#my prose is great. my art just started to get good. and my songwriting is decent

[evandore]

wait actually i hate this. (just remembered why i always abandon any account when i get a few follows)

[oldbutnotyetwise]

So You Want to Be a Writer

     So about six and a half years ago I started a blog, I was inspired by my daughter who had started her own blog, and followed her lead starting my own.  I recently was notified I am now up to twenty five entries on my blog which was started about six and a half years ago.  It sat dormant for many years but after I retired and moved north I joined a Writing Group at the local library and that has been the spark I needed to bring my Blog back to life.  I write under the pseudonym oldbutnotyetwise, all one word.  I write on an online forum called Tumblr, and brace for it, yes I have four or five followers …. who are friends who are kind enough to read and add a nice comment from time to time.  Although I write my blog I would be hard pressed to call myself a writer, I think I am a simple story teller or perhaps ponderer of life.

     So what is an author?  Webster’s dictionary defines an author as a storyteller, biographer, blogger, wordsmith, novelist, and many other similar titles.  I like the title Wordsmith, it suggests someone who knows how to craft a story using just the right words.  Sort of a Craftsman of the written word.  

     So who are the worlds best writers of all time?  According to the Internet that would be people like H.G. Wells, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and George Orwell.  I think it is sad that there is only one woman on that list, but then a lot of the names on that list lived when no one would publish a woman author, thankfully the world is different now…I think.

     So who are my favourite authors or books?  Probably one of my favourite books of all time is Tuesdays with Morrie written by Mitch Albom.  Now is he a great author, I don’t know about that, but he sure wrote a great book.  I really liked the writing of Robert James Waller who is best known for Bridges of Madison County, his writing appealed to me and I really liked everything he wrote but that’s just me, I expect for most folks he was just a one hit wonder.  John Irving wrote some amazing novels despite the eccentric nature of some of his stories.  Irving just wrote such interesting characters.  I am just realizing that although I have a list of my favourite movies, I don’t have a list of my favourite books.  I may have to work on that.  

     I have struck up a friendship with Darrell who shares some similarities with me.  He is also a Published Author among many other things, his book has both Prose and Poetry in it.  It took me a while to read his book, not that it wasn’t good but rather it is the kind of book I liked to read, ponder, go back and reread and ponder it more.  I don’t normally care for poetry but I must tell you that some of his poems were so well crafted that they just touched me and stayed with me.  The last piece of prose was so well written that I felt I was in the story, that is how well he painted the picture with his words.

     I just recently exchanged messages with Sheree who is a pretty well known children’s author who has published many, many books and lives in Nova Scotia.  Someone who has made her living at writing books.  She and I have been talking about life challenges that we are both facing.  I must admit to feeling a little intimidated by “real authors”.

     I think authors must be kin to songwriters and artists.  People who I suspect tend to be right brained and somehow just are able to express themselves artistically whether it be through music, art or writing.    

     As much as I pretend I can write I have to accept that I am a left brained person.  I am boringly logical, matter or fact kind of person.  Add to that 31 years of writing Police Reports where like my good friend Joe Friday liked to say “just the facts ma’am”.   I tend to write factually, I don’t have the ability to paint the picture with words no matter how hard I try.    

      Now the conflict is I am full of stories, now getting those stories out of my head and finished on the computer screen is the challenge.  What I work so hard at is that middle part of translating that jumble of thoughts and ponderances and transforming them into a readable piece that someone might enjoy reading and that just maybe gives them something for their brain to chew on when the story is done.  

     Now one of the all time great books is supposed to be On Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau.  Trying to better myself and my exposure to great literature I tried to read it.  I absolutely hated the book, and to be honest didn’t like Thoreau either.  I would best describe this book as and exercise in turning what should have been a paragraph into twenty pages of drivel.  Yet I am sure that there are many who love this book.  There are many other examples of great books that some of us just don’t like.

      So obviously different styles, topics, characters must appeal to everyone differently.  Now I honestly do not ever expect to be a published author, but if I did ever finish a book then I would hope that I really liked what I had written.  I guess that is the luxury  of writing what I want, for like minded souls and not needing to make a living at it.  There is a freedom to that that a professional author does not have.  

