#mark baumer

[sinceileftyoublog]

The Pines of Rome Interview: Sounding the Alarm

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Some reunions happen off the cuff, a band simply finding themselves in the same room again, missing what they had and immediately deciding to get back together. Others, like that of Rhode Island slowcore band The Pines of Rome, seem to happen over a number of years, a result of shifts in modes of thought. Yes, the pandemic caused guitarist/vocalist Matthew Derby to finally reach out to guitarist John Kolodij, but events in his circles both close and broad was what lit the spark.

20 years ago, The Pines of Rome played what was then supposed to be their final show. While they were never a political band, Derby was always involved in the local arts community in Providence, a scene that’s long been uniquely closely intertwined with political organizing through organizations like AS220. Over time, though, not playing music, Derby became less and less involved, ultimately feeling “detached,” as he told me over the phone earlier this year. A day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, one of the stalwarts of the local arts community, writer and activist Mark Baumer, was killed by an SUV while walking barefoot across America to raise awareness of climate change. Though Derby mourned Baumer’s death, he took the time to self-reflect and started to become involved again in the local arts community. And when he started writing songs again, he knew he had to write one about Baumer, which turned into “I am a road”, the first track on what would be come the first The Pines of Rome album in 20 years, The Unstruck Bell (Solid Brass).

After Derby and Kolodij started jamming, they contacted the band’s drummer Rick Prior and recruited a new member, bassist Steven Kimura. They entered the studio with prolific producer Seth Manchester, knowing they had something, not necessarily an album, but a collection of songs that at least continued on the post-rock journey they paused decades prior. “The By & By” featured an interplay among exploding distortion, mammoth snares, and gentle harmonics. “Slick Enhancer” was deliberate, too, featuring guitars that were at once rounded and raw. The comparatively twangy “White Ships” chugged along, but used silence and space like you’d expect from a band inspired by the slowcore acts of the early 90′s. Eventually, though, they decided to shake things up a little bit. “REDACTED” spotlighted shuffling electronic tape loops. “Siren” and “I am a road” featured acoustic, finger-picked guitar. With a little bit of reigning in from Manchester during times they wanted to go too over-the-top with instrumentation (Derby recalls the band wanting to put a harmonium on “I am a road” simply because it was there in the studio, Manchester standing firm and saying no), it turned out The Pines of Rome did, in fact, have an album. The Unstruck Bell was released in May.

The Pines of Rome also have returned to the stage, playing with contemporary kindred spirits like Cloakroom and an album release show at the Columbus Theatre in Providence last month. But before Derby even practiced for those shows, he started writing new material. The band plans to go back in studio with Manchester later in the year. He’ll probably have to be honest with them about their loopiest instrumental ideas. In the meantime, though, they were able to do what they wanted live, and yes, their sets purportedly included a full-band version of “I am a road”. 

Read my interview with Derby, edited for length and clarity, below. He speaks about how it feels to be back, the state of post-rock, political music, and being inspired by new bands.

Since I Left You: Despite the presence of your new band member, does it feel like you never left? Or are you starting anew?

Matthew Derby: There is an element of that kind of cliché. There’s just something about the way John and I write. There’s some alchemy happening with our two guitar parts I’m never able to replicate on my own. When I try to write my own stuff, it ends up sounding like the worst kind of Journey ballad, which is dignifying them too much. Neither of us were able to achieve on our own what we got out of playing together. When John and I started playing again, we picked up right where we left off, and it was a tremendous relief. I didn’t know what I was missing. It felt really powerful to be able to have that articulation or musical language that really only works when we’re collaborating.

SILY: Do you feel like you had any newfound inspirations or influences this time around, whether instrumental, thematic, and/or lyrical?

