#like were there really that many people expressing interest in Mandy to begin with

[yourqueenb]

I imagine PB might do more spin-offs where a side character becomes romanceable if Unbridled does well. But I have to wonder why they chose to try it out for the first time with Untameable and Mandy specifically because tbh I’ll be surprised if the numbers meet PB’s standard for success

[seeker-of-stories19]

Found this article about things Ian did wrong in Shameless and I’m not saying he’s perfect but this didn’t even make sense so I’m fixing it. (Part 1)

20/20

Okay so you’re saying it’s messed up that a fifteen year old was sleeping with his married boss? No it’s messed up that a married adult man is having sex with his fifteen year old employee, consensual or not he’s the adult in the situation. Also Ian did think it was wrong and opted out of their weekend together when he was presented with the presence of Kash’s family life. And I’d like to just add that while this was a bad decision He didn’t exactly have many options as far as expressing his sexuality, throughout the show it is clear that the southside isn’t exactly excepting.

19/20

Seriously? You’re not obligated to come out to someone just because you care about each other, sexual and romantic preferences are personal to some people and it’s not something you’re required to share. Not to mention there are plenty of reasons Ian may not have come out to his family, maybe he was scared or maybe he wasn’t ready but that’s his decision it has nothing to do with Lip.

18/20

Mandy reacted well because she’s a good person and she wanted her best friend and her brother, two people she cares about, to be happy. That doesn’t seem weird to me? I mean really it’s not her job to dictate who either of them can date and she doesn’t which is a sign that they have a genuine friendship. Not to mention Ian didn’t tell her because Mickey wanted it to be private which again is his decision.

17/20

First of all I don’t think Ian was indecisive I think it was awkward to tell your gay boss you’ve been sleeping with that you’re not interested in a relationship while he’s trying to impregnate his wife. Also one again Ian is being blamed for something that could be better pinned on either other character, Mickey shouldn’t have antagonized Kash and Kash obviously shouldn’t have shot Mickey because he was jealous (it’s not like he could’ve thought they’d be together forever.) Finally Ian really wouldn’t have helped either of them by going to the cops. Kash was engaging in an illegal affair with a teenager and Mickey probably would have been killed by his father who is a known homophobe if the truth got out.

16/20

Yeah an insane homophobic ex con thinks you got his daughter pregnant when you’re actually sleeping with his son and he was the one who impregnated his own daughter, why would you try to protect the people you care about and save your own life? Also Mandy and Mickey would be pretty relieved that their dad was locked up a while longer.

15/20

Why would Ian tell Jimmy? It’s not like they’re incredibly close and as far as the fact that Ned is married he shouldn’t be dating a teenager. Now I’m not saying this was rational or ethical behavior but I do think that Ian behaves in some questionable ways romantically throughout the beginning of the series but he never had a good role model in this department and he’s really just a kid who makes some stupid decisions and figures it out later on. Finally I’d like to point out that Ian had never had the opportunity to be in a relationship where the other person isn’t ashamed or afraid of being with him and he even confirms that this is why he’s with Ned when Mickey asks, which in my opinion is more sad than anything else.

14/20

He didn’t get tired of waiting to enlist he watched his boyfriend get raped by a Russian prostitute while they were both held at gunpoint and then watched him as he was forced to marry her since she was pregnant with his child. As for the rest of it, being bipolar is hardly something you could blame on Ian.

13/20

Seriously? For starters they didn’t know he was bipolar because he wasn’t there and they weren’t looking for him, even later in the season no one other than Mickey expressed more than basic concern over his behavior. I’d also like to point out that he’s spent his entire childhood watching Monica struggle with this disease. He knows what it does to people so of course he wouldn’t except it instantly. Even under normal circumstances denial in these type of life changing circumstances is normal. As for the rest of it he did care about his family enough to take his meds even though they made him feel so horrible he eventually stopped. And his relationship with Mickey was so sex based for so long that not being able to perform sexually only made him feel more insecure about a disease that he’s already watched ruin his family’s life. As a bonus I’d just like to throw in that all these criticisms are based on the effects of a mental illness he has no control over.

12/20

One again this behavior was caused by a mental illness he didn’t have any control over, and as hard as it was to watch Mickey be so heartbroken they persevered like they always do. Also, you can understand why Ian would feel babied or crazy by Mickey’s sudden careful and loving behavior, he’s not in the right mindset to accept the genuine change in his long time partner as anything other than a response to his bipolar disorder.

11/20

Honestly I’m getting sick of making the same point over and over again. He’s mentally ill, he isn’t thinking clearly, he’s afraid and in denial, and he doesn’t have control over any of it. Seriously the judgement against him for having a mental disease in this article is infuriating. Not to mention the fact that both Ian and Yevgeny are alright which I count as a win considering the circumstances.

Hopefully you enjoyed this or at least found it interesting even if you didn’t agree on the whole thing. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts as I put a lot of time into thinking about these points. Part 2 will be posted soon and will be a continuation of this because I hit the 10 image max. I obviously don’t own the article and it is posted at the bottom to give full credit to the writer. I only own my opinions.

Part 1/2

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Why is Margaret Atwood an abysmal human being?

Oh god, it’s a few things. And it’s all rather involved, because it’s Canadian Lit and everything is messy in Can Lit. 

There is no way to do this succinctly. But if I had to: 1. she supports an alleged sexual assaulter who preyed on students while he was chair of a creative writing program; 2. continues to support this man as he actively works to silence conversation around rape culture in Can Lit; 3. supports a man who has been discovered to have spent the last so many decades pretending to be First Nation writer in order to make $$; 4. had her lawyers harass the Walrus until they pulled a piece by Zoe Whittall that was a bit critical of her; 5. has been recently vibing with Jon Kay and other MRA folks on twitter; 6. generally actively works to silence women writers who don’t suck up to her .. etc. etc. 

-

So, the big, recent issue has been her ongoing support of Stephen Galloway, alleged sexual assaulter who preyed on students while chair of the UBC creative writing program. 

She infamously signed the stupid UBC Accountable Open Letter in support of him. She’s also doubled down on her support as he moves forward in charging upwards of 25 people with libel for talking about rape culture on twitter.

-

The Stephen Galloway case: 

Stephen Galloway was the chair of UBC’s creative writing program. From 2014-2016 several allegations came forward about him from both staff and students. These ranged from bullying to sexual assault. UBC then suspended his employment. 

In response to this, the above open letter was published claiming that the University “acted irresponsibly” and chose to go about the allegations in a manner that was “severely damaging Professor Galloway’s reputation and affecting his health,” denying Galloway of his right to due process.

However, I think Alicia Elliott put it perfectly in a Twitter statement: “In cases of sexual assault, sexual harassment & rape, the criminal justice system (and society) centre the accused and his comfort, while ignoring the victim’s needs. The UBC Accountable letter did the same thing. It wasn’t calling for systemic change; it was upholding [the] status quo.”

Subsequent to this, Galloway brought forward over twenty libel cases against various and sundry writers, colleagues and the women who brought forward the sexual assault charges. Those charged include Alicia Elliott and Mandi Grey. This is all in an attempt to bring about a chill effect to the conversation of rape culture in Can Lit. 

And it worked, for the most part. After he brought forward the libel cases the conversation dried up over night. This is because Canada’s libel laws heavily favour the prosecution and not the defendant. 

Galloway, though, is really just angry at having to suffer consequences for his shitty behaviour and wants to take it out on everyone. 

From The Toronto Star: 

AB [unnamed complainant who brought the initial sexual assault charges against Galloway] subsequently told a couple of professors and a friend of the alleged assaults in November 2015 and wrote a letter to the UBC president, claiming she had been sexually assaulted by an unnamed professor, according to her court filings. She asserts that she had a “moral and social duty” to report the allegations.

Lawyers for AB also told the court the independent investigator never used the words “not substantiated” or “unsubstantiated” in reference to the sexual assault allegations. “Ms. Boyd’s words were that ‘on a balance of probabilities’ she was ‘unable to find’ that the sexual assaults ‘occurred,’” their written submissions state, adding that Boyd did find AB’s allegations of sexual harassment to be credible.

Here’s a Globe and Mail on the latest about the case (behind a paywall unfortunately) 

VICE piece that has a bit of an update on the case as well. 

Atwood has double downed on her support of Galloway throughout this entire debacle - from beginning to present day. 

Because power protects power.

- 

Additionally, Margaret Atwood has expressed support for Joseph Boyden after it came out that he’s been doing a Pretend-indian shtick. (Which is racist. So very racist.) 

More recently, Margaret Atwood has been retweeting MRAs, being lauded by the likes of Jon Kay for being anti-Feminist (essentially, which is a stance she’s long had tbf), using her power and presence to silence writers like Alicia Elliott and Zoe Whittall, and is generally demonstrating her clear and vested interest in maintaining the status quo of a white, mostly-male dominated Canadian Lit (and art) scene. 

And, as I’ve said before on the Margaret Atwood subject: 

It’s also hard because I understand there are lines you have to erase to succeed as a woman in the Lit establishment, especially in the cliquey, arrogant Canadian Lit scene. But when you buy in so much to the narrative that white, cis men in the Lit scene perpetuate you have to wonder at what cost did you acquire your power?

There are ways to be a successful, powerful woman in literature - I think Ursula K LeGuin is a fantastic example of how to use power for good - and I just am so sad Margaret Atwood continues to steadily become The Literal Worst.

Also, very petty but w/e, I remember hearing a story that she went into a store at Bay and Bloor looking for wine glasses - like a really posh, expensive store. It’s Bay and Bloor you can’t breathe in a store there without spending $400. Anyway, the store had only two options for wine glasses: one super pricey and the other on the more affordable end. And Margarette Atwood got so mad that this store only carried two options (it was not, it should be noted, a store specializing in kitchen or dish ware) and that she had to pay for the nicer ones. She treated the staff horribly. And it’s like, go to fucking Homesense Maggie. You’re not above Winners

-

And it’s like, I’m not one of those people who is like “burn all her work; never read anything by her ever again” because that’s a stupid position to take. Her books have held value and do hold value. That she was one of the first women to ascend in Canadas’s dick-swinging literary world is a net positive for all women. That said, I do think more of a nuanced view should be held of her than is currently the case. We can acknowledge that she did do a lot of firsts as a woman in Can Lit, while also not ignoring her racism, her rape apologist attitude, her tendency to trample down up and coming women writers, her sympathy for the MRA world view ... etc. 

Anyway, a reckoning needs to happen in Can Lit about the voices we choose to amplify and what we want art and literature to look like. 

[thisismandee]

The Rebel and The Criminal

Chapter 7)It’s Okay to be a Virgin

There was nothing but shock on everyone’s faces. Bender reached towards his jaw and slowly started to stand up straight. I took one step back, but I couldn’t go far before I backed up to the railing. I was bracing myself for whatever was going to happen next. John stepped closer to me. I was surprised to see the look on his face. There was nothing. He had a blank expression. For some reason this made me even more nervous, I really couldn’t tell what was about to happen. He didn’t say anything. I knew I was going to be the one to have to speak up first, but I was having a hard time forming words.

“Sorry” I let out in a whisper. Why was I apoloigizing for that. He deserved it. Why did he have this effect on me. Making me feel small all of a sudden. I was always the one that was big and bad. I had to be the strong one for the others around me. But now I felt like I was crawling into a hole in the ground. “You shouldn’t talk to them like that” Another whispered sentence.

His face got closer to mine. I could smell the cigarettes on his breath. “I really don’t want to get into it with you Mandy” He says in a flat tone. The whole sentence takes me off guard. This is the first time he used my name. I didn’t know what to do. I froze. My emotions were everywhere in that exact moment. I was still mad at him for being such an asshole, but I was also taken aback by his reaction. It wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting him to begin yelling, but he was calm. My head felt like it was everywhere. 

He just kept staring at me, not saying anything. I was looking down at the floor but then I decided to look up. I made eye contact with him, and for a brief moment I felt a different feeling. When I looked in his eyes I saw hurt and pain. And in that moment I felt like there was so much more to John Bender then I could ever comprehend. Andrews voice broke us up.

“Leave her alone!”

Bender turned his head towards Andrew and began walking towards him. “You gonna make me?”

“Yeah”

I walked back over to my original seat and choose to watch this altercation from afar. Bender was now in Andrews face. “You and how many of your friends?”

“Just me, just you and me. Two hits. Me hitting you, you hitting the floor! Anytime you’re ready pal!”

Bender goes to hit Andrew but Andrew grabs his arm and puts it behind his back and soon he has Bender pinned to the floor. I don’t know what kind of move this was but I was impressed with Andrews wrestling moves.

“I don’t wanna get into this with you man” Bender said mumbled with his face pushed into the ground.

Andrew gets up releasing Bender. “Why not?”

John then gets up from the floor and fixes himself. “Cause I’d kill you, it’s real simple. I’d kill you and your parents would sue me and it would be a big mess and I don’t care enough about you to bother. “

“Chicken shit” Andrew scoffs and is walking away. I then watched as Bender reaches into his pocket and pulls out a switchblade . He was walking backwards and he was right next to my chair at this point. I could sense the anger that was built up in Bender. He proceeds to stab the knife into the chair that was next to the quiet girl at the table next to me. 

Andrew turns around and points at Bender. “Let’s end this right now.” I look over and see the quiet girl take the switchblade out of the chair and keeps it for herself. “You don’t talk to them, you don’t look at them, and you don’t even think about them. You understand me!” I smiled at the fact that Andrew was also standing up for me as well as Claire. I guess I did judge him too soon, maybe he was a good guy. Bender being Bender, he had to get the last word. 

“I’m trying to help them” He then sits down in his seat.

***

I had my head resting on the jacket I was wearing. I was using it as a pillow, zoning out. I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander over to John, who was now sitting at the table right next to Claire and Andrew in the front. This was the first time he has been this quiet all day. For some reason I was completely mystified by this kid. I had a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that there was so much more to him. He put on this front but every once in awhile he would let his guard down. I just wished I knew what was going on.

I then heard music coming from the door of the library. I looked over and saw the janitor walking into one of the offices and grabbing the trash. He then looks up and makes eye contact with Brian. 

“Brian, how you doing?” He says.

Bender looks over at Brian. “Your dad works here?” You could tell Brian looked embarrassed. So what if his dad worked here. John then chooses to address the janitor. “Uh, Carl?”

“What?”

“Can I ask you a question?” 

“Sure...” Carl seemed to be interested in what Bender had to say. It makes me wonder if they see eachother every Saturday.

“How does one become a janitor?”

“You wanna be a janitor?” Carl responds in a sarcastic tone while also raising one eyebrow towards Bender.

“No, I just wanna know how one becomes a janitor because Andrew here, is very interested in pursuing a career in the custodial arts” Bender has a smug look on his face. Like he is so proud of this joke, but I look over at Carl and you can tell that he isn’t having any of it. 

