.”

Doing the math in his head, medic corrected his age on the paper. They conversed that way for quite a while, by the end of the session the doctor felt like he had worked out his abs more in that hour than in the last year just from laughing.

The pyro grabbed his mask and medic stopped him with a gentle touch to his wrist. “Why do you wear it even off the battlefield?” The smile he received was a bit sadder than he expected “It makes life a little bit more bearable, honestly. When I find something that does the same job, I’ll take it off more.”

He pulled the mask on and fed the stick of his newest lollipop through one of the grates in his mask. He threw the doctor a thumbs up and walked out, leaving that empty feeling from before sinking back into the room.

It was almost a sign.

After the Pyro is the best time he’s lived through. Now, he wakes in the morning feeling refreshed and with another’s scent on his pillow.  His lover smells like s’mores, sweet and ashen all at once, making him crave another day of candied smiles and fiery touches.  

He sighs deeply with content the moment his alarm rings and his grip tightens on the smaller man before him. His nose buried in auburn locks of hair, to which a hand that is not his either pulls him closer or pushes him away with a murmur of  “Oh just ten more minutes…” 

He climbs out of bed and dresses, glasses on the moment he wakes so he can see those green eyes every moment he isn’t right next to them. His figure clad in blankets curls to watch the doctor dress and smiles, cracking soft jokes and making them both laugh and hum tenderly to each other. 

He has someone to coo at other than the doves while he brushes his teeth, though it leads to lewd “Mouthful” jokes from the Pyro and has him choking on his own laughter and trying not to spit toothpaste all over the mirror.

More often than not, he crawls back into bed, sans his boots and coat, holding the lad with a chuckle and a smile, listening to stories and begging him not to make them late to breakfast again. His greatest joy is watching his lover smile, watching his eyes light up with happiness when playing a game or telling a story.

The doves adore him too, landing on his shoulders and nesting in hi hair when he stays still long enough. Some days they have identical “nesting hair” that the others mistake for “sex hair.”

It was a new beginning.

It was the spark his life honestly needed. 

He was never running again. 

And the realization came to him all at once as their lips met before both getting up to finish redying for the day- Pyro wore his mask far less often in the past few months. Perhaps he helped Pyro as much as his little spark helped him.

[grimelords]

Hello and god bless, I have finally finished my November playlist a week and a half into december. Disco, Guns N’ Roses, an entire doom metal album and everything in between. Please enjoy.

​Extraball - Yuksek: Aside from the extremely nice electro bass I think what I appreciate most about this song is that the chorus seems like the sort of thing you could sing in a round, or as some kind of children’s clapping game.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: Let me be the first to apologise for putting an 80 minute doom metal album as the second song on this playlist. I’m sorry. It was selfish and it won’t happen again. That said, please listen to this because it is transformative. I’ve listened this a lot this month and it’s really affected my mood I think. Doom metal is one of the only genres that takes itself seriously enough to release an album that’s just one 80 minute track but I really can’t fault them for doing it. This is a piece of music that demands to be listened to in full, and while it does naturally divide into movements like anything else this long would, it would be weaker overall if it were split into individual tracks or listened to individually. A lot of the playing on here, which is very sparse in long sections feels like ritual music of some kind - a feeling that’s compounded by the length when you’re absolutely lost within it. It makes electric bass and drums feel like modern ritual instruments and this album feels like an invocation of the spirit of loss itself.

Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis: For some reason I keep thinking about and listening to different versions of Sixteen Tons. This is Merle Travis, the orginal songwriter, but this is a new recording he did in 1989. Notably I love the very plaintive solo in the middle of this, but I especially love that he changed the lyric at the end to say “I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford” which feels like an agressive rebuke or a solemn nod but I can’t tell which.

Looking Up - Michael Smith: My girlfriend sent me this song because she heard it on the podcast Good Christian Fun which as I understand it is an exploration of the bizzare world of american evangelical christian media. Anyway this song rocks. It sounds like Todd Terje remixed the theme to some lost 80s sitcom and I really can’t get enough of it.

Wild - Beach House: This is such a beautiful song. I love the tinny drum machine and the live drums that sound programmed constrasting against the huge wall of guitar and synths. I used to listen to this album a lot a few years ago when I worked night shift and it reminds me of standing on top of wine tanks in the cool night air at 2am texting my now girlfriend as she went to bed. Sorry.

Piano Concerto No. 3 In D Minor, Op.30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto - Sergei Rachmaninoff: I had a friend in school who did his licentiate degree in piano in year 12 and was obsessed with this piece. One day he took me through the whole first movement and showed me how the theme is established and comes back in different forms over and over again throughout and basically taught me how to listen to classical music which was very kind of him because it’s something I’m only really appreciating now.

Verklärte Nacht, Op.4: String Sextett for 2 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Cellos - Arnold Schoenberg: This is an early Schoenberg piece before he got into that good good atonal serialism, but it does still have moments that presage what was to come. I don’t really have much to say about this other than it’s a very good place to start with Schoenberg because it’s like proof that he was a human man at one point.

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - Harry Belafonte: I’ve really been thinking about how work songs like this and like Sixteen Tons become international hits. This one especially, in the 50s, was it because it was a really good song (which it is) that a lot of people related to or was it a sort of exoticism about funny banana song (which to be fair, it also is).

Boogie Wonderland (12" Version) - Earth, Wind And Fire: This is the song you hear playing from the other side of the door when you get to heaven.

Apollo’s Mood - The Olympians: This album is basically a collection of Daptone All-Stars under the name The Olympians just doing their thing and it’s really amazing. I especially love the harpsichord in this, an instrument that doesn’t get nearly enough of a workout in soul music. Also, I don’t really know how to describe it but I really love the way the snare roll that starts it off and comes back a few times sounds - buzzy and busy without rushing anyone.

Saturn - The Olympians: This is the song you use for your montage at the end of a James Bond movie that’s just four minutes of him relaxing and drinking different cocktails by himself that the critics called ‘wholly unneccesary’. In the drums and bongo break he does a little dance and falls over.

November Rain - Guns N’ Roses: As far as overblown classic rock epics go, I really wish November Rain had the cultural place of bad song Bohemian Rhapsody or Stairway To Heaven because underneath the 9 minutes of stings and bullshit it’s actually a very beautiful and sad song written by an idiot.

Sisters Of The Moon - Fleetwood Mac: With the current wytchy cult that Stevie Nicks has around her it’s easy to forget that she wrote songs like Sisters Of The Moon, a song explicitly about a witch converting other women to witchery. I love the big extended phrase of guitar chords in the chorus and I’m very mad about how this song fades out just as it’s absolutely going off.