      Now I think that we all have great stories in us, and older folks can be a Gold Mine of great material.  So for now I will continue to keep tapping out my ponderances on life, and maybe from time to time putting down to paper an interesting story that I have heard from someone.  So if you have the time and the inclination feel free to read my stories, and perhaps even better share a story or two with me.  If I was to ask you to tell me an interesting story from your life, what story would you choose to tell me?

[biggesthalseystanxoxo]

romeo and juliet are hopeless now

"Good artists copy; great artists steal."

Was this quote uttered by Steve Jobs when he declared that he was willing to engage in thermonuclear warfare with Android in 1996? Or Pablo Picasso, who was misquoted as he referred to Igor Stravinsky's iteration, while they both borrowed from T.S Elliot's dictum, "Immature poets imitate, mature artists steal." Well, to be honest, it doesn't matter too much because everyone who uttered almost the same message moulded it to fit their own requirements. Regarding art at face value makes us see it as just stories and paintings to be hung on walls or choreographed into melodies and built into cities when there's so much more behind it.

For example, at a quick glance, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is nothing more than a story of two immature children who disregard their parents wishes to get married. But the tale of loverboy and manic pixie dream girl acts as a cautionary tale, a warning for foolishness, impulse, and rivalry; eliminating the repercussions the characters faced from their actions would remove the deterrent, and the play would lose its significance. And that - is what makes his work timeless. 

So timeless that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has been picked apart and scrutinised hundreds of times; in fact, in terms of movie adaptations alone, this 16th-century story has been staged for the screen over fifty times. But this time, we're having a look at singer/songwriter Halsey's take on iconic literature in the setting of her own discography. Instead of fair Verona, Halsey's entire album released in 2017 titled 'Hopeless Fountain Kingdom' is jam-packed with references as it plays with Shakespeare's original script, and she decides to set the two-hour traffic of her stage in Anorev (wildly creative; I know) - the fictional city housing her modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.

And while you may already be familiar with many of Shakespeare's works after being obligated to tap along to his iambic pentameter and pick apart his prose, Halsey has managed to take the cult classic film (Romeo + Juliet 1996) by Baz Luhrmann and reinvent it for herself. She chose to maintain critical concepts and themes like lust, conflict, the inevitability of fate, the idea of death and love that blinds but adds her own like same-sex love, betrayal, female sexual liberation and modern romance. 

The houses alike in dignity are Aureum as the Montagues and Angelus as the Capulets. Our main characters are now Solis Angelus and Luna Aureum, which mean sun and moon and represent Juliet and Romeo, respectively, making the quote "star-cross'd lovers" literal. Halsey says that Solis was chosen as the name for Juliet since, in Act 2 Scene 2 of the play, Romeo confesses that Juliet is his sun but, contradicting him, is Luna, meaning the moon. Throughout the music videos, we do not see the original Romeo's homie-o's Benvolio and Mercutio. However, we know that Solis's best friend is [SPOILER ALERT] the traitor, but the audience has no other means to identify him or relate him to since all we see is his withering lack of loyalty. To my excitement, we see some Rosa (depicting Rosaline) content in the music video about the song that describes Luna (or, well, Halsey) reflecting on her relationship with Rosa she had been trying to move on from (just like Act 1 Scene 2 in the original but with the same-sex love twist). 

Halsey has chosen not to follow the exact chronological order in Shakespeare's script, but she incorporates key points into each of the five music videos that conclusively create her circular plot. In the 'Strangers' MV, we see Luna and Rosa physically fighting in a boxing ring - symbolising their break up early, and towards the end, Luna meets Solis for the first time. The 'Now or Never' MV depicts Luna and Solis finally getting closer together and realising they love each other. Luna goes to a tarot reader, and he tells her their love is pure, yet there is interference, and before she gets to ask any more questions, she is forced to leave. Shortly after, Solis confesses to his best friend (who is unnamed, thankfully, or else I'd have started using his name to curse), who conveys Solis's secret to the elders of the house of Angelus, and warfare begins and ends as quickly as it started, resulting in bloodshed and civil hands staining with civil blood. This continues directly into the next MV of the song called 'Sorry', which is more of a lamenting ballad where Luna walks through the ruins of the battlefield as she sings apologetically. In the 'Bad At Love' MV, Luna is on the run/banished, much like Romeo after he murders Tybalt. She comes across the same place she took a tarot reading but finds it abandoned.