“Oh, really? You guys think I’m just some untouchable peasant? Peon? Huh? Maybe so, but following a broom around after shitheads like you for the past eight years I’ve learned a couple of things, I look through your letters, I look through your lockers, I listen to your conversations, you don’t know that but I do. I am the eyes and ears of this institution my friends.” He looks down at the watch on his wrist and then he points at the clock in the back of the library. “By the way, that clock’s twenty minutes fast.”

Everyone groans, but I can’t help but smile at this. I see that Bender also finds this amusing.

***

The time was now 11:30. Bender was back in his original seat. He had his scarf around his head. He started to whistle a marching tune. I couldn’t help but let out a laugh and whistle along with him. I noticed that everyone else joined it. Then we heard the library door open and saw Vernon walking towards us. Everyone stopped but Bender, who had now decided to change his whistle to Beethoven’s 5th.

“Alright girls, that’s thirty minutes for lunch” Vernon says to all of us. 

“Here?” Andrew asks.

“Here” Vernon responds

“Well I think the cafeteria would be a more suitable place for us to eat lunch in, sir”

“Well, I don’t care what you think, Andrew!”

Bender speaks up, “Uh, Dick? Excuse me, Rich, will milk be made available to us?”

“We’re extremely thirsty sir” Andrew says.

“I have a very low tolerance for dehydration.” Claire adds.

Andrew agrees and says, “I’ve seen her dehydrate sir, it’s pretty gross.”

Bender begins to stand up from his chair. “Relax, I’ll get it”

“Ah, ah, ah grab some wood there bub!” Vernon says and Bender gives him a smile “What do you think, I was born yesterday? You think I’m gonna have you roaming these halls?” Bender sits back down, and Vernon points at Andrew. “You” Andrew points at Claire to see if Vernon will pick her. “And you” Instead Vernon points over to the girl that has been in the corner all day. “Hey! What’s her name? Wake her! Wake her! Come on, on your feet missy! Let’s go! This is no rest home!” The girl stands up “There’s a soft drink machine in the teacher’s lounge. Let's go!” Vernon, Andrew, and the girl all leave the library. 

We all sat there quiet for a moment, but then I realized that I could use this time to get up and move around. I stand up from my chair and I see the remaining people stare at me. I look back at them, but before they can ask me where I am going I am already in the pews of books that are in the back of the library. I wasn’t shocked when I saw Bender walk over towards me. I was surprised though when he instead decides to sit on the desk nearby and doesn’t say anything. I am not going to lie having his company for that moment was nice. Even though I was nervous that he might say something at any moment. I decided to take this moment to flash him a genuine smile. He looks up at me and returns the smile. He really was very attractive when he wasn’t saying stupid shit. He grabs a book that was on the desk. 

Soon Brian and Claire join us. Brian is sitting next to John and Claire is leaning on the weird statue that was near me. Bender has the book open to a random page. “Claire, you wanna see a picture of a guy with elephantitis of the nuts? It’s pretty tasty”

“No thank you” Claire says

“How do you think he rides a bike?” I see Claire roll her eyes at his comment. I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “Oh, Claire, would you ever consider dating a guy like this?”

“Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I mean if he had a great personality and was a good dancer and had a cool car, Although you’d probably have to ride in the back seat, cause his nuts would ride shotgun.”

Claire ignored him and instead said, “You know what I wish I was doing?”

“Op, watch what you say, Brian here is a cherry” Bender says pointing at Brian.

Brian looks offended, “A cherry?”

Claire then looks over at me and says, “I wish I was on a plane to France.” In that moment she looked like she was just a normal teenager.

“Yeah? What would you do in France?” I ask her.

“Not what you think, yeah the shopping would be nice, but I want to go there and experience the culture, and just get away from this mundane place.”

“I can relate to that” She looks directly at me. “I wish I was in Italy. I am Italian and I would love to experience what my family has and see where my family came from.”

“Yeah, it would be nice, but instead we are stuck here in this stupid library, on a Saturday!” Claire doesn’t say anything else. In this moment I realized that without the pressures of her friends Claire was actually a nice person. To bad the stereotypes of high school are a thing because I think Claire and me could have been good friends.

“Oh, you did it with both Claire and the Newbie?” We heard bender ask. Her and me both turned our heads towards the boys.

“What are you talking about?” Claire asks.

I saw Brian's face go blank, and then sudden embarrassment. “Nothing, nothing. Let’s just drop it, we’ll talk about it later”

I was not going to let them drop whatever they were talking about especially if I was involved. “No! Drop what, what are you talking about?”

“Well, Brian’s trying to tell me that in addition to the number of girls in the Niagara Falls area, that presently you and he are riding the hobby horse. He is also riding it with Claire as well.” Bender speaks for Brian.

“Little pig!” Claire says.

“That's a lie!” I exclaim.

“No I'm not! I’m not! John said I was a cherry and I said I wasn’t, that’s it, that’s all that was said!” Brian seemed nervous. I didn’t really care though. I hate when people spread rumors that aren't true.

“Well then what were you motioning to the girls for?” Bender asks him.

“You know I don’t appreciate this very much, Brian.” Claire says. And I can’t help but agree with her.

“He is lying!” Brian exclaims.

“Oh, you weren’t motioning to the girls?” Bender instigates.

“You know he’s lying right?”

“Were you or were you not motioning to Claire and Mandy?”

“Yeah, but it was only, it was only because I didn’t want them to know that I was a virgin, okay?” Brian hangs his head down low and I see Bender look at him. “Excuse me for being a virgin, I’m sorry.”

Claire lets out a laugh. “Why didn’t you want me to know you were a virgin?”

“Because it’s personal business, it’s my personal, private business.”

“Well, Brian, it doesn’t sound like you’re doing any business” Bender had to add.

“Claire walks over toward the boys, and smiles at Brian, “I think it’s okay for a guy to be a virgin”

Bender looks at her surprised. Brian looks at her and smiles. “You do?” he asks. Claire nods. Bender then looks over to me.

“How about you Mandy? Do you think it is okay for a guy to be a virgin?” I didn’t have to think about it for long. 

“I think it is perfectly fine for a guy to be a virgin.” I answer. Bender looks completely surprised. I don’t think he was expecting either of our responses. I decided to milk in the moment that we had Bender speechless.

| Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3| Chapter 4| Chapter 5| Chapter 6 |  Chapter 8 | Chapter 9| Chapter 10  | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

[heyyyharry]

The Boy Next Door - Part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Masterlist

An angsty/fluffy series in which you and Harry were childhood best friends who lived next door from each other, until he became Harry of One Direction and you moved out of town. Years later, you two meet again when you and Harry come back home for New Year.

Dinner is on the table. Everyone’s gathering in the dining room, and somehow you end up sitting in front of Harry, and the girl who introduced herself to you as his girlfriend. You try not to pay attention to them, pretending you don’t see them touching each other’s hands, whispering in each other’s ears and laughing together. Witnessing this makes you start questioning yourself why you’re even here. You came here hoping after tonight you could finally be a part of his life again. But now this girl, this beautiful girl shows up and everything changes. All the certainty and security you’ve felt since you woke up in his arms this morning has all disappeared. Harry feels so far away even though he’s sitting right there on the other side of the table, right in front of you.

Harry��s looking at you now. You can feel it, but you’re acting like you’re too busy eating to notice. You’ve been trying your best to avoid starting a conversation with him. You don’t know whether you are mad at him for saying he’s not dating anyone and letting you find out through the girlfriend herself, or you’re just too heartbroken by the fact that the man you’ve always loved now belongs to someone else, someone, in your opinion, is better than you in every way. You know it’s wrong to put yourself down like that, but it’s just how it is.

“Y/N,” the brunette named Mandy speaks up, making you flinch at the sound of your name. You immediately look up from your plate.

“You’re so quiet. You haven’t talked much since you got here.”

“Yeah, sorry. I just don’t have many interesting things to talk about,” you say, laughing nervously as everyone’s eyes are on you. You’re not trying to be sarcastic or anything, you’re telling the truth. You doubt anyone here wants to hear about your university life instead of Harry’s tour or his girlfriend’s daily struggles as a model.

“You’re a student?” asks Mandy’s boyfriend, Aaron, one of the three people Harry invited here tonight. You think they’re just trying to be nice by starting a conversation with you so you won’t feel out of place. However you would like nothing more than to be invisible.

“Yes, I live in London, only here for a week and then I’m flying back.”

“So soon?” asks Anne.

“Yeah, I’d love to stay for longer but I’ve got so much work left unfinished.” You give her a slight smile.

“Totally relatable!” Caitlyn joins in, which surprises you a bit, for she hasn’t said a word to you since the awkward introduction in the kitchen. You thought she didn't like you very much. Well, that might be the case, if she ever finds out you’re desperately in love with her boyfriend.

“I normally get like a few days off once in a while and then I must get back to work asap. It's exhausting flying from places to places. But hey, us girls have got to be hard working to take care of ourselves, right?”

You nod, smiling at her. She seems like a lovely girl. Why does she have to be lovely, a model, and Harry’s girlfriend at the same time? It’s so unfair...

Caitlyn turns to Harry, “your friend's so cute. How come you’d never told me about her before.”

It came out as a joke but it leaves Harry at a loss of words. 

“Yeah, I can't believe you guys have been friends since middle school! That's so freaking amazing!” You just shrug and give Mandy a smile, not knowing what to response to that. She doesn't just stop there though.

“You’ve been friends for so many years it's really weird that you two have never…you know…wanted to be...more.”

“I’m feeling like we’re interrogating poor Y/N. Just let the girl eat in peace,” says Gemma’s boyfriend, the fourth guest to this dinner. He doesn’t forget to add in some laughter to make the atmosphere less serious and more relaxed. You cannot thank him enough for saving your ass. This conversation could have gone worse and you don’t think you’d be able to sit here through it.

Caitlyn lets out a laugh and shifts her attention away from you, so does everyone else, so does Harry. His eyes are back on Caitlyn, where they should be. And yours, on him, where they shouldn't be.

Everything around you seems to fade and the voices are muffled in your ears. The only thing you hear is silence and the only thing you see is him. After all this time, after all these years.

Caitlyn’s touching his hair, caressing his face. He smiles at something she says and then she presses a kiss to the corner of his lips as if they were the only two people in this room. You hate this feeling. You feel like you cannot breathe, your chest is heavy and your stomach’s twisting. You've only felt like this twice in your life. The first time was when Harry first told you he'd got a girlfriend, his first girlfriend, whom he had broken up with a few weeks before his life-changing X-Factor audition. The second time is this moment right now. Sure it hurt you in the past seeing pictures of him with other girls during your seven years apart, but it's different now that it's happening right in front of you.

“Where are you going?” Gemma asks when you push back your chair and stand up. You tell her you just need to use the bathroom and then you'll be right back, but only half of that is true. You are going to the bathroom, but you probably won't come back. You excuse yourself and make your way out before anyone else can say anything to you. You need to get out of here, this room at least. Everything following after is like a slow-motion movie scene. You rush to the closest bathroom, lock yourself in and try to catch your breath. As the cool water’s splashed on your face and you look up at your reflection in the mirror above the sink, you finally come to your senses. Your brother was right. You should've stayed home. 

“You alright in there, love?”

Harry. The last person you want to see right now. You open the door and he’s waiting right outside, looking so worried for you it almost makes you want to change your mind.

“I’m fine. Can't a girl just use the bathroom?” You try to fake a laugh but it's not very convincing. Harry doesn't laugh or at least smile back, he keeps a straight face and tells you, “let’s go back, yeah?”

“H,” you grab the sleeve of his shirt when he's about to turn away from you. “We need to talk.”

“Is there something wrong?” Harry looks at you in concern. You wonder if he really doesn't know or he's just really good at pretending he doesn’t know. Either way, you're mad at him.

“A lot. But I would like to start with why you lied and told me you didn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Caitlyn.”

“Wait, did she tell you she’s my girlfriend?”

“She isn’t?” The look of confusion on Harry's face begins to make you confused!

“No!” He looks dead serious so maybe he’s telling the truth. None of this makes sense though.

“But...You two were holding hands and you even let her kiss you.”

“How do I explain this to you?” Harry puts his hands on his hips and presses his lips together. Maybe he's searching for the right words to put into a sentence in a way that won't offend or hurt your feelings. But there's no easy way out. “Caitlyn and I are friends…but…um…but we…we’ve decided that if we're not seeing anyone then we can sometimes meet up and, you know...”

“So she’s your fuck buddy?” you keep your voice down, eyes widened in disbelief and shock.

“I don't have feelings for her, not like I do for...” There’s a pause before he goes on, “...someone I would make my girlfriend. So I’m sorry she told you that. I'll talk to her about it.”

“Does your mum know?”

“No, mum doesn't care who I'm with as long as I'm happy. Gemma knows though, but she doesn’t judge me.”

“Hey, I’m not judging you.” You glare at him, offended by what he seems to imply.

“Not saying that you are but you’re giving me that look, as if you don’t know me.”

“Exactly, because I don’t, not anymore.” 

“I'm sorry, love...I didn't tell you about her because I was scared you might look at me differently, and wouldn't want to let me back in again,” Harry says as he reaches out to grab both of your hands. You have no idea why you let him do so. You don't want to be near him anymore but at the same time you want him to hold you and love you forever. 

“But that's it. I told you everything else this morning, in your room. I was completely honest. I didn’t hide anything from you.”

“Are you sure? Because you didn't mention why you didn’t call, or try to reach out for me for seven fucking years.”

Harry's reaction is exactly what you expected. He always knew this moment was gonna come eventually. He's just not prepared to have this conversation with you in such a sudden. So now he's standing in front of you like a statue, unspoken words stuck in his throat. You don't like it at all, but still you pull your hands away from his grip. They immediately withdraw to hide away behind your back while his hands hang there for a second before falling back to their original places on his sides, leaving him in an awkward standing position.

“I regret it everyday, not reaching out for you...But I really didn't have a choice,” he says.

“Yes, you did. And you chose to abandon me.”

“I-I've been trying to make it up to you, petal.”

“By inviting me over to meet the girl you fuck and ignoring me the whole night to talk to her?” You break your own heart by saying these things out loud. To hear yourself say it rather than the voice inside your head is much more devastating. By the expression on Harry's face, you know he didn't realize until now that he's hurt you. Of course, because you never told him until now. He would never make you sad intentionally. It just didn't occur to him that some things he did and didn't do hurt you. He looks guilty and you feel terrible for making him feel like it's entirely his fault. 

You take a step closer to him, wanting to wrap your arms around his torso and pull yourself into his chest. But instead you just reach out to hold his left hand in your right . He looks down at you looking at him. You take a deep breath.

“This morning with you made me think that we could go back to normal, like seven years had never passed. When we were alone, it felt like nothing had changed, but put us in a room with other people, you suddenly feel so distant.”

“I'm still me. I'm still Harry. Let's...let's go back, okay? After dinner, we'll talk this through, I promise.” His voice is shaky and he's talking fast like he always does whenever he's nervous or scared. 

“I don't want to go back there and I don't want to talk. I want to go home.”