MD: That’s a really good question. Definitely, in terms of influences, in our first incarnation, the combination was largely the Saddle Creek-style folk stuff that was happening in the late 90′s, and post-rock, which we were really heavily influenced by, bands like Rex, June of 44, and Bedhead. We were trying to combine those two influences. In the 90s, [I thought] that post-rock bands [were] going to stay around and keep making music forever, and [the] new form [would] become folk or jazz or whatnot. Five years later, it was gone completely. All of those bands disappeared. In a way, we started [The Pines of Rome] again because we were missing that. I personally wanted more of that kind of music in the world. At the same time, our tastes have changed over the course of 20 years. The genre striation that was around in the 90s has given way to a much more permissive musical culture, where genre distinctions are quaint and old fashioned. One of the bands we look to as a model stylistically and lyrically and musically is Big Thief. They’ve merged so many genres into this new Americana that’s hard to pin down and describe but feels very much like their creation.

SILY: Post-rock can go two ways, as does slowcore. The Bedheads of the world get the Numero Group treatment, while the cleaner, atmospheric bands like Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai soundtrack commercials. And sometimes you can get more metal or jazzy with it. Do you feel like that’s true to the spirit of the original post-rock, this genre-less style of music?

MD: I don’t know that I would have articulated it that way, but it’s a good summary. There’s more to explore in that space, and we felt compelled to push it in new directions but also retain whatever unique spin on it we could provide to add our voice to the chorus of people still trying to explore that stylistic train.

SILY: The bands that endure or endured, like Low, Yo La Tengo, and Lambchop, are unafraid to embrace things once looked at as cheating, like AutoTune and drum machines, and put it in their music in a tasteful way. It speaks to that lack of purity you refer to.

MD: Invoking genres [in general], there’s a way in which, like AutoTune, you’re bringing in a stylistic quality that’s been celebrated and maligned. Once the hype and the backlash has died down, it’s another way bands can express themselves. When John and I started playing again, one of our rules was, “If it feels good, keep doing it.” It seems like the most obvious aesthetic you could possibly make, but the initial hesitation of, “Are we just going to sound like Bedhead?” or any band popular 20 years ago that sound really dated, was replaced by, “Let’s just pursue this to our logical conclusion.” Run through our filter, it might not sound like anything we’re afraid of imitating.

SILY: Is there a song on the album where the rule of, “If it feels good, keep going,” led to something unexpected?

MD: The first few songs that we wrote were the last song, “Slick Enhancer”, and “White Ships”, which are slow tempo, open and spacious, with this culmination in big, crashing tsunami waves. To us, that was where we naturally go. We started, and thought, “Let’s go with it. This is what we do.” We play these slow, deliberate songs where we carve out negative space and fill it in at dramatic points in the song. Then, we thought, “Uh oh, we’re on the verge of writing a fourth song that does that same thing.” At that point, we deliberately changed course. There definitely is a point where you have to break your own rule because you don’t want to make every song on the album sound the same. We started to challenge ourselves. We said, “Let’s try to write a song in a completely different style.” Someone said, “Let’s write a krautrock song!” John started to come up with a riff that eventually turned into “Redacted”, which is not something anyone would listen to and say, “This sounds like Neu!” Its genesis, though, came from our desire to not want the album to be one note and to explore a different sonic terrain. We took a left turn, and what came out is not at all what we tried to put in, which was a lesson to us. We can try to deliberately rip off anyone we want, but it will always come out the other end sounding like what we do. We loosened up, and have been doing a lot more of it since the album was recorded.

SILY: In hindsight, that shuffling at the beginning of “Redacted” reminded me a little of maybe not Neu!, but Tortoise. It does chug along.

MD: Yeah. The initial impulse was the song “Hallogallo” from the first Neu! album. We originally played it where we all had volume pedals and tried to manually ramp up the volume. It was originally 8 minutes long and...started with the drums barely playing. [When] we brought it into Machines with Magnets, Seth Manchester said, “Guys...I don’t think this is the spirit of the song. Let’s find another way in.”

SILY: It’s an effective second single, though, because if the first taste of the new music was “Slick Enhancer”, which sounds like you never left, this one is a bit more unexpected.

MD: That was what we were hoping. I’m glad that came across.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the lyrics of “I am a road”?