Meanwhile, back in the comfort of his home Solis quickly sprawls a message onto paper telling Luna he loves her and sends a messenger to deliver it immediately. Again, Mr McTraitorFace (aka Solis's best friend) meddles in other people's business and switches the letters so that it reads as if Solis wants Luna dead and that he hates her (referenced in the lyrics of her sidetrack titled 'Lie' - "I get the message you wish I was dead"). Luna receives this message, and the audience collectively winces as, just like in Shakespeare's original work, another untimely misconception occurs, and the phenomenon of blatant miscommunication strikes once again. Ultimately, the 'Alone' MV shows Luna moving over Solis at a party (which is visually similar to the Masked Capulet house party) and thus, we are back again to the start of the story - where an opportunity may arise for new love to be found. 

Halsey herself quotes her story to be a "celebration of death" because it's the end of their "death-marked love", and she's rejoicing as she's revolved once around the circle, and it's time to spin around another chapter while making way for new art to be created. 

[scriptstructure]

@strangeness-and-charm-art

I've been working on a series in my head that I'm not too sure about. I've wanted to write it for years, but I have my doubts about it since the settings and places are either places I've been away from for years or have never been to (which could be remedied by Google Earth and online research, I suppose?), I want to make it personal but in doing so I'm afraid it will simply be my characters acting out my life (which could be ok since I'm writing it as something I would've liked to read growing up), and I'm concerned about referencing pop culture, paraphrasing, and outright copyright infringement (more later.) 

Basically the MC is pretty much based off of every woman I've admired or been inspired by in my life who experiences a lot of what I have plus what other people I know have and she's kind of the person who if look up to and very much who is aspire to be. 

The thing is she would be full of references that I'm not sure would violate copyright or not. Plus, music plays such a large role in her personality that it would be an issue. She eventually becomes a singer-songwriter in a band who starts out doing karaoke covers on YouTube but branches out, yet continuing to honour other artists from time to time by covering them or singing with them. Music also is what takes her to her happy place so songs would be playing through large segments. Which would have meaning, books and chapters would also contain song titles and lyrics which ties into her character. 

I'm just concerned that it's too large and ambitious for now and I should hold out for a while until I'm established enough to negotiate around copyrights by talking to artists and things or whatever I'd have to do.

Okay, I’m guessing that you’ve already read [THIS] post, and I also have [THIS] post regarding using lyrics and referencing songs in writing. I don’t think I can add anything to what I’ve already written in those posts, so I’ll just address the other parts of your questions.

First off, yeah, writing about places you’ve never been to, or have only been to briefly is a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of research, but you can definitely do it well. Google is a great starting point for researching and you might be able to contact local organisations (libraries, museums, etc) in that local area that could help you with more specific detail and information that you want to find.

Aspirational characters are also great, as long as you can find ways to ensure that she’s a rounded, relatable character, that all seems just fine, though as to quoting sections of songs, that’s going to be more difficult as, as I wrote in the posts about usage of other people’s IP, that is going to depend on the IP owners and whether you can get permission to use the material.

I would suggest that rather than relying on the lyrics of the songs, you focus on writing about what they mean to the character personally and how they make her feel -- why are the songs important -- as that is going to be much more informative to the reader than just sprinkling lyrics into your prose.

And as to your last worry, I’d say just write it. Any project you’re brewing up in your head will continue to grow ad infinitum until it is written down. Not only that, but holding back ideas or concepts because you might want to use them in that potential future project will slow you down in creating other things.

Write this story, and make it exactly how you want it to be, use the lyrics if you have to (and keep solid records of what lines you’ve taken from where) and be prepared for things to need to be changed. Every book gets edited (unless you’re Anne Rice), and every book is going to have changes made to it, so don’t worry about it for the first draft, just get the thing done, get it all onto the page, and see where it goes from there.