“Please love...” Harry holds your face gently between his palms and you flinch at the contact. His tender gesture makes you feel like the most fragile thing ever, and maybe it's true.

“Don't give up on me,” he says.

The problem is you're not sure if you can. Not when he's doing this to you. Why is he doing this to you? Why is he touching you, looking at you like this? Why is he saying all these things? Like he's in love with you, but in fact he's not. You want to kiss him so bad, especially when his face is this close to yours and his breath is fanning your face. He's making you feel things you're not supposed to feel and you don't want to go there anymore, because the next thing you’ll know is another goodbye and promises he cannot keep. 

You take another step closer, letting your nose brush against his and surprisingly he doesn't pull away. He's looking at you, you're looking at him. If anyone sees you two right now, they might assume that you two are in love. 

“H, I need to-” you whisper breathlessly, not even sure what you're trying to say but that doesn't matter anymore; not when Harry attaches his lips to yours and kisses you like it's his first and also last kiss.

(Part 4)

This part sucks but it'll get better, I swear.

[qweenmandymarie-blog]

((((the scariest thing I have ever done is share this))))

I guess the best place to start is the beginning. This… time line started when I went with a childhood friend to her grandmother’s house. I was 12 at the time. There was a horror movie on the television, I choose to believe this event spurred my interest in horror movies and all things ooky, spooky, weird, scary, ect. I do not know the name of the movie, but it was kinda generic scary movie stuff. A bunch of young people go into an abandoned hotel, a crazy killer dude lives there. They have sex, he kills them. What stuck with me was that he had this big hook that he would throw through the ceilings and walls and floors to catch people, and he would steal their eyeballs when he finished. I have a fear of eye things now, that kinda fucked me up. This movie translated to, really a fixation. My daydreams switched from being about general teenage girl stuff (twilight at the time I believe) to this movie, or the idea of it. From that Mandy Marie was born. Mandy is based off of me, but she is the badass I wish I could be. She always looked exactly like me at first, and acted like me. And then the crazy dude guy would capture her and she would morph like some sort of fucked up butterfly to what she remains as now. A badass queen with endless magical abilities, immortality and a sex appeal like no other. In reality I would n e v e r want to be Mandy. She hates her life, I know because I made it. The escape is nice, but Mandy isn’t a human anymore. WHICH leads into the next thing. So the weird movie set up the scene for me. From that came the ‘peculiars’. I didn’t have a name for my little collection of characters until Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. After I read that book I called them peculiars. I decided that wasn’t original enough at one point, so I changed over to ‘strangers’. Strangers are, essentially humans, born with a special gene that allows them, once expressed, to have magical powers and many other things. Most strangers have lived many past lives. I still haven’t quite come up with where strangers came from. In some timelines they come from demigods, but Mandy never was a demigod. That is again a story for a different time. For the most part strangers do not remember their past unless they have been around for a long time or are very powerful. Mandy does, but she is older than dirt and one of the most powerful strangers in the world. There are strangers all over the world. They live on compounds for the most part. Mandy is the queen of the 13th compound, the North American Compound. There is a South American Compound, the 12th , 1 in Australia, the 11th, 10, 9, 8 and 7 are in Asia, 6 and 5 are in Europe, and 4 through 1 are in Africa. The strangers started in Egypt, where Mandy was first born, in the ancient times. (this stuff is NOT supposed to be historically accurate I AM SORRY but not really) She was married to Anubis, they had 13 kids. She was taken by Horus and forced to marry him, taken again by Osiris and then forced to go back to the mortal world. Then she was found by Hades, and lived with him for a short time until Anubis found out and Hades and him had a big nasty fight and she was whisked away again. She lived through two lives and was then found by Loki. They were essentially fuck buddies until he knocked her up, but she lost the kid and he sent her back to the mortal world. She lived through 12 very miserable and disease filled lives, and then in the 13th life she was taken to a council, consistent of all the gods of death including a young man named death. They gave her the powers of a grim reaper. Her job was to help souls cross over, and to help decide who lived or died. You could also call her a miracle, she saved a lot of lives. Until she met Rodney. Rodney was, well a terrible human really. But she fell in love. He would use her to kill people and get away with it, and she would keep him alive. The council found out and stripped her of her powers. Her and Rodney and his three brothers went on to do really crazy fucked up shit. They created a circus, which was just a front for drugs and murder. Mandy slowly went insane and killed Rodney in his sleep. She proceeded to kill all of his brothers, and many other men that worked with them in the circus. She was taken to the council again, who wiped her memories and sent her soul back into the world to try again. Well she was still crazy, and spent her next 7 lives killing people, she just wasn’t as good at it.

To Be Continued 

[dramaclover]

TVB KING & QUEEN WINNERS 2020

LMAO. Man my predictions were wrong. Never did I think Sisley Choi would actually win. I thought at most she’d win in Malaysia or get Favourite Character award again. Also I had no idea Vincent Wong would actually win this year again. Nevermind the fact he won the most awards.

Okay, so I know Sisley is getting a lot of hate from Hong Kong locals for her win. First, of all. Don’t blame her, blame management for making such a DUMB move again. They really did not learn from 2017 when she won Favourite Character. I’m always surprised by how much TVB likes her. She’s a rumour magnet (not her fault she just has a very outgoing personality). She technically lied about her education. And the local audiences in general don’t like her compared to past Miss HK winners. BUT. You have to give credit when it’s due & it’s the fact she has made immense improvements in her acting. Unfortunately TVB pushed her way too hard in dramas. People who support Sisley are mostly oversea fans. Who shows high favouritism. I remember how she was the most hated actress that TVB was promoting at the time. I’ve seen arguments like “TVB decided to give it to someone that actually had the best performance this year”. The thing is, I agree Mandy Wong didn’t perform well this year. But if we really give it based on “best performance”. Sisley still shouldn’t have won. She improved a lot in Legal Mavericks 2 & Line Walker 3 but it wasn’t anything impressive. People say she was amazing in LW3 but her screentime was reduced after episode 21. Her character was no longer important. And I mention that cause when Mandy was in that drama people praised her in the beginning especially at the elevator scene. And then everything went downhill for her too. So simply put I feel like they both gave similar performances. If we actually go by who acted the best Mandy Lam was super well liked & praised for her portrayal in Come Home Love: Lo & Behold. I know people found Selena Lee boring in Forensic Heroes 4, but the fact remains in she gave an amazing performance. People said she was able to speak clearly & pronounced forensic jargon smoothly & believable. Ali Lee resonated with audiences in Death By Zero. She was hilarious as Cash and people found her very memorable there. These actresses didn’t have “outstanding” acting this year either but they are lot more deserving then Sisleys role. Despite me liking Legal Mavericks 2, it did poorly ratings wise & it was barely talked about. Getting lots of votes from Mainlanders doesn’t mean much. Those votes can be faked & adding on to the fact LW3 aired in China which gives her an unfair advantage. So really. No Sisley didn’t win cause of her acting. She won due to TVB politics. Even when she received the award she didn’t look shocked or touched. I think it’s cause she knows deep down she shouldn’t be getting this & also cause she knows the amount of hate that is gonna get thrown her way now. People need to understand that Sisley has only been in the industry for 7 years. And in those 7 years she never had it bad. She’s always been leading in dramas or put into grand production. She never had to rough it like Nancy Wu, Tavia Yeung, Kristal Tin or even pageant winners like Myolie Wu etc did. She was given lots of opportunities and won so quick. Hence why she wasn’t emotional when she won. Which is not her fault. She has what it takes to be an actress & I am still looking forward to her future dramas. I just wished TVB didn’t have to be like this and promote her this way. She’s gonna continue to get unnecessary hate from this. And since she only won 7 years in, I can see her winning again for a second time in the near future. She has a long contract left & with the lack of talent at TVB it’s highly plausible. But I know one thing for sure, is when she does win it for the second time it will be deserving.

Vincent Wong has thoroughly confused me. He won so many awards. Best Actor & Best Drama in Malaysia & Hong Kong & Best Partnership. It was so awkward when he thanked Al Cappucino instead of Legal Mavericks 2. I wonder if he got confused or believes he should’ve won for Al Cappucino instead? Either way, I did not see this coming. I really thought Raymond Lam or Lau Dan. Vincent is an amazing actor but to win for Legal Mavericks 2? The same role he won for the first time? It makes it seem like he has no acting range. Since he has left TVB for Shaw, I believed TVB wouldn’t treat him so well still. Bosco Wong & Ron Ng also signed with Shaw and didn’t even get half the treatment he got. He’s also starting to focus more in the Mainland China market. And has vocally expressed it too. Is this TVBs way of guilting him to film more with them? He also did not have the best performance of the year. That would go to Wayne Lai & Moses Chan from Death By Zero. When that aired people were talking non stop about it. Eddie Cheung also killed it as a villian in Of Greeds and Ants. I feel like the winners won only cause they got recent bias from how their dramas are still fresh in their minds. Forensic Heroes 4 though was really badly written got the highest ratings & were not mentioned at all. Death By Zero was of course shafted. I guess TVB didn’t want Wayne to win a 4th time. And Moses doesn’t care about awards anymore so they didn’t bother with him sadly. Vincent works hard and is a good actor but I feel like he shouldn’t have won this year at all. Like I always knew Vincent was gonna win again but I didn’t think it was gonna be so soon. This year for Best Actor & Actress TVB only gave it to those they wanted & not to those who deserved it. I’m still confused on what even happened or what TVB was thinking though. At least Vincent winning won’t be as controversial compared to Sisley but I still feel like it was very unnecessary of them to do.

Side opinions but... SUPER HAPPY Angel Chiang won Most Improved. It’s been soooo long since someone deserving actually won it. Like it got to the point that Most Improved became more of a Miss Hong Kong award judging by how much won it in the past. Angel Chiang has shown major improvements & this award belonged to her. I also thought Winki Lai winning was also nice. Her acting is great & has always worked so hard. Yoyo Chen was also another actress I wouldn’t mind winning. Brian Chu winning isn’t bad but shocked they didn’t give it to Brian Tse or Joey Law since TVB seems to be more interested in promoting them. Also glad Hubert Wu won for the song portion. Hana Kuk keeps winning and it’s gets annoying. Obviously Hana is winning if TVB keeps assigning songs only to her. I feel like Best Partnership should be given to Priscilla Wong, Shiga Lin & Yoyo Chen. When Life After Death was airing everyone was in love with their friendship. It’s also so hard for TVB writers to be able to to write such a great friendship between woman. It’s always about bromance and womance is ignored. Their strong loyal ship between each other was amazing in that drama. And I hate how this drama was also ignored in the awards show. It looks like Sisley Choi winning is gonna go down in history along with Natalie Tong for worst BA winners. Vincent Wong might also go down as the “randomness winner” along with Wayne Lai when he won for the 3rd time in Forensic Heroes 3.

[matildainmotion]

Mothers Who Make: A Letter of Invitation to all the Producer Job Applicants and Everyone Else Too....

Dear Kandy, Courtney, Charlotte, Benjamin, Ben, Eleonora, Grace, Hazel, Kimberly, Otto, Clarrisa, Debbie, Keltie, Anna, Cameron, Delea, Ellen, Helen, Jenny, Laun, Lucy, Mandy, Mary, Rachel, Rebecca, Ruth, Sherona, Tina, Toyah, Claire, Genine, Georgie, Heidi, Kate, Li, Michelle, Noemi, Rebecca, Rhiannon, Sarah, Victoria, Becca, Ray, Ruby, Sara Marie, Viccy, Suzy, Jenna, Rosie, Leonie, Cariad, Cristina, Faith, Hilary, Lily, Liz, Lizzy, Lydia, Sam, Ruth, Sarah, Rebecca and everyone one else too,

           There is something that I have noticed happens increasingly in both professional and commercial contexts: “Dear Matilda,…..” begins the email, letter, text which is trying to sell me something, persuade me to join a cause, or tell me that my story has not been short listed. The script that follows is the same script that is being sent to thousands if not millions of others. It is not in truth addressed to me but by using my name as an opener it makes it sound as if it is personal, as if someone, somewhere cares about me enough to write. Sometimes the cause is a good one but nonetheless it bothers me, this co-opting of a personal tone for professional ends, because it seems hypocritical – the personal gets such a bad name, until it is useful. It makes me think of the wolf, dressed up as grandma – looking sweet, ready to pounce. So I thought I would try to do this differently, to be transparent about writing the same words to all of you. I intend to write you individual replies but it is going to take me a long time because there are many of you – 65 in total –and I don’t want to leave you waiting months. Anyway there are some things I want to say to all of you. Here they are……

           Firstly a huge thank you. It has been extraordinary to receive and read your applications for the role of producer for Mothers Who Make. It has been moving and startling. You made me laugh, cry, feel outrage, passion and amazement. Above all it has been incredibly humbling, again. I say ‘again’ because this has been the story of Mothers Who Make all along. I set out to do something small, low impact, straightforward  – start a local group for some creative mothers, raise some funds, recruit a producer – and the response each time was such that the process became profound and far-reaching. I never expected so many applications. I never expected so many people to want the role or to understand the initiative with such depth or to engage with such generosity and commitment.

           Not all of you are mothers. I was impressed by the men who applied and by the women who are not mothers but who have the vision to support this mother-centred movement. Most of you however are mothers, and there was one thing that struck me about you - the same thing that often hits home when I am sitting in a Mothers Who Make meeting. It is simply this: how much you are doing. Often the mothers in a meeting are apologetic for how little they are currently making and then as they talk further it transpires that they are engaged in epic endeavours - training for a marathon was one example from the last meeting, but it is a good one because marathon-running is such a symbol of heroic effort and so many of us have figurative marathons to run. The phrase a ‘mother producer’ is a tautology. Mothers are producers – we produce milk, meals, clothes, wet wipes, stories, songs, comfort. We produce people. It is a staggering feat. But on top of that, on the basis of your applications, I know that you are also producing plays, dances, books, companies, websites, records, workshops, exhibitions, venues, networks, art galleries and more – there is a stunning breadth of skills, experience and abilities amongst you. I would, seriously, love to hire you all.

           However, at present I can only pay for 1 producer so there are 64 of you who will be disappointed. In a professional context what I am currently writing is referred to as a ‘rejection letter.’ It strikes me now as a strange phrase since it sounds intensely personal, ‘rejection’ being the word used when an offer of love is turned down, when a suitor is jilted or spurned. You have, many of you, made me an offer of love and the very last thing that I want or need to do is to reject it. Quite the opposite. Since I am in the business of re-inventing how business might be done, what I am writing to you now is a letter of invitation, not rejection. I am not trying to dismiss any disappointment you may feel in not getting the role of MWM producer. This is not a booby prize (though why the word ‘booby’ has come to connote a poor comfort instead of a rich result is in itself revealing!). I am entirely serious in my invitation to you. In many ways the role of producer is a small one – 5.5 months. The role which I am inviting you to take on is far more vital and longer term than that. Let me explain…

           I have been thinking about the ‘Me Too’ campaign. A common ‘me too’ narrative is this: a man in a position of power has been unprofessional, has ‘got personal’ in an undesirable way. Until recently this was acceptable. People turned a blind eye. The ‘Me Too’ campaign is the process of un-blinding us all. But there is another kind of blindness still at work. When a woman is labelled as unprofessional, as having ‘got personal,’ a likely narrative is this: she has become emotional, or she has become a mother. In other words she has introduced an element of care into a less-than-caring context. MWM aims to begin to foreground and give credence to this form of ‘me too’ narrative and to ask what what it would be like if ‘getting personal’ in this way could be reframed as positive, rather than it also being deemed as undesirable or even offensive. My invitation to you is to engage with me in this research.

