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lins-fandom-hub · 4 years ago

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HPHM Profile: Em Wen-Hui Lin

Template by @hogwartsmystory

Profile subject to change.

IDENTITY

Name: Emily “Em” Wen-Hui Lin

Gender: Female

Age: 12 as of May 31, 1990

Birth Date: February 19, 1978

Species: Human

Blood Status: Half-blood (both parents are Muggle-born attending wizarding institutions)

Sexuality: Undetermined

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Ethnicity: Chinese

Nationality: Um...British, I think?

Residence: Oxford, England

Myer Briggs Personality Type: ISFP

THE MAGE

Wand: Rowan and Phoenix feather, 11 inches, quite flexible

Animagus: N/A. Of the three siblings, only Clara has become an Animagus.

Misc Magical Abilities: Like her siblings, Em is a Legilimens--although she did not recognize the power until late in her 6th year.

Boggart Form: Her inner demons are her downfall. Her Riddikulus form makes the entire room dark, leaving her in the spotlight, standing in front of the glowing column of a Cursed Vault, while shadows of her past begin to echo her worst thoughts. Most of them pertained Jacob’s permanent disappearance, or her older sister abandoning her for good. She just cannot stand the thought of standing there, helpless while her family suffered.

Riddikulus Form: Her Riddikulus form is of the demons popping like soap bubbles all around her, the voices warbled with every bubble that rose. The prevailing darkness will fade as well. The Cursed Vault will become a giant teddy bear.

Amortentia: (What do they smell like?) Freshly ground mint, cinnamon, freshly baked fudge, and tomato juice.

Amortentia: (What do they smell?) She smells fresh linens, nutmeg, smoke from a fire, and...wait, is that honey lemon tea?

Patronus: If she can produce a Patronus, it would be of a black swan. A little strange when compared to Jacob’s falcon and Clara’s unicorn, but her grace and poise is not to be underestimated.

Patronus Memory: the day the tension from the Cursed Vaults finally subsided and she saw the light return to her siblings’ eyes.

Mirror of Erised: She sees herself with her older siblings, both of them genuinely smiling in happiness. Her family has completely reconciled, and she feels at peace.

Specialized/Favourite Spells: Before Em goes to Hogwarts, she knew already of the Herbivicus Charm, which her father taught her to speed up the growth of flowers. This was very useful for her whenever people requested her to make flower crowns at the arts and crafts club she heads along with her friend Dawn. Em can cast a really good Expelliarmus as well--a powerful one that could send the wand flying far away from the owner. In later years, one should watch out for her Tarantallegra and Obscuro. Unbeknownst to several of her classmates, she could also perform a good shield charm thanks to training with her siblings in her first year.

APPEARANCE

Faceclaim: TBD

Voiceclaim: TBD

Game Appearance: (may subject to change every once in a while)

Height: 4’10 at 11, but grows a bit before reaching adulthood

Weight: She is on the slightly light side, lighter than average.

Physique: Relatively frail, but her glare can make up for her strength and power behind her spells.

Eye Colour: Dark brown

Hair Colour: Black

Skin Tone: Pale

Body Modifications: N/A

Scarring: N/A

Inventory: Em carries two silk bookmarks, a beaded bracelet, her wand, a few flower clips, several quills and bottles of ink, and some parchment.

Fashion: Most of the time in school, Em wears her school robes. Yes, even when she’s not in class, she wears her school robes. She would always have a flower in her hair.

ALLEGIANCES

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff

Ilvermorny House: Pukwudgie/Wampus?

Affiliations/Organizations: Hufflepuff House (Hogwarts); Circle of Khanna (Hogwarts); Order of the Phoenix (1996-); St. Mungo’s Hospital

Professions: Healer at St. Mungo’s

HOGWARTS INFORMATION

Class Proficiencies:

Astronomy: A

Charms: E

DADA: O

Flying: A

Herbology: O

History of Magic: A

Potions: E

Transfiguration: E

Electives: Care of Magical Creatures (E), Ancient Runes (A), Muggle Studies (E)

Quidditch: Em does not join the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, but she is a great supporter of the team in the spectator stands.

Extra Curricular: Arts and Crafts Club (leader), Duelling Club

Favourite Professors: Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick, Professor McGonagall

Least Favourite Professors: Professor Binns

RELATIONSHIPS

Brother: Jacob Pan-Hui Lin

Although she and Jacob never really were that close, she still admires him for what he does and never held a grudge against him for his mistakes. She longs for them to reunite when she learned he went missing, and always wanted to know him and get along with him.

Older sister: Clara Xing-Hui Lin

Em didn’t really get a chance to connect with Clara until the summer before her first year at Hogwarts. Still, she was firm on helping Clara through her trying times and helped her in any way she could to break the final curse and stop R once and for all.

Father: Sueh-Yen Lin

Mother: Renee Lin (nee Tao)

Love Interest: currently N/A

Best Friends: Dawn Everett, Hillary Redstone,

Rival: Travis Poulter, Eunice Ahn

Enemy: R, Voldemort and Death Eaters

Dormmates: Dawn Everett, three other Hufflepuff girls

Pets: Cheddar (rat), some others TBD

Closest Canon Friends: Penny Haywood, Chiara Lobosca, Nymphadora Tonks, Diego Caplan, Andre Egwu, Charlie Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Cedric Diggory, Badeea Ali, Barnaby Lee, Liz Tuttle, Tulip Karasu

Closest MC/OC Friends:

Sarahi Silvers (@dat-silvers-girl )

Nora Magnus (@dat-silvers-girl )

BACKGROUND/HISTORY

Pre Hogwarts:

Em was around 5 or 6 when Jacob disappeared. Since then, all she had known was broken bonds and tears.

Her sister drifted away from her as well in her first 5 years at Hogwarts. She had to learn in this time to stand alone in the worst of the storm.

1st Year:

Em was Sorted into Hufflepuff on the first day at school

The statue curse prevailed during little Em’s first year at Hogwarts

Following the Halloween Feast, Em created the Arts and Crafts club at her friend Dawn’s suggestion--where members create many wonderful things out of everyday items

She and Clara take up Bill’s offer to go to the Burrow for Christmas.

After Rowan Khanna’s death, Em was roped into the Circle of Khanna by Diego Caplan who insisted the group needed her duelling skills

While Clara was preparing the Polyjuice Potion to infiltrate R, Em got to see all the Vaults firsthand that have been broken

Prior to Clara’s trip to the Black Lake with Ben, Merula, and Jacob, Em comes around and gives Clara a flower crown to present to the merqueen

After the curse was lifted, just as Clara threw a party at the Three Broomsticks, Em threw a party in the courtyard with the people who were unable to go to Hogsmeade

2nd Year:

Em returns to Hogwarts for her second year prepared to help her siblings take down the rest of R

3rd Year:

Em returns to Hogwarts without her siblings for the first time. However, it was then when she met the Boy Who Lived--Harry Potter.

The year passed pretty normally for her

4th Year:

When the Chamber of Secrets was opened, little Em was one of the first to ensure that all the younger Hufflepuff students remained calm in this time

She already knew firsthand that Gilderoy Lockhart was suspicious, and so she wrote her mother when he was outed (and his memory was permanently wiped)

5th Year:

Em becomes a Hufflepuff Prefect for her fifth year along with Cedric Diggory

The year that Sirius Black escaped has been a tough one for her. Imagine Percy constantly on high alert, especially since he’s Head Boy--she’s adapted his high alertness once more, fearing for the entire student body once more

Despite all this, little Em came out successful in her OWLs, obtaining an impressive eight OWLs while only failing History of Magic (she dropped Muggle Studies after her 4th year)

6th Year:

Enter: The Goblet of Fire, and the Triwizard Tournament!

Em was too young to participate, so she ended up sitting by the sidelines cheering both her friend Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter on

She did not develop a crush on any of the boys in her year (mostly because she can’t be bothered right now with romance, maybe), but she did go to the ball with another Ravenclaw boy in her year

The loss of Cedric Diggory at the end of her 6th year had put her in another mute grief. First, she sat through Rowan Khanna’s memorial--she didn’t expect to sit through another one five years later, and one for one of her closest friends too.

7th Year:

Prior to starting her 7th year, her older sister Clara left for China

Em becomes one of the Head Girls in her 7th year, but the arrival of Dolores Umbridge and the way she instilled all these regulations made her secretly pissed off

She wholeheartedly supported Fred and George in testing their joke products so that they could make a profit out of their talents

When they left Hogwarts on their broomsticks after a while, she too was one of the few who wished she could leave the school but could not

Order of the Phoenix / 2nd Wizarding War:

Em was roped into the Order of the Phoenix along with her brother, Jacob, by none other than Professor Dumbledore immediately following graduation

While her sister was in China holding back the Japanese forces, the times they had to talk were far and few in between--however, they were able to talk when they could, and Em relayed everything that happened to her through encrypted letters sent to her grandmother

Em was the one who alerted Clara of the upcoming Battle of Hogwarts--while the siege went underway, she stuck close to Diego

Em survives the battle--she mourned for Fred and the many lives that were lost

Post-War:

Em ends up becoming a Healer at St Mungo’s, helping those who have undergone traumatic experiences during Voldemort’s rise

Future relationship TBD.

PERSONALITY

Though she comes off as a shy soul, little Em is not completely fragile. Behind her kind eyes laid years of suffering from her family’s arguments and broken bonds--yet she pushes forward, and her persistence does not go unnoticed

Em is always willing to offer a helping hand, even though she’s the one who needs it most.

She cares deeply for those who she ends up befriending and trusting. This also includes most of Clara’s friends at Hogwarts.

Though soft-spoken and easy to knock over, her spells could pack a serious punch.

MISC

Em’s love of Herbology came from her father, whom she loved helping in the family gardens long before Jacob’s disappearance.

She doesn’t play many instruments like her sister, but she has a decent singing voice good enough to join the Frog Choir. However, the thought of that made Em shake her head--she really only sings for fun, after all.

Em’s love for crafts came from the time Jacob gifted her a Hippogriff ornament at her first Christmas that he made himself.

#hogwarts mystery #hphm #etched engraved everlasting #hphm em lin #so here's the profile for clara's younger sister #for anyone who is interested more or less in learning about her #but she's always open to friends so #hit me up if you want to be friends with the little sister

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idontrememberthetitans · 6 years ago

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The Best Films of 2018

Top 10 Films of the Year:

1. ROMA (Netflix)

If I harbored any doubt that Alfonso Cuarón was among the greatest filmmakers/storytellers of this (or last) century, it was forever dispelled with Roma. Cuarón’s hyper-naturalistic memoir reveals the thorny relationships between employers, caregivers, and those who receive care. It possesses a kind of clarity, maturity, and tenderness that only comes with distance and time. As it communicates the innumerable intersections of and parallels between ethnicity, class, and gender, it neither rushes nor exaggerates and romanticize, which is quite commendable considering just how visually rapturous Cuarón’s execution is. Moreover, he does so without pontificating or criticizing. Some of the film’s detractors claim it’s an elitist exaltation of domestic workers; I find that assertion unfair, for it would require a larger conversation about who is able to represent whom. I believe Cuarón respectfully illuminates and savors the mundane for therein lies the clandestine miracles of life. It’s clear he has so much love for the ghosts of long ago. Roma is a paean celebrating and lamenting all the pains and pleasures that usher us through any given year. (Watch the trailer.)

2. COLD WAR (Amazon Studios)

Sexy, sad, and everything in between, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War chronicles a nearly two decade-long love affair between Wiktor - an accomplished music director - and Zula - a rising singer - in a world in threat of extinction. The film examines the violation of cultural identity and the mechanism of war which thwart any attempt to preserve authenticity. Epic and tactfully sparse in equal amounts, the film is comprised of unbearably terse episodes peppered over fifteen years. Thus, we are only privy to fragments of the characters’ tumultuous timeline together. Within the interlude – between each passionate episodes - Pawlikowski brilliantly employs subtext and chilly atmospheric tension to sustains the pair’s longings – and subsequently preserves our infatuation with them. Cold War is a rich love story swathed in bitterness. By the end, we can’t help but envy, pity, and mourn each part of Wiktor and Zula’s hot-blooded romance. (Watch the trailer.)

3. THE TALE (HBO Films)

The Tale is a work in progress. I say this without insult but unrestrained admiration. Documentarian Jennifer Fox’s devastating filmic memoir about childhood sexual assault is personal exercise in understanding deeply entrenched trauma. Much of the film’s approbation notes its nuanced handling of difficult thematic material and Dern’s towering yet understated performance, but Fox’s haunting lyricism – the way she manifests a cinematic conversation between her present self and her younger self from dispersed memories – makes this film a formal and aesthetic triumph just as much as a cultural watershed.

Initially, I questioned how “accurate” the film’s conclusion was. Did the events unfold with the same amount of understated poetic justice? Did Fox have the opportunity for confrontation and vindication as depicted? I realize that asking for explication undercuts the power of Fox’s investigation and exemplary subjectivity. The film itself is an act of introspective healing. As harrowing as The Tale is, it is essential viewing. (Watch the trailer.)

4. THE FAVOURITE (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

I’m still quite ambivalent towards the film’s nauseating photography, but make no mistake; The Favourite is the best writing and acting you’ll witness this year. While Lanthimos other films (Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer) are the superlative statements on the auteur’s résumé – perhaps in part because he also penned them – his dark, stomach-churning talents certainly lend themselves well to this gleefully filthy farce. The deliciously dicey sexual politics between the characters provides a scathing critique of class, decorum, regal period pieces, and the current political climate on a grand scale. The trio’s absurd antics keep the film alive with color and candor, but film’s lasting impact comes with the glimmers of profound sadness laced within Olivia Colman’s performance as the sovereign. Colman, one of the finest living actors, carefully vacillates between her character’s illogical command and her surprising frailty. The Favourite typifies the best kind of satire: deliciously catty as it plays out with a melancholic sting in its aftermath. (Watch the trailer.)

5. HEREDITARY (A24)

Balance is key in life – and because we’ve relished the delectable delights of Mary Poppins Returns and Paddington 2, a hearty dose of uncompromising nihilism is also imperative. Hereditary more than excels in that role. It is a grotesque descent into unimaginable horror led by Toni Collette in a game-changing performance. Following films like Antichrist (2009), Babadook (2014), The VVitch (2015) and this year’s equally terrific and terrifying The Haunting of Hill House series, Hereditary marks an apex in the horror subgenre exploring the connection between loss and dread. It’s aware of the genre’s robust history. Consequently much of its success lies in its perceptive ability to draw from other classics like Rosemary’s Baby, Don’t Look Now, and The Exorcist while continuing to probe the complexities of grief and unconscious shame. (Watch the trailer.)

6. YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Amazon Studios)

Had the titles not already been taken, You Were Never Really Here could have easily be called “Making a Murderer,” “Gone Girl,” or “Vengeance Is Mine.” Lynne Ramsay’s follow-up to We Need to Talk About Kevin follows a damaged antihero hired to rescue trafficked girls. Her The story’s presentation is so lean and alienating that it’s difficult to ever form a comprehensive understanding of merciless world the characters inhabit. The violence is graphic, however Ramsey rarely shows the actual acts as they are committed. Instead, she takes us through static terrains in the wake of horrific brutality. Her juxtaposition of overwhelming ambient noises creates a particularly affecting cacophony. Surreal, distressing, yet oddly tender and uplifting, You Were Never Really Here confirms once again that Ramsay is an artist of the highest order. (Watch the trailer.)