MD: There was a poet and activist in Rhode Island who used to teach at Brown, Mark Baumer. He was a really influential creative person in the Providence arts community in the early 2000s. He was in the MFA Program at Brown and taught poetry. He was rigorously experimental and did all kinds of weird things. One day, he showed up to his poetry class in his coveralls and just cowered in the corner and pretended to be scared of the class, and that was his poetry class. He was also really involved in organizing. He was part of this group called The FANG Collective, an abolitionist group. They were originally protesting the [Iraq War] and [War in Afghanistan], and he actually chained himself with a bike lock to the door of the headquarters of Textron, a company in Rhode Island building cluster bombs causing horrendous collateral deaths in Afghanistan. He was arrested for that. 

He was a really influential figure. I knew him and was always kind of intimidated by him. We’d go to readings together, and I’d say a few words to him. He had this practice of walking across America barefoot to bring awareness to climate collapse. He went around the country once and raised a bunch of money. In 2016, around the time of Trump’s election, he went out again, and on the day Trump was inaugurated, he was hit by a car and killed. To me, it really felt like he was the first casualty of the Trump administration. The whole Providence arts community was totally heartbroken. It was the beginning of my realization that I had given up a lot. We had stopped playing in the band, and I had drifted away from the Providence arts community. I had become detached. It was a wake up call. I became more active in local organizing and the Providence arts community. The song came out of that.

[Mark] was also an early vlogger. He has hundreds of videos of himself going across America. There is this last video of him on the day he was killed. Because that was the start of a change in me, I used that as the material for that song.

SILY: Are you still involved in AS220?

MD: Not really. Friends of mine are. They’ve gone through a bunch of radical changes over the past 10 years. They’re doing amazing work.

SILY: What sorts of changes?

MD: They’ve always been about supporting the arts community, but once Trump got elected, [they started to ask questions like,] “Whose community are you representing here?” They’ve taken huge strides in becoming inclusive and representing and inviting a greater and more accurate version of what the Providence arts community looks like, demographically and politically. Those things weren’t on the table prior to this recent spade of changes.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the record title?

MD: It’s related in a way to “I am a road” and the influence that Mark had on me. We were thinking about the idea of this alarm that hasn’t yet sounded. The potential that a bell holds. It’s a little pretentious, but the bell has all of the potential in it to sound the alarm, but someone needs to strike the bell in order for the alarm to sound. It was a gesture at this moment. John doesn’t want me to reference the pandemic, for good reason. This isn’t a “pandemic record.” The effect the pandemic had in something is undeniable, and we felt like we were experiencing in real time this climate crisis, and it’s possible that we’re already living in a climate apocalypse and we just don’t know it. That’s where that concept of the unstruck bell came from.

SILY: I don’t know whether this album is your attempt to sound the alarm, but, at the risk of sounding reductive, it’s interesting that this style of music could sound an alarm, this slow music. Do you think about that?

MD: Yeah. It’s something I struggle with a great deal. I do recoil at music that is overtly political or tries to push an agenda. My aesthetic sensibility tells me to stay on the John Prine end of the spectrum of making a song that might plant a seed in someone’s mind that would motivate them to take some kind of action, but not urging them to do so. Slowcore and post-rock aren’t traditionally the vehicles--you’re not going to go to a protest and start singing songs from Spiderland. It’s not really attuned to that. But as I’m getting older, the ways in which all of these systems are interconnected, I’m interested in that place where we can create something aesthetically interesting and new [that] tries to take genre tropes in a new direction. Part of that new direction asks, for instance, “Can we just write a simple love song in the time we’re living without it spilling over into all of the other things going on in the world?” It’s something I think about a lot, and I don’t know that we’ve carefully delineated the Venn diagram of talking about and raising awareness of an issue and songcraft, trying to make a song that people want to sing around a campfire. I don’t know where we fall in that.

SILY: If one of the main purposes of art is to create empathy, which I think is inherently political, the observational, humanistic, earthbound songwriting of John Prine falls into that. At the same time, music that’s slower in pace that requires patience to listen to deeply, there’s an inherent humility in that act, too. That’s where I see the Venn diagram.

MD: I really love what you said about patience and listening. Trying to slow things down is an act alone that triggers a different way of thinking. That’s really beautiful.

SILY: It can exist at the same time as the urgency. It has to.

MD: Totally.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art of the record?