When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin: Rounding out this unexpected classic rock trio is When The Levee Breaks which I was thinking about because I was thinking about The Big Short. This song sounds so good and there’s been so much written about the famous drum sound and the production but what I only learned this month is that it was apparently recorded at a faster tempo and then slowed down afterwards, which explains a lot about a lot of the sounds in here.

Bad Liar - Selena Gomez: This is maybe the pop song of the year honestly. It’s so good in every single aspect, especially the when she says’ oh baby lets make reality, actuality, reality’ which is a very weird lyric. So is 'you’re taking up a fraction of my mind, every time I watch you serpentine(?)’. Great stuff all around.

Hello Miss Lonesome - Marlon Williams: I saw Marlon Williams a year or so ago and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to because things just kept going wrong. Broken strings and misunderstandings and all that sort of thing, and the highlight for me was in this song the drummer got overconfident and started pushing the tempo near the end and eventually tripped over himself so badly they had to stop and start again.

The Voice Of Q - Q: Here’s how you can tell a song is good: you can only find it on Spotify on a compilation album called 'Cocaine Boogie: 24 Kilos Of Underground 80s Dance’. This song seems like a classic case of 'somebody bought a vocoder’ and it’s very very good, another fantastic entry in the canon of interplanetary disco. I also love the children sadly pleading with Q to come back at the end, because the song hasn’t really given you any understanding of who or what Q is other than a being with a voice who is from space.

Take A Trip - Rev. Utah Smith: If I were, hypothetically, to start, for example, a UFO cult, I would definitely have my congregation sing this song. I love it so much. Outside of the fun premise it does what good gospel music should do and completely uplifts my spirit by promising a better life after this one, and if I get to go there by rocket ship, well that’s all the better.

Normal Person - Arcade Fire: I love the little 'do you like rock and roll music? 'cause I don’t know if I do.’ he sings at the start because it sounds like they’re into their 13th hour of recording or something. I love the lead guitar that sounds like it’s severely undernourished but trying its best and I love how strangely heavy the bass and rhythm guitar is compared to a lot of their other songs. A good song to sing along to while you’re driving.

Top Of The World - Kimbra: I don’t know exactly how or why but Kimbra made a Kanye song. Playing the dual roles of Kanye and Featured Artist she does a great job and once again defies whatever I thought she was going to do next. I can’t wait for the album, I hope it has even more Raps.

Eric’s Trip - Sonic Youth: I’ve never gotten much into Sonic Youth because they seemed way too New York Cool for me, so imagine my heartbreak when I found out the lyrics to my favourite song of theirs are wholesale lifted from an Andy Warhol film. I still have a lot of love for 'my head’s on straight, my girlfriend’s beautiful, it looks pretty good to me’ though.

I Hope I Sleep Tonight - DJ Seinfeld: God I’d be embarrassed if I blew up on soundcloud with the name 'DJ Seinfeld’ and then had to keep it when I put my album out. This album varies pretty wildly in quality but I really love this track, the synth melody that just careens around wildly while the rest of the song happens nearby is what does it for me I think.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: “In an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, Jaar said “I was watching a documentary about bugs. It said that if they looked at the sun, they’d die. I thought ‘Oh, that’s funny; that’s cute’ and I wrote a track about it (…). If you find something really special in a tiny story about bugs, it could have a much bigger meaning than that. I like the idea of turning life into this miniature thing”.” He’s used this particular voice modulation on a couple of song and it really cracks me up because it so thick and textured and just plain silly but somehow it suits the song perfectly.

Long Strong Diamond - Baggsmen: This is a song I remember seeing on Rage late at night years and years ago. The guy was dressed up as a werewolf and kidnapping some girl but he gets so distracted by his song about being a werewolf that she ends up escaping. Extremely mad to find out that the guy in this song from years ago that I love is none other than personal enemy of mine Jake Stone from Bluejuice.

XO/The Host/Initiation - The Weeknd: Trilogy could well be the best album of the decade. Remember when The Weeknd was this mysterious anonymous guy who was firmly a character and not an actual guy who seems to actually believe what he’s singing? I love Trilogy because the progression across the three discs from like 'cool indifferent party guy’ in House Of Balloons to extremely deranged cult leader in Echoes Of Silence is very satisfying. Initiation especially is great because it’s like a cool fun song about a party mixed with some extremely dark shit about the clocks not working so you can’t tell the time and the blinds not working so you can’t see outside in a scary pitch shifting voice. “And all I wanna do is leave 'cause I’ve been zoning for a week and I ain’t left this little room, trying to concentrate to breathe” but you absolutely MUST meet my boys.

This Guy’s In Love With You - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: Anyway here’s a change of pace. A very peaceful song about just fucking dying if she won’t be your girl. I love how dramatic this song gets before completely stopping and starting again into a very relaxed trumpet line.

Jasmine (demo) - Jai Paul: I’m obsessed with the cult that develops around guys like Jai Paul and Jay Electronica, who put out two songs that are so good that it drives people insane when they don’t put out any more. There’s apparently a bunch of stuff happening with Jai Paul currently that I haven’t been keeping track of but The Fader had a really good article earlier this year about how the Jai Paul leaks and how insane it made everyone. Aside from all that, the song is pure magic - just listen to it and you can understand why everyone was obsessed as they were.

Freaking Out The Neighbourhood - Mac Demarco: I remember I saw an interview with Mac Demarco talking about this song and he described the riff as just some dumb little thing he made up which is shocking to me because I am totally obsessed with how good it sounds. It’s perfect!

Bob - “Weird Al” Yankovic: Yes baby it’s Weird Al’s all-palindrome Bob Dylan parody! I was telling my girfriend about how this is actually really good songwriting because even though it’s essentially gibberish it has enough good imagery and fun sounds that it works anyway and really how different is 'may a moody baby doom a yam’ to 'transient jet lagged ecto-mimed bison’ from the Mars Volta which also appears on this list? Anyway she hated it, and rightly so.

I Have Good News To Bring - Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live from the basement church of my UFO cult, a beautiful version of Take A Trip that sounds like it was recorded on the organ of an empty baseball stadium at night.

Julia - Jungle: I have been desperately waiting for three years now for another Jungle album and they finally posted about new songs the other day and I got very very excited. This is an amazing song, every sound in it is so perfectly placed and the vocals are very beautiful and have such a rich bass for such a high tenor. I love the way the drums subtly get very busy in the last few choruses, I could listen to this song for hours.