7. EIGHTH GRADE (A24)

Bo Burham’s Eighth Grade a wonder to behold – that is, if you can endure an utterly distressing experience to endure. Eighth Grade’s young heroine, Kayla, navigates the frightening contours of adolescence. During my initial viewing of Eighth Grade, it felt like a slideshow of memories from the most repellent stages of childhood. I only allowed myself to recognize it all at a distance – perhaps a self-induced safety mechanism – as if all of it existed in a half-remembered past. Revisiting the film months later, it felt startlingly indicative of not only my eighth grade year but every year of life. If we cut through the handful of distinct aches of puberty, I’m really not so different now than I was at age thirteen – though Kayla is perhaps a bit less polished. What’s more, Kayla’s anxieties, comforts, and hopes function the same way mine do now. Burham’s film brims with compassion, so it’s easy to see - and feel - that eighth grade wasn’t that long ago. (Watch the trailer.)

8. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (Annapurna Pictures)

Fear begets fear... until it eats the soul. Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel is a exquisite study of how fear - internalized and externalized - leads to systematic racism and discrimination. As Baldwin and Jenkins reveal, the only remedy to combat this fear is love – and there’s so much of it in and around Beale Street. (Perhaps Donnie Darko’s Jim Cunningham and his simplistic binary theory were actually prophetic?) It’s difficult to examine Jenkins’ expertise without acknowledging his stylistic and thematic influences – specifically Wong Kar-wai and his intoxicating visual romanticism and Douglas Sirk and his flair for weepy melodrama. Yet even as glimmers of other great works shine through Beale Street, Jenkins contributes his own unique voice to the pantheon of Cinema. Using Baldwin’s poignant prose as a template, he blends the conventions of great American stage plays with docudrama tenets to craft a vast universe of feeling. Furthermore, If Beale Street Could Talk is evidence that Moonlight certainly wasn’t a fluke. (Watch the trailer.)

9. MARY POPPINS RETURNS (Disney)

It feels inappropriate to include such an imperfect movie among intimidating achievements like Roma and Cold War. Even with all its excessive schmaltz, saccharine sentiment and scenery-chewing cameos, Mary Poppins Returns represents a kind of homage I feared was entirely lost. Not so; I learned nothing’s gone forever, only out of place. Sure, the film’s nostalgic structure (or lack thereof), design, quips and songs are all aggressive imitations of a perfect cinematic and cultural touchstone, but the whole ordeal is just so beautifully flattering it’s impossible not to melt in its warmth. It reverently and earnestly reminds us just how lucky we are to have a classic like Mary Poppins to return to. It sends up and throws back to the pinnacle of the expansive (and now unforgivably carnivorous) Disney kingdom. As demonstrated here, indulging nostalgia from time to time can be quite healthy. Unlike most current family movies that pander to the lowest common denominator, Mary Poppins Returns transcends cynicism, pop iconography, and humor ingrained in the present moment. Although much of the film’s success is due to the collaboration of a surplus of talent, the film belongs to Emily Blunt. She, in fact, IS practically perfect as she evades mimicry and adds nuanced wit and benevolence. (Watch the trailer.)

10. MADELINE’S MADELINE (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

Madeline’s Madeline, an experimental coming-of-age thriller, is a film for those who care deeply about grueling and convoluted “artistic process.” It deftly walks a tight rope between satire and an earnest exploration of psychosis and performance – not unlike Bergman’s Persona or Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Co-Writer/Director Josephine Decker fashions a platform for the fascinating newcomer Helena Howard; she reveals a rare kind of brashness and vulnerability in the title role. Alongside Howard, Molly Parker and the ever-brilliant Miranda July put their trust in Josephine Decker’s peculiar process. As such, they elevate and legitimize Madeline’s nightmare. There is palpable malice woven through the confounding narrative, though it is impossible to discern its primary source. Thematically, the film picks up the baton where Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York left it, but Decker uses a film language loaded with obtuse codes and metaphors. Aesthetically, the film is something else entirely – more dangerous and anomalous than we’re comfortable seeing. And for that reason, it’s quite difficult to shake. (Watch the trailer.)

Another Praiseworthy 10 (in alphabetical order):

BEN IS BACK

BLACK PANTHER

BLACKkKLANSMAN

BURNING

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

THE DEATH OF STALIN

LEAVE NO TRACE

SHOPLIFTERS

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

A STAR IS BORN

Best Direction:

1. Alfonso Cuarón for ROMA

2. Paweł Pawlikowski for COLD WAR

3. Lynne Ramsay for YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

4. Barry Jenkins for IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

5. Yorgos Lanthimos for THE FAVOURITE

Best Adapted Screenplays:

1. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

2. BLACKkKLANSMAN

3. BURNING

4. CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

5. BLACK PANTHER

Best Original Screenplays:

1. THE FAVOURITE

2. SHOPLIFTERS

3. EIGHTH GRADE

4. THE DEATH OF STALIN

5. EIGHTH GRADE

Best Leading Actors:

1. Bradley Cooper in A STAR IS BORN

2. Ethan Hawke in FIRST REFORMED

3. Joaquin Phoenix in YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

4. John David Washington in BLACKkKLANSMAN

5. Lucas Hedges in BEN IS BACK

Best Leading Actresses:

1. Toni Collette in HEREDITARY

2. Olivia Coleman in THE FAVOURITE

3. Emily Blunt in MARY POPPINS RETURNS

4. Laura Dern in THE TALE

5. Yalitza Aparicio in ROMA

Best Supporting Actors:

1. Timothee Chalamet in BEAUTIFUL BOY

2. Steven Yeun in BURNING

3. Richard E. Grant in CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

4. Adam Driver in BLACKkKLANSMAN

5. Josh Hamilton in EIGHTH GRADE

Best Supporting Actresses:

1. Natalie Portman in VOX LUX

2. Emma Stone & Rachel Weisz in THE FAVOURITE

3. Regina King in IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

4. Amy Adams in VICE

5. Emily Blunt in A QUIET PLACE

Best Cinematography:

1. ROMA

2. COLD WAR

3. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

4. AT ETERNITY’S GATE

5. SUSPIRIA

Best Film Editing:

1. SUSPIRIA

2. BLACK PANTHER

3. FIRST MAN

4. ASSASSINATION NATION

5. WIDOWS

Best Sound Design:

1. YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

2. FIRST MAN

3. A QUIET PLACE

4. ROMA

5. SUSPIRIA

Best Production Design:

1. SUSPIRIA

2. MARY POPPINS RETURNS

3. THE FAVOURITE

4. BLACK PANTHER

5. READY PLAYER ONE

Best Costume Design:

1. MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. SUSPIRIA

3. THE FAVOURITE

4. BLACK PANTHER

5. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Best Original Scores:

1. Marc Shaiman for MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. Ludwig Göransson for BLACK PANTHER

3. Alexander Desplat for ISLE OF DOGS

4. Justin Hurwitz for FIRST MAN

5. Nicholas Britell for IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Best Original Songs:

1. “The Place Where Lost Things Go” from MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. “Shallow” from A STAR IS BORN

3. “Suspirium” from SUSPIRIA

4. “All the Stars” from BLACK PANTHER

5. “Treasure” from BEAUTIFUL BOY

Best Animated Features:

1. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

2. ISLE OF DOGS

3. THE INCREDIBLES 2

4. MIRAI

5. RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET

Best Acting Ensembles:

1. MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. SHOPLIFTERS

3. BALCKkKLANSMAN

4. THE DEATH OF STALIN

5. A STAR IS BORN

2018′s Most Important Films:

1. THE TALE

2. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

3. BLACK PANTHER

4. INSTANT FAMILY

5. CRAZY RICH ASIANS

To commemorate Ingmar Bergman’s 100th Birthday (and a sold-out Criterion Collection boxset of 39 of his films), let’s recall his greatest works:

1. PERSONA

2. THE SEVENTH SEAL

3. CRIES & WHISPERS

4. WILD STRAWBERRIES

5. SHAME

6. FANNY & ALEXANDER

7. AUTUMN SONATA

8. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY | WINTER LIGHT | THE SILENCE

9. SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

10. THE VIRGIN SPRING

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blackbird-brewster · 7 years ago

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Helen From PTA: Origins

(A Jemily Universe Head!Canon) For @otahkoapisiakii based on [this reblog] Before [the PTA incident], before her [untimely and mysterious demise], before JJ and Emily even moved into the colonial with the cracked foundation next door on the cul-de-sac, there was just Helen and (looks at smudged writing on hand) Tom. Helen Matilda Jessica Mayberry-Newman-Smith was from old money. The kind that has deep, filthy, racist, roots. If there was a stereotype of a wealthy, white, East Coast socialite, Helen topped that by ten. She was, as Jean-Ralphio would say, "The woooorrssst". Helen Matilda Jessica Mayberry-Newman-Smith had never known life outside of her ivory tower. No one truly knew how Tom ended up married to this hideously privileged miserable excuse for a human being. Some say he was the highest bidder at an online auction. Some say he knows some truly dirty secret about the Mayberry-Newman-Smith family. Others think he is a hypnotist and has Helen under a spell. However they ended up together it lead them to eventually purchase an obscenely large home in Washington DC. Technically, they purchased the entire street. Helen had grand plans of turning the 10 bedroom home into an ongoing stretch of properties connected by a lazy river, which she could travel down in small boats paddled by robots who called her "M'Lady Helen" and complimented her in at least twelve different languages. Despite having a heart that made Black 2.0 look like flat black (By reading this post you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not reading this post on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this post will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor. And if you are, in fact, Anish Kapoor you can replace the previously used metaphor with Vantablack and then fuck off entirely), Helen was pretty striking in looks. Many said she looked a lot like a specific, extremely talented, Canadian actress. People often asked if she was related to the actress. Or remarked at how she could be her "clone". Helen never much saw the resemblance, she thought the idea of this fictional "clone club" was ridiculous. She marked her looks up to years of expensive skin care regimens and drinking precisely 39.75 fluid ounces of purified water collected from melted snow from the peak of Mt Everest on the first full moon of each year. Turned out Helen was (amazingly!) not the only person who looked eerily like said Canadian actress. She eventually became the victim of identity theft. Once someone found out they looked nearly identical to this Helen woman , it took a matter of moments to gain access to her accounts. (Turned out the password for all of her accounts was "password") Helen was left "nearly" bankrupt. "Nearly" meaning she was left with a very pitiful seven figure annual stipend from her Great Aunt Gertrude Mayberry-Newman-Smith. If ever there was a need for a fainting couch, it was when Helen found out her new annual income demoted her from ungodly, obscenely, unfathomably wealthy to just obscenely, unfathomably wealthy (but not enough to get robots). Then to add insult to injury, Helen Matilda Jessica Mayberry-Newman-Smith found out she was....pregnant. Tom (remember Tom? He's married to Helen.) was ecstatic to welcome their daughter, Stately Boston Pina-Colada Mayberry-Newman-Smith into the world. The whole billionaire Bitch turned millionaire Mother never suited Helen. But when they were on a family vacation on one of the smaller yachts they could still afford (the one with only two pools and the medium sized movie theatre), Helen had the most unfortunate accident. She slipped, after spilling her 39.75 fluid ounces of purified water collected from melted snow from the peak of Mt Everest on the full moon of that year and fell overboard. Tom rescued her from the water but Helen had a serious concussion and total amnesia! Helen couldn't even remember her own name. Now Tom wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. But he was, in fact, a tool. He decided to use this new found opportunity to do a little personal tweaking of Helen's lesser loved qualities. Tom could have easily woven some amazing tale to Helen about her origins, her life, and her current predicament. He could have convinced her she was a caring, humble, loving and caring woman. He could have rewritten her story to change her into a compassionate and tender partner. Instead, Tom (in all of his brilliance, which was about as much brilliance as a dollar store rhinestone that fell on the ground of the craft department from a bag of mixed gems you glue to kid's crafts and then got swept under the shelf for three years until Brad the manager decided it was time to refloor the entire store in order to turn it into a classy $5 shop where they sold the exact same products as the dollar shop but they just upped the prices) merely convinced her of one change. During her recovery, Tom convinced Helen that she really, really loved baking. That was it. Helen went back to being just as cold and heartless, except she had an overwhelming need to bake. Everything. Always. If Martha Stewart and Paula Dean had a child that somehow embodied their knack for flavourless, overly buttered, baked goods, while being some eldritch manifestation of their abhorrent racism and class-privilege, then you dressed her up as some sort of lesser known American version of that certain Canadian actress.... it would have been Helen post-amnesia. Time passed and Helen was continuously (Jean-Ralphio voice) "the wooooorst", except now she made shitty cookies. She and Tom eventually "welcomed" ("welcomed" is used loosely because really their relationship hadn't been the best ever since Tom put on tons of weight due to his incessant intake of baked goods and he also suspected Helen was cheating on him after he kept finding miscellaneous and seemingly unrelated items, that could probably be used in kinky ways if one felt so inclined and extremely determined, around the bedroom when he'd return home early from his long leisurely days of golfing with The Guys, thus making him doubt the paternity of) their second child, Tom Jr into the family. Eventually, the Mayberry-Newsome-Smith spawn went to school. And somehow, Helen ended up being part of PTA. Maybe she was bored. Maybe she was confused about what PTA was. Perhaps, her heart grew two sizes that day (assuming she had a heart and assuming that the rules of mathematics ceased to exist and zero times two somehow equaled more than zero). But probably, she just wanted to profit from her obsession with baking. And she did. Helen ruled the annual PTA bake sale with an iron fist. Until that faithful day a new mom showed up who wasn't afraid of Helen and happened to be unanimously voted head of the PTA. Her name was Jennifer Jareau. And the rest, is history.

#criminal minds #jemily #helen from pta #head!canon #my writing #cm crack #my head canons have origin stories #get on this level

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ahouseoflies · 7 years ago

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Best Films of 2017, Part IV

We’re getting closer. Part I, Part II, Part III. GOOD MOVIES 42. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)- I think the biggest strength of this film, a pretty conventional one by Davies's standards, is a drive inward that is steady but not judgmental. Dickinson's retreat isn't treated as tragedy, but as a natural trajectory that was there in the first scene. (A lot of the heavy lifting is done by Emma Bell, the actress who plays young Emily with constancy.) The life of the mind is a lonely one, but there isn't much choice in the matter. The film moves along in a leisurely way, matching the long days of such privileged people, and it's funny until the bon mots drift into Frank Underwood territory that doesn't make sense. And the parts of the movie that don't work, the ones that succumb to the biopic mold, feel like that: told in the cadence of a joke but a bit empty. 41. Stronger (David Gordon Green)- For most of its running time, Stronger is a raw film bolstered by searing, sharply felt lead performances. It doesn't take the easy way out or succumb to cliche, suggesting that, gasp, maybe being a symbol for an entire city could be exhausting and frustrating. Then, quite quickly, it gives in to all of the cliches. The conversation with Carlos would have been an awesome deleted scene. 40. Split (M. Night Shyamalan)- Shyamalan flat-out knows how to make this kind of movie. It's not without its faults--can you even complain about his tendency to cast himself anymore?--but his cross-cutting game hasn't slipped a beat. The film is composed and patient, but it doesn't trespass the self-indulgent line the way that some of his earlier work does. Some of the abuse stuff is handled clumsily, but I suppose it has to match the touch of the psychology material, which can only be breezy and flippant. Here's what's different about the filmmaker's approach: Shyamalan hasn't guided many actors to great performances. (I guess Haley Joel Osment is still number one.) But this movie is James McAvoy's performance. He gets to have fun technically by switching back and forth among the personas, but the serious business is the fact that the whole thing's tone rests on his shoulders. Like many successful B movies, it has a fluidity that allows the audience to laugh at it, laugh with it, or be genuinely scared--sometimes in a span of minutes. If McAvoy hadn't gone all the way, the movie wouldn't have been able to.