           As I explained in my ‘unoffical job ad’ letter, I never intended to found a national network. It has been powered entirely by you – people-power. We now have a tiny injection of funds. The money will not last long and while I hope we will use it well to achieve a great deal it is not the thing that will make MWM grow. You will. Your stories. Your engagement. Your valuing of your mothering and your making and of each other. You are the ones who will be the producers of MWM, along with everything else that you are already, incredibly, producing.

           I am inspired by La Leche League, the international organisation, that supports women through the many challenges of breastfeeding. It is run by volunteers, by women who care enough to show up and help another woman learn to breastfeed. It began with a small group of women at a picnic. Two of them were breastfeeding and the others expressed an interest and said how they were sad they had failed to breastfeed their children. Now it is huge. In the last year alone over 25000 women have been supported by it across the world, via meetings, helplines, online enquiries and more. Maybe MWM will one day have a reach this grand, or maybe not, but either way I believe passionately in the power of the impetus that lies behind both LLL and MWM.

           So here are some things you can do – both practical and then less tangible.  Some of you, I know, are doing them already. If you are a mother you can attend a MWM meeting. You can start a MWM hub near you. Whomever you are you can tell others about the movement. Many of you have said that you are good at all the things I am not so good at, like social media. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – all of this, to spread the word.

           And then here is the less tangible, yet even more extraordinary thing that you can do. You can be unprofessional, by which I mean you can care with pride. Value your care for your children, for your making, for each other, for anyone. Sweeping statement coming up…..I really believe that if anything is going to save the world it will be this: an incremental yet momentous shift in valuing long-term care over short-term gain.

           I read a stunning blog this morning by a mother who is also a climate scientist. It was about the sea, about how she takes her son to the beach on the train and how she knows that in doing even this much she is participating in a system that is warming our oceans, how this will impact on her son and how terrifying this is. The sea is on my mind. My daughter is on my lap, breastfeeding. It is another Saturday in another coffee shop, as it was when I wrote to you before with my ‘unofficial job ad.’ I may not be inviting you to be my producer, but frankly that is a drop in the ocean. I am inviting you, collectively, to be the ocean - a sea of change. We need it.

Thank you.

Matilda x

[rachelannc]

Things are shaping up. And it took me quite some time, patience, and a lot of inner work to do so. And I’m feeling pretty happy about it all.

Step into your own power. Answer to your truths. Follow whatever the hell sets your soul on fire. And remember why you’re here.

One month into my new home and city and I have to say, I feel I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. For months, I hadn’t realized how much I was holding myself back: my home environment was not conducive; I didn’t feel I could thrive; I felt limited, restricted, and stuck. When you wake up everyday feeling anxious, unsure, lost and alone because you simply didn’t know what you were meant to be doing, what you will be doing that day, or why you’re even here, that’s a big wake-up call (and that is not the Rachel I know or that you know. Helplessness is a real thing).

But this past month has been absolutely magical. The feeling of unpacking all of my belongings (for the second time in one month) felt both therapeutic and exciting. It was a feeling of knowing I am here to stay. I’ve finally found my place, my home, my place of refuge and safety and space to unleash all the budding creativity bottled up inside of me. It was a feeling I haven’t had since I first packed my tiny car with all of my belongings to drive down to SoCal all on my own almost two years ago.

After the initial excitement of leaving home with my naive wishes to follow my dreams, to months of an internship that threw me into the heart of Hollywood media, the Asian American community, to a year of chasing shows for inspiration, I got hit with some hard questions:

What is it I really want to be doing? Do I feel I am thriving? Do I feel happy with how I am spending my time and my life? And how can I support my “starving artist” tendencies?

That positive energy and relief I felt from my move came back to me. I was met with so many genuine moments of laughter with new friends and old. Weekends spent wandering the streets of Los Angeles — a town I hadn’t known or seen except for its concert venues I’d so oft frequent — warmed my heart. Bedtime pool hangs, treadmill gains, and a city of people I felt I could actually interact with (and hey, even a few off-the-cuff dates, meals and meets with people) have made this broke girl very happy. It’s funny how when you finally feel like yourself again, the attention comes running back at you and you say to yourself, “Hey, don’t mess my groove up please!”

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Things are shaping up. And it took me quite some time, patience, and a lot of inner work to do so. And I’m feeling pretty happy about it all. Step into your own power. Answer to your truths. Follow whatever the hell sets your soul on fire. And remember why you’re here. Someone recently asked me: “What do you want to be remembered for at your funeral?” All I could say was: “Hm. To be remembered as a good person… Someone who may have had a positive impact on people, in whatever way or medium I have.” I think it’s important to ask yourself those questions from time to time. With love and honesty, always. ❤️ #happythursday #love #honesty #thoughtoftheday #mood #selfie #shamelessselfie #remember #awalktoremember

A post shared by Rachel Ann Cauilan (@rachelcansea) on Mar 28, 2019 at 2:40pm PDT

One of those dates asked me, “What do you want to be remembered for at your funeral?” All I could say was, “Hm. To be remembered as a good person… Someone who may have had a positive impact on people, in whatever way or medium I have.”

And I think it’s important to ask yourself those questions from time to time. More often than not, we can get so lost in the ebb-and-flow of life and forget the real reasons we are here. What is the impact we want to leave on people? On our lives? What kind of lives do we want to be living? For me, I think it’s all about just being remembered as a good person who may have touched someone else, with her words, music, behavior or way of life. That’s been the biggest effect anyone else has ever had on me, personally, and perhaps I’d like to pay that back.

This month, I explored the world of audience and background work and, I have to say, in such a short amount of time, I’ve been able to book so many countless gigs each and every day, showing up to different sets and studio lots all around Los Angeles (oh, and that 15-minute commute from where I live now feels pretty nice). It brought the “hustle” back in me. It’s not all glamorous and more often than not, you can deal with some petty people, but it’s been fun. It’s what keeps things and life interesting and I’ve been able to meet so many kindred souls through this that it’s very comforting (and the payout is pretty generous for my starving soul. #gigstogetmeby is back).

I celebrated my birthday for the first time in what feels like since I was 12 and, if any of you know me well, I’m not one for celebrating big birthdays, but it felt nice to invite a couple friends to go out, hang out, chill, and then have my family visit me for the weekend (because my indecisive self couldn’t plan my plane trip in time lol). My heart was happy and I felt so much love, laughter and kindness, which I only hope to continue to give back to all the people, however small or big in my life, who have made me feel happy, seen, loved or even believed in.

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Thank you for all your warm birthday wishes this past weekend. I’ve never been one to celebrate my birthday, but all your love, warmth and kind messages about my light, presence and impressions on you all have just made my heart so full. A night spent with friends from my music, college and fil-am worlds colliding at a moody vinyl record bar 📀 owned by a dear friend, to a weekend spent with a visit from my family from the bay… All your hi’s, hello’s and moments shared mean the world. And I only hope to continue to share and show the love you all continue to give to me. Tysm for making me one happy gal. 💛 #birthday #piscesseason #birthdayrachel #lolarachel #rachelannc #losangeles #highlandpark #goldline #blindbarber #stonesthrowrecords #16or28 #whoknows

A post shared by Rachel Ann Cauilan (@rachelcansea) on Mar 11, 2019 at 8:42am PDT

To all the belated birthday treats, weekends that felt “normal” for once, with daytime brunches, afternoon affogatos, weekend food trips, birthday meals, dinners and catch-ups… Y’all know who you are. Thank you Angela, the Elusive Milk Tavern group, the Golden Hour Hearts Club Band, the KEB Family, my Fil-Am Family, to those who couldn’t make it out but still expressed their love, catch-ups with my high school bestie Luna & Co. (or pitbull lol), Andrew K. for the good vibes (and Japanese discotheque always), a visit from my red-hatted East Coast friend and more…

This month has been a lot of starting over, rediscovering and beginning again. I randomly became a new brand ambassador for FlipBelt, a beloved running belt company for the LA Marathon Expo one whole weekend, which inspired my love-for-running heart and reminded me of my love for the run community (nice to meet and make some new friends from there). I’ve spent many more days at home when I wasn’t working just feeling “normal,” by cooking at home, eating home, playing more and more guitar and actively writing more. (It’s a funny thing how you can really lose touch with some parts of yourself when adulting hits). And, lovingly, I had such a blast previewing a new Sundance film inspired by a young writer who becomes inspired by music — something that I feel hits personally close to home (and hanging with the cast and crew who are kids just like me was nice). I’ve been getting a better hold of myself when it comes to doing press for events, but still holding my own goals intact.

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This was totally my jam. 📀 A film about a young writer who dreams of writing and finds himself through the music of Bruce Springsteen?! That hits a little close to home. Ty @sthanlee @iwgroup and the team at @newlinecinema for the fun night and opportunity to preview @blindedbythelightmovie, which stole hearts at @sundanceorg, including my own. As a music lover and sucker for any and everything music, I can’t wait to see what comes of this story, these people and this stellar cast. More soon. 🤘 #blindedbythelight #blindedbythelightmovie #gurinderchadha #viveikkalra #nellwilliams #aaronphagura #sarfrazmanzoor #brucespringsteen #dancinginthedark #80s #music #movie #filmscreening #asianfilms #british #pakistani #losangeles #hollywood #sundance #aboutlastnight

A post shared by Rachel Ann Cauilan (@rachelcansea) on Apr 4, 2019 at 5:19pm PDT

And, how can I forget the moment I was able to be there with Mandy Moore, her closest friends, family, the This Is Us family and A Walk To Remember and Shane West himself. I feel these past couple of months have been absolute full circles, with finally seeing Switchfoot (Jonathan Foreman) a few months ago, to then being there for such an intimate moment to celebrate Mandy’s star on the Walk Of Fame. My younger self was in absolute disbelief, and it was humbling to hear her words and why I’ve always seen so much of myself in her:

“I’m finally starting to understand and own who I am. It may have taken a long time to get here and a long time to feel comfortable in my skin but hard work is what grounds us. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you must be grateful for where you’ve been in order to keep moving forward. And I have such an appreciation and fondness and respect for my young self, because she is what brought me to this moment today, twenty years later, with her own star on the walk of fame.”

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“It takes just one person to see a spark in you, to see you in a way that you may not see yourself, to give you permission to go beyond what the world may or may not expect of you and completely change the path of your life and career.” — Mandy Moore One of the most Hollywood things I will ever do. So many congrats @mandymooremm! Not many people I would go to these events for, but I’m so happy I was able to witness this intimate moment with your @thisisusnbc family and swoon over @theshanewest himself! This movie and your journey have stood for so much for me throughout my life. Your life, work and presence have given me so much light and inspiration over the years — and I love how you honor your younger self to get you to where you are today. It was a walk (of fame) to remember, for sure 🌟 Swipe ➡️ for more! Full writeup on rachelannc.com. #mandymoore #walkoffame #walktoremember #awalktoremember #shanewest #hollywood #losangeles #mondaymorning #starceremony #landoncarter #jamiesullivan #dancinginthemoonlight #shamelessfanmoment #mandymooreday #itsofficialyall #rachelannc

A post shared by Rachel Ann Cauilan (@rachelcansea) on Mar 26, 2019 at 8:23pm PDT

It’s been a wild month, and I’ve been riding the wild hustle train lately. But these moments, these life learnings, these conversations have all been eye-opening and priceless.

I think there’s a reason I’ve been working with Steve Harvey so much, only to have him say so much, every time, how he’s gone from being a bad kid, a troublemaker, to being a foul-mouthed comic to someone who used his gift to rise above and beyond, go from being homeless to having so much success, and being so real with us when he says to follow your gift, to use what God gave you, to follow the path he set for us when we were born and to wake up the day we realize why we were born.

It’s been a lot. And maybe those conversations of people who give me so much of their attention for no reason, reminding me that hey, maybe all the attention I do get is a sign. Apl De Ap? Oh you’re homies with some band I grew up with? These people I grew up watching online can casually go up to you and say, “Let’s jam?” That’s stuff my 15-year-old self coulnd’t have even imagined.

But sometimes all it takes is zeroing out on everything else, and zeroing in on yourself, your bliss and your stride.

There is a strong desire as a creative and sensitive soul to seek permission. Believing and trusting in myself, fully and wholeheartedly, has always been one of my biggest struggles. And I am just discovering again what it is like to be comfortable in my own heart, mind, body and soul. I am understanding how to reclaim my light, to never hesitate to shine in it. For so long, I’ve been too afraid to follow my heart, to follow my bliss, to let myself fully go to my heart and soul’s desires. Being human naturally comes with struggles, no doubt about it. But life’s too short to hold back your greatness when you’re too afraid to be your best self. It’s time to thrive, inside and out, my woman, my feminine, my soft and stubborn heart, to let my true self shine.

We are always learning in this life. And that is okay. When you have your bliss by your side and you are following your true heart’s desires, I trust everything will fall into place.

I have found that girl again.

With love and honesty,

Rachel

View my past video blogs below: I’m Stuck, Babe 2/2019 Back To The Velvet Underground 1/2019 Coming Up Roses 12/2018 In My Feels 11/2018 Through Thick And Thin 10/2018 The Last Hurrah 9/2018 Breaking Down to Break Through 9/2018 You Get What You Give 8/2018 Summer Daze 8/2018 Back To You and Hometown Takeaways 7/2018 Young, Reckless and Loving It 6/2018 In A New Light 5/2018 Wandering 5/2018 You Give Me That Wicked Love 4/2018 Rediscovered 3/2018 Twentyfive 3/9/2018 Forever On The Road 2/2018 Beginnings 1/2018 One Sky, Six Months 12/2017 Looking For You, Five Months In 11/2017 Quarter Month Crisis 10/2017 Third Month’s the Charm 9/2017 I Adjusted Month Two 8/2017  I Survived One Month 7/2017 One Week Out 6/2017

Twenty-Six and Stepping Into My Power Things are shaping up. And it took me quite some time, patience, and a lot of inner work to do so.

[ayumiystica]

Q1. What kind of swimsuit or yukata do you like for a girl to wear?

Q2. During the date, which do you prefer: holding hands or linking arms?

Q3. In what percentage each do you consider outer and inner side of someone is important?

Katayose Ryota

A1. Appearance in swimsuit is nice, I guess~! Any design will be great for me.

A2. I prefer holding hands.

A3. 50:50. Someone with tidy, adult-like outer appearance and bright personality is good.