MD: John is friends with Will Schaff, the artist. We’d been an admirer of his work. He did the [art for the] Godspeed You! Black Emperor record, [Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven]. He did a [Songs: Ohia] record. He also started to embroider during the pandemic and would post these works he’d been doing on Instagram. I grew up in a Catholic family, and my mom was really involved in the church, and she did a lot of banners and tapestries for the church. The embroidery kind of recalled some of that work. We didn’t really think it through that much, and we gave Will the album title. I think John gave him the songs in their raw state and asked him to make an interpretation. That’s what he came up with. It was a collaboration without constraints. I really love how it came out.

SILY: Do you know what shape your new songs will take?

MD: This might end up being super pretentious and we might back away from it, but our goal is still to split the record sonically between one side all acoustic and the other all electric, as an organizing principle. That’s helped us shape the songs. We found that there were certain things we could get away with stylistically in an acoustic setting we weren’t able to do with a full electric setup. We may continue down that path, but [it could be] a cool idea that has no substance. We do plan to record a bunch more acoustic songs this time around. We’re trying to push out on both ends of the spectrum. We have songs that are a bit more aggressive, like the big middle third of “Slick Enhancer”, and much quieter songs. We’ve really been into the band caroline, and the way they’re able to play this one riff for 7 minutes and make this hypnotic hymn out of it with different movements. I don’t know how they do it, but we’re experimenting with songs closer to that feel.

SILY: What else is next for you?

MD: We’re trying to figure out whether we can get out on the road. Solid Brass, the label that put the album out, are awesome. They’re good friends of ours from a long way back. They’re also just starting up, figuring out how to work a label. We’re trying to figure out to what extent we’ll end up able to get on the road. Honestly, to me, when we re-joined, my single ambition was just to play with the band again and start writing and recording songs. We didn’t have any aspirations of putting a record out, even when we first recorded with Seth. We love working with him and just booked time for the pure enjoyment. We’re trying to keep that same spirit for the next record, keeping expectations of where it will go out of the equation. Once I start thinking about that stuff, it makes it harder to write the songs we want to record and that we’ll have fun playing and figuring out.

SILY: Anything else you’ve been listening to, reading, or watching you’ve enjoyed?

MD: We’ve been super into the band Wednesday. It was one of these moments where they’ve found a way to perfectly merge shoegaze and country music that felt surprising and cool. The lyrics are the best kind of David Berman, incredible plays on words, clever and funny while totally heartfelt and devastating. It’s a lot of what I aspire to and am still working toward.

SILY: A quintessentially Southern voice.

MD: Yes! And not a cliched one. Crystal clear in terms of the poetry and lyricism of it.

[cirr0stratus]

thinking about frodo and sam and how their characters are near identical to stanislaus katzinsky and paul baumer and how they are both fictional men of different statuses that were created during the horrors of world war one by two people who used their incredible poetic voices to cope with the realities of warfare and how the relationship that these characters have transcends friendship and brotherhood and even romantic love because what they have is so much more important than that, it’s so much more. how there isn’t a word for the relationship that they have, and people like me are stuck thinking about these quotes and being completely normal about them

“We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? formerly we should not have had a single thought in common – now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so intimate that we do not even speak.”

“you lay close to me. I'd be dearly glad to see you have a sleep. Id keep watch over you; and anyway, if you lay near, with my arm round you, no one could come pawing you without your Sam knowing it.”

“A little soldier and a clear voice, and if anyone were to caress him he would hardly understand, this soldier with the big boots and the shut heart, who marches because he is wearing big boots, and has forgotten all else but marching. Beyond the sky-line is a country with flowers, lying so still that he would like to weep. There are sights there that he has not forgotten, because he never possessed them – perplexing, yet lost to him. Are not his twenty summers there?

Is my face wet, and where am I? Kat stands before me, his gigantic, stooping shadow falls upon me, like home. He speaks gently, he smiles and goes back to the fire.

Then he says: "It's done."”

“Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: 'I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no”

“Kat my friend, Kat with the drooping shoulders and the poor, thin moustache, Kat, whom I know as I know no other man, Kat with whom I have shared these years—it is impossible that perhaps I shall not see Kat again”

“'If you don't come back, sir, then I shan't, that's certain,' said Sam. 'Don't you leave him! they said to me. Leave him! I said. I never mean to. I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon; and if any of those Black Riders try to stop him, they'll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with,”

[phoenixmaiden-gaming]

Near a chasm, I found the Hills of Baumer Well that I had missed, but before going into it I caught Farosh going down into a Chasm. Cool. I then went down the well and it was a large cavern with some breakable rocks on the floor that revealed a small pond with a chest with a Ruby. I continued near Deya Lake and up on a cliff I found some statues that I had to put an apple in one of the baskets to make a Korok appear and it gave me my 405th seed. Down the road a bit I found a hole with a boulder in it and I had to put it in a cradle to make the Korok appear and it gave me my 406th seed. I warped to the Jiukoum Shrine to get to the next mark on my map and it was another boulder that I had to put into a cradle and the Korok gave me my 407th seed (701 total).

[scholar-of-yemdresh]

This Post.

I'm finally doing it! A list of Adult (20s+) Nonbinary/Genderqueer/Transneutral and Trans men rep in SFF books(no romantasy). This will only be limited to main or major characters.

I've not read everything on this list, so some information could be inaccurate or missing e.g I might not know that a character is actually a POC or 40s+. I will also advise to check content warnings because some of the books listed here can get pretty gnarly.

Will occasional be updated

Keys: 🏳️‍⚧️=Trans Author,✊🏾= Author of Colour,🌈=POC,🧓🏾=40s+, ♂️= Trans man , ⚧️= Nonbinary,🎨=Comic

Claude from The Chatelaine by Kat Heartfield ♂️

Tarquin Mercator from The Devoured Worlds by Megan E. o'keefe ♂️

Yari from Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston ⚧️🧓🏾🌈✊🏾

Sol Katz from Dead Collections by Issac Fellman 🏳️‍⚧️♂️🧓🏾

Rosie from Persephone Station by Stina Leicht ⚧️🧓🏾

Rafe from Viscera by Gabrielle Squailia🏳️‍⚧️♂️

John Wyndham from The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall ♂️

Casey Ravel from the Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings ♂️🌈✊🏾

Ardent Violet from The Starmetal Symphony by Alex White🏳️‍⚧️⚧️

Gyen Jebi from Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee ⚧️🏳️‍⚧️✊🏾🌈

Shock Pao from Shock Pao by Ren Warom ♂️

Firuz-e Jafari from the Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia 🌈✊🏾🏳️‍⚧️⚧️

Iktan from Between Earth and Sky by Rebecca Roanhorse ⚧️🌈✊🏾

Chih from the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo ⚧️✊🏾🌈

Brennus from Wolf Among the Wild Hunt by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor ⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

Dex from Monk & Robot by Becky Chambers 🌈(?)⚧️

Anima from In The Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu ⚧️🌈✊🏾🏳️‍⚧️

Eolo from The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie ♂️

Ridley from No Gods,No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull 🌈✊🏾♂️

Enae & Qven from Translation State by Ann Leckie⚧️🌈🧓🏾

Penfield R. Henderson, Aiden Chase, Blithe + others from Future Feeling by Joss Lake 🏳️‍⚧️♂️

Ilan from The Faithful Dark by Cate Baumer♂️

Various from The Tensorate by Neon Yang 🏳️‍⚧️✊🏾🌈⚧️♂️

Alex Easton from What Moves the Dead by T.Kingfisher⚧️

Edie from Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🌈✊🏾

Nameless Man from The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg🌈🏳️‍⚧️♂️🧓🏾

Arén from A Promise Broken by S.L. Dove Cooper♂️

Erígra Lilún from The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg 🏳️‍⚧️⚧️

Claire|Claude from Baker Thief by Claudie Arseneault ⚧️

Dianthus from The Fate of by J.E. Lynn ⚧️

Asa from The Forgotten Lyric by Carolina Cruz⚧️🌈

Sal Hernandez from It Took Luke by Mark Bouchard & Bayleigh Underwood 🎨⚧️🌈🏳️‍⚧️

MCs from Time Will Devour His Children by Otava Heikkila🎨🏳️‍⚧️♂️🧓🏾🌈

Jonah from Dominion of Blades by Matt Dinniman♂️

Tet Sang from The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho♂️or⚧️🌈✊🏾