39. Molly’s Game (Aaron Sorkin)- This movie has a lot of the things that make me love movies. A scene in which someone flushes drugs down the toilet and hides valuables because the feds are coming. Self-effacing but rousing speeches that reference classic literature. An "I'm good for it" sequence dedicated to someone's gambling downward spiral. Cleavage. But all of the things I'm describing are window dressing, and this is maybe the first Aaron Sorkin screenplay that has more fat than meat, as tasty as that fat may be. The film's thesis shines in Idris Elba's strangely-accented monologue, the one that starts with "Is this what a RICO suspect looks like?" It seems to suggest that the world is indeed rigged against women, but it might be because they have more integrity than men, which makes it more difficult for them to succeed. It's an interesting notion, and the figure at the center of the film might be perfect to prove it, but there are so many flashbacks and scenes that feel obligatory to get us there. 38. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson)- Good, if micro-managed in the way that a film-as-shareholder-commodity has to be. It's interesting to me that, though there are only nine movies that take place in this universe, the storytelling is more codified than any other genre I can think of. Even though it's less clinical than The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi has to jump through an inordinate number of hoops to be "a Star Wars movie." No matter how these are sold, they all have the same beats. That history is a gift in some ways. Even though we haven't heard from him in thirty-plus years, Jedi Master Luke's personality tracks in every way. It makes total sense how he would hold people up as symbols instead of personalities, and the movie benefits from the archetypes its predecessors have created. On the other hand, I think we spend thirty minutes on a mission that fails, and the movie hangs Finn out to dry. It's a sort of Empire mandate that the characters have to be separated from one another for the majority of the running time, and that makes for a strained middle section. I get that people like these movies because they're engineered and manicured for maximum pleasure, and I cherish the goofy bits like the drunk creature thinking BB-8 is a slot machine. Maybe these just aren't for me. Until I cry at the end. 37. Win It All (Joe Swanberg)- It ends abruptly and doesn't get as psychological as it could, but Win It All is designed for maximum pleasure. There are a few inventive gestures that make for a jaunty hang--I loved the superimposed counter that showed how up or down Eddie's bankroll was. Jake Johnson, who co-wrote, has real rakish chops. 36. American Made (Doug Liman)- It's helpful to compare this movie to T.C.'s summer disaster The Mummy, which cast him as a static rake. Doug Liman presents the same smiling mug, but he punches a few holes into the persona, letting us see the shortcomings of T.C.'s Barry Seal if not the delusional quality that the actual man must have had. (The movie tries to sell us on boredom as the main motivation for a near-suicide mission, but it was probably more complex than that.) The actor is at his best when he lets himself seems slightly dumb, when the audience is a few steps ahead of him. Luckily, that's the whole film. It helps that this is the first Liman movie since the original Bourne Identity to have a vibrant "stolen" quality to its visuals. American Made careens through its beats at a breakneck pace, and the biggest flaw of the movie is that it remains that fast at the end, when we need more answers. 35. Mudbound (Dee Rees)- A true ensemble, Mudbound has a deft hand with its own emotional effects. Dee Rees knows the moments that matter--the reunion of father and son after the War is unforgettable--and she nails them. The ending is a poignant culmination of a lot of momentum. Much of the film's success comes from real Movie Stars, Jason Mitchell chief among them, elevating their characters past types though. And some of them don't get there all the way. Jason Clarke's Henry is pretty much Unfeeling Man's Man Farmer and Jonathan Banks is totally Racist Pappy. (Not a joke: His character is actually called Pappy.) In the end, I can't help but suspect that similar characters and situations--he drinks to forget what he's seen!--haven't been staged better elsewhere.

34. Raw (Julia Ducournau)- These types of movies--by that I mean late New French Extremity, I guess--have to go too far. If they didn't, they would lose the perverse aesthetic high ground that they're all so smug about. So it goes too far, but I would like to show Raw to someone making, say, an X-Men movie because Julia Ducournau crafts more immersive world-building in twenty minutes than some of those movies do in multiple entries. The beginning was jagged, but when the storytelling settled into itself, it reminded me of Repulsion because the taboo that guides Raw starts out as a metaphor, then becomes a device, then becomes literal, and then it circles back around to metaphor. Maybe that journey is the reason it exists. 33. Get Out (Jordan Peele)- I saw this movie twice. The first time I was kind of cavalier about it. The line I said at parties was: “I personally prefer genre movies that let you attach social commentary to them. The subtext is the text here.” Knowing the film's secrets the second time around helped me to appreciate the performances better, especially in the powerhouse hypnotism scene. Kaluuya has to play an everyman but also, for obvious reasons, an everyman who stands out. The balance of vulnerability and heroism that he pulls off is impressive, armed with a fake-smile that is perfect for the micro-aggressions he has to stand and take. Chris embodies a civility that lets him stay in the house past his level of comfort, but he’s smart enough to insist on leaving when some horror protagonists would get illogical. I still think the film escalates a bit too quickly from suspicion to actual danger, and, man, I don't know what that TSA investigation tangent is doing at such a crucial moment. But I'll admit that I didn't give the film enough credit in February. Comedies of manners are common; horrors of manners are rare. 32. Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh)- From a screenwriting perspective, there are probably two schools of thought for heist movies. Approach A outlines every detail of the plan; that way, when the characters overcome their challenges, we are more impressed because we were warned of the dangers in advance. Approach B leaves the viewer in suspense, and the hurdles pop up for the viewer in a way that mirrors the characters' surprise. I prefer Approach A, and I think there's a degree of difficulty that can't be discounted there. In fact, there's a sort of joy of exposition that is unique to the heist genre and jives with Approach A. Logan Lucky operates mostly on plane B, and it frustrated me at first in what seems like a sterile, straight first act. But then, as I try to avoid spoilers, it goes so far past what we thought the heist would be, and it branches out into Soderberghian "what was actually happening during that time" territory. I had to re-evaluate my prejudices as I joined in on the fun. Despite the inevitable "What It Did Wrong" YouTubes that some killjoy will make, I didn't notice any narrative cheating. Daniel Craig is the eye in the zany storm. 31. The Big Sick (Michael Showalter)- I feel slightly diminishing returns with each super-autobiographical portrait of a comedian. As heart-wrenching as this one gets, it follows the beats that we're used to, right down to the rock-bottom argument with a fast food cashier. Cue the twenty different endings and the uninspired visual style. But why be a sour-puss when faced with a movie so sincere and eager to please? Besides keeping all of the subplot plates spinning, besides being fair to the female character, the film offers original moments and ideas. The triangle that emerges among Nanjiani, Romano, and Hunter authentically captures the way decorum frost melts once two generations realize their common ground. And "the movie that a guy shows a girl to test her taste on a third date" is something that I myself am guilty of, but I haven't seen it portrayed in a film. What isn't unique in the big structural picture is completely unique in certain moments. 30. The Belko Experiment (Greg McLean)- Its ending is only "good enough," but The Belko Experiment is my kind of ultraviolent trash. I would be perfectly happy if we could get the White Stripes of Experiment movies on odd years and alternate them with The Strokes of Purge movies on even years. For one reason or another, empathy machine John Gallagher, Jr. is still in his Hi, Mom! or Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight phase. When he gets his Taxi Driver, watch out.

29. The Lego Batman Movie (Chris McKay)- I laughed twice during the opening production logos. Of course it devolves into everyone teaming up to save the city, as the straight versions of these movies do, but The Lego Batman Movie, especially in its lower stakes first half, was one of the funniest films of the year. I'm kind of thrilled that the satirizing of tropes I cherished from the margins in the '90s is now de rigeur, sponsored by the same studio that has shoved cliches down our throats. Will Arnett deserves special mention for inhabiting this specific version of Batman so well that he makes you rethink 70+ years of the character's make-up. It's no small feat. This movie, yes, probably counts as a slip-up of my superhero ban. I didn’t realize that until I was halfway through.

28. A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski)- This is a difficult film to recommend because, if the person you're talking to cares only about story, he won't like it. It's strained and sometimes illogical, a "you can never leave" story that has been around the block a few times. But look out for the Miami Viceans on here when this film gets reconsidered for its visuals because, I'm telling you now, A Cure for Wellness has the most stately and controlled images this side of Kubrick. It's a perfect reference Blu-Ray if you still care about such things. Verbinski is credited with the story, and I doubt he told the screenwriter much more than "water, wrinkled faces, the color white," but he does some things with that sandbox that I haven't seen before. 27. It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults)- It Comes at Night never completely explains its own horror conceit of encroaching "sickness"; even by the end, there's a lot that we don't know about the apparently apocalyptic event that has singled out the characters. That presence of an absence is the film's greatest strength--it allows us to attach to the human frailty at the center without distraction. However, it's the film's greatest weakness as well because it's what keeps the proceedings small, like a cost-cutting measure. In capturing bleak human frailty, Trey Edward Shults knows exactly what he's doing. He uses literal darkness to suggest emotional darkness, and his script guides the viewer along character arcs without holding anyone's hand. A character uses the word "brother-in-law" instead of "brother" and, because of the context, it produces as much of a gasp as a gunshot would. I didn't recognize Riley Keough at first, which is an excellent sign for a young actress. There's a moment when her character catches another character eyeing her breasts, and she tugs her shirt with a unique mixture of flattery and shame. I can't wait to see what she does next. 26. Wind River (Taylor Sheridan)- If a movie has a scene of #RennerSeason making his own bullets, then my fingers won't let me give it lower than three stars. He's amazing/hilarious in this as the know-it-all spirit warrior--basically Steven Seagal in a better actor's body. He's perfect for squinting and selling lines like, "You keep looking for clues...but you're missing all the signs." Taylor Sheridan's screenplay is tight and meticulous in a way that we used to get all the time but feels special now. The backstory is doled out with care, and every character is rich enough to get a moment to shine. He shoots his own material with less visceral impact than someone like Denis Villeneuve did, but he does lend a specific sense of place to the film.There's a crucial late scene that sort of solves the mystery for us, making everything that comes after seem like falling action baggage. Your mileage may vary, but I'm not sure there are other ways to get across the information. I was okay with it. 25. The Post (Steven Spielberg)- The Post is a great time at the movies, but it's ultimately a bit too much of a movie for me. It has a hand-held lightness to its look, an energy that belies how quickly it was made. Streep's Kate Graham has a satisfying arc that eschews a lot of the grandstanding that this type of picture would normally lend her. Her lesson in confidence is laid on thickly, but Streep doesn't play it that way. Unfortunately some of the brusqueness I like in the filmmaking carries over to the screenplay. It offers few of the laughs-in-crisis that make individual Spielberg scenes so good, and most of the conflicts resolve themselves just a little too easily. ("I wonder if the guy I think has the papers actually has them...yep, after a few calls, I found out he does.") The less said about the cartoonish Vietnam protestors and the CCR needle-drop, the better. Overall, do I prefer the lean, realistic version of this story over the more belabored, showy version? Sure.

24. The Work (Jairus McLeary, Gethin Aldous)- The Work is undeniably raw, pure, and effective in the emotion it documents and generates. The access given to the filmmakers as they capture a group therapy program in Folsom State Prison is unbelievable. But for that reason, there's something on the margins of the film that feels exploitative and violating to me. I'm interested in how Bloods and Aryans console each other, not to mention how the most damaged figure is not a prisoner at all. But I get the sense I shouldn't be watching any of this. 23. Marjorie Prime (Michael Almereyda)- I like everything that this chamber piece specifies and everything that it decides to leave vague. The film is unsentimental, considering how sentimental this premise could be. It seems bent on reminding us, sometimes tragically, about how we shape our own memories until the original moment is gone in every way. I'll admit that it seems a little slight by the end, despite the weight suggested by what I just described. Even when it's surprising you, the film never writes in capital letters, and part of that feeling comes from bland visuals. But that's a small complaint for a film that is grappling so palpably with the challenges of authenticity in modern life.

#film #lists #movie reviews

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sethisrael · 5 years ago

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right/wrong/neither

I recommend listening to this song while reading; it helps me focus and it might help you too. :)

When I began our class in public art in sound and listening, my way of thinking was very much rooted in discernible outcomes and notions of success. This was largely a product of the environments I had existed in growing up: intense, competitive academic spaces, playing sports, going to a well-regarded college. Even in my first year at Brown, the notion of comparative success was pushed forth; I was denied entry to classes due to a comparatively worse portfolio, writing sample, or application. Not only were opportunities to learn limited, once in class, creative assignments I submitted were deemed poor in quality because they were not up to par with the level of the rest of the class or did not meet expectations of a rigid rubric imposed by the professor. I questioned why the system existed in the way that promoted uniformity and rewarded following rigid instructions over organic growth and learning.

Even at a place like Brown University where a liberal education is championed, I felt limited in my ability to make choices for myself, questioning my every decision and my place on campus. Why did every decision I made feel “wrong”? Why did I constantly feel like I was in the “wrong” place, doing the “wrong” things? It was around this time of self-doubt that we read Miwon Kwon’s “The Wrong Place” and Judith Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure. For a long time, it had been explained to me that the greatest growth and discovery was made when I failed, when things didn’t work out, but I was still resistant. Halberstam’s writing expressed a similar sentiment in a way that spoke to me greatly. As Halberstam explains in the introduction, “Failure preserves some of the wondrous anarchy of childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and losers,” and later points out that “[failure] provides the opportunity to use these negative affects to poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life” (Halberstam 3). Halberstam’s argument recognizes the importance of positivity but also the ability for negativity to shift our perspective and view things through a different or critical scope.

In a similar vane, Kwon’s writing recognizes that objective rights/wrongs are nonexistent, but our relationship to objects, beings, and places is what defines our sense of right and wrong: “The determination of right and wrong is never derived from an innate quality of the object in question, even if some moral absolutes might seem to preside over the object. Rather, right and wrong are qualities that an object has in relation to something outside itself… The more important point here is that it is we who are wrong for this kind of ‘new’ space” (Kwon 38-39). Kwon explains that ending up in the “wrong” place can often lead us to new discoveries about ourselves that we would miss if we follow rigid, “correct” paths. I really love one of her closing statements in the piece:

“Often we are comforted by the thought that a place is ours, that we belong to it, perhaps even come from it, and therefore are tied to it in some fundamental way. Such places (‘right’ places) are thought to reaffirms our sense of self, reflecting back to us an unthreatening picture of a grounded identity. This kind of continuous relationship between a place and a person is what is deemed lost, and needed in contemporary society. In contrast, the wrong place is generally thought of as a place where one fells one does not belong—unfamiliar, disorienting, destabilizing, even threatening. This kind of stressful relationship to a place is, in turn, though to be detrimental to a subject’s capacity to constitute a coherent sense of self and the world” (Kwon 42).