The time when I think someone attracts my interests... it often starts with "scent". When someone has nice scents, I think I get to like her a little bit (laugh). Scent of perfume might be left in the air, and I'm a type who can be attracted with things like, "Ah, what is this... this drifting feeling!". Like a person with refreshing scent... Well, it's not that I would sniff it though, but there's a moment when a nice scent waft around, isn't it! Maybe that kind of moment would make my heart throb. If I dated someone in reality, I think a relationship where "we can both do our best in our job" is nice. It might not be a job though, it could be something she whole-heartedly devotes herself to, and conversely, in times when she felt troubled, I want to do my best to encourage her, so we could enhance each other. When she felt down/depressed, I have to support her so that she could feel positive.

If it's about going for a date in summer, as expected, a place where we can see the sea is nice. Staying in a ryokan (Japanese-style lodging) which has private feeling, in a room with open-air bath, then from that open-air bath, we could see the sea... it would be good, wouldn't it? Then, I also want us to drink delicious alchohol together. If she came to my place, I would show her hospitality. I'd ask her what she wanted to drink, I'd gather things she would seemingly like and asked her to choose, "What do you want to do?"... I'd like to try that kind of house-date. It seems fun~

Shirahama Alan

A1. I like swimsuit from sports brand! High-waist type is also good.

A2. I want her to lay her hands on my arms!

A3. 40% for outer appearance and 60% for inner side. The last thing to begin with is the face.

My mother is a foreginer, so in my family, we're being relatively straight when it comes to expressing our feelings. That's why I might be like that too, if I had to express my feelings toward someone I like, perhaps I'd do it precisely. I also want us to communicate frequently, so I'd replied quickly (to her messages/call)! However, if we're going out for a date, I'd be really embarassed to hold hands (laugh). For me, compared to linking arms, holding hands has a kinda higher hurdle, so if we had to walk together, perhaps I'd ask her to lay her hands on my arms instead...

For me, the most ideal love story is when someone can get married to the first person he/she has dated since junior or senior high school times. It's already impossible for me though, but still, I think it's a wonderful thing. Bearing that in mind, my love philosophy has never changed from the start, so when I got myself a girlfriend, I have to be able to support/provide for her and it would be bad if I couldn't take a good care of her... I came to think that way. Marriage is still far ahead in the future for me, but as a man, I don't want to just go out for a date. I feel that I must be able to be a support in her life. Being able to think like that, I think my way of thinking is getting matured a little bit! The kind of outer appearance which I like is changing a bit too. Before, I always thought that a girl with black hair was gorgeous, but recently, I think stylish hair with gradation in colour is attractive too.

If I got a girlfriend, I'd like to introduce her properly to the members. I think everyone would give real comments, so they might say things like, "You better stop (going out with her)~ (laugh)" casually (laugh).

Kazuhara Ryuto

A1. Is it called tube-top? I like that one. I would think like where she stayed (if I saw someone wearing that) (laugh)

A2. I'd like to walk as we hold each other's hands.

A3. It's 50% - 50% (laugh). It's a safe answer though.

Speaking about love, I'm a cautious type who always tries to read the atmosphere. Perhaps until I could be sure that she liked me too, I wouldn't really take any action... If I dated someone, as for things like our communication frequency, I'd match it with her. I think a girl basically has selfish side, so it's a man's duty to tolerate that. As a boyfriend, I would really do anything for her! Waking her up in the morning, cooking for her, drying her hair! I like doing things like that!

It might be a bit bothersome when I'm tired though... However, if she saw a cockroach and then she contacted me, asked me to exterminate it, I wouldn't do it (laugh)! Right away, I would search in Google, "exterminate cockroach"! No, I should ask someone instead... Well, I would go for it though, but perhaps I would be just as noisy as her. Saying things like, "Yabai, yabai" (laugh).

Speaking about our job, since it's a job with intense ups and downs, and there will be lots of times when we are not in Japan, I think it wouldn't be easy for me to grant what she wanted when she asked... That's why she needs to have great patience. And since it might be something painful for a girl, in times when we could be together, I'd do anything I could for her. I think it would be good if I could have a love relationship where I could keep her from feeling lonely. Before, I hate it when my own time got disturbed, I felt that I didn't want someone to meddle with me, but as I became an adult, I realized the importance to take my man-side a step backward.

Nakatsuka Yuta

A1. As for yukata, I always like light blue color. And I also like black cloth with patterns. Then, with bun-styled hair, it will be the greatest combination!

A2. I prefer holding hands! But if I saw people linking arms, perhaps I would change my mind...?

A3. 50:50. I like someone with tidy, adult-like outer appearance and has a bright personality inside.

Since I'm shy toward strangers and never experienced love-at-the-first sight, I'm a type who starts from being friends and then gradually thinks, "Ah, perhaps I like her". It's like we doesn't force ourselves and can be together just naturally, someone who's down-to-earth is wonderful. When she made weird face so that her eyes look white, I would conversely think she's cute (laugh)! I'm a shy person, but though I might not be a type who would chase her, I would express my affection once we're already dating. For example, the word "suki" (like), I would properly express what I feel in words and I'd like to tell her that once everyday.

Lately, I didn't go afar at all, I'm just busy with my sewing machine making clothes (and giving them as presents for the members too!), and also playing water with my pet hedgehog Milo (female) as I said, "It's time to go for a bath" (laugh), so I'm pretty much an indoor type. But if I had to go for a date in the summer, as expected, it would be fireworks, I guess... 

Sekiguchi Mandy

A1. Since I don't understand swimsuit fashion, it's OK if it suits her, and I want the color to be matched for the top and bottom.

A2. I prefer linking arms. Because my hands sweat easily (laugh).

A3. It's such a malicious question (laugh)! But perhaps it's 70% for the inner side and 30% for outer appearance. I think there are many people who has good personality and cute outer appearance as well!

I never experienced love-at-the-first-sight... but if I got to like someone, I want to chase her! I don't really have any things I dislike about love though, but I'm kinda interested on someone whose cellphone's screen has lots of cracks on it (laugh). I can understand if there's little cracks on it, since mine has cracks too. But if there are lots of it, it's kinda... It'd make me worried like, "Isn't the gap too much?" (laugh).

Since I'm pretty much an active person, someone who can go together with me to the places I want to go, someone who can have fun even in the place she doesn't know and has kinda high tension is the best for me. Like going to Hawaiian's Water Slider, seems like we could enjoy such an active date! Then we would sometimes have a fight... Though it's not a jet-coaster, I think a kind of love which has few waves and time to think about it after that is kinda nice. I came to think that way.

Sano Reo

A1. As for yukata, ordinary type like black one is good. As for swimsuit, the one which is not flashy is good!

A2. Both is okay for me. But as for my hands, my fingers are fat so they're kinda chubby?

A3. 50:50. Outer appearance is reflected in inner part, and unexpectedly, inner part is also reflected in outer appearance.

A4. Mandy-san. We're together 5 days in a week. He might be the oldest, but he can't do anything when I'm not around (laugh).

A5. I like everyone a lot as a man, but if I were a girl, I'd hate everyone (laugh).

If there's someone who attracts my interest, I'm a type who will wait until she likes me back. I never experienced love-at-the-first-sight, and since I'm a type that will like someone after I know about her completely, the process from knowing her to going out with her will really take a lot of time (laugh). If I got someone to go out with in reality, I would introduce her to Mandy-kun. Seems like he would be like, "Hey, it's good, isn't it~" or "She's cute~" (laugh) (Reo imitates Mandy's voice while saying this). If we went out in the summer, it would be ideal to have a leisure date. With refreshing appearance, I'd like to go out to shopping mall, taking our time as we went shopping around, having lunch in the foodcourt, watching movies... things like that. Since I'm not a romantic person, I'd like to feel ordinary happiness, and someone who could share the same feeling is good. It's ideal if we could always be together, and even without exchanging words, we could have nice atmosphere. And on anniversary day, preparing for it with high spirits, handing her a wrapped present along with a flower bouquet... I'm not a type of person who would do that. So don't expect me to do that (laugh). Sometimes buying matching items, telling her that I wanted her to wear it so that I bought it...  I think that kind of love which I can be relax about and enjoy suits my nature.

Komori Hayato

A1. If it's swimsuit for my girlfriend, I'd like the conservative one. If it's not for my girlfriend, I'd like the flashy one! It's good for my eyes (laugh)

A2. I prefer holding hands! But I'm a fast-walker, so it would be difficult in the middle I guess.

A3. It's not a dorama though, but perhaps it's like, "A person is 100% her appearance!" (laugh)

A4. Yuta-kun and Reo. If it's hanging out with just two persons, it will be Alan-kun.

A5. Yuta-kun. Because the sense of "being loved" he has is similar to mine (laugh).

To value a love relationship, it's about flattering a girl, in a good meaning. I'm a type that would immediately say "Sorry!" if she got mad.  I'd also buy lots of presents even though it's not our anniversary day. With feeling like, "When I went out shopping today, this seems good for you so I bought it", I want to have a kind of "anniversary-day-though-there's-nothing-particular-happens". If it's about marriage... I'd like to do it after dating for 7-8 years! To be enthusiastic about marriage, I don't like that. For me, it's ideal when we had always been together, and then as we realized, it's already like 10 years passing, so we felt like, "Let's get married then". To feel that way without getting too excited is ideal. It was different before though, but recently, as I became an adult and get calmer, I feel that as expected what's ideal is different from the reality (laugh).

Inner part is of course important, but outer appearance is also important to some extent. By the way, recently I found in the book I read that for people who consider outward appearance as something important, the divorce rate seems kinda low. Since I always read books about neuroscience and psychology when I have time, the members are always kinda amazed and say stuffs like, "Hayato is really girl-like!" (laugh).

[redsoapbox]

PAUL LEWIS / INTERVIEWS WITH VAN MORRISON AND SNATCH IT BACK

A gathering of the It's a Wonderful Life Club, that met each Christmas in the Lewis household to watch Frank Capra’s famous festive film - Left to right, Paul Lewis, Rob Jeffreys, Me, Huw MacDonald and Mandy Morris, sitting. Taken around 1990 - I think we are all singing along to our friend Big Al Davies, tragically just out of shot! 

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of my great friend Paul Lewis. We first met, back in 1984, while working in the post room at Companies House in Cardiff - I was reading a biography of Jack Lemmon on my morning tea-break, and Paul wandered over to talk about Cinema. It didn’t take him long to get my measure - if he mentioned a Hollywood classic, whether it be Twelve Angry Men, The Searchers, or Bringing up Baby, then I had a view worth expressing. I was even able to hold my own on the silent movies of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. However, when Paul threw in Akira Kurasowa, Jean Luc Goddard or Ingmar Bergman my limitations were exposed for all to see. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with my new colleague and soon to be best friend (we eventually ended up being best man for each other). 

That chat only scratched the surface of Paul’s knowledge - it soon transpired that you could apply the lessons of that first conversation to music, literature, photography, architecture - just name it. As this is primarily a music blog, however, I’ll stick to Paul’s influence in that department. Paul, at the time of his death, had established himself as one of the leading blues journalists in the U.K. -  even appearing as a guest on the legendary Paul Jones’ The Blues Show on Radio 2. I was lucky enough to tag along with Paul and his wife Wendy on many occasions, as he reviewed and interviewed iconic figures like Van Morrison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Cardiff’s very own local heroes Snatch it Back.

So Karen and I will be raising a glass tonight to Paul’s memory and to our continuing friendship with Wendy and the Lewis clan. I’ll be listening to my favourite Snatch It Back tune, “Kind of Loving I Need”, Van the Man’s “Into the Mystic” and, perhaps, something from Nanci’ Griffith’s  Little Love Affairs to remember the good times by.

The interview with Paul and Wendy’s beloved Snatch it Back, (the band played at the couples evening wedding reception - what a gig that was!), is available to read through the British Blues Archive and the UK Blues Federation (www.ukblues.org), and a link to  the interview, which originally featured in issue No.17 of BBR Boogie, can be found at the foot of the page, together with a video of the band in action. As for the copyright of the interview with Van the Man, where Paul’s forensic knowledge of his subject really shines through, I’m winging it - but I think Paul would see the funny side if I received a letter from The Belfast Cowboy’s solicitor threatening to sue me!

Van Morrison in his skiffle/rock ‘n’roll years.

1991 Van Morrison interview

by Paul Lewis

From Now Dig This, December, 1991, pages 22-26

Van Morrison is, without question, one of the giants of the rock era. Having first emerged as a prime mover in the British r&b movement of the early '60s with his Belfast band Them, Morrison has remained remarkably faithful to those roots, developing a musical style at once highly original but also greatly indebted to his early heroes - the blues singers and jazz musicians; the 'voices' of gospel and r&b; the original rock n rollers. His lyrics are peopled by legendary names - Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly etc. - figures that appear almost as characters in an ongoing dialogue; indeed the beginner could amass a terrific record collection simply by checking out the clues that Morrison sprinkles. To get a fuller picture of the man's musical background and primary influences, I met with Van on a recent trip to South Wales. We were joined by a mutual friend, Gordon McIlroy (Wales' leading promoter of blues, r&b and rock n roll gigs), and the conversation was lively, informal and enlightening. What emerged was an engrossing guide to the musical roots of one of our most important performers.

Paul Lewis: Can I start by asking how you got introduced to the blues and rock n roll and all that kind of stuff? I know your father was a great collector of blues and jazz records...

Van Morrison: Yes, well that's really it - I sort of grew up listening to it. You probably heard that before.

PL: And wasn't your mother a singer?

VM: She did some singing, but never professionally. She did some local sorts of shows.

PL: Did she sing jazz?

VM: I don't know exactly what it was. I think it was just the stuff that was happening. I mean the dance band era, that sort of thing...

PL: How did your father get hold of his records? Was there an outlet in Belfast?

VM: Yes, Solly Lipsiz was the guy's name. He had a jazz record shop in the High Street in Belfast - a collectors' shop. It was very small, a very small shop, just shelves of...well, they had 78's then, and they had 10-inch LPs and EPs. Nowadays you can go to these big stores, Virgin or something... In those days you had to go to a specialist shop to get any jazz or blues records.

PL: Was there a lot of interest over there in Belfast then?

VM: No, there wasn't a lot, just small pockets really. There were just small pockets of interest.

PL: So when did it first hit you that there was something you might have liked among your father's records?

VM: Right away! When I could breathe, I think. I just connected with it right away. The first things I heard were Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Clara Ward Singers...

PL: All the gospel people...

VM: Yes. The earliest thing I can remember hearing was gospel, but I heard Leadbelly too, right from the beginning. I don't know the exact sequence, but I heard it all at once. And he was into the big band stuff as well, so I heard Tommy Dorsey and Harry James - because that was his era - so it's all mixed up, you know. But I connected with the gospel and Leadbelly - heavily connected with Leadbelly - and that's how I got into music in the first place.

PL: How old were you when you started playing music yourself?