Marcus from Lesser Known Monsters by Rory Michaelson♂️🌈

Scorn from Emergent Properties⚧️

Misery Nomaki from The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang✊🏾🏳️‍⚧️🌈⚧️

Taigan from The Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley⚧️🌈

Leiander from The Stones Stay Silent by Danny Ride♂️🏳️‍⚧️

The Plauge Doctor from The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw⚧️🏳️‍⚧️✊🏾

Aleph Null from Test by Christopher Sebela & Jen Hickman🎨⚧️

Joel Lodowick from My Heart Is Human by Reese Hogan🏳️‍⚧️♂️

Jules from Finna by Nino Cipri 🌈⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

Dax from Shatter Minds by L.R Lam🌈♂️

Scout from The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August⚧️

Avery Ryu from Dead Space by Kali Wallace🌈⚧️

[dunkelwort]

Sleepingfish XX

Notions (about the object under investigation), «Sleepingfish» XX anniversary issue, Derek White, Garielle Lutz editors,  2024, ISBN 9781940853208. This 20th anniversary issue features work by Steven Alvarez, Rosaire Appel, Ali Aktan Aşkın, Nat Baldwin, Niles Baldwin, Maeve Barry, Chiara Barzini, Mark Baumer, Emilio Carrero, Kim Chinquee, David-Baptiste Chirot, Bobby Crace, Anna DeForest,…

[ybthewyattdavis]

Wyatt Davis @ybthewyattdavis

Miss you Mark Baumer (2017)

Pastel on Paper

[mikethemovieguy]

[farmcontent]

From the tree planting the other day... Rest easy sweet friend.

[sadvacaygonemad]

This is Mark Baumer’s cactus. Friend Catherine Tung sent us this image from her home in Staten Island, NY. It was brought there by a friend of hers and Baumer’s, visiting from Providence, Rhode Island.

Baumer’s cactus is alive in Staten Island. It is quite an impressive cactus. It promises rising stature. It’ll probably be famous like Katy Perry. It will save the planet. It will defeat tyranny. It will save us all from social media.

[luxette]

I need people to understand this earth does not only have to create systems of death and wealth.

Mark Baumer

[rickinmar]

climate change activism

.....just heard of the running down of the activist Mark Baumer of Providence while on day 100 of his walking across America barefoot to raise awareness of climate change. He worked in the Brown University Library, and this was his second walk across the country. The first was in 2010. Washington Post online has a good deal on his life.....so sorry to hear this news....

[mikeayoung]

I remember walking with Mark Baumer in Providence to get a juice. I remember his quiet height and his goofy eyes and his careful listening. I remember him telling me the story of how—on his first walk across this ridiculously big country—a camera crew from Dairy Queen made a big show of giving him a coupon that didn't work when he tried to use it later, off-camera.

We all have our own ways of seeing the world, but I've been thinking all day about what made Mark so special, and I think it was how his way of seeing the world found such joy in the strange roots and reaches of everything, how he was so fearlessly weird and defiantly kind in blinking big enough to send his vision over. I imagine him running down the street in a huge parka with the stew of the world sloshing in a plastic yellow bucket, and he's balancing it on top of his long hair, and it's splashing everywhere, and he's laughing and we're laughing and everyone is hanging on.

He was one of the funniest and least alienating people I've ever known, even though his style of being both those things was so hummingly the opposite of the usual versions. And I feel such vivid grief to think about—like his parents said in their post—just the simple fact that we won't be able to talk with him again. To say something and hear what he says after, to see something and point to it and hear what he calls it. Like how he told Claire about wearing sunglasses when he meditated. Or how he told Blake "You're more likely to mistake a rock for a bear than a bear for a rock." Or how he wrote missed connections for his housemate.