As you write, and as you establish yourself, this story is going to keep growing, and it might end up seeming that you’d never be ‘established enough’ to do it real justice. That’s your brain playing a trick on you trying to make sure that this ‘perfect’ idea can’t be ‘ruined’ by being actualised. If you think this story is too large and ambitious, that’s good, that means it’s going to challenge you while you work on it, and that means that you’re going to learn and grow as a writer as you create it. 

But you can’t do that learning and growing if you just leave it on the back burner waiting until you’ve learned enough and grown enough to do it. You’ve got to do it to be good enough to do it, y’dig?

I hope that helps!

—

Hi there, your friendly blogger Mason here!

At the moment I’m fundraising to cover the costs of my gender confirmation surgery, if you’re able to donate, please click [HERE] to give me a helping hand!

If you’re not able to donate, I would be really grateful if you would reblog [THIS POST] so that more people will be able to see the fundraiser.

Thank you for reading, and thank you all for being so kind!

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – April 27, 2018

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

Archive

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

  November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

  November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

  September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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[bleederziine]

“I Like Weird Complicated Songs”; an Interview with Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz

Speedy  Ortiz puts the feminine in feminism. Their music is for everyone realizing that feminism isn’t just about women, but examining how attacking femininity is used to pretty much hurt everyone who isn’t wealthy, white, straight and male by birth. And even though talking about oppression is really depressing and often unproductive because of this, Speedy Ortiz is all about what would happen if we put the positivity we talk about all the time into action. Our world could not only be full of interesting discussions and equality, but playful scariness and fairy tale outfits. But Speedy Ortiz’s writing isn’t only valuable in its humor and politics. With a poetry MFA as their lead singer-songwriter, Speedy’s lyrics are insightful, hilarious, and achingly true. In Sub/Verse’s latest interview, I talked to singer, musician, and songwriter Sadie Dupuis about horror movies, political art, songwriting, and much more.

How was SXSW?

Sadie: Pretty good, I haven’t been there an insubstantial amount of times before, so I know what to expect. I enjoyed all the shows we played, and got to eat all the food I like. No complaints really. I got to see less shows than in the past. In the past I was running around in between sets trying to see a million different bands, but this year I took it pretty easy. I went to the showcases we played obviously, and I got to see US Girls, and Girl Ray, Kurt Vile. I went to the AdHoc showcase, and the Don Giovanni showcase.

Inspiration for new album?

SD: Its hard to talk about just one inspiration for the new album; its all kind of older songs that were written that we rewrote, ones that were more personal. I think my goals as a writer shifted away from things that are specific to me, and I’ve tried to write more towards not universal themes, because everyone’s coming from this world and country from different places, which is evident from the presidential election. But certainly the song that came out today was about people performing allyship,  but not putting in the work to help their friends, and putting a burden on them. In the album we explored a lot of big issues with a light touch, because it can be exhausting looking at the news everyday, with practical ways to not lose your mind while you try to make the world a better place.

On the topic of allyship and consent, how do you think you promote and talk about these ideas at your shows and through your work?

SD: Talking about these issues is one way to help people  understand them more. Certainly Speedy Ortiz has tried to do a lot on those roads. We started a hotline a few years ago for people who are feeling unsafe at our shows. Whats been even more effective is passing out information on bystander intervention and de-escalation tactics on print outs at our shows, so that someone who’s just coming by the merch table can read about how to intervene if you see something going on at a show that seems unsafe. We are trying to foster the idea of people taking care of each other, and looking at not only their music scenes but their lives, like, how they can best help their neighbors and friends. I also believe inclusivity is paramount to safety, so we make sure we hire a diverse crew. These are the issues we are all thinking about, not just musicians, so I think it made sense that these ideas bled into the record.

What inspired the song and video “Lucky 88”?

SD: Well you mentioned that I lived in Austin. I took my mom to Austin for Christmas a few years ago. We spent a week in Texas, mostly in Austin but we also went to Houston. We went to the Cy Twombly gallery and it was the day before Christmas eve, and being in Austin which is a very liberal city but also being in Texas with a lot of conservatism, I felt pretty weird, especially with the president we were about to innaugurate. And I was looking at one of his sculptures called Untitled 1988, 1988 being the year I was born, and all of the horrible things that had happened since then and the things I didn’t know about. I ran outside and just started singing the song into my phone! Its about how the generation before me kind of left this world gutted and ruined but also about younger people keeping a watchful eye and working to make things better, and how inspiring those people are to me.