Kwon and Halberstam’s discussion of failure and place bring me to one of the first posts I made on our class soundblog, a podcast profiling the artist Emily A. Sprague, a founding member of the band Florist and an independent artists as well, working primarily in ambient music and creating with Eurorack modular synthesizers. Hailing from a rural community in the Catskill Mountains, Sprague explains how space has shaped her processes of creation: “Every studio I’ve ever had has been in the place that I’ve been living in… You learn from that, being in spaces that aren’t ‘Studio Bs’… You just learn to work with what you have” (Sound + Process). On her origins, Sprague later explains, “Community has always been something that I’ve known to be incredibly hard to find and also the best and most rewarding and inspiring thing that you can experience. I’m from a small town in a pretty rural area; I didn’t really find people until I was older than I really felt a part of a community with, with making music” (Sound + Process). Like Halberstam’s argument, Sprague has repeatedly tried and experimented with space and technique, creating new ways to approach modular synth and pushing the boundaries of genre. Like Kwon explains, Sprague has made new discoveries in her process of making through the space she’s in—not that place is right or wrong, but just that they are different, and produce a different result.

With her process of making rooted in modular synthesis, it is hard to deny Sprague’s precedents. On June 7th, 2017, Sprague made an Instagram post of a single book on a hardwood table: Daphne Oram’s An Individual Note of Music Sound, and Electronics. Daphne Oram, born in 1925 and passed away in 2003, was one of the central figures in the development of British experimental electronic music (Anomie Publishing). Oram declined a place at the Royal College of Music to become a music balancer at the BBC, and she went on to become the co-founder and first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Anomie). Leaving the BBC in 1959 to pursue commercial work in television, advertising, film and theater, Oram also made her own music for recording and performance, continuing her personal research into sound technology. Sound technology was a passion Oram cultivated since her childhood in rural Wiltshire (Anomie). Eventually her home in Kent became an unorthodox studio and workshop, which she crafted on a minimal budget (Anomie). Additionally, Oram developed her pioneering equipment, sounds, and ideas at her home studio. A significant part of her personal research was the invention of a machine that offered a new form of sound synthesis – the Oramics machine (Anomie). Her biography further cements her as influential to contemporary electronic artists, with Oram’s contribution to electronic music receiving considerable attention from new generations of composers, sound engineers, musicians, musicologists and music lovers around the world (Anomie).

Like Wendy Carlos, Oram was a pioneer of synthesizer music and technology, definitively changing the ways her contemporaries approached synthesis, as well as generations for years to come. It seems as though Carlos, Oram, and Sprague are inextricably linked. As Carlos focuses intently on her studio in her website/primary form of external communication, it is evident that the artist considers her studio as a point of pride and importance (Wendy Carlos website). If Wendy Carlos’s studio is Persian rugs, felines, and the crackle of a fireplace on a frigid winter day and Oram’s is a quiet converted oasthouse, then Sprague’s studio is a surfboard leaned against a corner next to a human-sized floor plant as sun pours in through a skylight on a warm California morning (Kheshti). Like Kheshti’s relationship with Carlos, I feel connected to Sprague in a similar way. I do not mean to equate our relationships or interpolate myself in the discussion of electronic musicians, but I do find great joy in listening to electronic music and feel that it is an important part of my life, similar to the way Kheshti describes.

There is something extremely childlike, imaginative, and fantastical about home studios. They are places for experimentation and imagination, mostly unbounded by judgement or criticism, creating a place to take risks and make new discoveries. In many ways a home studio allows for a democratic education of sorts, a place where a creator can speak their own language and have internal dialogue, unrestricted by rigid constraints that may be imposed externally otherwise, and even explore the inherent fun in learning (hooks 43-44).

The ability for these artists to create in unexpected places and to push the boundaries of their genre and craft remind me of Fluxus artists like Yoko Ono or Alison Knowles. There is an ambiguity in place and correctness of a Fluxus score. They are not defined by doing things in a certain way or a certain place or for a certain outcome, but doing for the sake of doing, trying, experimenting, learning, and moving forward. I recently watched a film that referenced Yoko Ono’s “Ceiling Painting, Yes Painting” (1966), where the person interacting climbs a ladder to a magnifying glass in order to discern a tiny speck on the ceiling that reads “YES” (Guggenheim Bilbao). I think this piece is beautifully poetic in a number of ways, but specifically for its affirmation in discovery, and doing so in a playful, almost childlike and imaginative manner. On this note, I want to include some scores I wrote throughout the course of the semester for consideration, reflection, and response (dots indicate separate scores):

sit on a bench and be the last to break eye contact with a stranger • collect fallen leaves from the ground into a paper bag and deliver to someone • learn the language of a Tree and have a conversation • ask a loved one (or a complete stranger) to name a favorite song and listen to it in full • listen to your breath as you run up a steep hill and walk down slowly; listen to your breath as you walk up a steep hill and run down slowly • cut holes in an umbrella during a rainstorm and listen to the irony pour through • get a bicycle and ride across America • hold your palms and fingers gently over the tips of grass at dawn and wipe the dew across your cheeks • do nothing • sitting cross-legged on the floor, recount in detail to an audience (of any or no size) the most recent dream that you can remember • make a friend • look at the Atlantic Ocean; turn 180 degrees; walk; look at the Pacific Ocean • grab a cactus / smash a guitar • move fast so that wind becomes music

Through all these artists, authors, activists, and beyond, like Ono, Knowles, Carlos, Oram, Halberstam, Kwon, hooks, Kheshti, it is clear that approaching things not with notions of right or wrong, but with the intention of discovery, experimentation, and playful imagination is a valuable way of living. In the inscription to hook’s Teaching Community, the author quotes Paulo Freire: “It is imperative that we maintain hope even when the harshness of reality may suggest the opposite.” In many ways, these figures stand for just that: a rejection of the harshness of reality through creativity, experimentation, discovery, and a love for learning.

Bibliography

“Ceiling Painting, Yes Painting (1966).” Guggenheim Bilbao, http://yokoono.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/artworks/ceiling-painting-yes-painting.html.

“Daphne Oram – An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics.” Anomie Publishing, Anomie Publishing and The Daphne Oram Trust.

“Emily Sprague: SOUND PROCESS #8.” SoundCloud, 2017, https://soundcloud.com/sound-and-process/es_ep8.

Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011.

Hooks, Bell. Teaching Community. Routledge, 2003.

Kheshti, Roshanak. Swithced-on Bach. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Kwon, Miwon. “The Wrong Place.” Art Journal, vol. 59, no. 1, 2000, pp. 33–43. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/778080.

“Wendy Carlos.” Wendy Carlos, http://www.wendycarlos.com/.

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rudimentaryrecollections · 5 years ago

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The Quiet Site 22 July – 27 November 2018

I caught the bus to Penrith the next day. There were heaps of cool young looking people gathering at the train station there organising to go to Kendal Calling, a music festival nearby. I took a bus to the Brackenrigg Inn, overlooking Ullswater in Watermillock.

Peter, Emily’s boyfriend picked me up. He was a mad redheaded dude with a bushy beard, more chilled out then even me. He was to train me in the coming weeks. He set me up in my caravan and showed me around, introducing me to the other staff and the owner of the campsite, Daniel.

We had some drinks at the campsite pub that evening. I was on form and charmed the other staff easily. But I was hungover when I started work the next day. The work was simple enough however, and despite my worries I quickly proved myself a hard and capable worker there. All were pleased, and I was offered ongoing employment.

It was cleaning work. The brunt of it was cleaning the glamping accommodation - Tipi tents, pods (wooden tents) and Hobbit Holes. That, and the toilet and shower block. And I worked the occasional bar shift at the Quiet Bar. I was nervous before my first bar shift, and gulped spiced rum before it started to try settle my nerves. My main anxiety was that I would be too quiet working at the Quiet Bar! That I would not have the charisma and personality I thought a bartender should have. I needn’t have worried. Just being polite and able to fill empty vessels with liquids was enough. And in time the rest came naturally.

In my time off I quickly explored the surrounding area. I explored the meadow paths and climbed Little Mell Fell, which our campsite sloped down from. I hiked to Aira Force waterfalls and got lost coming back, following sheep trails that wound through bracken ferns as tall as me. I cut over the Gowbarrow Park fells in the cloud, found the path again and drudged back to camp with sodden boots. A hot tea and shelter had never felt so nice.

I hiked the Ullswater Way, a path that went around the lake, and wild camped at Sandwick Bay.

I finally got a National Insurance number after an overnight trip to Newcastle, where I had to go to a government jobs centre to prove my identity.

I read a pocket-sized book, in the Collins Gems series ‘Kings and Queens.’ It detailed the known history of kings and queens of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England. In doing so, it provided a brief history of these countries. I found it most fascinating, and ordered more books from the Gems collection. I bought books on trees, mushrooms, edible food, survival and the weather.

I worked to improve my natural knowledge. Collecting plant and fungus specimens, and identifying them with the aid of my books, and further online reading where needed.

I added nettle to my curries, elder berries to my porridge. I feasted on blackberries, foraged for blueberries and collected crab apples. Wild comfrey replaced parsley from the shops. This fresh food supplemented what food I could get for free from the camp store, canned beans, rice, pasta, cheese and the likes – to a point where I was eating quite well for free.

I was being paid more money than I could spend so I started saving. Things were going quite well for me but I was missing some companionship. I booked flights back to Australia for a two month trip over December and January. There would not be much work at the campsite over winter, and I wanted to see friends and family.

Companionship

In the first few months I would occasionally have drinks with some of the staff, but this disappeared as the site got busy and our work schedules overlapped. I was enjoying hiking and animating and living on my own, but at times I was getting lonely.

I was messaging Kim a fair bit but she had no interest in visiting England, as she was saving for a trip to New Zealand. I was using tinder but the options were limited in my area. And I was unwilling to travel far to meet someone.

I met a woman, Lucy, five years older than me at Aira Force on one of my days off. I had made some hummus and brought some beers my boss had given to me (which had been left on-site by a guest). I basically counselled her for two hours as she figured out what to do with her life. She had been travelling and now was had the option to move to Italy or to London for teaching positions.

It wasn’t really the date I’d dreamed of, I guess I was hoping for a hookup like I’d had a few time when I was backpacking. When she decided to go home to Carlisle we said farewell and she thanked me… And I said, “You owe me…” Why did I say that? I knew she didn’t owe me a thing. I felt dark for having said it. Strange… I walked upstream, a way back I hadn’t been before. I was in a dream like state.

On the top of Gowbarrow Fell, I found magic mushrooms. I put them in a bag and examined them more closely when I got home, researching thoroughly online to ensure they were what I thought they were. I dried them out and stored them in a jar in my larder.

We had a good team at the campsite of about a dozen and I got along with everyone. One day, as I was cleaning, the owner’s son George came to me looking mortified. “I just went to clean the bell tents… but I forgot which ones needed cleaning. I went into thirteen, because there was no car out the front. And inside there was big fat bald guy fucking his wife. Both stark naked. I said sorry, sorry, and came straight here….” Young George went home early that day.

The Saucy Sausage

There was a catering van on site which did breakfast and dinner. It was called The Saucy Sausage. Staff ate free. It was owned by a middle-aged Geordie man named Nigel. He was very friendly but could be quite brash. In my early days at the campsite he was moving houses, and I helped him with some heavy catering fridges. He gave me his two cents on the campsite and the area. He said it was beautiful but not much of a party or social scene. I told him I was looking for this kind of place, I needed a break from drugs and alcohol. We kept talking and he told me about some big German guys he’s once hosted. They were known as journeymen. They were stonemasons, and came from a village where young men, after being apprentices were sent out into the world to be journeymen. They were to travel and work for nothing more than food and shelter and not use the internet or mobile phones, in order to learn how their craft is done in different places and to learn the value of their work.

We moved the fridges and I noticed he had a short temper – never aimed at me but just in general. Afterwards he gave me 30 quid, which I hadn’t expected… Not bad for two hours work. I couldn’t help feeling nervous around him from then on however, like I had to be on tippytoes around him. Meditation and alcohol alleviated these feelings however.

One evening when he saw me at the campsite he invited me to a reggae gig. An English band, Zion Train. In ten minutes I was in his car. We went to the pub for a few where I met his wife and their friends, a couple from Glasgow. We got rip roaring drunk and as Nigel drove us to the Art Gallery beneath a radio tower where they were playing we drank strong gin and tonic from a plastic bottle and I felt like I was a teenager again. When we got there they distracted the ticket collector and I snuck past them without needing to pay.

Needless to say I bought the first round. And when the band started I danced my pants off. Nigel kept bring me beers through the gig and when I went to get a round I was quiet sloshed and got bottles of San Miguel instead of the draught ale we’d been drinking and Nigel got upset and I told him to bloody cheer up it’s not worth getting upset about. After the gig we went back to Nigel’s and I sipped some whiskey and discussed current events and philosophy with him and then I slept on his couch. I had a splitting headache in the morning when he drove me and his daughter to the Quiet Site. They opened up The Saucy Sausage for breakfast and I lay down for an hour before my cleaning shift started.

Fantasies in the Dark

I set out late one afternoon with my camping gear. I ate some mushrooms and was intoxicated them as I made my way downstream at Aira Force in the dark. I was trying to meditate, and walk without a torch, and it was so very dark. I felt like the forest wanted me to fall and fertilise the soil for its roots. I stumbled across a circle of short wooden seats, about waist high. They looked like they were for elves. My mind went to imagining things. I set up my camp under a yew tree nearby. I’d had mushrooms before and enjoyed them, but I’d come to an unfamiliar environment, in the dark, under the influence of them which was unwise.

I imagined I had to appease the elves to stay a safe night here, so I went and left a boiled egg in the circle of chairs as an offering. As I lay in my camp, all sorts of delusions went through my head, fantasies of elf councils in the dark, of their malevolent attitude towards me. And I snapped out of it. Realised these were all fantasies I was creating, and felt silly for leaving the egg down there. But it was not just this fantasy I broke out of. But other fantasies, stories I told myself about myself and others in my day to day sober life, for as long as I could remember. I meditated and honed my mind. What you think is not real. What you believe is real to you, but you can choose what to believe. And what you believe is only real to someone else if they believe it to. So choose what you believe wisely, and manage your thoughts. I slept the mushrooms off, I was not enjoying them that night. I’d taken them hoping to have some spirtual epiphany.In the morning I went to the circle and ate my egg I’d left to the ‘elves’ for breakfast. And so I’d lost my superstitions. It was near the gardens and the bottom of Aira force where other wooden artworks were.

I walked to Glenridding and boarded the steamer. I got off at Howtown and climbed up Hallin Fell. I got the steamer to Pooley Bridge and walked home.

Second Thoughts

In September I went down to London for a second screening with flucamp. They’d wanted me to participate in a clinical trial for months but the dates hadn’t worked for me to take time off. On the way down I visited Camilla in Manchester. I met her at a bar in the university area where she was photographing a psych-rock evening. I drank and met some of her friends and she wandered round, photographing and seeming to know everyone so I left her to it really. She introduced me at one point to Lucio, the monthly psyc-rock gig organiser from Sicily who was a bit standoffish when I told him I met Camilla through tinder. He liked her.

Camilla and I left to meet some of her other friends in a nightclub called Gas. It was a young gay couple Kurt and Mattias and their female Liverpudlian companion Jodie who was also somewhat standoffish with me. Her and Camilla got touchy and I got shy, but then Jodie called me good looking and Camilla put my hand on Jodie. So they were lovers. And it was strange… I was shy and a bit uncomfortable but I was consenting if Jodie was... But she was really drunk and must have remembered something that happened to her as she started saying how bad men were so I went to get another drink and sat across from them as Jodie seemed distress. Kurt and Mattias were fun gay guys and witty and cracked jokes to lighten the situation and secretly told Camilla and I that Jodie had been a handful tonight and was the drunkest they’d ever seen her.