I remember reading passages to Jenelle from the book he made out of his first walk across America, I AM A ROAD. Everything was a person; everything was feeling and eating. Mark didn't eat animals. I remember one time I emailed Mark for a project where people wrote about short stories, and I just found what he wrote back, and I want to put it here and have it stay here, in whatever kind of staying this serves as.

So many knew and loved Mark, and my thoughts are warm and wide for them, and I hope all the stupid, beautiful twists of the world—a tiny person who wants a raisin, a long hair in a shower nozzle, an away message that says "Brb I'm moving the moth back"���brings some memory of something funny and brilliant Mark said or did that they'd forgotten about, or they can't forget about, and I hope all of this time and light around us knows how good it is to have all of that Mark. (for those who didn't know him, Mark was walking barefoot across America to raise money for climate change // he was on day 100 // here's a good place to start to get to know him: http://thebaumer.com/)

[seedterri]

Faceboof mark baumer

#FACEBOOF MARK BAUMER FULL#

Anecdotes about his hockey and baseball prowess growing up in Bangor, Maine, lay the foundation for the arduous physicality of his journey. Sokolow talks with Baumer’s mother and father, who help humanize their only child with stories of his active, outdoorsy youth. “Barefoot” also relies on a series of talking head interviews with people who essentially say the same things about him over and over in slightly different ways.

#FACEBOOF MARK BAUMER FULL#

But “ Barefoot” makes the mistake of deifying him posthumously at the expense of rounding him out as a full human being, and it pads its running time with inane footage that grows repetitive. His passion was genuine his dedication, inspiring. This is a guy who literally walked the walk, raising money and giving his life for the crucial cause that drove him. If you don’t find him completely annoying, perhaps you’ll become enthralled in the daring and sacrifice of Baumer’s mission, as Sokolow clearly intends. His energy and offbeat sensibility are a lot to take, though, even over the course of just 85 minutes. “I don’t want to live in a world where penguins don’t exist!” the long-haired, bespectacled Baumer shouts at one point while discussing the decimation of the polar ice caps. Solemn cows, a dead turtle, garbanzo beans gobbled straight from the can, a quiet lake on a peaceful morning-he marvels at all of it, usually with a buoyant and childlike enthusiasm. These clips feature him talking with nonstop intensity about whatever he encounters on his ambitious adventure. A prolific documentarian, Baumer recorded everything all the time and posted videos on YouTube and Instagram daily. Along the way, writer/director/editor Julie Sokolow offers a wide array of archival footage, most of which Baumer himself shot and narrated.

[sierratitta]

Faceboof mark baumer

The same story is reflected in the documentary Barefoot: the Baumer Story came out in 2019. This is because the headlines at the time of his death naturally focused on the easy story of Mark Baumer’s death: his goal to walk across America barefoot to raise awareness and money for climate change. His death was reported in The New York Times, although the ironies, the layer of facts so darkly comic it was tragic, the extremely American nature of it all, were only hinted at. The collision itself happened just hours after Marc had posted a photo to his blog, the ominous, of his bare feet next to yellow graffiti letters that read “KILLED” with an arrow pointing forward to his immediate future. What’s so interesting about this one man’s death? Let’s start with the fact he was a young writer who once taught a class at Brown University called “Everything is Fiction,” and was later struck dead by a gas-guzzling carbon-monoxide spewing beast of an SUV while he was walking on the side of the highway during the 101st day of his attempt to cross America barefoot, an effort to raise money online to combat climate change, and all this, his death, the accident, occurred on the day Donald Trump took the office of the president in 2017. At the time the tragedy seemed to me emblematic of something significant just out of sight, an obscured thing it has taken me years to even glimpse through a glass darkly. It was a notable event for me personally, since I had been following his relatively obscure blog. Though the automobile crash that took his life back in 2017 did make a few headlines due to its extremely unusual circumstances. Merely an aspiring writer and devoted environmentalist. He was not famous, and only 33 at the age of his death. Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander Naughton

[mainswhere]