What do get out of Speedy Ortiz and your more solo work with Sad13, individually?

SD: Speedy started as a solo project, and I really enjoyed the outlet of home recording, and working as a solo musician. But then when we started playing as a band, I really grew to love that, and I don’t really like performing solo. We developed a language and a way for working out these songs together. I wouldn’t trade that for anything, but I like having both options, where I can go in my basement for eight hours, and post something on Soundcloud and its done, vs Speedy Ortiz where I want to make sure its something we all feel good about. Even though I write the songs, we work them out as a group.

I noticed a lot of horror movie and monster visuals in your music videos; are those big inspirations?

SD: We can’t help ourselves, we love horror movies! With most of the songs there are big themes, but we try to approach them with levity. I think a more literal video would be too heavy handed. Daryl our bassist went to film school, and our drummer Mike is really interested in film, always archiving old film stuff. They always have a really strong aesthetic plan for what the videos should be. I like doing that stuff too, but its cool that we can all come together on that and do something creative.

What are some of your favorite movies?

SD: As you might have guessed, I really like horror movies! Scream is my favorite series of movies. I’m coming at it from a pop horror/horror comedy background. I think my bandmates have a more refined taste in movies. I actually think I saw all of the Oscar nominated movies from last year, which is pretty rare. I really liked Moonlight from last year, and I saw I, Tonya which was really good too. I like horror, comedy, even really serious political commentary movies…

I used to have a job at a video store, which was like the best job I ever had, and there was a deal for video clerks where you could see any movie at a theater for free. I don’t  care if a movie’s bad, I just feel like its the most decadent and luxurious experience, being in a movie theater.

What do you do on tour, entertainment/reading/movies wise?

SD: What am I reading… last year in Glasgow I got a bunch of stuff from this place called Good Press, that published a lot of short run poetry, really small press academic stuff, essays, stuff like that. All the books are shrink wrapped, so you just have to trust that whatever you got is good. I was cleaning out my basement and found them in a record box so I’ve just been working my way through that stuff. Its all prose poetry and very experimental, stuff like that.

Do you think getting a poetry MFA helps your songwriting?

SD: I think honing any of your artistic sensibilities helps the others, in the way that so many musicians I know are really great visual artists. I think having an artistic practice, even if its outside your field, is bound to have an impact on your other creative work. I think it might be a detriment to my career because some of the things people really like about songwriting are things that are easy to remember or easy to sing along to, things that repeat, whereas, with my background in poetry, I’m always trying to think of the most not necessarily the most accessible  way to say something, and I definitely don’t repeat things much. So its bad for my pop song writing, and good for the weirdos who like weird complicated songs.

What were you into in high school, especially music? Any guilty pleasure stuff?

SD: Let me think, its been a while, I’m old now… I still like a lot of the stuff I listened to then, I started listening to New Pornographers again. A lot of Matador bands, like Helium and Pavement, and I’m really lucky that I’m friends with some of them now.

You have a really cool way of dressing on stage. How does that work/contribute to your music and performance?

SD: Aw thanks! I try. I played in bands since high school and I was used to being the only woman on stage or on tour, and I kinda got accustomed to this falsely masculine aesthetic, and I would just dress like the boys. Thats still kind of how I dress at home, jeans and a flannel. But at some point, the lack of femininity that I started to feel that if you were going to make rock music you had to fit into the male aesthetic, and that seemed like bullshit to me. I wanted people in the audience to not think they had to wear a man costume in order to play technical guitar music. So I started dressing like a fairy princess that can also shred! Its been a few years of that, with some slightly more elaborate costuming. When I see people in a bright or interesting outfit, it makes me happy to see something beautiful. I want to do that for other people, if their having a shitty day so they can have something cool to look at.

I know it might be goofy to go way back two albums ago, but I wanted to ask you about the title of your album two albums ago, Major Arcana.