So we went back to Camillas and drank red wine Jodie was really drunk and stood there swaying so I made room on the couch for her and she sat down and was being somewhat abrasive to everyone. Camilla rolled a joint and it was passed around and I said no the first time because I couldn’t have weed in my system for the flucamp screening and besides weed tends to disagree with me these days but there was a part of me that wanted to sabotage my chances of getting into the trial. So when it came back round I had a light puff on the joint and it was soothing.

Camilla made Jodie a grilled cheese sandwich and then she was sick so Kurt and Mattias took her home in a cab. Camilla and I hooked up for a bit but were exhausted and fell asleep. The next afternoon I caught the bus to London.

When we stopped at a service station I saw ten quid fall to the ground and a man walking away from it. “Excuse me!” I caught up to him, “you dropped this.” I gave him the tenner and he looked taken aback and as I walked away he checked his pocket and realised it had fallen and his face lit up with this random act of humanity and he gave me his thanks.

In London I checked into the hostel and had a quiet night. The next day I went to the screening which took about two hours. I struggled with the spirometer test technique but was signed off on.

I was paid 100 quid and reimbursed my travel expenses for this.

I bought a single malt whiskey and sipped it in my hostel room. I prepared some dinner and gulped some more whiskey. I made small talk with some people. An American girl was cooking kale with coconut oil and bragged about how healthy it was. I told her it’s full of saturated fats and they use it to induce obesity in lab rats. She got defensive and I told her to read the nutrition info but she was brainwashed and refused to believe me. I got really mad about it because she was friends with everyone there and I seemed like the bad guy. So I left and was mad in my room. Clearly I was caring too much about things. My head was spinning. I’d drank the whiskey to make myself chatty because I wanted to meet people… but it is silly to gulp whiskey. It’s a drink meant for sipping.

Sharp Edge

Time moved on at the campsite and the weather cooled as the winds from the Atlantic became more consistent. I worked and hiked and ate and slept and tried to meditate from time to time and work on my animation. On a clear day I asked Peter to drop me off at the bottom of Blencathra. I was to hike up along Sharp Edge, a steep ridge scramble.

I wasn’t the only one walking up the knife edge ascent. Many came up and down, some with sure-footed canine companions. And the views were awe inspiring. Why wasn’t I doing this more often?

Competent Crew

I took a week off to take a five day sailing course in south Scotland. In Largs I met the instructor, Alis, a Czech yacht master. The other crew were Rob, a retired farmer was doing mile-building in preparation for his yacht master testing. Chris, a middle-aged teacher from Elgin was there to complete his Day-Skipper course so he could skip for school trips. Matt, a 23 year old junior doctor, a prodigy was also doing his Day-Skipper. They all had experience sailing one man dinghys or crewing sea-going yachts. I was the only newby, doing my competent crew to learn the ropes.

I did my best to to try to learn but most of the attention was given to those doing their day-skipper course, so for a lot of it I just had to watch and learn and participate where I could. I was given the helm a couple of times each day and Alis guided me.

There was a lot to go through, a lot to learn. Too much information, but I’m sure a lot of it soaked through. How to moor the ship, how to shape the sails, right of way on water, Coriolis effect, knots,

At times I felt like deadweight, the others got to doing the things as they knew how to do them while I tried to stay out of the way. I was not often shown how to do things as they got to it and so I had to ask, yet I can be a slow learner for practical tasks and often there wasn’t time for me to practice so they just did it. And it is tight knit on a ship, I was always around other people, which wears me down, I need time alone. So I’m not sure if life at sea could be for me.

But it was a pleasant trip. A great way to travel, and see places you would never see otherwise. From Largs we sailed to the Isle of Bute, and harboured at Rothesay. From there we sailed to Tarbert. Chris informaed me there are many Tarberts around the British isles, all named by the Norse, to indicate a narrow piece of land where vikings would land their ships and roll them to the other side on logs - to avoid treacherous water or reduce the time of their voyage.

We sailed to the Isle of Arran, stayed again in Largs to fuel the engine and went back to Bute, spending our last night at Port Bannatyne.

We drank beer and played pool and darts celebrate the end. Alis met us for pub dinner. I had halloumi battered like fish and served with chips, and we stayed on for dessert. Everyone had passed their course. Chris and Matt would receive RYA certification as day-skippers, allowing them to charter yachts in coastal waters. Rob had miles added to his logbook, needed to be certified as a yacht master. And I would get a piece of paper saying I completed the competent crew course. My first taste of sailing. I drank up.

A group of locals cleared the dining room as we finished our meal and started setting up their instruments. They met here every Thursday to play Scottish folk tunes. A dozen of them started up with all sorts of instruments and voices. And onoxious drunk man with his guitar often interrupted, strumming out of time or trying to shout the song over the singing. The village idiot. Matt and I wondered if he was autistic. But talking to the locals we just learned he was an arsehole. At the bar Rob had a word to him and he left, and the music was better for it. A short man in his sixties drank stout from a bottle next to us. He’d lived in Rothesay all his life and worked as a steward on the ferry to the mainland.

He got up to dance and sing one song. Everyone began stomping their feet and singing the chorus and for a moment I felt blissfully jovial and at home. The song was ‘Doon in the Wee Room’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-uQat7OodE The room reverberated with the merriment of the singers and audience. I was down in that wee room in my mind, drinking and laughing life away.

We were up early with headaches. All but Alis, never drinking on the job. We returned to Largs, doing a man overboard exercise with a floating buoy on the way. We parted ways on the dock.

I was in two minds about the trip. For one, it was a brand new experience, I’d seen some great new places. On the other, while I’d learned a lot, I felt far from competent as a crew member, alongside four experienced sailors. If anything, I left knowing how incompetent a sailor I was. C’est la vie.

Lisa

I’d matched with Lisa on tinder in Cumbria, but she lived in Galloway, on the other side of the border. We texted for a while and eventually met up in Carlisle. She was Dutch, but spoke English with a Scottish accent. She loved Scotland, and wanted to live there for the rest of her life.

We met at the train station and walked over to Carlisle castle. We climbed a maintenance man’s ladder onto the castle walls and walked along them, watching the city go by. A ladybird strolled along the walls where we stood for a while. A grim place, we decided.

We had to climb down as the ladder had gone when we came back. We explored some more then went for a pint. We walked to the train station in a hurry. She bumped into a guy she knew who was with a girl and they chatted for a bit and then her train was leaving so she left in a rush and I didn’t think it went so well, but she texted me saying otherwise the next day.

A couple of weeks later I met Lisa again and had a great day. We met at Annan, near the Scottish border. There we followed the Annandale Way, a river path, to Hodom Castle. Well, Hodom Castle caravan park. The castle grounds were a campsite. The castle was in disrepair and entrance was blocked. We climbed into the castle yard, used for caravan storage, and had a picnic there. A ladybird rested on a blade of grass nearby.

When we were done we kissed but I had a runny nose so I stopped it. We walked back to Annan as the sun fell, hoping to hitch a lift but being unsuccessful. We held hands and trod on and it was alright. In Annan I had a pint and she a whiskey, at two different pubs. I really started to like her. She lived in her broken down van at an outdoor activity centre on Loch Ken, where she also worked. A similar situation to me, so we understood each other. We understood the great beauty of living on natures doorstep, and yet the isolation that came with it.

We had a proper kiss on the station platform, and with warm hearts caught trains headed in opposite directions. The last bus from Penrith had long gone when I got there, so I trekked home in the dark, and the warmth in my heart remained.

Wandering what to do

I had four weeks before my trip to Australia and was counting the days. I was lacking variety in my work, and longed for warmer weather. Lisa would be too busy to meet again before my trip. So on my next day off I hiked away with my goretex coat full of food, water, a torch, a map and a knife. I was hoping to reach Helvellyn, the highest peak in the area, but the days were getting very short. I hiked past Aira Force toward Glenridding. I had mushroom tea in a jar and I drank it when I turned off the Ullswater Way and followed a sign post that pointed toward ‘Seldom Seen.’ It was there I saw red squirrels for the first time in England. Seldom Seen indeed. I continued up and up and the weather was good and I reached a pass and could see Helvellyn. But it was late so I turned in the direction of Sheffield Pike and reached the summit. And it was magic. The future the present and the past swirled around in my mind and my thoughts were turbulent.

I found my way down to Glenridding and bought some beers and waited for the bus. The moon was high and full and bright and reflected off the lake as I walked back to the Quiet Site. When I got back to my van I felt great and alive and wanted to do something fun but it was the quiet site so I quietly listened to music and went to bed.

Winter Droving, Camilla’s Birthday

The next day I got up late and had a beer. I knew it was Camilla’s birthday so I messaged her wishing her a happy one and she invited me to her party that night.

I caught the bus to Penrith where the Winter Droving festival was being celebrated. Once it was a harvest style festival where the farmers drove their livestock through the village. There were people in fairy tale costumes and troll outfits roaming around town and the whole thing had a very paganistic vibe. There were market stalls and I drank mulled wine and Irish cream and roved around. There were two stages with great local bands, reggae, dub, psych-rock, alt-rock, celtic folk, ska. When it was dark the parade started. Giant animal shaped lanterns were paraded by different crews of masqueraded men and women who had competed in various competitions throughout the day – such as the pint carrying competition. I drank bitter from a can and when it was over I caught the train to Manchester. At the station there was a woman with her friends ready for a night. Fake tan, short skirt, singlet. I had three layers, a shawl and an overcoat on. She was visibly shaking from the cold. I almost offered her my shawl, but the train came. I would lose my shawl later.

On the train I ate a lot of cheese and bread and nut and a wrap and some fruit and drank beer. Then I opened a mindfulness app and meditated for an hour. If I was to party, then I ought to prepare my body and my mind.

When I got off the train my mind was in the right place. This is the place it should be before any recreation. I’m here to have a good time. I walked to her neighbourhood and called her as I did not know her exact address as she’d moved. I waited in a bar with free wifi and drank soft drink for the sugar kick and hydration. Eventually she messaged me back and I walked to her house. Inside I met her house mates and her friends and some familiar faces from last time. I put a case of beer in the fridge and started on the separate six pack to bring me up to their level.

It was fun. Everything seemed fluid. I drank and ate tapas and talked with Kurt and Mattias and newcomers. A guy wandered around with a wig and a silk dressing gown. I sat with Andy for a while, a local who lived in the flat and watched the madness go by. People carried on. A racist neighbour yelled at complaining about the Spanish at the party. I talked and talked and everyone was sloshed.

Camilla offered me some MDMA she’d been given as a birthday present. It looked clear to me so I had a bump. The euphoria and love came. And the time jumps. I’m sitting chatting. I’m on the balcony with Kurt and Mattias, my arms around Camilla, her touchy as a joint is passed around. I’m with Liz, the half-American half-English with a shaved head and wig. There’s no beer left. I get out my bottle of emergency port. There’s another gay couple there with ket and I have a bump. And I was in that dream like universal connectedness state where everything felt alright and everything happens was happening and will happen for a reason it’s nature feel the comfort and relax and enjoy this moment. A group of us sit passing the bottle of port talking all sorts. We all love and appreciate each other even though most of us are relative strangers to one another. There’s pockets of Spanish speaking Spanish, Galicians speaking Galician, and English speaking English. And everyone speaking English.

It’s a small apartment. I’m tired. Everyone is gone but Liz and I and Camilla. Liz goes to sleep in Camillas room. Camilla is all but asleep on the couch trying to roll a joint. I tell her not to bother we’re both practically asleep as it is. I put my shawl over her and I join her on the couch, using my coat as a blanket. It is broad daylight when I wake. I stumble outside to find a toilet, delirious, and remember I’m in Manchester so I wander up the stairs to the bathroom then collapse back on the couch.

I wake and drink two litres of water and plug my phone in to charge with the help of a Galician man. When I wake again I am well rested and feeling surprisingly well. Still dreamy but very content and not feeling ill at all. I gather my things and when I go to leave Camilla is on the couch so I kiss her farewell on the head and she looks like she’s seen much better days and I know she must know where my shawl is which I can’t find but I’m happy for her to have it, may it serve her as well as it’s served me.

I get to the train station and sit on the platform while I wait for the train. A worker comes up and asks me if– “Are you ok man?” I say, “Yes, I am going to Penrith.” He tells me when the train is expected and says I just wanted to make sure you’re ok. I reassure him I’m fine. And I was. I’ve never felt this content with everything the day after a party. I guess I achieved my goal, to have a good time. It was nice of him to ask though, I’m glad there’s guys like him working at train stations.

In Penrith, I missed the last bus home, and trudged contentedly home for 3 hours. I was at peace as I walked over fields and through forests in the fading light, listening to ambient music.

Four weeks pass by peacefully. I go to the local pantomime, an English Christmas time tradition. Owen, the bar manager at The Quiet Site wrote and directed it. The play fit with Owen’s character, being a gay conservative man. In pantomine tradition is was full of double etendre, quirky costumes, lewd jokes, audience interaction and musical numbers. The play was set in Roman Britain and compared the resistance to Roman rule in with Brexit.

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waterkick15-blog · 6 years ago

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July 2018 Must-Read Books

A review of the 8 must-read books I finished in July of 2018.

Dear friend,

Since getting my reading glasses and solving the whole “I’m losing my mind because words are jumping around on the pages” problem, I’ve been taking advantage of reading ALL THE BOOKS. It feels SO good to be reading again!

I thought I’d do a quick roundup of some of my July must-read books. As always, if we aren’t friends on Goodreads click here to friend me there so we can share real time book recommendations with each other. It’s my favorite site to hang out on although my “to read” shelf is dangerously large. There are way too many good books out there and not enough time, am I right?

Since I have a lot of books to share, I’m just going to write a short review about each one, however if you want to know more about any of these must-read books just leave a comment and let me know. Let’s dive in, shall we?

How to Walk Away by Katherine Center

My rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

About this book: Margaret is a young twenty something woman living her best life. She has a wonderful fiancé, is getting ready to start her dream job and has a future that’s planned out down to the white picket fence. Things change when Margaret is in a plane crash that severely changes her way of life. Through her recovery, she is able to examine her relationships and life goals more closely and determine if the great track she was on is really the track she wants to be on in her life. This was a heartwarming story about true love, forever family and how sometimes the worst things in life aren’t actually so.

If, like me, you loved Katherine Center’s book Happiness for Beginners you’ll love How to Walk Away. You can add it to Goodreads here or purchase it on Amazon here.

Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

About this book: Ginny Moon is a 13 year old autistic girl who suffered terrible neglect and abuse from her birth mother. Ginny was eventually rescued and placed into foster care. After being shuffled from home to home, Ginny is finally placed in the loving care of a family who plans on adopting her. The only problem is, Ginny is hiding a terrible secret and because of it she can’t seem to let her past go. Ginny’s obsession with her past is threatening to ruin her future which is a chance Ginny can’t afford to take.

Ginny Moon is such a terribly sad yet heartwarming book that I think every parent and educator should read. You can add Ginny Moon to your Goodreads here or buy it on Amazon here.

Hum If You Don’t Know The Words by Bianca Marais

My Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

About this book: Oh, how I loved this book. Hum If You Don’t Know The Words takes place in 1976 apartheid South Africa. Robin is a 9 year old white girl who becomes orphaned after her parents are murdered (most likely as a consequence of her fathers racist behavior towards blacks). Living in a rural village many miles away is Beauty, a 50 year old, educated, black mother. Both Robin and Beauty live in an era of racial divide and come together when Beauty searches for her daughter who she believes left school to become part of the resistance. Through a turn of events, Beauty becomes Robin’s caretaker and despite their outward differences, the two develop a special bond that helps them navigate the terrifying world they live in.