Ray Gun (feat. DOOM) -BadBadNotGood & Ghostface Killah: I love that this song is maybe 20bmp faster than Ghostface or Doom are expecting. Doom especially sounds far more excited than he has in years and they both do really well with it. Also, I was certain the melody it breaks into in the last third was some Lalo Schifrin bit I’ve heard before but I can’t seem to find any info corroborating that. If it’s familiar to you or you know where it’s from, please reply to this post because it’s been driving me crazy.

Confessions Pt. III - BadBadNotGood & Colin Stetson: Any song where Colin Stetson has to play with others is funny to me. He’s such a self contained ball of power that him joining a traditional group like it just wouldn’t work. Sure, this song does sort of sound like him doing his own thing for seven minutes while the band sort of reacts to him but it is absolutely fantastic anyway.

Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In The Line For The Bathroom) - N.E.R.D: Remember when Pharrell was crazy? This song is total chaos. The pitched down sample in the hook, the two note bassline, the sax that just hoots once a bar. And I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful bridge, especially the 'achooo’ backing vocals.

Parties - Shlohmo: Bad Vibes was such a moment. It is such a beautiful album, and a very easy album to fall asleep to and then wake up 20 minutes later terrified and choked by your headphones because Trapped In A Burning House, the song that sounds exactly like its title and nothing like the rest of the album, came on. I have such a strong emotional reaction I really can’t explain to the cutoff samples of people laughing near the end of this song.

Bering/Human Till Born -Talkdemonic: I have no idea how I came across this album but I’ve been listening to it constantly for ten years now and I still find new things to appreciate in it. The drums especially in Human Till Born are a source of obsession for me.

Don Caballero 3 - Don Caballero: For a long time I never 'got’ Don Caballero or Hella or any of these supposedly legendary math bands, despite loving so many bands obvously influenced by them. But then one day this album, and this song especially just clicked for me. It also happened to coincide with one of the most surreal weeks of my life when I was on a cruise ship and all I listened to was this and a field recording album that seems to have completely deleted itself from my computer since then. The best advice I’ve heard for listening to this is, and bands like it is that it’s backward. The drums are the lead instrument and everything else works around that, if that helps. This song has a twisted sort of morose quality that’s really hard to pin down. Some days it is absolutely heartbreaking, which sounds silly but it’s true.

B.Y.O.B. - System Of A Down: There’s a few reasons I was thinking of this song. First and most importantly it’s because of that dog vine but the other reason is I was thinking about how there hasn’t been a good anti-trump song yet outside of YG’s FDT, and that came out before the election. This and American Idiot came out in 2004/5, and I suppose it’s only been a year since the election so we’ve got a few years yet until the real hits come out I guess. Or I suppose he’d have to actually properly declare war, which, you know.

4D/MTI - Koreless: These songs are so intertwined in my head I feel like you can’t have one without this other. 4D is such a simple, beautiful piece of music. The synth that sounds like glass and the chopped vocals getting more and more contorted as the song goes on contrasted with the propulsion of the drums is so great. Both of these songs have a meticulousness and restraint to their sound, every single piece is perfectly where it should be and nothing else is allowed. Even MTI using so much white noise feels incredibly controlled and when it totally drops out it feels like coming up from underwater.

New Lands - Justice: Remember when Justice took 4 years to write a follow up to their album that lit the world on fire and instead of doing the same thing again they made a classic rock album? Everyone was so mad. Luckily this song is incredible and everyone was wrong once more.

You Discovered The Secret And Juiced It For All Its Majesty - Venetian Snares: This is from an EP called Cubist Reggae which I think a lot about in concept alone. This is probably the song that illustrates the idea worst but I love it a lot. My incredibly unpopular opinion is that Venetian Snares is miles better of Aphex Twin and whoever but everyone’s written him off as the Rossz Csillag guy so he doesn’t get no respect. I love how detailed his music is, how every one of the million sounds seems to be perfectly placed. I think he’s in a similar position to Autechre where he’s been making and listening to only his own music for so long now that he’s forgotten how normal music sounds, which is good.

Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank: I made a playlist a couple of years ago of all the songs I sing to myself when I’m just walking around or whatever and it turned out about 6/10 had 'blues’ or 'hard times’ in the title, which is tough but it’s ok, and this was one of them. If you want to read a wiki article that’ll make you cry, read Jackson C. Frank’s, but mostly you should just listen to this, his only album.

Thermal Treasure - Polvo: I played this song for my girlfriend and during the intro she said 'you have such a wide variety of tense, off kilter music seeminly designed just to put people on edge’. I’m a huge fan of this very defensive sentence in Polvo’s wiki article 'Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band’s guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars’.

FML - Kanye West: This is such a strangely affecting song and it’s hard to be sympathetic to Kanye as a narrator sometimes (especially when he insists on doubling down on dogshit lines like “'I'mma have the last laugh indian cause I’m from the tribe called chekaho’”) but against all odds you can identify and relate to his struggle to hold onto the woman he loves and not be undone by his own worst instincts. Musically this is the best The Weeknd has ever sounded and I already love him a lot, and the way the drums lead into the sample at the end is just perfect.

Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) - The Mars Volta: This is the album I’ve probably listened to the most in my life. As a teenager I would listen to this album every night for easily a year and somehow there’s still something new to hear in it. It’s almost hard to listen to it now because I have so much Teenage Feeling attached to it but it’s still an incredible piece of work. Jon Theodore deserves a statue for his drumming on this album, and this song especially, in my humble opinion.

Life’s A Beach! - Studio: God I love Studio. I think if you tried to describe them on paper you could never make it sound like good music. “It’s sort of, balearic , reggae, guitar-led dance music and the songs go for about 15 minutes most of the time.” But it is good music! I absolutely promise it’s incredible music!

The Number Song (Cut Chemist Remix) - DJ Shadow: I love this remix because it feels like theseus’ ship as demonstrated via remix. How many parts can you swap out for similar but not identical parts before it’s a completely different song. The drums are almost the same beat, but a totally different sample.The Jackson 5 horns in the original that signal the transition to the second half are still here with the same function, but it’s an entirely different horn sample, and an entirely different second half save for 'the party’s already started, and it’s about to end’. 

listen here

[auvoixauldier]

In-Character Interview

😬- If you bit someone, would it hurt?

“Erm.”

He appears lost in thought momentarily, tonguing at his canines behind his lips.

“I do not believe so.”

🏨- Name a time you were badly injured. What happened and what caused it?

“I’ven’t. Never horrifically enough for a fun tale, at least.”

Auvoix lifts his arms slightly, inspecting himself over.

“Mayhaps I must be due for my share of scars, eh?”

He then looks to you, parting with a nervous chuckle.