Faceboof mark baumer

For a five minute period, my better judgment took leave and I found myself listening to the demagoguery of Sean Hannity, during his afternoon exercise in right wing ideological indoctrination. Yesterday, while driving home from some appointments in Dover-Foxcroft, I was scanning the radio dial for something tolerable, or at least wouldn’t put me to sleep. In my blog post from 2006 at the Words Matter blog, I wrote this about fear: These are both central tenets to Orwell’s book that I’m amazed was written in 1949 and is still eerily relevant-just as if he’d written it last week. Just like in the present, I was concerned about the use of fear and hysteria (back in 2006) and also, the limbing of what is considered “proper” in what we are allowed to think and say. Interestingly, these prior blog posts serve as a “trail of breadcrumbs” back to what I was thinking at the time. Since I just completed rereading George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, I was curious about what I might have picked up previously and perhaps noted somewhere. The blog I maintained from 2004 until I launched this one in 2012, Words Matter, is still out there. Occasionally, I look back at something I wrote. I’ve hit the markers I set out for nearly 20 years ago. My writing has been bylined in a host of print publications and online. Since 2003, I’ve had several blogs including this one. As a writer looking to up my game and work on my craft, I was off to the races with a space to publish my own writing. The most important element of the site was that it including a blogging platform. Fortunately, I didn’t invest much energy into furthering Whitey’s corporate agenda and instead began planning my plan of exit.Ī co-worker with topnotch design skills built a functional website at my behest. Every minute I spent there was a minute I’d never recover. I occupied a cubicle in a soul-sucking job for a major disability insurer.

[fatefulfaerie]

For the fic writer asks! 🤡💋👀

What’s a line, scene, or exchange you’ve written that made you laugh?

I have a terrible memory and I'm not sure if I've laughed at anything I've written but I enjoyed this:

“Welcome to Baumer Inn,” the young woman said to the completely drenched pair of people that approached her desk. “How may I help you?”

“We’d like a room,” Link said. 

“Alright,” the young woman said, scanning a large book with all sorts of markings. “Double or single?”

Link said “Single” at the exact same time Zelda said “Double”, the accident making them look at each other and making the young woman look up from the book, her gaze alternating between them.

“There’s no use in taking a double if I’ll be keeping watch the whole time,” Link argued.

“That’s where you are wrong,” Zelda said in reply. “Because you won’t be keeping watch, you will be sleeping and resting in a bed.” Zelda looked to the receptionist and said. “A double, please.”

“It’s my job to protect you,” Link insisted, before also looking to the receptionist who, after crossing out what she thought their final answer was, now sat in wait for them to come to an agreement. “Put us down for a single.”

Zelda’s head shot to Link, her hands on her hips.

“Who among us is royalty?” She asked with a brooding frustration.

“Is it not me?” Link asked rhetorically and quite sarcastically.

Zelda straightened her arms and balled her fists.

“You absolute…” Link raised a brow as she sputtered through her anger. “Disrespectful...ill-mannered...sea urchin!”

“Sea urchin, huh?” Link asked rhetorically. 

“Are you sure you guys don’t want to agree on the single?” the receptionist said, interrupting Zelda’s inhale. “Seems like all you need is to pound things out.”

Zelda widened her eyes at what she just heard, and Link reacted similarly, his mouth popped open at just the insinuation. He cleared his throat and pulled rupees from his pouch that he tossed onto the desk.

“The double will do fine.”

From Chapter 28 of In Calamity's Grasp

First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

I mean...

Music: https://www.tumblr.com/fatefulfaerie/699553381743804416/music?source=share

Overgrown: https://www.tumblr.com/fatefulfaerie/697743263420022784/overgrown?source=share

Rituals: https://www.tumblr.com/fatefulfaerie/689941354967678976/rituals?source=share

Truth Or Dare: https://www.tumblr.com/fatefulfaerie/683105687516200960/truth-or-dare?source=share

Communication: https://www.tumblr.com/fatefulfaerie/668339800293670912/communication?source=share

Once Upon A Time: https://www.tumblr.com/fatefulfaerie/663341207927373824/once-upon-a-time?source=share

And those are just the six most recent...

Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

Well other than the FREAKING REQUESTS I HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO DO BECAUSE I'M A TERRIBLE HUMAN I have also been playing with some Alyx stuffs because RWBY Volume 9 is a thing that exists that I feel completely normal about.

Thanks for the ask!!