Hum If You Don’t Know the Words is a beautiful book about the bond of family and friendship that goes beyond race and stereotypes. If you loved The Help you will love Bianca Marais’ debut novel. You can add Hum If You Don’t Know the Words to Goodreads here or buy it on Amazon here. (I just read that this might not be the last we hear from Robin and Beauty and I can’t wait!).

The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

About this book: Friends, I don’t even know where to start with this book and would desperately like to talk to anyone who has read it. It was one of the most moving yet bewildering books I’ve read in a very long time. I was sucked in by the story, moved by the writing, and left in a state of wonderment about what I just finished reading when I closed the book. I don’t even know what to say about it, so instead, I’ll just leave a short synopsis from their website here: “The Devil comes to Ohio…and is a 13-year-old boy. This devastating and original story delves into the depths of community, revenge, redemption, and where evil really resides. In the end, you must decide is this boy, who speaks in riddles and brings with him a heatwave unlike the town has ever seen, really the devil…or a victim.”

The Summer That Melted Everything is definitely not for everyone and is definitely not a book in my normal genre. Fans of Neil Gaiman and readers who are looking to suspend reality and be made to think deeply, will enjoy this book. You can add this book to your Goodreads shelf here or buy it from Amazon here.

Educated by Tara Westover

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

About this book: I love a good memoir. In fact if I had to pick a favorite genre memoir would be it. I especially love memoirs about life so outside the norm of my own, which is what Educated is. In this memoir, Tara Westover chronicles her life growing up completely off the grid in rural Idaho. Tara’s parents (especially her dad) were paranoid anti-government extremists Mormons who did not believe in sending their kids to school, avoided doctors and hospitals (even after severe, life threatening accidents, which were plenty) and attempted to be as self-sufficient as possible. While living at home Tara often experienced abuse by one of her brothers that went ignored by her parents. Tara’s version of the story chronicles her life growing up under these circumstances and eventually tells of her move away from the Mormon church as well as leaving Idaho and her family behind to get a proper education.

Educated reminded me some of Jame’s Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces (which is one of my favorite books). Some of the stories told seemed to be so extreme it was hard for me to imagine them actually being true. Tara is sticking by her story although several family members are not so happy about the light she has shone on them and are offering up different versions of their facts surrounding her upbringing. Either way, if you like a good memoir, definitely pick up Educated. You can add this book to your Goodreads shelf here or buy it on Amazon here.

A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

About this book: Stephanie and Emily are best friends who met because they both have young sons the same young age. One day, Emily asks Stephanie a simple favor…would she mind picking her son Nicky up from school and watching him for awhile? These kind of favors aren’t unusual between these two friends, so Stephanie happily obliges. What isn’t typical is Emily never shows back up to pick up her son. What happens next is a twisted and suspenseful story with lots of unexpected turns. What was fun for me (and made me cringe a little) is Stephanie is a blogger who blogs about the whole experience of searching for her missing best friend.

Fans of Gone Girl or The Last Mrs Parrish will like this one. Bonus, it’s currently free for the audio version on the Hoopla app (which is how I listened to it). A Simple Favor has been made into a movie starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively which I think is perfect casting. You can catch the movie in theaters in September.

You can add A Simple Favor to your Goodreads shelf here or buy it from Amazon here.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

My Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

About the book: I had the opportunity to visit Alaska during the summer of 2017 and reading this book made me miss it so much. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

The Great Alone begins with Ernt Allbright up and moving his wife Cora and his teenage daughter Leni to the wilderness of Alaska in the 1970’s. With little advanced planning, the Allbright’s have no idea what they are getting into with the harsh Alaskan winters and realize once they’ve arrived that they are completely unprepared for the new homesteading lifestyle they face. To make matters worse, Ernt Allbright is a Vietnam Vet who is fighting demons that remain from the war. He’s unhinged and mentally unstable, which makes the long winters even more difficult. The local neighbors try to help the Allbright’s out by donating livestock and food to help get their new life in Alaska started, but over time Ernt’s hostile, unpredictable and abusive ways tend to alienate the Allbright family from others who can help them.

Kristin Hannah is an incredible storyteller and it’s evident in the way she crafted this beautifully sad story of the Allbright family. This is definitely not a happy book, but one that will capture your attention from page one and continue to hold you captive until the very end. If you love Kristin Hannah’s other books, you will definitely love The Great Alone. You can add this book to your Goodreads shelf here or buy it from Amazon here.

The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

About the book: This is a true story about two very different teens who spend just a few minutes on a public bus at the same time each day and how their lives drastically change when one of them does something really stupid and ends up being charged with a hate crime. It’s a timely read about gender identity, racial tension and unexpected forgiveness.

This is an important read that will both break your heart and open your mind to the daily reality of those who might be different from us. You can add this book to your Goodreads shelf here or purchase it from Amazon here.

OK friends, I fell like I just dumped a ton of books on you, but hopefully out of these 8 must-read books you’ll find a couple that pique your interest.

When you get a moment leave a comment letting me know what must-read books you’ve been reading lately! In addition, if you’ve read any of the books I recommended today, let me know your thoughts about it. As always, check out all of my reading activity on Goodreads and follow my 2 Minute Book Chats on Instagram Stories for more of a live look at what books I’m reading.

All the best,

Kristen

For more must-read books, check out my past book review posts here.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in my July 2018 Must-Read Books post. This means if you choose to purchase a book through any of the affiliate links above, at no additional cost to you, I may receive a small commission. Thank you for purchasing your books through Dine & Dish…your support helps to keep me reading so I can continue to share more must-read books with you.

Source: https://dineanddish.net/2018/08/july-2018-must-read-books/

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dracolord1208 · 8 years ago

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The Scientist and The Revolutionary

Dracolord1208

AO3

Summary:

After years of disinterest, Tracer decides to us the recall and restart Overwatch. Two new members of Overwatch will have to deal with the hardships of being heroes in these uncertain times. A failed mad Vishkar scientist named Junkrat and a Revolutionary commander named Symmetra who brought balance to India will have to work together and bring Overwatch back to greatness.

“Are you sure about this Lena?”

Tracer had been looking at her computer screen for a while her cursor hovering over the Recall Program for some time. “The world needs more heroes I have to activate the recall.”

“But Overwatch was disbanded for good reasons. The team became too unstable. Teammates were seen as expendable and were often left for dead.”

“That’s not going to happen this time Emily. This time I am going to lead the team. We aren’t going just to be an army that only cares about winning no matter the cost. This time we are going to be heroes. We save everyone no matter the risk. No one gets left behind, no one will be forgotten.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“I love you too. Let’s get the team back.”

After Overwatch was disbanded the members of the team found themselves scattered around the world. Tracer finally decided that enough time had passed and that the world would have to be ready because this time Overwatch was going to be its best.

The recall fired this widespread message across the world.

“The world could always have more heroes. When you go to sleep, do you think that you have done enough or do you feel like there was more you could do? Well, Overwatch is back for that purpose. We are going to be the heroes that this world needs.”

Soon enough Overwatch was back, with old and new faces joining.

One of the first people who joined Overwatch was a mad scientist that was done being ostracized by his peers, Jamison Fawkes A.K.A Junkrat.

Junkrat had been working as a Vishkar scientist for as long as he could remember. Vishkar had provided relief to Australia during the omnic crisis allowing Australia to mount a defensive against the omnic threat. During this time Jamison was recruited as a scientist due to his interest in chemistry. Jamison took to chemistry like no one could have predicted. He loved studying the chaos of the artificial world. He found that he enjoyed figuring out how the random nature of DNA would react to different chemicals. In time Jamison discovered that radioactive materials provided him the results he desired.

Jamison’s inventions, however, were not held to the same standard as he was. Although Jamison was a brilliant scientist that produced more inventions in a month than other researchers did in a year they often were seen as failures. His project was often dismissed as unsellable or non-practical with a majority of then being thrown in the trash. With this amount of junk, he was producing he was given the unfortunate nickname of Junkrat.

Junkrat did, however, create his signature equipment during this time. Junkrat built his microwave projector, isotope turrets, and his mobile teleporter. Junkrat’s style of fighting was designed to literary microwave his victim’s from the inside out. Jamison also carried a scavenged teleporter from the shutdown omnium, on his back so he can teleport his allies to his location at any time.

Junkrat joined Overwatch due to Vishkar’s constant pressure on him. While all of his inventions were marvelous leaps in scientific advancements converting them into practical and sellable versions was often impossible or unreasonably expensive Vishkar would deny all of them. Junkrat only decided he had enough of it so he decided to quit and join Overwatch with the hope that his inventions would be appreciated.

Another new member that replied to the recall was the legendary revolutionary leader of the Junkers Satya Vaswani A.K.A Symmetra.

Satya Vaswani would have been another name lost to poverty in Hyderabad if it were not for the Omnic crisis. People say that the omnic’s only came to India twice. The first wave was a complete massacre the omnic’s aimed to bring down the government to weaken the nation then come back to destroy the survivors. The second wave of omnics didn’t know what hit them. A girl whose family was lost to the first wave quickly organized a new fighting force, to combat the second wave. At sixteen she had an army under her control and with her brutally efficient strategies the omnic’s were beaten out of India within ten years.

Satya created her army from the ground up. She started by organizing the poor around her to raid the remnants of the war zone. Her small group is earning the name the Junker’s. As time passed, the Junker’s grew their forces into an efficient and brutal strike force. Satya in time became to be known as Symmetra for her role in bringing balance to India.

Symmetra personally specialized in explosives. She was able to craft shape charges that would render identical symmetrical explosions every time. She carried a grenade launcher that she wielded like a surgeon, with each round finding is a destination to cause the most damage possible. Symmetra was known for her shaped charges that would allow for her to drastically change the flow of battle by opening new paths in the field. Satya also carried around her GBB (Good Bye Bomb), this explosive was able to bring down entire buildings in a second if she wished.

Symmetra responded to the recall because she believed in the organization’s purpose. While Symmetra did not agree with Overwatch’s method, she decided that there needs to be a force of hope. Having to lead, a war Symmetra knew better than anyone else that hope for the future was the most compelling motivation on the planet. This time, however, Symmetra would make sure that Overwatch stayed the symbol of hope that she always knew it could be.

“Welcome to the team Symmetra.” Tracer was the first person to greet Symmetra as she arrived at the base.

“Thank you. I look forward to working together with you.”

“It’s an honor to work alongside you as well. Your reputation proceeds you, your exploits and skills will be much appreciated.”

“Your reputation is also well known. Tracer the best pilot the world has ever seen with the use of your slipstream you can instantly change the flow of battle with its teleportation technology. The skill it takes to take in your surroundings instantly and to react accordingly is something that I wish to see someday.”

“Aw shucks, flattery will get you far, but unfortunately, I am already taken.” Tracer then proceeded to show off her ring. “My wife would not be that happy with me if I strayed from the path.”

“Shame.” Symmetra responded while feigning to be much more distraught than she was.

“So how about a tour?”

“That would be lovely.”

Tracer then showed Symmetra all over the base.

“And here we have the workshop. This will be where you can work on restocking on your supplies. Oh, Junkrat is in there right now why don’t we get you two introduced.”

Junkrat what kind of name is that? As they entered the workshop, they observed Junkrat working on something inside of a glass box with his arms through gloves that gave him access to its interior.

“Only 400,000 milliRem!? By my calculations, this isotope should be producing another 75,000 milliRem at the minimum.” Junkrat had moved to read the results of his experiment as the two approached. Junkrat scratched at the stubble on his chin as he lifted an arm in frustration. He then began to type furiously on his computer without even noticing the women standing behind him.

“Hey Junkrat how’s it going.”

Jumping in his seat, Junkrat responded to Tracer without looking up from his computer. “’Ello, Tracer thought I told yah to stop calling me Junkrat.”

“Aw come on we’re heroes now we need code names and cool stuff like that.”

“Whatever. So what can I help you with today?”

“Well, this here is Symmetra.”

“Hello.”

“Yip!” Junkrat had finally turned to see the two of them. As Junkrat had turned, he was meet with the vision of an angel. This woman before him was the most impressive thing he had ever seen in his life. This lady in front of him with her beautiful black hair, her dark skin, and her rudimentary prosthetic arm was perfect.

Don’t fuck this up. Junkrat began to repeat this mantra in his head a hundred times a minute.

“Hello. Ho, who, who, hello?” Junkrat cursed at himself for stuttering.

“Hello.”

“Who are you? I don’t think we have had the pleasure of meeting before.”

“We haven’t. My name is Symmetra.”

“Symmetra! As in the Symmetra. The Symmetra that at sixteen raised an army to fight the omnics in India and won.”

“Yes that is me, and it sounds like you know me already, it is unfair that I do not know anything about you.”

“Oh well uh, I am uh Junkrat. Well, my names Jamison, Jamison Fawkes. I don’t like the name Junkrat, but it is my call sign so feel free to use it.”

“Well, what to do around here Jamison.”

Suddenly filled with pride Jamison started to explain his role. “Well, I am the team, resident mad scientist. Hahaha. I work here to create new tech for the team to use. When I used to work for Vishkar, they would go out of their way to deny all sorts of my tech due to the cost of production. But here at Overwatch, I can make anything I want and as long as it’s useful someone will use it.”

Symmetra had since begun to go through the lab and was observing all of the different inventions that he had made. “You created all of this?”

“Yep.”

“Amazing. During the war, we had to scrap both sides of the war to get weapons and armor, if we had someone as adept as creating tools as you are we probably could have won even faster. This is very impressive.”

“No, you don’t have to flatter me.”

“No I mean it is very impressive. I can’t wait to work together.”

Junkrat felt his eyes begin to sting with the tale tail signs of tears. Jamison had wanted that level of recognition his entire life and this new woman standing in front of him had said everything like it was nothing. “I love you,” Junkrat whispered as he turned around and to cover his face with his arm.

“What was that?”

“Thank you, I am also looking forward to working together with you.”

“Have a good day.”

“You two.”

Symmetra and Tracer left the workshop and continued their tour.

“So Jamison, is he also taken?”

“Who that goof? No, why?”

“No reason, just thinking out loud.”

Notes:

Howdy. So I really like this universe, and I have a lot of ideas of what I can do with it, so there will probably be a second chapter at the minimum, and this could even be bigger depending on feedback. I hope you all have a good week and life. I love all of you. My Tumblr is http://dracolord1208.tumblr.com/

Series this work belongs to:

« Part 4 of the Draco's Junkmetra Week series

#symmrat week 2017 #junkmetra #symmrat #draco original #junkrat #symmetra #day 4 #Overwatch

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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The 2018 midterms could sweep Democrats back into power in Congress. But that might not be the only change: Young, mostly Democratic women running for Congress in districts across the country could also win and take their place in a body historically dominated by older men.

The effects of their involvement could reshape American politics far beyond 2018.

Already, their candidacies have not only transformed their own races, but they’ve also affected the broader political landscape. Twenty-nine-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset of Rep. Joe Crowley made her a political star. Abby Finkenauer, 29, a fundraising powerhouse, is gearing up to be the first woman elected to the House of Representatives from Iowa. Lauren Underwood, a 32-year-old registered nurse and former HHS adviser, is the first African-American woman to win a party nomination in her Illinois district.

And they’re running in some of the most competitive races: 31-year-old nonprofit executive Katie Hill is duking it out for a seat in California’s 25th Congressional District — a race that Cook Political Report rates as a toss-up.