🏆- Do you consider yourself competitive at all? What will you do to win a game/fight?

“T’happens that I used to be. Further back in my days. Though perhaps not in means of sport… neigh superiority over others, but more-so a futile scramble to prove myself…” His words trail --

“Though now…” Auvoix’s gaze wanders off, as if to think for a moment. A small tug of the corners of his mouth form.

“Though, now. I do not feel that way.” He nods confidently as he speaks.

His eyes dart quickly from between the floor, to you, and to the floor again. “I... Erm. Do not figure me wrong, I would be an awful liar if I was to say validation does nothing for me.”

“Though I no longer worry myself sick over a day of missed paperwork, to put it simply.”

🥘- Are you good at cooking? What is the best dish you have made. Alternatively, how bad are you at cooking? What’s the worst dish you’ve made?

Auvoix seems a bit taken aback by this question, twiddling with his hands in apparent embarrassment.

“Nn, I truly loathe to admit to it, though I’ve never quite had the opportunity to try my hand at the art of cooking. Back home, I had always been fortunate to have my meals prepared by experienced culinarians. It would be considered odd by all parties to try to involve myself in the kitchen-work.”

“I just preferred to stay out of the way. Mayhaps I could… Tell you which spices fair the best in which locations? Though… That doesn’t help well with the process... Does it?”

🌴- Do you like going on vacation? Or does your boss force you to take a break?

“‘Tis was never my.. Ahem. Former employers style, any holiday, occasion, or whatsoever was often spent behind a desk for us. Suppose me as a creature of habit, but mayhaps because of this I believe I’d much rather put myself to work, no matter the day - So long as I have moments in-between my duties to tend to my leisures.”

🐚- When treasure hunting, what do you look for? Stuff that sparkles and shines or dusty ancient relics?

Auvoix seems pleased with this question, relaxing back in his seat. With his eyes to the ceiling, he purses his lips as he places his words, and then meets your gaze with a grin.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is how the saying goes, is it not? It all lies within what you consider treasure.”

He begins fumbling with his pockets.

“Or - One man’s rubbish is another’s treasure? Whatever the idiom happens to be...”

He mumbles idly, light gil and other curiosities lightly jangling about as he patted himself down.

“I tend to enjoy objects of all sorts, as long as it is new to me. Heh.” He draws his hands from his pockets, cupping a small, pearly stone. His face is obvious with excitement as he awaits your reaction, “‘Ve you ever happened to lay your eyes upon a Couerl’s molar? I’ven’t either until today!”

“I- I didn’t retrieve it myself. Didn’t even have to polish it up,  I’ve seen Elezen with dirtier teeth. Wonder what their secret is.”

He ugly-chuckles at his own joke. 

👓- How good is your eyesight? Do you ever need glasses for anything?

He blinks hard, “’Tis.. Not the finest. Though I oft forget I require glasses until I am actually attempting to read something, ooor aim at something…”

👛- What are the contents of your purse/bag/pockets?

“…Glasses. Keys. Whistle. Three gil. A shoelace! No, four gil…”

Each item is sprawled out before you as he names them off, “Pen. More keys. Ouch! - Heh. Arrow head. Pocketwatch. Oh hey, I forgot about this strange stone I found –”

He’s still naming things off. Are those pockets endless?

👘- Describe your formal attire. What would you wear to a wedding, fancy dance/date/dinner, funeral, or similar formal events?

“Formal events? This..” He looks to his suspenders and button-up, “But with a tie, I suppose? That is often what I would wear to meetings…” He trails.

“- For weddings? A funeral?... Ah… mayhaps  I would need more than just this.

I would not dare to be under-dressed for an event. It is not because I prefer the superfluous noble attire, It is because it is a terrible feeling to believe all eyes are on you for your attire choices alone. I attempt to fit in when needs be, there are stylistic equivalences to keeping your head down.”

Auvoix is quiet for a moment, and then mumbles under his breath.

“Ah, by the twelve, the stuffiness of those overcoats…”

🐩- What dog breed bests suits you?

“I see myself more as a coeurl, the type that allows their curiosity to kill them?”

🎀- Do you like cute things at all? What is the cutest thing you have or have met?

“Admittedly. I’m quite fond of Chocobo. Those gigantic saucer eyes are hard not to fall into. I’m exceptionally partial to my own, as well.”

He smiles warmly as he recalls his feathery companion. 

🗝- What is looped around your key ring?

He looks to the pile of pocket-contents messily laid before him. 

“…Keys.”

🛁- What do you do to treat yourself?

“My favorite vein of leisure would be the type that allows me to practice with my violin. Mayhaps, if I could imagine a relaxing day to myself - it would include a nice tea, or game of chess by my lonesome. A novel, a orchestrion - a warm fire…”

💉- Do you dislike shots and injections?

“Injections? As in.. Something that penetrates your skin?” 

He gives off a dejected shiver.

“Fortunately, I’ve never been injected. I can assure you I’d dislike it regardless.”

🌅- Are there any scenic locations you would like to live out your retirement in?

“I do not wish to retire. Though if I somehow willed myself to, it would be somewhere many ways away from Ishgard.”

🍸- Do you need to relax right now?

“Relax? No. I’ve plenty of paperwork to finish up. Three composures I must practice, and an entire towering stack of Winter’s books to catalog once I return home.  I’d rather not take a day off unless I surely must.”

🏰- If you owned a castle, what would you make it look like?

“Erm… Nice?”

⚽️- What games did you play with other kids when you were younger?

“I occasionally played chess with my tutors, and dabbled in Triple Triad as a child. Occasionally mother and I would play ‘I Spy’ while waiting for my father to make it for dinner, I guess. I was a terribly boring young one. I would consider it a lonesome childhood, though I did always prefer little to no company, so it was not entirely bad.”

His tone suddenly shifts, from speaking with dismissive recollection to suddenly shrinking into his shoulders, his posture falling pitifully as he collects his words. He sighs.

“That is, until I had to sit with those moments in-between my work. I would finish my daily tasks. And then... Then the.. the-the.. The purposeless, gnawing boredom would set in. Those moments in-between where you have the time to yourself to just… Unravel things within your own mind.  

I believe I felt loneliness, then. Or perhaps... emptiness? But before I had long for it to set in, the next set of tasks would be put before me, and I would forget all about it. Ahem.

You know, the loneliness.

I would shut myself off and out, and everything was just… fine.  I’d even convinced myself I preferred the solitude. Mayhaps I did. Prefer the solitude, that is. I’d made myself believe it, after all - that it wasn’t entirely bad. That it made my work more focused, more productive, more independent. It is terribly easy to lie to oneself, after all. I still do it to this day.