SD: Tarot cards were really interesting to me back then. Its basically a breakup record, but I didn’t want to just write about that. I’ve always been interested in magic, and magic as an alternate religion, and witches and witchcraft in general. All of the songs were kind of through the lens of me being a witch and the songs are kind of like incantatory spells, and tarot was one of the lenses I used to find meaning at that time. My dad was Jewish and my mom was Catholic, and I had some education in both, but I’ve never been very religious but have always been interested in magical practices.

You’ve lived in a lot of places; Philly right now, Massachusetts, Austin. How have those places contributed and/or helped your writing.

SD: I think where you live affects you, and who you are affects what you write. I don’t know if its as direct as me moving to Philly made me write like a Philadelphian, but the reasons I moved to those different places was loving the bands and scenes at those times. In  a lot of my early Speedy work from those times I would put little easter eggs in songs to say, oh, this riff is from Pile or whatever. To a certain extent I still do that. There are so many bands in Philly I love, like Palm, Japanese Breakfast… I think anywhere you live, as a music fan, you’re going to internalize that. But at the same time I feel like I could go out in the middle of nowhere and still write songs.

INTERVIEW AND ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE GRAHAM

[heirbm-blog]

ITW LEGACY MAGAZINE (All) (parue 11/17, répondue 10/17)

Good evening HEIR and many thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! I hope you are doing great in France! Let’s get right to it: Your first album “Au Peuple De L’Abîme” will be released soon. In the promo-text of your label it says that your art resolves around the idea that “mankind inherited an Earth it does not deserve”. Could you elaborate about this statement? What exactly do you mean by that?

Matthieu (guitare) : Actually the phrase sums quite well what we are saying with Heir. Mankind doesn’t deserve its status of “intelligent species” as he is constantly trying to establish his domination on everything he sees (this being humans or animals). We have a lot to learn and a lot of efforts to do to reach what we shall consider as the right behaviour for the human race. Heir propose basically a pessimist vision of things, the darkest side of our minds, where hope disappears and where all we can do is complain about our own weakness. For some of us, this band is an outlet for all that can make us “go insane” in the nonsense that is human life.

Let’s stay a bit with the lyrical aspect of your album: “Au Peuple De L’Abîme” can be translated as “To The Humans Of The Abyss” and your cover-artwork features an antique statue pierced by arrows while from the background an arm holding a scale is emerging. I guess one could interpret this picture in such a way that every great empire will one day be judged. However, that seems like a rather easy interpretation. One could also interpret the picture in that sense that some of the most brutal regimes and empires were ruled by laws and that some of the most horrific crimes have been committed by mankind while being completely in accordance with the laws of society. Could you tell us a little bit about this cover-artwork? What message would you like to convey with this picture and in how far is it linked to the lyrics of your first album?

Matthieu : The only instructions we had left for Cäme (designer of all the visuals) was that we wanted a amphitheater as a symbol of how power can be overused or corrupted &nd we wanted him to propose something. The artwork has a much more general meaning than what you’re looking for.  It is Auguste, the first roman emperor who got to power legally after making the senat slowly giving him more and more power. It is a choice of Cäme and perfectly illustrates the concept of overused power we are talking about in the album.

The song ,Meltem’ starts with a German quotation of Eichmann talking about the responsibility of the “average” person for the vicious and terrible crimes of the Nazi regime. In what way do you talk about the so-called “banality of evil” (Hannah Arendt) in your song? What message does this song tell us concretely? Do you also sing about the situation in France around that time?

Actually, the quotation is of Hannah Arendt herself, from an interview on western germany television from 1964, but there, it doesn’t really matter for that’s what is said that interests us,.

Here is the translation of some lyrics in english :

“Pages turn, word aren’t changing,

we remember, we remind, but we learn nothing,

nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything repeats itself,

a rule written, with non-erasable ink”

The song Meltem is about how lessons from the past are most of the time ignored and mistakes are occuring again. The problem is not rooted in the past, but deeply in our present. The reason of the choosing of this extract is that it explains the “banality of evil” concept in a really short and clear way :

“But they  were not murderers. They were people who fell into their own trap.”