For decades, younger women were less likely than young men to be involved in politics pretty much across the spectrum. Data showed they were less likely to run for office, contribute to campaigns, or contact public officials. (They were and continue to be more likely to vote, however.)

This year, some of these long-held patterns are changing. Surveys are finding that young women are increasingly more likely than young men to attend protests, donate to a political candidate, and — in some cases — launch campaigns of their own.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigns with Zephyr Teachout in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The young women running for office in 2018 — predominately as Democrats — aren’t only upending the demographic makeup of different contests; they’re also changing the kinds of messages and policies up for discussion.

The effects are likely to last past 2018: Once people get involved in the political process, they’re much more likely to stick around, suggesting that this year’s boost could transform an entire generation’s relationship with public office.

Across men and women of different age groups, young women are the ones who have disapproved of the presidency of Donald Trump the most, according to a number of polls. And this disapproval is translating to major political pushback.

Run for Something, a Democratic organization aimed at getting first-time candidates under 35 to run for elected office, heard from more than 15,000 people interested in running in the wake of the 2016 election, according to The Cut. Of that number, 60 percent were women.

Similarly, Emerge America, a group that provides training courses for Democratic women interested in running for office, has seen an 87 percent uptick in applications over the last year, according to the Christian Science Monitor. “We have never seen this kind of interest in running for office,” Emerge America’s Andrea Dew Steele told the CS Monitor.

According to Alexandra De Luca, a spokeswoman for Emily’s List — a Democratic group that helps train and support women candidates — half the participants at trainings that the organization has done since the presidential election have been under 45. Of the 40,000 women the group has heard from since 2016, roughly half of those have also been under 45, she notes.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, 10 women under 40 were named on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list this cycle, compared to just one who was on it in 2008.

This surge marks a sharp contrast with the current makeup of Congress.

Young women were among the protesters who pushed back against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in the wake of sexual assault allegations. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Only five millennials are currently elected to the House, including two women: Reps. Elise Stefanik and Tulsi Gabbard. As Bloomberg reports, if the composition of the House actually reflected the general population, there would be 97 millennial representatives.

The gender composition in both chambers is also still incredibly lopsided, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics. Congress remains heavily male, with women making up just 20 percent of the seats across both chambers.

“This place is stuck in another era, and it’s time to get it to the place where the rest of America is,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar told reporters following the confirmation vote on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

A host of millennial women — include some who are under 30 — are seeking to change this dynamic as they vie for office this fall. And much like Ocasio-Cortez — who noted that “women like me aren’t supposed to run for office” in one of her campaign videos — they’re showcasing their age, gender, race, and other facets of identity as a strength.

“They said the State House would be too tough for a young lady,” Finkenauer, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s First District, says in one of her campaign videos. “And then they said a ‘girl’ paying off her student loans wasn’t tough enough to beat a millionaire for Congress.”

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Underwood, too, has emphasized how African-American candidates rarely succeed in predominately white districts, like the one where she’s running — a trend that she’s seeking to change.

“For so long, African-Americans have only had elected representation from those traditional districts that are historically Black, maybe urban. But not all of us live in all those majority-minority districts,” she said in a Refinery29 interview, adding that she’s striving to challenge this assumption. “‘Hey! I grew up in this predominantly white area and my family has been here for years. I’m a leader and I have ideas,’” she said.

[embedded content]

Katie Hill of California — who is bisexual — has not shied away from discussing her sexual orientation, either. “A lot of people told me I should be quiet about being bisexual and not say anything, but for me this is a part of my identity,” she told ThinkProgress. “We have a Republican Congress that wants to restrict LGBTQ rights and a Supreme Court that could overturn gay marriage.”

The growing number of women under 35 running for Congress coincides with a bigger shift among millennial women, who accelerated sharply to the left around the 2016 election, according to data from Pew.

In January 2017, just months after Trump’s election, a group of women activists organized what would become one of the largest protests in US history. The Women’s March ended up drawing more than four million people across the globe and became a symbolic act of solidarity by many who took issue with Trump’s presidency. It also kicked off a wave of grassroots activism across the country that’s continued to reverberate in the months since.

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and MTV found that 48 percent of young women said they had signed a petition for an issue they support, versus 39 percent of young men. Twenty-five percent of young women also said they donated to a campaign or cause, compared to 18 percent of young men. And 22 percent of young women said they attended a public rally or demonstration, compared to 16 percent of young men.

Protesters walk during the Women’s March in January 2017. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Young women are also more excited about voting than young men: A survey conducted by PRRI and the Atlantic in July found that 56 percent of women ages 18 to 34 said they were either definitely or probably planning to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, compared to 47 percent of men in the same age bracket.

Relative to older age groups, however, younger voters are still seen as much less engaged at the ballot box. The PRRI/Atlantic survey also found that only 28 percent of young adults were absolutely certain they would vote in the 2018 election, compared to 74 percent of seniors.

This spike in political engagement could mean that young women will play a pivotal role in fueling a so-called “blue wave” this November, a raft of wins that could help Democrats regain control of the House. What’s more, they’re also part of a voting bloc that’s more likely to back women for Congress.

“I think the blue wave is a blue swell and we will have to work hard for it,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “In the final analysis, the key vote may well be the turnout of millennial, young women. They are voting very Democratic and very much for women candidates.”

But young women aren’t just shaking up age and gender dynamics. They’re shifting the kinds of conversations that are taking place, including by emphasizing health care and abortion rights, both issues that have had an outsized effect on women’s lives.

Underwood, a former Obama adviser who helped implement the Affordable Care Act, cites incumbent Rep. Randy Hultgren’s vote against the ACA as a key reason she decided to run. Ocasio-Cortez has catapulted the idea of Medicare-for-all further into the spotlight. And Finkenauer has championed the need to move toward universal health coverage, while criticizing a six-week abortion ban that the Iowa governor recently signed into law.

De Luca noted that many of these policy conversations can be further informed by personal experiences with issues like reproductive healthcare. “Democrats in general this cycle are laser-focused on sharing personal health care stories,” she said.

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Research has repeatedly shown that increasing the number of women in Congress has a substantive impact on how policy is crafted. As Vox’s Sarah Kliff reports, women lawmakers are more likely to back legislation that specifically benefits women. Researchers have also found that a woman legislator passed twice as many bills as a male one, on average, in a recent session of Congress.

In addition to their policy achievements, women taking on high-profile positions of power also alter public perceptions regarding the kinds of roles women can take on, spurring others to consider pursuing higher office down the road.

By dialing up their participation in politics, young women are setting up a self-perpetuating phenomenon that ensures even more women will get involved in the future.

Original Source -> Young women are one of the most potent political forces of 2018

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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dawnajaynes32 · 7 years ago

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7 Branding Trends from FINE, an Agency for the Digital Age

Before you tackle your next branding project, up your expertise with these insights from FINE, a brand agency for the digital age that connects brands with customers in the ways people connect today.

1. Back to Sensory Basics

“So much of our world is consumed by tech,” says Josh Kelly, managing partner and chief strategist at FINE. “We all spend our days engrossed in screens, pushing buttons. We see more and more a need and desire for brands to engage non-visual senses offline, like touch, taste, sound and smell, to stand out.” That could mean anything from considering how to orchestrate all the brand touchpoints of a place-based experience to remembering “old-fashioned” tools like print or highly refined promotional schwag.

“For one of our highest tech clients—Cloudera, a company that sells its brand and its wares to chief technology officers to solve the biggest data challenges of our day—we found success with unique, personalized and extravagant direct mail rather than falling back on ubiquitous digital outreach to tell the story,” Kelly says. He adds that when it comes to FINE’s hospitality clients, the team thinks about those moments when people put down their phone, interact with people, pick something up, or see/hear/touch/smell something they’ll forever associate with a brand.

Kelly says they also see this happening in retail. “Many brands shifted their in-store experiences to accommodate flashy tech and digital screens—but forgot to consider the larger impact those tactics would have on the guest experience and long-term relationship. Now we see retailers scaling back on tech and humanizing their environments.”

Brand strategist Emily Buchholtz adds that at a brand experience level, they’re interested in tech that adds value to the relationship and doesn’t distract from it. “Brands must consider all inflection points within the guest journey to understand which demand tech, and which are best served by tapping other senses.”

2. Branding from the Inside Out

Principal and creative director Kenn Fine believes that increasingly, brands do best when they think inside out. “When we begin an engagement, we always start with the core of why the brand exists and what it has to offer to those who will engage with it,” he says. “What is the experience and how does that fit or drive the brand? It’s given us phrases like ‘Brand Is Operations,’ or ‘Deep Branding.'”

This process also often aligns consumer branding and employer branding. “We also say that increasingly ‘Employer Branding is Good Branding,'” Fine says, noting that the messages you use to lure and guide employees are often the same as the ones you use to lure and guide customers—as they should be. For this reason, some of the best brand work today is going into the key challenge of shaping companies through hiring and training the people most responsible for creating the product and experience.

“Each employee needs to understand the larger vision and have a clear sense of purpose in bringing that vision to life,” Fine says. “Developing a methodology and training systems to empower is what makes people want to work there, and what helps them create customer experience.

“We found this with Ten-X, a Google-funded real estate venture, where the company’s vision of ‘changing the state of real estate’ was the key selling point to prospective employees, customers and even investors alike.” Fine points out that this is apparent too in the agency’s hospitality work. At Kimpton, for example, the term “ridiculously personal experiences” inspired people, and McKibbon Hospitality rallied around the idea “Hospitality Begins With Me.” All joined by a mission, vision and shared purpose.

3. Quiet is Speaking Louder

“From a brand and design perspective, more and more of our work is about stripping away layers to allow very simple messages, images, names, experiences, and impressions to come into full relief,” Kelly says. Of course, this has always been somewhat true, but as new customers like millennials come along, Kelly notes that making things that seem less noisy and busy and brand-y is becoming more important. “We’ve even used the phrase ‘un-name’ and ‘un-brand’ to describe what we do in helping to rethink brands. Removing artifice, being simple and honest, creating whitespace, minimizing visual and textual clutter.”

Kelly notes that they’ve observed this trend with their business-to-business client M3, which is simplifying complex business services, and with their client Kimpton Seafire Resort + Spa, which offers respite from the noisy commercial world as a core benefit.

“Consumers are constantly inundated with distractions,” Buchholtz adds. “Brands are competing for attention and only causing more noise and anxiety. When everyone else is shouting, we see tremendous opportunity in a personal whisper. There is power in operating at a lower volume that cuts through the noise and adds simplicity versus chaos.”

4. The Un-Commodification of Design

Digital creative director Tsilli Pines suggests that we consider more closely the commodification of design in the digital space and beyond. “It’s happening through the proliferation of tools and platforms—like, Squarespace, Virb, 99 Designs or even Wix—that enable a baseline of visual standards.” she says. “These companies sell accessibility. And that’s really important.” But what it means is that designers will increasingly focus on the aspects of their work that cannot be commoditized: custom interactions, insight-driven design, content strategy/IA—not just grids, type, color and images, but true solutions to your actual brand challenges.

5. Honest Branding

Fine says that we’ll likely see the continuation of “honest” branding as organizations confront what they really stand for and craft their brand in line with that to build engaged and dedicated communities. “Look for more brands bundling activism of some kind with their product or service—connecting with meaningful issues that matter to their customers, and/or avoiding socially charged negative associations that disconnect with their audience—to gain meaningful traction. More than ever, it won’t be enough to try to be all things to all people. Brands will now need to examine and reflect their ethics on a continual basis.”

Buchholtz adds that there is a key consumer trend that tracks with this: the idea that we live in a “post-truth” world. “There is a lot of information but little credibility,” she says. “We are constantly questioning the motive and have developed a skepticism around individuals, platforms and authorities who used to hold clout.” As traditional role models and cultural perspectives struggle to express the truth, she notes, brands have a unique opportunity and play a larger role in upholding a sense of truth and a sense of values with which people can align.

6. Being Useful is More Valuable than Ever

Kelly believes that the tone of branding will continue to shift toward service and utility, and that sophisticated and tech-empowered consumers will increasingly avoid sales pitches and seek answers in a world of noise and misdirection. “This plays out in a number of ways, like renewed focus on careful and succinct IA in digital, brand use of wayfinding symbols and visual languages in lieu of clever logos, a paring back of content strategy focus, and an emphasis on product and service delivery as the impetus for brand communication,” he says. adding that as screens and attention spans shrink, we’ll have less room for fluff and bravado and more need to be helpful, useful, and humble.

“It’s about relevance,” he says. “Brands who understand their consumer on a deeper level can articulate a narrative that will resonate with them across myriad moments in their day and across the trajectory of their life. Then, they can meticulously design touchpoints and interactions that punctuate that narrative in a way that is truly meaningful and relevant.”

7. Commoditizing Disruption

Design director Mehran Azma sees a sort of gentrification within brand design in metropolitan spaces. “For years, the buzzword has been ‘disruption,'” he says. “But now we’re seeing the reversal of this trend with brands that want to (and have the tools to) fit in amongst competitors and peers, ideally unnoticed at first to allow for time to assume pre-establishment to the consumer.”

Azma observes that an overall modernized aesthetic has become the norm, with the rise of “hipster logo” DIY kits appearing in just about every design-oriented blog or showcase site. “It’s paved the way for story-less brands for dispassionate business owners less interested in cultivating community and more focused on profit margins,” he says. “Granted, this isn’t the first time (or likely last time) this shift has occurred (see: just about every 80’s mini-mall)—but it is striking at a time when social media serves as a vehicle to extend blasé brands into a greater socio/eco-sphere.”

He notes that in the past, marketing initiatives were fairly localized for small to medium–sized businesses. “Now we live in a boundless commercial frontier, and as a result we’re being inundated with logarithmic advertisements catering to data that doesn’t correlate to our actual sense of ethics, just our browser-history. The end result is an influx of brand everything, and with it comes a proliferation of identities that are drummed up without any actual story backing. They take no consideration of context, and appropriate whatever is on-trend recklessly.”

To counter this, he says, the team at FINE develops brands, like Kimpton, from the ground-up, taking the time to understand the core values of the organization, partnering with them in all avenues of strategy and execution, and then extending that across all associated initiatives.

What do you think? Have you observed any of these branding trends within your own organization? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @HOWbrand.

The competition celebrating innovative and effective logo design & identity applications is accepting entries.

work by past HOW Logo Design Awards winner wkrm design

ENTER TODAY!

The post 7 Branding Trends from FINE, an Agency for the Digital Age appeared first on HOW Design.

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brewdogusa-blog · 7 years ago

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Meet The Team!

Just a short year ago, we had only two employees at BrewDog in Ohio. Fast forward to today, and we have over 100 team members across the business in the offices and taproom.

With the first kegs ready to fly out of the warehouse next week, our team has recently grown at a lightning fast pace with new Sales, Accounting, and CEO roles having been filled.

Interested in joining the Good Ship? Check out our vacancies here!

Mark Frame - Ohio Market Manager

Mark comes from a local distributor with six years of industry experience and many more of coaching/team building practice. As the Ohio Market Manager, he gives our city specialists the tools they need to blow shit up in Ohio. Whether that is distributor communication, production forecasting, advice on new challenges, or simply motivating them to achieve the impossible- he’s up for the challenge!

Of the challenges he faces working here, Mark says, “BrewDog moves quickly and you need to be able to adapt fast to survive. In this type of atmosphere, you can get worn out, which is when you need your peers to be revitalized. We have an amazing team of people who are all excited to create new ideas, push this company in new directions, and seriously blow shit up together. Wherever there is a challenge, we find a solution.” Mark’s go-to beer at the end of a busy day? “Punk IPA. In the sun, listening to something loud, my dog has a tennis ball. That’s my #PunkOClock.”