Years were spent learning to bury those corpses behind productivity. And, like all things one has killed, they definitely came forth to haunt me later on…

I just… Ahem.

Games. We were talking about games. I apologize...”

🍱- Are you hungry right now? Are you craving anything to eat?

“Not particularly at the moment. Why do you...? Oh! Unless.. You’re wanting to get something?”

[heilewelt]

In Words: Hellas Filmbox, Greek Filmfestival in Berlin

So, I dipped my toe into a bit of Greek culture at Hellas Filmbox, mostly films and two musical acts. It all started at the opening event with String Demons, a duo made of the siblings Konstantinos and Lydia Boudounis. They play violin and cello and sing and are really impressive. Withing just two songs the range was impressive - one had a massive heavy metal vibe and the other one was a Lady Gaga cover with some traditional Greek music thrown in. As Konstanintos said during the show: Do whatever you want - you’re free! And that’s apparently the basic recipe for their music. 

The other musical act of that opening night was quite on a different end of the scale: Vicky Leandros. She sang in Greek and German, even within the same song. I remember the Greek parts sound so much more profound - maybe because I can’t understand the language. A fact not everyone remembered and sometimes someone would talk to be in Greek or the conversation switched. Reminded me of hanging around with my French friends. Anyway. Leandros’ voice is way more impressive than I thought. Although she’s been around for many, many decades I have never seen her live since it’s not quite my music. 

In between some speeches, in Greek and English and there was one thing that stuck with me: When Holger Ehlers and Asteris Koutoulas pointed out that the show must go on - even if you have nothing, referring to the crises and the art that was created in the aftermath of this massive event. 

The first day ended with “Der Stellvertreter” by oscar-winning director Costa-Gravas. The film is placed in the second world war and deals with the failure of the catholic church and how Gerstein who invented Zyklon-B (without knowing it would be used to kill humans) tried to inform the pope or actually anybody. I’d love to believe that such a film could change some minds of those idiots trying to build walls or exclude complete religions out of their country but I fear it won’t work. I had the same thought a few days later when I saw “Amerika Square” by Yannis Sakaridis. 

“Amerika Square” is playing now, dealing with refugees and how two friends, Billy and Nakos, deal with it differently. One is falling in love with a girl, the other one has a growing dissatisfaction rooted in unemployment, living with the parents at the age of 38 and no real plan. For his failure he blames the refugees as so many people do these days. A creepy motherfucker. And actually a film I don’t want anyone to watch who is not so happy with the refugee situation  they just get stupid ideas. 

Nakos is played by Makis Papdimitriou. I need to point that out. “Amerika Square” is the second movie I saw him in. A day earlier I saw him in “Suntan” where he plays a 40 year old doctor who moves to a small holiday island. As summer approaches he wants to keep up in terms of partying and stuff with a 19 year old girl. Falls in love. He plays a different kind of creep. He is so convincing at playing this weird, insane, frustrated, lonesome guys, I’m actually a bit afraid of him by now. Just a tiny little bit. He’s really good at that. 

For some reasons I randomly picked out “love movies” like “Suntan” - no happy end in sight, some creepy guy who wants a girl and it ends with no happy end. I almost lost hope that love exists but at least in Greek movies there are many half naked and naked men. More than I’ve seen in German cinema in a while (unless it’s Lars Eidinger playing). You gotta take what you get. In most movies I saw there was a very destructive and frustrated feel to it. I think it’s a feeling a lot of people carry around with them - not only in Greek but everywhere. 

Of all the 13 movies and shorts I saw there was just one with a hopeful and warm feeling: “Südwind (Mythopathy)”. A beautiful, charming movie about a young romantic boy growing up whose imagination is just fabled. I love this movie. Although the Südwind (wind from the south, something like Santa Ana) usually comes up in the low, depressive times of your life, it pretty clear from the beginning that it also goes away. It’s going to be better. That’s a lesson to remember these days. When you get the chance, see this film. Maybe it will be on Hellas Road Show - last year the festival took some of the movies to different cinemas around Germany. Hopefully something for later this year as well.

Have a good Sunday,

Dörte

[newsnomadblog]

07 August 2019 | c depasquale | Aquarium Drunkard

“It’s hard to find pure forms. Forms of music and culture, these little hidden pockets are disappearing. I guess that’s just the way it goes with evolution.”

Producer and musician Daniel Lanois is speaking to us from his home in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, discussing his work with Bob Dylan on 1989’s Oh Mercy, a document that shows what purity and evolution sound like when they’re occurring simultaneously. This September marks 30 years since its release, but its swampy mood and wide-open lonesomeness feels outside the measurement of decades. “Time is beginning to crawl,” Dylan sings on “Where Teardrops Fall.” Time crawls within the world the album creates, too.

Oh Mercy exists on its own plane, and the same is true of New Orleans, where it was fashioned. Lanois goes on to describe the Zydeco roots of Louisiana’s Lafayette area, its intangible dance hall ambiance. “Zydeco is the music that really touched me, and I wanted to make sure that I felt part of that. And Bob felt that down there. It was something that hadn’t been molested yet.”

The slow-burn noir of Oh Mercy exudes the untouched gothic mystery of its New Orleans environs—the humid timbre of the recordings shaped heavily by their setting. The region’s enigmatic spirit affected Dylan’s writing, which drifts between the worldly and introspective, setting a decidedly postmodern tone. Uncertainty is a mossy through-line, connecting anxieties both political and romantic, as if there was no dividing line between global unrest and personal disorder. On “What Was It You Wanted,” he asks in forlorn detachment: “Has the record been breaking? Did the needle just skip?”

The years leading up to Dylan’s sojourn to the Crescent City had found the record skipping quite a bit. The late ‘80s found him plagued by a gnarly hand injury, one Dylan has always been vague about, but even more so than that, a feeling of creative resignation.

“Had long ceased running towards it,” he writes in his 2004 memoir Chronicles. “When and if an idea would come, I would no longer try to get in touch with the base of its power.” Touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in ‘87, Dylan describes himself feeling adrift. The feeling persisted as he began work with the Grateful Dead. But a simple moment shifted his focus. During a rehearsal session with the Dead at the band’s Club Front in San Rafael, he stepped outside and stumbled upon a jazz combo playing through a doorway.

“Something was calling me to come in and I entered,” Dylan writes. “The singer reminded me of Billy Eckstine. He wasn’t very forceful, but he didn’t have to be; he was relaxed, but he sang with natural power. Suddenly and without warning, it was like the guy had an open window to my soul.”