VM: Well, I got a guitar when I was about 11 or 12. Then I got this Alan Lomax book, and I learned the chords and picked the shapes out of this book. It was called 'The Carter Family Style' - that was what I initially started learning on guitar. And I was trying to pick up also what Leadbelly was doing, but that wasn't in there. If you did The Carter Family, then you could pick up from there, you know.

The Carter Family - Maybelle. A.P and Sarah

PL: You mentioned The Carter Family; did your father have any country records as well?

VM: Oh yes. Well I heard Hank from friends in the street. Friends of mine had the Hank Williams stuff, so I heard that from five or six doors down - they used to leave the doors open. One of my father's friends used to bring all these 78's over, they used to have 'Hank Williams Nights'. Have a few drinks, listen to Hank all night.

Gordon McIlroy: Hank parties! That's unbelievable. Never happened here, you know, never...

VM: That happened in Ireland all the time. It was a big thing.

PL: Ireland's got a strong tradition of country and western though, hasn't it?

VM: Yes, because I think they're very connected you see. The cultures are very connected.

PL: So, guitar was your first instrument - did you play in any bands early on?

VM: No, it was what you'd call 'folk' then. I can remember when I started playing, there weren't any guitars around, apart from on the records by Leadbelly, Josh White, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. You never really heard guitar. You saw it on television - somebody like Ivor Mairants, or you saw people like Elton Hayes. And there were some comedians who played guitar - like I saw Max Wall play guitar once. But it wasn't 'in' then by any means; the guitar was not an instrument then.

PL: When you say 'folk' music, what exactly are you referring to - not 'traditional Irish folk music'?

VM: Yeah. Well when you started, you had to play on your own, because the players weren't available. It was so isolated to have a guitar. You'd see Delia Murphy, who was an Irish folk singer... There'd be Steve Benbow, who played Irish folk music - and English - and all kinds of stuff that you'd see on television. The only local traditional folk group that I heard were The McPeakes. But folk music was not something that was readily available; your entrance into playing guitar was folk music but it wasn't something that was everywhere, not where I was. You couldn't just walk in and hear it, as you walk in and hear rock n roll later on, when the guitar became fashionable and all the teenagers were getting the records. But people like Elton Hayes you'd see on television, so you'd only have that to go on: one person with a guitar, singing a song. Robin Hall, Jimmy McGregor - that's the only thing you'd have to relate to. Either that or the Leadbelly records, or Jimmie Rodgers who I listened to a lot as well. All of a sudden, in the next five years, I think it was - in this part of the world, the UK and Ireland - it was Lonnie Doneganwho brought the guitar *in*. When I started playing they called it a banjo - that's what they called it! So they didn't really register about the guitar until then. I think Donegan was before all the rock n roll stuff...I can't quite remember the sequence.

GM: Donegan made the players, without a doubt. The *players* came from him, I believe.

PL: Had you been following Donegan through the 'trad' period with Colyer and Barber?

VM: Yes. My father had the Ken Colyer records and the Barber records - things like 'Precious Lord', where Donegan was singing in the Barber band. When 'Rock Island Line' came out, it was a Chris Barber record, so my father bought it and that's how I heard it. But what I connected with was that I was hearing Leadbelly before that, so that when Donegan came along, I thought everybody knew about it. So in retrospect now, I realise I was really lucky then - I didn't realise it then, because I thought everybody was hearing the same things I was, but they weren't. So consequently I think I was really lucky to grow up at that time and hear what I heard then, you know.

PL: Had you been trying to tell other people about these records you were listening to, and meeting with resistance?

VM: All the time, all the time. The 'country' people were the most relatable to at that time. My friends who had brothers or uncles or fathers into country music were the most relatable. Hank Williams was *the* most relatable thing, so those people who were into Hank, I connected with them. But they weren't jazz or blues people per se - they were into Hank, so there weren't a lot of people that I came into contact with that were into it. I used to meet people that were much older than me when I went to the collectors' shop, but I didn't really start connecting until the '60s. But the skiffle thing was the bridge really because that sort of crossed over - when I was going from Leadbelly and blues into skiffle, it translated very well. The next thing for me was the early '60s when all these groups started to emerge; then it was like everyone understood it, you know.

PL: Was there a skiffle scene among young musicians in Ireland as well as over here?

VM: Oh yeah, absolutely. That was what was happening then.

GM: I think all the musicians in this country came from skiffle, more than from rock n roll. When they brought rock n roll over here, nobody could play it. Couldn't play it directly...

VM: In that period, in Belfast, the one guy that I've heard of that was playing rock n roll was Brian Rossi. He was playing at The Plaza Ballroom, the Mecca ballroom in Belfast, and he was the first person that I saw that was 'rock n roll'. He had a three-piece because they didn't have the electric bass then - they had two guitars and a drummer. The bass wasn't in then, wasn't happening. People didn't know about it. In rock ‘n’ roll they didn't have electric bass until a couple of years after that, it was very slow to come in. But they had a piano, Rossi was playing piano, two guitar players and a drummer. He was the happening thing in Belfast.

PL: What year would that have been?

VM: Oh, '50s - late '50s. He was from the mid-'50s on, I would say. I wasn't getting into these sorts of venues until the late '50s, you know, because I was too young before that.

PL: How big a part did radio play in your musical education?

VM: It was actually more the records. I mean I heard things on the radio, but it was more the records that my father had. The radio stuff was just additional - you know, the AFN and Luxembourg - but it didn't really play as big a part. The records were the main feature.

PL: What was the first rock n roll record you bought?

VM: The first rock n roll record...it was the only one I could get actually, the only Bill Haley record I could find: 'Razzle Dazzle' (see right). I can't remember the other side...

GM: 'Two Hound Dogs'!

VM: That was it! 'Razzle Dazzle'/'Two Hound Dogs'. That was actually the first 45 I bought when they made the changeover from 78's to 45's.

PL: Did your father approve of the rock n roll stuff as well?

VM: Yes. But the thing is we were so much into jazz that it was sort of part of it, but it was more background, it was just passing by. We were so much into jazz and blues that rock n roll was peripheral. I mean we liked it, but it wasn't in my face all the time, because of the wealth of other stuff, you know. At the time when I got into rock n roll, I was also into jazz saxophone. I started studying tenor with a guy called George Cassidy in Belfast, learning to read music, so when I entered the rock n roll thing, it was coming from that end of it, that angle. So the whole thing wasn't rock n roll, there were other ideas and things I was listening to. People like 'Fathead' Newman, who was playing with Ray Charles - so that was sort of running parallel.

PL: And were you into all those r&b 'honkers' - the Earl Bostics and so on?

VM: I listened to Sil Austin, I had a Sil Austin record...'Pink Shop Shoes' was one of the tracks. I used to listen to him before I went to school, to get me up for school, you know. I heard 'Honky Tonk' too, but I was more into listening to a guy called Jimmy Giuffre than I was to rock n roll. I decided I wanted a sax when I heard Giuffre doing 'The Train And The River'. I couldn't get enough of it after that. If ever there's anyone who was a footnote or asterisk it was him, he's my main influence on saxophone.

PL: I suppose your father would have had his records with Woody Herman, so presumably that would ultimately have come from those?

VM: No, not really - I mean I liked that music, but I didn't connect that strongly with it, not as much as I did with r&b. My father had the first record that Parker played on, 'Dexter's Blues' with Jay McShann, so I heard that, but again I didn't connect so much with that as I did with this other stuff later on. I don't even know what it was called, just some sort of fusion. They didn't call it that then of course - today they'd probably call it fusion. In between Jimmy Giuffre, the Bill Doggett thing with Clifford Scott and The Bill Black Combo would be my area. And then I had these Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan Quartet records that I listened to quite a lot. But when I heard 'Ray Charles Live At Newport', that was it. I started to understand something about the harmony, harmony phrasing, playing together, ensemble - all that kind of stuff. But that's what I was studying - more the jazz end of it than the rock thing at that point. When I joined my first rock n roll band, I was still listening to blues and progressive r&b and jazz. I never saw rock n roll as the whole picture.

PL: Were you playing the sax in a showband?

VM: No, no this was strictly a rock n roll band. It had two guitars, drums and saxophone. We had a piano player but he didn't stay there. He was working in another job, so it was like two guitars, drums and a tenor playing "Peter Gunn" and "Tequila" and all that kind of stuff. Then we actually became a showband because in Ireland you had to have more bodies to work. Because groups weren't really happening there - they were everywhere else with The Shadows etc., etc., but for some reason the promoters didn't want groups (laughs), they hated, you know, 'guitars, bass and drums' groups, they just didn't want to know. You had to have a horn section, you couldn't really work properly if you didn't. All the showbands had horn sections and a lot of them were really good, like The Royal Showband, Dixielanders, Swingtime Aces, Clipper Carlton... The horn sections were the main thing, so you had to have at least a seven or eight-piece band to work.

PL: Is that scene still thriving in Ireland now?

VM: No, no, it's all gone. That went with the ballrooms, they went at the same time. You had these five-hour dances, you see; the band would have to play for five hours for dancers. And people would come from everywhere, out of the woodwork. Some of these gigs were in the middle of a field, you know, in a ballroom. The Royal Showband were huge at the time and they went to Vegas for six months of the year. They'd come back and they were the biggest draw in Ireland.

PL: So presumably you were involved in this scene for quite a while. Were you trying to introduce r&b into it?

VM: Yes. Well, what happened was I was gradually trying to creep r&b in - we had this group situation and we had this piano player who was into Jerry Lee. So he used to come and listen to my Jerry Lee singles, and we'd gradually try to introduce them, and then Ray Charles. Bit by bit it was becoming more of an r&b band. And then we went to Germany where we could virtually play what we wanted. So at that point, it was no longer a showband, they wanted more r&b in Germany. They had showbands there, but they liked r&b, they wanted "What'd I Say" and "Sticks And Stones", you know...

GM: Jerry Lee had been down there at The Star Club. There's an album out of Jerry Lee...

VM: And Ray Charles had already been. So that was when it was beginning to turn around. And then a strange thing happened, just as we started to kick off on the r&b thing - we were playing a club in Heidelberg - I can remember the exact situation. We'd done three or four numbers and then we were announcing the next one when this American G.I. - there were a lot of G.I.'s coming in - he came up to me and said, "You guys ever heard of Dave Clark?". And from that minute, everything changed. All of a sudden it was groups again. So I went back - Calais, Dover and London - and it had all changed from six months previously. Now, the group thing was back and The Beatles were the biggest thing, and The Dave Clark Five. The r&b thing with horns was less predominant, you know, and then of course The Rolling Stones came after that. So, after Germany I went back to Belfast and opened an r&b club at The Maritime Hotel.

PL: So the band in Germany, was that Them at that point?

VM: No, no, completely different band, much better musicians. This is something I'll never understand, you see. The musicians in this band, we'd never got any commercial success, and I started this other situation from complete scratch. You know they actually just went their separate ways and got jobs in different bands and I got a job with Brian Rossi at The Plaza Ballroom in Belfast. I was playing some tenor, playing some harmonica and sang a couple of numbers, so I had a spot with Brian Rossi.

GM: What were the numbers then - rock n roll?

VM: No, it was r&b - that's why he got me. Because he was rock n roll, complete rock. His thing was like Jerry Lee, you know. He was like Jerry Lee, Little Richard...so he had that going. What was I doing? I was doing r&b numbers, like Ray Charles - "Sticks And Stones" or "What'd I Say", or some slow r&b songs, and I was sticking some tenor solos in as well. Then, during this period, there was an ad in the Belfast Telegraph which blew me away when I read it. It said: "Musicians Wanted To Start R&B CLub". I went and met these guys and they were in some other business - I don't know what exactly, but they weren't in the music business. The said, "We want to start this r&b club in Belfast and we're looking for people". There was only me and this other guy there; only two people showed up from the ad. So I went out and found this club, it was a Seamens' Mission; it was called The Maritime Hotel and they had a room set up, that's really where I made it - well, it came out of that situation. I had to just get musicians in at short notice, so the people that I really wanted, I couldn't get. I got another lot of people and we went into this club known as Them, and then it built up from there.

PL: Do you think that you did your best work (with Them) at that club, rather than on record?

VM: Oh...well, it's hard to say. Yeah, in some ways - energy-wise - yes, and as far as stretching the numbers out goes...I think a lot of it was more intense than on record. The records didn't really capture the whole thing because they were limited, you know. Like when you made records in those days, it was all 2:58, wasn't even three minutes, so it never really came across. Live gigs were much more stretched out, you know...

PL: Presumably you still like that club atmosphere?

VM: Oh yes, I think I'm at my best in a club situation, but it's difficult for me now to get that situation. It's not so readily available now.

GM: It's difficult to cope with the people that want to come in, you see. It's too "high-profile" sort of stuff. If you could move in, like, say come in tomorrow, without anyone knowing, it would work.

PL: You were obviously listening to the Chicago blues people - Muddy Waters, guys like that - by this point...

VM: Well, I heard the first Muddy stuff, his folk things, the Library of Congress recordings, I think, on French Vogue. Vogue were issuing records in England - 78's - when I heard Muddy it was from the 78's. You know that "Rollin' Stone" song? "I'm A Rollin' Stone", Muddy Waters? I hadn't heard the electric stuff by then, I heard that later on. But Sonny & Brownie, I heard them electric before I heard Muddy. Sonny & Brownie made an electric album, I heard that before I heard Muddy Waters, so that was like the first electric blues band I heard. I think it was called 'Back Country Blues' or something, but it was with an electric band.

PL: You mentioned that you'd started playing harmonica earlier; who were your influences there?

VM: Oh, Sonny Terry. The first one I connected with was Sonny Terry.

PL: Was that because you'd been buying those records - as a guitarist - to listen to Brownie McGhee and then thought: "Well, I could have a go at harp as well"?

VM: No. As far as guitar goes, I was just sticking with Leadbelly and doing the runs on 6-string - nobody had even heard of a 12-string guitar - and I thought: "Well, where can I get a 12-string?". They used to think I was insane when I was 12 years old and talking about 12-strings. They wanted to put me away. So I was trying to play the Leadbelly runs on a 6-string guitar, the best I knew how - I played more like Lightnin' than like Brownie McGhee, the Lightnin' style. Lightnin' and Leadbelly were the two main influences - and Hooker.

Van Morrison & John Lee Hooker

PL: When did you get into John Lee Hooker?

VM: It was an album on the Audiolab label, Hooker was on the one side, on the other side was Stick McGhee.

PL: Of course he'd played with Sonny Terry as well...

VM: That's right. He was Brownie McGhee's brother or something. But anyway, to get back to Hooker: the Hooker record was like it was done in an echo chamber. The guitar and the vocal were soaked in this echo. I'd never heard anything like that, there was nobody doing that. That's where I got "Baby, Please Don't Go" - from that. I mean, Hooker's name was on it, it said: "'Baby Please Don't Go' (John Lee Hooker)", and it was his arrangement that I started to work on.

PL: So you hadn't heard Big Joe Williams or any of those older versions?

VM: No, but it turns out that he never wrote it either. (To GM) You know the guy who wrote it...