Here in France, this is most of the time forgotten. Fear and hate are the most common answer to terrorism (and most of the time this hate is aimed at the wrong people) and the “enemy” is turned into a soulless devil. This is what this extract right here is all about. A loss of common sense leading to dumb hate will never make things better, and nor will forgetting/ignoring what happened before and what lead us here.

As far as I know you guys have not played in any other black metal band before HEIR, at least I didn’t find any reference to that. Could you give us a brief introduction in how you five guys met and why you decided to play black metal in the first place?

Matthieu : Heir was project initiated by Diego (drums) and I, we had played together a few times before this and wanted to start a more “post” project, influenced by black metal and post-hardcore. We published an ad on the internet, and Maxime, François and Loïc answered quite fast. I wanted to start a black metal-inspired band since quite long, and I knew Diego liked a lot of the same stuff I listened at the time.

Let’s shortly stay with this question: What makes the style of black metal so special and unique that it is perfectly suitable to express your message and your feelings?

Matthieu : Its way of being at the same time, oppressing, epic, harsh and tortured. I think it’s the better style for us to express in the same time the “stories”  and how we feel about things we are talking about. Definitely it’s the ability of black metal to be mixed with a lot a different sounds without losing its roots that makes this possible.

Your compositions contain a very interesting mixture of fast and slow parts. This comes, of course, not unexpected since you mix black metal elements with sludge parts. Most interestingly this is a musical combination which one can find quite a lot in France, but not so much in the rest of the world. Do you have any idea why this might be the case? And which bands did inspire you to go forward and mix these two styles?

Matthieu : Honestly I don’t know, we have great labels who are in a way promoting this encounter of black metal with other slower, more modern styles, like Throatruiner Records or Les Acteurs de l’Ombre. I think it can motivate french bands to play this music. Our main influences for making our black metal “different” are Neurosis, Amenra, Cult of Luna, those are the bands we share in common as influences. Making a mix between black metal and the overall feeling these music are giving us is the musical leitmotiv of Heir at the base.

Could you tell us a little bit about your song writing process? It says in the booklet that all music was simply composed by HEIR. Do you really hang out together, jam and then write the songs together? Or is there also one main songwriter present in your band?

No, we never jam for composing songs, usually one of us writes a song in its entirety and we play it in rehearsal, change little details, we almost all write music, and always before rehearsing we have quite a good idea of how the song will and/or must sound.

Your album was produced and recorded in the Dismalsound Studio and the Silent Ruins Studio – why did you specifically choose these two studios? And what was exactly done in which studio?

Matthieu : Well, we choosed those studios because they are close to our homes and mostly because they are ruled by friends we trust in. They both know the project since the beginning (we recorded the “Asservi” demo in the same studios) and understand what we are looking for. We recorded the drums at the Dismalsound studio and did all the rest at the Silent Ruins studio and we are glad we did it that way. They are talented people we also admire as musicians (their bands : Exylem and Havenless).

Concerning the live-front: When can we hope to see you guys play live in Austria, Germany or Switzerland in the near future?

Matthieu : We aren’t foreseeing any tour in this countries for now (except one gig in Geneva but I suppose that is not the part of Switzerland you were talking about). We don’t have any booker and currently don’t have time to book our own shows, but be sure that when the opportunity comes, we will play shows as much as we can, and those are country we’d  be very glad to come by.

Do you have any clue yet what the future will bring for HEIR? What are your plans?

Matthieu : We are now focusing on making the live shows more efficient and immersive, but when we are done with it we will start working on the next releases. Songs are already written.

Last question: What books are currently lying on your nightstand?

Matthieu : If I don’t mention books related to my studies (urbanism), the last books I read were “J’irai cracher sur vos tombes” by Boris Vian, “Le Crève-coeur” by Louis Aragon and an H.D Lawrence compilation. As I am finishing this interview I just restarted the “Petits poèmes en prose” by Charles Baudelaire. These are all books I read when I was younger but that I always like to revisit.

Many thanks again for your time and your effort! I wish you personally and for HEIR only the very best!

Thank you for your interest in our band and the interesting questions.