“Bob is very inspired by those little turning points in the day,” Lanois says. “He sees these little observations as beacons of a sort. They not only stir the imagination, but they’re a reminder of why we’re here and what we’re doing.”

The two shared an ability to locate the uncanny in small moments, which quickly established a bond. Coming off of work on U2’s The Joshua Tree and Peter Gabriel’s So, Lanois had decamped to New Orleans, taking over an abandoned apartment building as his studio and workspace. When Dylan was introduced to Lanois by their mutual friend Bono, he was laying down the spectral Yellow Moon with the Neville Brothers. The feel of the room moved Dylan, who was drawn in by the aesthetic and mood.

“We had a bit of fun, just decorating and setting up the whole studio,” Lanois says. “Art Neville brought his stuffed bobcat, and yeah, we did have a couple alligator heads and moss and we just wanted to situate what would be perceived as a recording studio. And Dylan stopped in and I’m sure he thought ‘these people are doing something different.’ I think he appreciated that we were on the pulse of something, we were enthusiastic about our work. We were committed, we were lifers, and we were there to make masterpieces.”

Part of Oh Mercy’s great power is its vessel-like existence; a work completely informed by the immediate senses from which it emanates. “Branches of trees hung overheard near a wooden trellis that climbed a garden wall,” Dylan writes in Chronicles.

“Waterlilies floated in the dark-squared fountain and the stone floor was inlaid with swirling marble squares … I strolled into the dusk. And, much like the record itself, he writes “the air was murky and intoxicating.” Dylan’s descriptions of the character and feel of New Orleans echo the sounds and tenors of the record. “There’s a thousand different angles at any moment,” he writes. “In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There’s one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees.”

Asked what he thought Dylan meant when he wrote that in New Orleans “the past doesn’t pass away so quickly here,” Lanois responds: “In New Orleans, we had access to the most wonderful music all the time, there was a little bar called the Maple Leaf, uptown, and it was just a little storefront place and the drummer played in the window with his back to his street, and you could walk by and check out the band just by looking in the window and they were just rockin’.”

Joined by the Neville Brothers band – guitarist Brian Stoltz, bassist Tony Hall, drummer Willie Green, and percussionist Cyril Neville – Dylan, Lanois, and co. aimed to inhabit the scene he might have glimpsed looking through the window at the Maple Leaf Bar. The record absorbed members of the New Orleans community as recording went on: Rockin’ Dopsie and John Hart from the Maple Leaf Bar band came by to lay down some accordion and tenor sax. Not everyone involved was as seasoned. Engineer and keyboardist Malcolm Burns “had never engineered anything before,” says Lanois. “He was just a guy from Canada that I liked.”

But there was a unity in their spirit. Lanois’ experimental curiosity introduced a completely novel recording approach to Dylan. In addition to the exotic palette the dobro, omnichord, and scrub board added to the production, Dylan chose to forego his usual big band approach and follow his producer on instinct into a largely intimate, one-on-one setting, working alone with Lanois and a Roland 808.

“I wanted to get to the heart of the matter,” Lanois says. “I wanted the center to be absolutely captured…The power of his stance and position is represented.”

The creative drought was over. Oh Mercy finds Dylan sounding inspired, impassioned, and indignant. Alternately, the record sounds at once like a sermon, a diary, and a faded old photograph. Housing swamp boogies and expansive gospel chimes, it’s musically eccentric, but direct and cohesive. Dylan glides seamlessly from the dark cloud thump of “Political World” where “wisdom is thrown in jail,” into the romantic dreamlike waltz of “Where Teardrops Fall,” its heartfelt saxophone dreaming aloud. The album finds him embracing rock & roll as a vital force; on “Everything Is Broken,” he catalogs the ills of societal decay, finding humor in the mundane, personifying the collapse of the damned. “Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking,” he murmurs, sounding like a croak itself.

Though Dylan’s “Christian Era” had ended, his new songs continued to make room for his spiritual longings, just as they had on Infidels earlier in the decade. The spacious gospel of “Ring Them Bells” recalls the pastoral calm of “Every Grain of Sand,” but finds the narrator in a more precarious state. “Time is running backwards and so is the bride,” he laments. In a sense, it’s the calm before the storm that is the apocalyptic “Man in the Long Black Coat.” Minimalist and foreboding, the stark and brooding ballad describes a misty, obscured netherworld. A graveyard séance, Dylan’s elegiac and graceful wordplay simmers with rich, poignant watercolors. “There’s smoke on the water/It’s been there since June/Tree trunks uprooted/Beneath the high crescent moon,” he sings, a dark and dusty trio of Lanois, Burns, and the man himself casting high spirits in a fog of dobro, 12-string, and keys.

“A peculiar change crept over the appearance of things,” Dylan reminisces about that recording in Chronicles. “…the production sounds deserted, like the intervals of the city have disappeared…The lyrics try to tell you about someone whose body doesn’t belong to him.”

Lanois’ interpretation is perhaps purer, more romantic. “When you’re coming up as a kid, maybe you want to be a fireman,” he says. “Maybe you want to run away from certain things and start a new life. Discover the wonders and wanders that are available to you as an imaginative human. Whether it’s the circus or otherwise, it’s just a human inclination to want to reinvent, to discover, to take in a magic place. It pushes that button, I appreciate that Bob wrote about it, because we’ve all felt that somehow or another.”

The gentler second side begins with “Most of the Time,” a majestic and somber masterwork. The arrangement gives his words space to document the transience of love. “I can handle whatever/I stumble upon/I don’t even notice/She’s gone/Most of the time.” That last turn, that contradiction, sells it all. “Melancholia hanging from the trees” indeed.

“The song is deep, man,” Lanois says. “It’s heavy. Most great art has contradiction in it and that song certainly has that in its spine. I wanted to create a sonic representation of the contradiction. I wanted to have this little tormented orchestra, this little ensemble. Playing cellos, violas, and violins, but without cellos, violas, and violins. So, I used a Les Paul Junior cranked all the way up to 10, and I overdubbed four parts of this heavy, single-note sound. So, the intertwining of these parts makes up that little exchange, that invisible string quartet that’s immense from a distance. I wanted to make sure that that the music was trying to destroy the singer at the same time as support him.”