GM: The original was Papa Harvey Hull and Long Cleeve Reid, in the 1920s. Incidentally, a funny thing happened the other week: we had Paul Burlison - Johnny Burnette's guitarist - staying in Cardiff. I think he set a standard for most of the British guys. You know "The Train Kept A-Rollin"? That's possibly where the lick came from for Van's version of "Baby, Please Don't Go".

VM: I think that's where Jimmy Page got the lick from - 'cause Jimmy Page played that lick on my record. But I'm sure he got it from "The Train Kept A-Rollin". I didn't really get this until years later, that it was the same riff, because I'd been listening to that record by Johnny Burnette.

PL: Were you aware of many of the rock guitarists of the time? Cliff Gallup?

VM: Oh yeah! WIth Vincent I was, yeah! For me, that was what the whole rock n roll thing was about. I heard the Johnny Burnette Trio first, then Vincent. I met him later on, about '65. I hung out with him, he was at The Royal Hotel in London and I got to know him a bit. He'd been to Egypt and he'd just got back; he was a really nice guy. For me he *was* rock n roll. I like Burnette, but not as much as Vincent. Whatever rock n roll is, for me it is Vincent.

PL: What about Jerry Lee?

VM: And Jerry Lee. To me, I couldn't say he was rock n roll. Jerry Lee's everything - he's jazz, blues, gospel, rock n roll... Jerry Lee to me means 'everything'. Vincent was to me what rock n roll was about.

PL: You recently did a gig with Jerry Lee. What was he like to work with?

VM: Easy. Dead easy. Very professional.

PL: You seem to me to be drawn to these people who cross over all these genres. I mean, Leadbelly is hard to pigeon-hole, and Jerry Lee as you said...Ray Charles... Would you say that's true - you like people that can straddle jazz and blues and country?

VM: Definitely. I think for me that's a key.

PL: I mean, you do that yourself...

VM: Yeah, I do.

PL: What about Ray Charles? When did you pick up on him?

VM: Oh, I bought three records - one was The Johnny Burnette Trio, another was a Ray Charles EP; it had "Don't Put All Your Dreams In One Basket", "Sittin' On Top Of The World" - it was the one they keep putting out every three years or something. But the first thing I ever bought by him was "What'd I Say". The first time I heard it was on AFN, late at night. It was a live version - it must have been out in America... The one I got was, you know, "Parts 1 and 2", and I was hooked. I was completely hooked after that.

Ray Charles & Van Morrison

PL: How about Elvis?

VM: I heard an Elvis Presley record - on Sun - was it his first record? It had "That's All Right Mama" on it...

GM: The first one we got was "Heartbreak Hotel". "That's All Right" never came across...

VM: I remember hearing one that was a Sun record. Somebody must've got an import. It was acoustic, had no drums on it. Must have been an import then, but I heard that one. But I never connected with that, I connected more with Vincent than I did with Presley.

PL: Did you explore all that stuff later on?

VM: I played it! When I was in a rock n roll band, I played it, jumped across the stage - did the whole thing. I did rock n roll for a couple of years really.

PL: Did you get the rock n roll films, the Alan Freed films, in Belfast?

VM: I saw 'The Girl Can't Help It', I saw that one. Vincent was in that. Little Richard... But I used to see Vincent on 'Oh Boy!'. He was on that fairly regularly, and 'Boy Meets Girls' and all that. Used to watch that every week. I remember seeing Ronnie Hawkins and Gene Vincent on 'Oh Boy!' with Joe Brown.

PL: What about the British rockers?

VM: Oh, Johnny Kidd, man. Johnny Kidd. He was it for me as far as the British end went. I remember he came to Romano's Ballroom in Belfast and he had a three-piece: guitar, bass and drums - and him. That was it, but it was like a big sound.

PL: What year would that have been?

VM: '62.

PL: Was Mick Green with them then?

VM: I think so, yes. But I mean, remember all those three-piece groups that came along much later? They were doing that *then*.

PL: The 'power trio' bit.

VM: Yeah, exactly.

PL: What about English r&b in the early '60s? Did it pre-date you doing it, or was it happening at around the same time?

VM: It was happening at the same time, but we didn't know. For instance, we played The Cafe A-Go-Go in Newcastle...

PL: The Animals' place...

VM: Yeah, but then nobody knew anything. They said there's this band in here called The Alan Price Band or something like that, which apparently became The Animals, but we never heard them. But we played this r&b club in the early '60s. I think there was a lot of crossover...probably Eric Burdon was doing the same kind of thing I was, but we never met each other then. This only came about when we had records out. We'd made a couple of records and The Animals and The Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones had records out, what, in '63 was it? The first British r&b of that type I heard was The Downliners Sect. It was at The Ken Colyer Club, there were doing it then, really doing it. I heard The Pretty Things later, we were on tour with The Pretty Things, but The Downliners Sect were *it*.

PL: What about the slightly earlier ones, like Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies and people like that?

VM: I heard Alexis during the skiffle thing with Ken Colyer, but you had to come to London to hear things like that then. Nowadays you could be in the outer Hebrides and you'd still be able to hear it, but then it was much more isolated. Alexis came and played the club I started about four years after I got it going.

PL: Were you, as a band, slightly out of it then, coming from Belfast? I mean, a lot of these bands evolved out of people that were sleeping on Alexis' living room floor. And they were all intermingled, those London-based bands...

VM: Yeah, probably yeah.

PL: Would that have made it harder for you?

VM: No. We met The Downliners Sect early on, when I was playing in a showband. I came through London and talked to them quite a few times, we went back to see them a few times, and so I started the r&b club I reckon about six months after that.

PL: Did you get many other bands in there outside of your own?

VM: Oh yes, loads of them. Because when it caught on - it took a while to catch on - but when it did, there were suddenly lots of r&b groups around, that came out of the woodwork, that just got into that when they discovered it could be done. Nobody thought it could be done before that. They just though: 'Oh, it's not gonna' work, it's not like a pop record...'. But when it did work, a lot of people that were playing in showbands suddenly wanted to be in rhythm and blues.

PL: I'd like to ask you about some of the people you met that had come across from America in the early '60s, some of the bluesmen that came across...

VM: I met Little Walter. We had a manager who brought us to London to stay at this hotel, called the Aaland Hotel, it was in Bloomsbury. We were sitting there for weeks, you know. We were having a jam session downstairs and all of a sudden these people were wandering through and somebody says 'Little Walter's coming in!'. I thought I must be dreaming, you know. And sure enough, he did, he came in. And I used to go for Chinese food for Little Walter - there was a Chinese restaurant a couple of streets away. I was always saying, "Well, can you show me anything on this harp?". But it was very tough, I mean he was tough, he didn't give anything away. His style was so 'off the wall' - I think he even had a number called "Off The Wall"! - that there's never been anybody since...the things he could do were just incredible. He had a scientific approach to playing the harp. As far as blues goes, he's the top, there is *nowhere* else. The outer limits. There's nobody to touch him. For me he's the outer limits.

PL: How different was he from someone like Sonny Terry?

VM: Well, I'm more like Sonny Boy Williamson, that's my speed. Walter, when he took the instrument to such an extreme, I haven't heard anybody come anywhere near it. But Sonny Boy, for me, I could manage my way around a bit, you know... But Walter was way, way beyond everybody.

PL: Did you meet up with anybody else then?

VM: We backed Jimmy Reed as a group - I backed Walter as well, backed him on guitar - met Jimmy Reed then, and I met Hooker in the same time period. That's really when I became heavily involved with Hooker.

PL: Hooker seems to have inspired you in all sorts of ways - phrasing and everything...

VM: I don't know what it is, but he had some sort of soul. He's got so much soul. When I heard him during that time, he had an acoustic and he came down to breakfast - he was just sitting around with three or four people in a room, and he got out the guitar and he started to play and I haven't heard anything like it since. It was just magic.

PL: I know you're not overly keen on much that's been written about you, but I came across something in 'Rolling Stone' that I'd like your opinion on. It was in a review of Paul Butterfield actually, it said: "Unlike Van Morrison, for instance, Butterfield always conceived of the blues as a tradition, not as a sensibility". Do you agree with that?

VM: Well, not really. I think I see it as both. The thing about it is, if you take Leadbelly or Lightnin' or Hooker, they're not always playing 12-bars. The blues is not always 12-bars, but somehow we've got it in our heads that that's where it is. I mean, some stuff Lightnin' does is not 12-bar - he plays different shapes. He's got records where he plays folk shapes. There's lots of different angles, but blues is a way of life. And it doesn't have anything to do with this thing about colour. When I was a kid, I used to think it was about 'black people' and this and that, but Hooker says "Blues is the truth", that's how he puts it. And I believe that. So whatever the truth is for you, that's what the blues is.

PL: You've always been quick to credit your influences in your own songs...

VM: A lot of that is tongue-in-cheek - you mean on the last album?

PL: Yes, well there's a couple on the last album: "Real Real Gone" and "Days Before Rock n Roll", but also going back to "Cleaning Windows" and so on.

VM: The last one ("Days Before...") was tongue-in-cheek, but "Cleaning Windows", that was reality. That was when I was listening to Blind Lemon, Leadbelly and Jimmie Rodgers.

PL: Do you see yourself in the role of some sort of educator?

VM: I think I could do that, it's a possibility. If I had a platform, I could get into that, it's a possibility.

PL: Do you ever think of doing an album purely in one of those styles? I know you did the folk album with The Chieftains, but a pure blues one or a pure rockabilly one...

VM: Oh, many times. Well there's stuff, actually unreleased material that is in that vein. Over the years you record things and there's only, like, 40 minutes on an album, so there's a lot of stuff gets 'canned'. This stuff exists, but it's long-winded going through all this material, finding out where the tapes are and getting it out.

PL: What was it like having Hooker record one of *your* songs? That's a rare occurrence!

VM: That was really strange, because Hooker recorded a version of "T.B. Sheets" and didn't give me any credit! At first I was really pissed off... Then I realized it was John Lee Hooker doing a *version* of it. He's doing an adaptation of it, it's not exactly the same. But I think if it had been anybody else, I would have done the legal trip. But seeing it was Hooker, I just don't see I could. I mean, it was a compliment, wasn't it, really, to do it - he would come to my gigs and say, "I dig this number 'T.B. Sheets', man. I wanna' do this number." You know, it's a compliment really.

PL: Were you involved in the 'Healer' project at all?

VM: He wanted me at the beginning to start on it, but they couldn't find me, they didn't know where I was physically, and they were trying to get in touch with me. By the time it got off the ground, Carlos (Santana) had got involved in it, and it became too far gone for me to get involved, but I became involved in the next one. I did two numbers for the next record: "Serves Me Right To Suffer" and "I Cover The Waterfront".

PL: You worked with Mose Allison...

VM: Yeah, I did a thing with him, two years ago, I think, in Bristol. A TV programme...

PL: Oh yes, but what I was thinking of was the concert that came out on video - that was from America though, wasn't it?

VM: Oh yes. Actually, the one in Bristol was better; there were more songs, it was stretched out a lot longer. The one I did in America was very rushed; the Bristol thing was shot over two days. There was much more chance to get into it, and he was playing some of my songs, which was good. But Mose has worked with me a lot, I mean been on shows with me for a long, long time, going back about 12 years. He's been on a lot of my shows in America. I saw him quite a lot when I lived over there. Sometimes I'd go see four sets in a row, you know. It's a completely different style, his music, from mine, but I really like it - I like his songs and I like what he stands for, what he's saying. He's a friend of mine; I've hung out with him, talked to him quite a bit, got a dialogue going - it's good.

PL: Of course you were playing with Georgie Fame around the same time, and he's obviously very influenced by him as well...

VM: Yes, I think Georgie's probably more influenced by Mose than I am. I don't really put Mose under 'influences', I put him under 'inspiration'. But Georgie's been into him for a long time as well. Georgie's a friend of his, too.

PL: How did you link up with Georgie? I imagine your paths must have crossed back when you were in Them and he was playing at The Flamingo?

VM: Well, our paths crossed, but we didn't actually connect up. We had the same agents when I was in a group called The Monarchs and he was playing at The Flamingo. So we had a lot of people in common, but we never actually connected with each other.

PL: Do you see much of the contemporary blues scene?

VM: No, it's like I have difficulty when the translation gets lost. I mean if you're brought up on Shakespeare, then it's difficult to read other things that aren't up to the same level. When you hear these people when you're very young - and it goes in all the way, it penetrates all the way and you absorb all that - the other stuff just seems feeble. I'm not putting it down, it just doesn't register. I always have to go back to Sonny Boy, Walter, Muddy Waters - I have to go back to these people because with the new stuff, there's something that's not there, there's something missing. I think it's got to do with people living it, and it was the consequence of this life and the way they really felt spiritually as well. And it's got watered down through the years. I mean it's good that people are still playing it, but there are very few things that I can say come anywhere near it. You know, I think the blues has become something else, it's become another vehicle. I think it's a good musical vehicle, but I don't think it's what it started out as it's become chipped away. It doesn't really have the depth of the original stuff is what I'm trying to say. There are very few people now that are penetrating the depth of it. For me, Butterfield was the last person that penetrated the depth of it. I haven't come across many people since then that actually were living the thing to that extent, anywhere near that.

Issue no 17 of BBR Boogie can be read here http://www.britishbluesarchive.org.uk/Docs/Blues_Review/Blues_Review-May91.pdf

Snatch it Back live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkKc88k_ZDQ

If you trawl the blog archives, you will find some of my own Van Morrison reviews.

[gossipnetwork-blog]

The Real-Life Inspiration Behind Randall's Adoption Storyline on 'This Is Us'

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The Real-Life Inspiration Behind Randall's Adoption Storyline on 'This Is Us'

Recent episodes of This Is Us have featured major twists (Kate’s pregnant!), new reveals (Miguel and Rebecca didn’t re-connect until 2008—on Facebook!), and surprise siblings (um, hello Nicky Pearson). But tonight’s episode, titled “The Most Disappointed Man,” didn’t need a cliffhanger to leave us speechless: It was a beautiful, raw, and uncomfortable hour of television that centered on timely topics of race and class.

The decision to focus most of the episode on Randall’s adoption—and, subsequently, Déjà’s new reality—had been in the works for a while, according to executive producer and co-showrunner Isaac Aptaker. “We always knew we wanted to do a story about Randall’s adoption, from Jack and Rebecca bringing him home to when he’s their kid.”

But it was writer Kay Oyegun who discovered a piece of history that dramatically informed the episode. Aptaker notes that “Kay brought to our attention that in 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers issued a statement very much condemning transracial adoption, and not at all recommending that black children be placed with white homes.” (You can see that document here.)

Once the rest of the writing staff heard that only happened eight years prior to when Randall’s adoption takes place, “that felt like a really interesting area to tell that story,” Aptaker says. “We all know in the end Jack and Rebecca end up adopting him, but there was this really interesting wrinkle with this judge, who just has a very different opinion of what’s right for young Randall. Now, obviously, times have changed and [transracial adoption] is much more accepted.”