The back half of Oh Mercy finds Dylan turning largely inward. The global unrest of the Cold War era may have been dissipating, but what was to come next? “What good am I,” he wonders. “If I know and don’t do/If I see and don’t say/If I look right through you?” But he points his finger too, wryly remarking on “Disease of Conceit” that “The doctors got no cure/They’ve done a lot of research on it/But what it is they’re still not sure.” Riffing on the defrocking of disgraced evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, Dylan focuses in on exactly how broken everything is. Searching for answers that might not exist, Dylan’s journey circles right back around to the elliptical on “What Was It You Wanted,” asking: “Is the scenery changing/am I getting it wrong?” The album’s closer, “Shooting Star,” feels like a letter written but never to be sent. “It’s the last temptation/the last account,” Dylan sings, knowing just enough to know he doesn’t know anything at all, only that “tomorrow will be another day.”

There’s a tactile somberness as the record winds down, leaning into a similar blurriness heard on Lanois’ own Acadie (also released in ’89). Even as they left serious gems like “Born In Times,” “Dignity,” and “Series of Dreams” on the cutting room floor, it’s clear that Dylan and Lanois were working off an atmosphere, loose but focused. Like 1969’s Nashville Skyline and 1970’s New Morning, which reflected the artist’s newfound domestic bliss, Oh Mercy is bracingly intimate. And like the inferno boogie gospel of 1979’s Slow Train Coming, it reflects a new look on reality, a specific time and place. A pure form.

Dylan writes in Chronicles, “We did it as we damn well pleased and there was nothing more to say. When the record was all added up, I hoped it would meet head-on with the realities of life … I can’t say if it’s the record either of us wanted. Human dynamics plays too big a part, and getting what you want isn’t always the most important thing in life anyway.”

This sense of humility is also shared in no small way by Lanois, who teamed with Dylan once more on 1997’s Time Out of Mind. Oh Mercy was a journey into the night, assembled in humble conditions. “Even though I had all the rooms padded up and ready for blast off, we just made the whole record in the kitchen. Pretty much did the whole record right next to the coffee machine.” The work is serious and complex, funky and ambient in different breaths. “I reassured Bob I was not about to rest until we had a masterpiece.” He thinks that for all its ambiguity, they got where they were going. “I believe we made a masterpiece of sorts.” words/c depasquale

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Original Link: Did the Needle Just Skip :: 30 Years of Oh Mercy

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Dylan and Lanois: Oh Mercy turns 30 07 August 2019 | c depasquale | Aquarium Drunkard “It’s hard to find pure forms. Forms of music and culture, these little hidden pockets are disappearing.