Accepted, yes, but still equally as difficult, as evidenced by Déjà’s journey in the foster care system and a mother fighting against her daughter’s best interests. So, with plenty more to discuss, Aptaker filled us in on how the past informed the present and where the show is heading before the winter finale later this month.

Let’s begin on a lighter note first: We need a This Is Us after-show with Jack and the toddlers. Seeing Milo Ventimiglia try to juggle little Randall, Kevin, and Kate is priceless.

Isaac Aptaker: [Laughs] It was chaos. I wasn’t there on set that day, but Kay Oyegun [the writer of the episode] gave me a full report, as did Mandy and Milo. Neither Mandy or Milo have kids of their own, but they were so patient with the kids, who are toddlers. They aren’t trained actors, so they can’t take notes and they won’t stop crying if you need them to. It’s always a long, slow process. And when you’re on location in a courtroom with that many pages and actors, it’s an added challenge. But they were such good sports. Although they were like, “So next week is with the teenagers?”

Speaking of the toddlers, there was such an acute awareness to the moment where the family photographer says, “I’m having trouble balancing the skin tones.” It’s so rare to see that kind of dialogue on TV.

IA: That was our way of saying that back then in Pittsburgh, for a white family to have adopted a black kid, it was not something you see a lot. On a very mundane, technical level, no judgments, [the photographer] was just trying to do his job, and it wasn’t something he was used to encountering.

Let’s talk about the scene where Judge Bradley tells Rebecca and Jack that he doesn’t believe Randall belongs in their home. What was it like crafting that narrative?

IA: As is sort of the world view with our show, no one’s in the right and no one’s in the wrong. There are people expressing different opinions based on their world views and beliefs. While of course we know that Jack and Rebecca do an amazing job raising Randall and gave him so much love and such a good home and did their best to be sensitive to the unique issues that he would experience as a black kid growing up in a white family, this judge didn’t know that. He makes a lot of really, really valid points that come from a place of wanting what’s best for the baby. So it’s three people who all ultimately want the same thing, which is what’s best for this child, but have completely different versions of what that is.

The dialogue was so honest and raw. I have to imagine these were some of the toughest scenes to write.

IA: That scene with the judge and also the scene between Randall and Déjà’s mom [in jail] were in a constant state of being re-written and perfected until we had to turn them over to the actors to memorize them. But yeah, these are scenes that I don’t really think you’ve seen on network television before. You want to respect everybody’s point of view and honor the reality of the time and what people thought about a transracial adoption, and also make it a compelling and dramatic scene. They were definitely some of the trickier [scenes] to get right.

PHOTO: Ron Batzdorff/NBC

The n-word is used in this scene by Judge Bradley. Was that met with any hesitation from the network, even though it was delicately used as a means to explain his own upbringing?

IA: The Carmichael Show did an episode last season where they said it a bunch, and NBC really understood what we were trying to do. They understood the context. The context is so important, and it really felt like the judge would probably use that word in that specific scene, so it felt like there was a reality to it. It was important for him to say that for the honesty of it. I think NBC really understood and supported the use of it in this specific situation.

Later in the episode, Judge Bradley assigns the case to a fellow judge, who happens to be a black woman. Was there any discussion about whether the judge would be white or black?

IA: There was, and it was very important for us to show that this is a story about one judge’s beliefs. That was one person’s belief at the time, but it was not everyone’s belief. It was not every black person’s belief. We wanted to be really, really clear that this was one person, and he was not a person representing all black judges everywhere. We wanted to show that there was another black judge out there that was incredibly glad that this child wound up with this family and was willing to grant that adoption.

Seeing Rebecca cut out the photo of Randall to pair it with one that had better exposure was such a moving moment. Talk about the idea behind that scene.

IA: That idea came out of the writers’ room, but it was something we wanted to start off the episode with—the [dialogue] about the exposure—to set up that this is not something people were used to seeing in the world, an interracial family like this. [It was the] idea that that would show how the Pearson’s would make it their own, and it’s not going to look like what you expected. They’re going to take people not knowing how to necessarily react to their family and make the best of it. It felt like such a great way to visualize what we think this episode is about. And then it was important for us not to do a tidy ending to this, because we didn’t believe that this judge, who has these deep-seeded beliefs, can be completely changed by one letter, but you do see him really look at that picture and consider it. You never know if he puts it up on his bulletin board or not, but it was enough of a message that in this specific instance, with this specific family, that he was willing to step aside and, at the very least, not stand in their way. It was our way of showing how these people with very different beliefs were able to meet in the middle and let this adoption go through.

Was there ever a chance that Jack and Young William could have crossed paths in the courthouse? We later see both judges talking to each other, which means it was at the same place, right?

IA: That’s entirely possible, but we weren’t necessarily saying that these things were exactly happening at the same time, like on the same day. One is criminal and one is family court, so they are certainly in very different sections. But yeah, I mean, it’s fun to think they could have walked past each other and had no idea.

Let’s move to the present day and talk about the scenes with Déjà. For the first time, we see her smile at Randall and tolerate his corny jokes. Do you have a foster care expert helping craft these stories?

IA: At the beginning of the season, when we started to plot this out, we had a bunch of foster people who run foster agencies or have fostered come in and tell us their stories. We got some really beautiful people, all across the board, talk about the emotions and specific challenges you face with foster kids, particularly older foster kids like Déjà. The common thread there is that it’s a slow, unpredictable process. You’re not going to get this kid to warm up to you overnight. Every situation is different. There are a lot of ups and downs. We wanted to make sure to show those baby steps, which makes those little moments—those smiles, those laughs—all the more impactful, because we know Randall has spent weeks and weeks building up that rapport.

What is it like for the actress who plays Déjà—Lyric Ross—to come in to this built-in TV family with Sterling K. Brown, Susan Kelechi Watson, and the young actresses who play Tess and Annie?

IA: Lyric just fell right in with this family, and I see them all on Instagram [following each other]. I think she was just in Disneyland with the girls a couple weeks ago. They were at the Cheesecake Factory, [too]! I feel like they’re hanging out all the time, so she fit right in with them. You would never know it, but she had done one episode of Chicago Fire, maybe, and this was her first real big job. Her first day on set, she completely nailed it. She has all the presence and skill of a very serious actor, while at the same time having never done this before. She is such a find.

Sterling is really involved with the writer’s room, so what does he have to say about some of these very heavy, intense scenes with Déjà’s mom?

IA: He was really excited about the story, and he just completely knocked it out of the park. I think he did such a good performance—as well as Déjà’s mom in that scene [Joy Brunson]—and he wasn’t afraid of making Randall all that likable in that scene. He’s pretty hard on this young woman, but then as we see in the next scene, he softens and lets her call Déjà. He’s not afraid of going there at all, and he does.

PHOTO: NBC

There’s so much more to talk about in this episode, but I can’t let you go without discussing Toby’s amazing proposal to Kate.

IA: Toby is this big, romantic comedy guy, and we kind of robbed him of that huge moment last year when Kate accidentally proposed to him when she thought he was unconscious in the hospital. So we thought if Toby could have done a proposal, what would that look like? Kay came in with that brilliant T-shirt/hoodie concept, which I guess is a spin on the Love Actually poster board. It felt so Toby. It was the right level of goofy and romantic, and that’s one of my favorite performances that Sully has ever given. Chrissy is amazing, too. It just gets you. I’m not a super proposal-y guy, but I can’t watch that without choking up.

Lastly, Mandy Moore just told us that episodes 8, 9, and 10 will be a trilogy. Episode 8 is called “Number One,” episode 9 is called “Number Two,” and so on. Will “Number Three” be the winter finale, and what can you tease about where we’ll be heading?

IA: Yes, that’s our winter finale. Our producer/director Ken Olin did all three [of those upcoming episodes]. He shot 24 days in a row. We nearly killed him from exhaustion, but each episode focuses on a different member of the big three. The first one is about Kevin, the second one is Kate, and the third one is Randall. And they are all set on the same day in the past, and on the same day in the present. So you’re seeing different perspectives on the same moment, and it’s really going to pay off. [You’ll be] DVR-ing, re-watching, pausing, and going back and seeing how these three separate stories and episodes of television all intersect in these really unexpected ways.

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Wildfires Mar First Day of Play at Australian Open Qualifiers

Hazardous air enveloping Melbourne, Australia, delayed play on the first day of Australian Open qualifying matches on Tuesday, causing one player to double over in coughing fits during a match as the country’s wildfires marred the famed tournament.

Citing “hazardous” air conditions caused by smoke from nearby wildfires blowing toward the city, the City of Melbourne advised residents Tuesday morning to “stay indoors, keep windows and doors shut, and stay inside.”

The city also closed the North Melbourne Recreation Centre and the Melbourne City Baths in the interest of safety. But after an hourlong delay, the Australian Open played on, despite the air quality index remaining in an unhealthy range, with temperatures in the low 90s adding to difficult conditions.

Dalila Jakupovic, a Slovenian player ranked 180th, was winning her match against Stefanie Vögele in the midafternoon when she sunk to her knees in a fit of coughing. Struggling to breathe, she was forced to abandon the match she was leading 6-4, 5-6.

Jakupovic, who has not previously had breathing issues, said she was having difficulties “like an asthma attack” while warming up for her match.

“I think it was not fair because it’s not healthy for us,” Jakupovic told reporters. “I was surprised. I thought we would not be playing today but we really don’t have much choice.”

Eugenie Bouchard, the 2014 Wimbledon runner-up, complained to medical staff that she also experienced chest pains, feeling “spikes in her lungs.” Her opponent, You Xiaodi, also struggled with the conditions, and hit only underarm serves for much of the third set of Bouchard’s victory.

Bernard Tomic also sought medical assistance for breathing difficulties in his match, and was treated with an inhaler.

Liam Broady, who prides himself on his conditioning, described himself as “gasping for air” after just 12 games. He said he thought qualifying players may be treated more roughly than the star competitors whose matches begin in the main draw next Monday.

“Maybe we have to earn the right to be treated like the main draw players do,” Broady told The Daily Mail. “But at the same time, we are all human beings and there is no doubt that this is pretty bad for you to be running around in these conditions.”

The normally clear views of the city skyline from Melbourne Park were obscured by the dusty air. A sepia tinge hung in the air, and coughing could frequently be heard around the courts.

Many players expressed anger that matches were played in such conditions, and at the lack of clarity or communication from the tournament.

“Shocked to see that qualifying matches have started @AustralianOpen,” tweeted player Mandy Minella from Luxembourg. “What about the health of all the people that have to work out there, especially the ballkids?”

Fifth-ranked Elina Svitolina tweeted: “why do we need to wait for something bad to happen to do an action?”

Across town at the Kooyong Classic exhibition event in Melbourne, a match between Maria Sharapova and Laura Siegemund was halted at 5-5 in the second set because of the poor air quality.

“We were out there for over two hours, so I think from a health standpoint, it was the right call from the officials” to end the play, said Sharapova, who said she “started feeling a cough coming on” toward the end of the match.

Sharapova had struggled with illness in recent weeks, and initially thought that might be the cause of her symptoms.

“When I heard Laura speak to the umpire and say she was struggling with it as well, I was like, thankfully I’m not the only one,” she said. “And then the umpire came down and said let’s just play one more game.”

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There is a ‘boom’ in Boom – let’s get that out of the way. But it was as though the narrator in this most American play, Barbara (a bombastic Mandi Symonds), had been doing television shows for many years, and without the watchful eye of the Federal Communications Commission, the US regulator for broadcast media, now finds herself doing theatre, so she can swear to her heart’s content without being bleeped or worse still, fined. So Boom deploys the word ‘motherf– — er’ repeatedly, mostly, as far as I could tell, because it can. The first few times were amusing enough, but it gradually gets increasingly unfunnier, much like the show as a whole.

It’s like a train that’s run out of steam before limping into its terminus station, with a part-philosophical and part-self- congratulatory epilogue, taking the form of a monologue from Barbara that seemed to go on for longer than the average-length sermon in a local parish church on a Sunday morning would. Fairly recently, an actor told me that “people like their shows [to be] grounded” – this one is, I’m sorry to report, dramaturgically all over the place.

Rather like the 1728 satire The Beggar’s Opera, there’s a reprieve from a sad ending, because Barbara is able to pull the levers, in more ways than one, in such a way that has a direct impact on the show’s proceedings. This ‘anything goes’ approach is not disappointing in its own right, but the main problem with it is the missed opportunities as the play’s fullest potential is never realised.

There’s some great acting from the two main characters, Jules (Will Merrick) and Jo (Nicole Sawyerr), who make the best with what they’re given. But, goodness me, they’re not given much.

“Really? Again?” I thought to myself as it became clear the play explores the end of the world. How (un)original. There have been more than enough dystopian plays, books and motion pictures over the years – does the London stage really need another one? There’s not much this play adds to the canon of post-apocalyptic theatre, save for some witty punchlines in the awkwardness between Jules and Jo that pervades the plot from beginning to end.

Barbara’s inability to properly express herself results in missing words from sentences and exaggerated expressions, which will have worked better on a larger stage but in the studio space of Theatre503 (wonderful as it is), it’s overkill, to be blunt. Even so, Mandi Symonds is delightful in the role, and I wonder if this would work better as a one-woman show. There are glimpses of her life outside directing what essentially is a play within the play, and the character development could be substantially deeper if the show were really stripped back.

As it is, there are some mildly humorous observations about the limitations of budgetary (and other) constraints on this production. The stop-start, freeze-frame nature of the play makes it sluggish, however. “Please make this night worth surviving”, Jo pleads, bless her. It’s a bit of a stretch to say I shared Jo’s wish to be taken either by her own hand or that of Jules, but I did find it a struggle to maintain interest throughout. A talented cast is let down by an almost tortuously meandering script.

If there’s anything to be taken away from this bizarre and unfocused play, it’s that not even the end of the world can stop ruthless and cutthroat management styles from continuing to rear their ugly heads.

Review by Chris Omaweng

Jules, a marine biologist, placed a personals ad offering “sex to change the course of the world”. Jo replied and has come to Jules’ lab expecting a hot night of no strings sex. But this is no casual encounter, it has evolutionary significance and the future of the human race hangs in the balance. Will they survive? Will we survive? What’s with the fish tank? And who is the strange woman in the corner? Cast: Will Merrick (The Rack Pack (BBC), Skins (E4)), Nicole Sawyerr & Mandi Symonds (1984, West End)

Announcement Productions in association with Theatre503 presents BOOM Running Time: 1hr 35 mins Written by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb Directed by Katherine Nesbitt

ARTISTIC TEAM WRITER – Peter Sinn Nachtrieb DIRECTOR – Katherine Nesbitt PRODUCER – Ian Melding DESIGNER – Nicola Blackwell LIGHTING DESIGNER – Robbie Butler SOUND DESIGNER – Callum Wyles

CAST JULES – Will Merrick JO – Nicole Sawyerr BARBARA – Mandi Symonds

Booking to 26th August 2017 https://theatre503.com/

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