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new arrivals july 20th 2017

lots of used lps this week - kiss, bowie, hendrix, black sabbath. zeppelin. tons of new arrivals in the used vinyl world. a whole new bin of rock records and a whole new bin of jazz records. lots of fun listening for your summer - and all at great prices!! also - this week is the second week of the east dearborn musical event - tunes at noon. full desription and schedule just below the list of this week's new arrivals. items in stock thursday - july 20th 2017 Belfi, Andrea: Ore LP $21.99LP version with download code. Andrea Belfi (born 1979) is an international respected electroacoustic musician and composer. He began playing drums at the age of 14. He studied art in Milan, before becoming involved in experimental music and since 2002 he's been in collaboration with a wide range of artists, currently residing in Berlin, Germany. His new album Ore is released on the new UK record label Float which was founded by Sofia Ilyas, who was previously the label manager at Erased Tapes Records. The new label exists parallel to Float PR, the London based agency dedicated to the promotion of unique artists and projects, and Andrea Belfi is the first signing. Titled Ore, the album places the drums as its centerpiece, while textures are embellished and mutated through electronic manipulations and dark, eerie sonic details. Over the years, Belfi has built a sound-world that artfully combines a modest drum set-up with an equally concise electronics component. He has searched long to produce and refine the acoustic timbres of his music, but has now reached a certain point of fulfilment, courtesy of his Saari drum-kit from Finland. Melded seamlessly with the acoustic elements are a Nord modular and sampler. On Ore, Belfi attains a masterful synthesis of these two sonic realms. Belfi has gained a reputation for his energetic and charismatic performances, both as a solo musician and within numerous collaborations. 2016 saw him tour with Nonkeen, the German three-piece band headed by Nils Frahm. Belfi became an instant highlight following a sold-out gig at London's Barbican Centre, lighting the stage with an impressive and explosive drum solo that became one of the most memorable moments from the evening. "When I started the record I really wanted to find something very direct. I was looking for something very raw, something sonically and acoustically complex. The title Ore actually was suggested by my wife. I had to look up the meaning and loved the concept -- something raw that you can extract, and the refinement into a precious material. It's a very simple metaphor but there's a lot there, you can just put that word out and you don't have to explain too much. You give an input to the listener, and just leave it to the imagination." Mixed by Francesco Donadello; Mastered by Nils Frahm. Mitchell, Nicole: Mandoria 2LP  $29.99Double LP version. "Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Recorded in May of 2015 at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, it features her longtime collaborators Renee Baker (violin), Tomeka Reid (cello, banjo), Alex Wing (electric guitar, oud) and Jovia Armstrong (percussion), along with new members Tatsu Aoki (bass, shamisen, taiko) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi). Also in the mix is Chicago artist, scholar and poet Avery R Young, who brings her lyrics to life with visceral humanity. Composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, once hailed by Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak as the 'greatest living flutist in jazz', continues the work begun when jazz visionary Sun Ra and his Arkestra first touched down on Planet Earth and told humanity that space (outer and inner) is indeed the place. As with contemporary Afrofuturist pioneers like cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, post-everything beat maker Flying Lotus, R&B cyborg Janelle Monáe and dystopian noise-rappers Death Grips, she uses Afrofuturism as a platform to launch her own, unique vision. Her vast sound often encompasses contemporary classical, globally oriented fusion, gospel, spoken word, funk-inspired groove research and even brittle shards of avant-rock. Mandorla Awakening II collides dualities such as acoustic vs electric, country vs urban, simple vs complex, while also sounding through intercultural dialogue between Black, European and Pan-Asian improvisational languages. The outcome is a creative music suite that blurs musical styles into recognizable fragments that weave a unique sound fabric, where human emotion and the struggles of today swim." O'Malley, S: Dread Live LP $25.992017 limited repress. Stephen O'Malley deploys the second in a trio of documents of his improvisational prowess following his crushing Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs, which was brought forward in tribute to the November 2015 Paris attacks and released in December 2015. The minimalist electric guitar mantra Dread Live was performed at Studio Helmbreker in Haarlem, Netherlands, on September 6, 2013, and recorded by Mathijs Ton, with technical support by the great Tos Nieuwenhuizen, using a hypercardioid ribbon mic with immaculate '70s valve amp backline. The set was programmed as part of the opening of the Dread -- Fear in the age of technological acceleration exhibition at De Hallen Haarlem, curated by Juha van't Zelfde. It renders 40 minutes of Sunn O)))'s O'Malley at his most depressive and heavy and is something akin to a slow-motion baptism by waves of tarry, blackened harmonic distortion, holding the listener under its sinking pressure. How low can you go? O'Malley knows. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Edition of 700 hand-numbered copies. O'Malley, S: End Ground LP $25.99Limited 2017 repress. End Ground forms the 3rd and final installment in a series of records documenting the solo prowess of Sunn 0)))'s Stephen O'Malley released on Sweden's iDEAL Recordings. It was performed on electric guitar thru Sunn model T amps, and captured on zoom H4 at Centre Cultural Suisse, Bad Bonn Carte Blanche, Paris, France, on October 18th, 2013. In solo mode, stripped of his usual accomplices and collaborators, O'Malley is no less than an elemental force. His durational meditations absorb and consume with steady-handed wave after wave of charred, sustained, and sub-harmonized chords casting the mesmerizing minimalist practice of La Monte Young into the physicality of Black Sabbath's original, heavy metal die. The A-side/first half of this 45 minute performance features O'Malley tentatively coaxing out languorous riffs which turn the air around him to a pensive, vibrating mush. As the 2nd half dawns he begins to deliver more crushing blows, drawing out and subsiding the chords with a patented, gut-wrenching and vivifying power that transcends rock, avant-garde, minimalism -- all of that -- to awaken dormant senses not usually experienced with other musics or concise temporality. As with many of the most affective heavy drone recordings by Sunn 0))), among others, a modicum of patience is required in order to attain the right state for reception, but once your mind and body are malleable, the impact is deliciously visceral, primal and whelming. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Individually hand-numbered edition of 700 copies. O'Malley, S: Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs  2 lp  $31.99 Stephen O'Malley on Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs upon its initial release in December 2015: "On 8 January 2015, the day following the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris (the city I have called home for the last eight years), I started a week-long tour of Norway. During this jaunt I faced the toxic reality daily of the horrible blossoming events intermittently via television. . . . The Trondheim concert on 9 January (depicted here) happened on a particularly intense day in this timeline... and was personally a true example of the purging power of immersion in music. Through a web of emotions resolving distance, disintegration, the intense power of the moment and the brutal fundamentalist, cultural and psychological aspects behind. . . Like most of us I have also sometimes fallen for the constant baiting toward anger, outrage, paranoia and fear in the daily life, often but not always misdirected, but it is not debilitating by any means. It's clear that as an experimental guitar player I have absolutely no political power (or even ability to articulate in those forms) but it's important to take the opportunity to say 'fuck you' in these situations. To the fascist and fundamentalist movements. To the absurding of the worst sides of monotheistic belief systems. And not only the perpetrators behind these events but also on other sides including the reactive and opportunistic. Those with most to gain are the underlying authoritarians in our own societies who have opportunities to implement and increase their control even further for their gains. The 'security' changes we face in fact may also result in yet further increase in the loss of liberty and freedom. The reactions aimed toward increased separation of cultures, xenophobia, nationalism, and especially racism are highly regrettable. I hope these recordings offer a small sense of solace in the time, even for the few hundred who hear them. . . . For the concert on this record we had a massive backline with beautiful vintage Hiwatt amplifiers, and two PAs (including a Funktion One) in the small venue Blæst, the night hosted by Nymusikk. . . . This record is actually the third part of a trilogy of live solo guitar records we intended to be released on iDEAL during spring 2016." Mastered and cut by Matt Colton; Edition of 700 (hand-numbered) Langhorne, Bruce: Hired OST LP $24.992017 repress. "Classic 1971 Peter Fonda film soundtrack from Dylan side-man & folk scene impresario. Beautifully melancholy score performed with guitars, tonal effects, fiddle, banjo, sitar, and more that evokes high plains drifting, lonesome cowpokes. 'It's The West seen as Purgatory, its characters endlessly moving on, but Langhorne conjures beauty from the pain." -- The Wire. Palestine, Charlemagne: Arpeggiated Bosendorfer + Falsetto Voice  LP $27.99In 1974, Ileana Sonnabend commissioned Charlemagne Palestine to create a limited edition, double LP in conjunction with a performance to celebrate the opening of her new Soho gallery at 420 West Broadway. Charlemagne made several recording attempts, first at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where they had a Bösendorfer Imperial Piano in their theater. He recorded "Bösendorfer + Voice", "Voice Piece" as well as some Bösendorfer tests, with Mayo Thompson as producer and Kurt Munkacsi as sound engineer. These ecstatic Swarthmore recordings, recorded late at night in the big empty theater space, represented the original elements on which Charlemagne Palestine later created the piano pieces for Four Manifestations on Six Elements (ALGAMARS 004LP, MAGNE 008LP). For more than 40 years since these recordings were made, Palestine never went back to listen to them, but recently on re-listening to these Swarthmore recordings with Alga Marghen, he found several blissful, arpeggiated piano and falsetto voice studies which he feels now deserve to be heard. Included in the Alga Marghen VocSon series, this LP of two previously unreleased 1974 recordings finally see the light of day. Edition of 405. TUNES AT NOONevery thursday at 12 noon in dearborn city hall park at the corner of michigan ave and schaeferone hour of free music - bring your lunch and enjoy some fun in the sun!! 7/20 Lac La BelleLocal musicians Jennie Knaggs & Nick Schillace create music that blends history with the present via accordion, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, harmonizing vocals, and fingerpicking resonator guitar. With their separate experiences learning folk and blues in Appalachia, American roots bind Lac La Belle’s compositions with a heavy thread. For this performance enjoy some of their favorite old time, bluegrass and western swing favorites, alongside their original tunes. 7/27 Detroit Pleasure SocietyDetroit Pleasure Society plays the traditional jazz of New Orleans with a fresh twist and raucous candor. 8/3 Libby DeCamp"Libby DeCamp makes dusty folk and American Roots-inspired music with a lyrical edge and a classic three-piece energy, delivered with a haunting vocal closeness that reaches listeners of all kinds. Sweetly soulful "Broken Folk." 8/10 Michael Malis TrioMichael Malis is a pianist and composer based in Detroit, MI. Malis bridges the gap between original composed, complex material and the spontaneity of improvisation. His trio (piano, bass, drums),   featured on his latest album, has toured in the United States and Canada, and in September 2016, they performed at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. 8/17 Viands "Viands is a spontaneous collaboration between two auteurs of Detroit's underground music scene: Joel Peterson and David Shettler. The music they create is a deep, reflective and fearless alternate-reality keyboard meditation that draws on the pair's broad musical vision to explore new vistas.