Olivia Siniff - Columbus Sales Specialist

After having worked in bartending for a few years, Olivia heard about BrewDog and loved what she heard about the company, and thus began her journey to work for us! As a Columbus Sales Specialist, she drives our craft brews into different bars, taprooms, and restaurants around the city. A mere two weeks in, she’s already locked in some awesome tap takeovers and is looking forward to organizing more beery events! Olivia is a big fan of dogs, and in her free time enjoys spending time with her own with a pint of Elvis Juice. Taylor Harvey - Columbus Sales Specialist

Taylor’s journey to BrewDog began in a coffee shop, where she became passionate about discovering the best coffee and what great coffee could be. Regularly checking ColumbusUnderground’s site for the latest beery events, she happened upon a BrewDog tasting before the Ohio brewery was built. “I’ve been obsessed with local breweries and their successes in Columbus. This will be my first time really delving into all the parts and pieces of what makes an awesome brewery, and I can’t wait!” Outside of work, Taylor loves spending time outside with her dogs and geeking out over coffee. Emily Yax - Key Account Activator

Emily’s craft beer journey began in 2013 as a server at a local bar and restaurant called Pies & Pints. With the Cicerone Certified Beer Server exam being mandatory at this establishment, she found her interested piqued in the craft beer industry. After graduating from OSU in December 2016, she joined BrewDog as a server in DogTap, and has just recently joined the Sales team! What a typical day look like as the Key Account Activator? “I spend my days calling off-premise accounts and ensuring that our displays are looking 100%. I will also be responsible for spreading the good word that is BrewDog all over the city and state. I can’t wait to start sharing our amazing beer with the Ohio market. Our potential to #BlowShitUp is limitless!” In her free time, Emily loves running. The longer the run, the better! She’s run three half marathons, one full marathon, and is planning on running another half in October. “At the end of a busy work day, running is my therapy- and the only reason I can eat pizza and drink beer on a regular basis!” Her go-to BrewDog beer is an Elvis Juice, saying she just can’t beat that crisp, refreshing grapefruit flavor.

T Robinson - CEO

T’s been a fan of craft beers since she started bartending when she moved to Columbus in 2003. Before BrewDog, she founded and built a few different technology companies such as Print Syndicate, an e-commerce company focused on social identities that are unserved when it comes to product- introverts, alien believers, feminists, and geeks of all kinds, with LookHuman being the best known. TicketFire is also a popular mobile app that allows you to turn a paper ticket into a digital one, so you can easily use or transfer it. On her journey to BrewDog T said, “James reached out to his network in Columbus for help in the search for the US CEO. A friend of mine suggested that James and I meet. BrewDog’s belief in blowing shit up, relentless focus on beer, and desire to create the best place to work in the world is extremely appealing to me. After many conversations with James, Martin, and several people on the US and Global teams, we all agreed it was an ideal fit.” As the Managing Director, a lot of T’s time is spent understanding all aspects of the team and business, to help set goals for where we want to be in the next year, two years, and five years. “Most of my job is working on figuring out how to leverage the awesome talent on our team to make us better and faster every day. Another big part of my job is telling our story both internally and externally, and making sure that everyone on the team knows what’s going on and what’s ahead.” T’s biggest accomplishment since joining the team has been passing her first Cicerone exam, saying “It was super exciting for me to pass my Cicerone Certified Beer Server right away. Another goal I think is really important is making us feeling like ONE BrewDog - a totally unified team. I think we’re already celebrating more, and it feels like we’re winning, which it should. I am really motivated about all of us working toward a clear set of goals, and growing BrewDog USA into the epic business we all know it will be!” Outside of work, T geeks out about trap shooting (shooting clay targets with a shotgun, reading, traveling, kayaking, smoking meats, legos, and puzzles. Her go-to beverage after a long day? “After a busy day, a Punk IPA feels amazing. If it’s been a particularly hard day though, I might have a bourbon or a gin + tonic.” Give them a shout on Twitter and welcome them to the team!

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caveartfair · 8 years ago

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20 Artists to Watch at The Armory Show

As The Armory Show opens its 23rd edition, 209 galleries from 30 countries across the globe have converged on Manhattan’s west side. The fair’s 2017 installment boasts not only roomier aisles and bigger booths, but an increase to the number of galleries in the Presents section, which offers solo or duo artist presentations by young dealers, and a revitalized Focus section, bringing in new or rarely seen work curated by Jarrett Gregory.

With these changes come an abundance of artists on the rise. These range from young German photographer and Andreas Gursky protégé Louisa Clement, to first-time Venice Biennale participants Fiete Stolte, a conceptual artist based in Berlin, and Achraf Touloub, a multimedia artist from Morocco—to name just a few. Here, in no particular order, we highlight 20 of the fair’s most promising newcomers.

Shannon Bool

B. 1972, Comox, British Columbia • Lives and works in Berlin

Daniel Faria Gallery • Presents Section, Booth P9

Kadel Willborn • Galleries Section, Booth F2

Portrait of Shannon Bool in her Berlin studio by Wolfgang Stahr for Artsy.

Bool is an encyclopedia when it comes to the evolution of the female mannequin. She draws from this idiosyncratic knowledge when creating her spellbinding photograms and tapestries, which look at the fetishization of the female form.

One tapestry, which comes to The Armory Show straight from the Biennale de Montreal, depicts a mannequin “gazing” into a mirror. The many reflections of the plastic body, which stretch deep into the background of the composition, allude to the psychological pressures that often result from the idealized female bodies that fill boutiques and fashion ads.

“A running theme in my work is the exploration of the psychological and cultural depth of surface,” says Bool from her studio in the Treptow neighborhood of eastern Berlin. For the artist, this refers not only to the veneers of her female subjects, but also to the surfaces of historical paintings and architectural landmarks. She furthers this investigation by embedding into her work allusions to treatments of the female body by Modernist architect Adolf Loos, designer Charlotte Perriand, and painter Pablo Picasso. One recent tapestry references the courtesans who populate Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907).

In a series of photograms also on view at The Armory Show, titled “Brides,” the artist covers the silhouettes of mannequins with patterns made from artifacts (African masks and fertility deities, for instance) similar to those that inspired Cubists and Surrealists. It was in their era that the first mannequins were made, a time when consumerism was geared toward women “by making not realistic forms but projective forms, so that a woman would enter into a fantasy to go shopping,” Bool explains. Not much has changed, and Bool’s work in turn reads as searingly relevant.

Louisa Clement

B. 1987, Bonn, Germany • Lives and works in Bonn and Düsseldorf

WENTRUP • Galleries Section, Booth 704

Avatar 12, 2016. Louisa Clement Wentrup

Avatar 14, 2016. Louisa Clement Wentrup

By zooming in on mundane objects with her iPhone camera, Clement captures close crops of the more surreal aspects of contemporary culture, including color and form. Her most recent photographs home in on the translucent limbs and contours of inanimate mannequins; but through Clement’s lens, they look more like slippery, free-thinking digital “Avatars,” as the series being shown at The Armory Show is titled. In this way, the young photographer, who studied under the acclaimed artist Andreas Gursky at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, cleverly nods to the virtual personas we construct through social media and online virtual worlds like Second Life. Berlin’s WENTRUP will also host its first solo show of Clement’s work this fall.

Martin Basher

B. 1979, Wellington, New Zealand • Lives and works in New York

Anat Ebgi • Presents Section, Booth P26

TBT, 2017. Martin Basher Anat Ebgi

An ideal fit for an art fair setting, Basher’s works toy with art’s role as commodity through installations that riff on the aesthetics and accoutrements of retail displays. His best-known paintings are sleek, minimal canvases filled with gradations of vertical stripes, though he’s also been known to create photorealistic visions of tranquil beach sunsets. The paintings double as backdrops in Basher’s installations, which often revolve around shelving units or plinths topped by consumer goods. Drawing attention to the psychology and visual strategies of consumer-driven merchandising, Basher challenges viewers to see the act of purchasing art as more than an impulse buy.

Zohra Opoku

B. 1976, Altdöbern, Germany • Lives and works in Accra, Ghana

Mariane Ibrahim Gallery • Presents Section, Booth P2

In Bob’s footsteps, 2017. Zohra Opoku Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

one of me, 2017. Zohra Opoku Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

German-Ghanaian artist Opoku employs African textile traditions to craft layered portraits of herself and others. This often involves screen-printing photographs onto fabric, then stitching them together or embroidering over their surfaces. In other series, she has created sculptural installations out of second-hand clothes, and photographic self-portraits in which her face is obscured behind various plants and vegetation—in each instance examining modes of identity and disguise. At Mariane Ibrahim’s Armory Show booth, she’ll show new works that feature screen-printed photographs of her siblings, woven together into textured narratives suggesting the human culture embedded within rich histories of pattern and cloth.

Nevine Mahmoud

B. 1988, London • Lives and works in Los Angeles

M+B • Presents Section,Booth P6

Portrait of Nevine Mahmoud in her Los Angeles studio by Emily Berl for Artsy.

Two years ago, Mahmoud carved an erotic peach from a slab of stone in what would ultimately spark a daring new body of work for the young sculptor. This week, in her debut at The Armory Show, the series culminates in a collection of handcarved forms that reference elements of the human body—including a lone tongue, a pair of lips, and a single breast.

“They’re disembodied body parts; parts without a whole,” says Mahmoud from her studio in a converted garage in eastern Los Angeles. Inspired by the fragmented bodies in works by Louise Bourgeois and Alina Szapocznikow, and the unsettling quality that can accompany even their most erotic or attractive forms, she laces beautiful shapes with strange, dark undertones. Though sensual, the sculptures are fashioned in hard stone and often affixed with metal and mechanical parts. “I’m always hoping to find a form that sits somewhere between familiar and bodily—something that you would recognize as your own, but something that’s also alienated,” she says.

The sculptures on view have been carved from alabaster, sun-yellow calcite, and opaque pink and white marble, using a traditional process that’s a departure from the plaster casting technique she employed for her MFA work at the University of Southern California. A particularly fruitful stone-gathering mission once led her to a stone-carving studio in Northern California, where she found a mentor in an older female sculptor. “That’s kind of how I’ve learned everything that I know,” she says of this new chapter of work, the next iteration of which will be on view in her fall solo with Los Angeles gallery M+B.

Amna Asghar

B. 1984, Detroit • Lives and works in New York

Harmony Murphy Gallery • Focus Section, Booth F4

Vital Signs, 2014. Amna Asghar Harmony Murphy Gallery

Restless, 2016. Amna Asghar Harmony Murphy Gallery

Disney villains, Pakistani pin-ups, and long lines of Arabic text: These are just a few of the subjects that populate Asghar’s canvases, which examine identity and the exoticization of the other. The Detroit-born artist, who is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent, draws from historical and pop-cultural imagery to create a visual map of her identity—one that mingles Eastern and Western social mores, beauty ideals, and mythologies. Tensions between the varying cultures emerge in the juxtaposition of the English, Arabic, and Urdu languages, as well as in the celebration and antagonization of the Eastern body in Pakistani beauty product ads and American cartoons, respectively.

Kathleen Ryan

B. 1984, Santa Monica, California • Lives and works in Los Angeles

Josh Lilley • Galleries Section, Booth 836

Work by Kathleen Ryan. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Ryan’s striking sculptures merge the imagery of Ancient Greece with modern-day materials. In recent work, clusters of luscious, Dionysian grapes are supersized, crafted from polished grey concrete and linked by stainless-steel chains. A laurel wreath is cast in shining pewter and placed carefully atop an old metal bucket. A giant clamshell evoking Botticelli’s Birth of Venus contains a cream-colored bowling ball in place of a pearl. Her work playfully elevates urban cast-offs, like the yellow stair railing on view at The Armory Show, which boldly reimagines its place in a grander pantheon of art history.

Ben Gocker

B. 1979, Rochester, New York • Lives and works in Tupper Lake, Adirondacks, New York

P.P.O.W • Galleries Section, Booth 909

Fuzzy Future, 2017. Ben Gocker P.P.O.W

Newspaper Sweater, 2016. Ben Gocker P.P.O.W

With an MFA in poetry and a former day job as a librarian, Gocker has a way of imbuing his art with words and books. In his last solo exhibition at P.P.O.W, the artist debuted assemblages adorned with fragments of old books and maps he’d scavenged from a public library dumpster, along with a collection of drawings on the books’ yellowed pages. At The Armory Show, he presents large-scale wall works inspired by online word searches and children’s puzzle books. Forged from scraps he collected during a two-year stint as a librarian in Coney Island, they evoke not only a specific time in Gocker’s life, but also the nostalgic nature of discarded objects themselves.

Achraf Touloub

B. 1986, Casablanca • Lives and works in Paris

Plan B • Galleries Section, Booth 202

Portrait of Achraf Touloub in Paris by Fred Lahache for Artsy.

The year 2017 is shaping up to be a pivotal one for Touloub, whose practice investigates the role of traditions in shaping the global society that we live in today. This week, the Moroccan, Paris-based artist shows work at Berlin- and Cluj-based gallery Plan B’s booth at The Armory Show; and in May, he’ll unveil a new project as part of the 57th Venice Biennale, “Viva Arte Viva,” curated by the Centre Pompidou’s Christine Macel.

At the fair, Plan B is showing three of Touloub’s sprawling, copper ink drawings. From afar, the dense compositions may recall objects that have historically communicated information through logic-based methods: text-laden scrolls, labyrinthine elevation maps, or data visualizations. As one approaches the intricate and visually stunning works, however, their undulating forms unravel into a purely graphic image that denies any communication of information in a traditional sense.

Touloub is interested in the ways in which our rapid technological progress has devalued the methods—whether written words, symbols, or images—by which we have communicated information in the modern era. And he wants to propose an alternative way in which images can insert themselves into this degradation of meaning.

In works like his “sight scenario – horizon” series on view at the fair, he proposes that we might stop communicating by directly representing various concepts and instead communicate on a sensory level. The works aren’t meant to be read or explained, but rather experienced.

Through that contemplative process, Touloub’s work considers the possibility that images and symbols provide alternative, nimble methods of expression—ones that, perhaps, aren’t as easily manipulated or misunderstood as language. As an artistic statement—or a method of dissecting today’s world—it’s an admirable effort.

Jill Mulleady

B. 1980, Montevideo, Uruguay • Lives and works in Los Angeles

Gaudel de Stampa • Presents Section, Booth P33

Riot IV , 2016. Jill Mulleady Gaudel de Stampa

Coming and going, 2016. Jill Mulleady Gaudel de Stampa

Mulleady’s canvases teem with magicians, raiders, bruisers, and hedonists. The world she paints makes no bones about life’s pitfalls, from abuse to alcoholism, but is given levity through flourishes of humor. In one work, four women from different eras each wrestle with demons. One battles a monster; another, who the artist notes resembles Melania Trump, is chained under a T.V. While informed by numerous art-historical precedents, from Martin Kippenberger to Otto Dix, Mulleady’s work deals in decidedly contemporary issues, namely the isolation induced by technology and luxury. Museums and galleries have taken note: She just closed a solo at Freedman Fitzpatrick, and she’s prepping for another at Kunsthalle Bern, opening this May.

Guthrie Lonergan

B. 1984, Los Angeles • Lives and works in Los Angeles

Honor Fraser • Galleries Section, Booth 715

Guthrie Lonergan, Babies’ First Steps, 2005. Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser.

Installation view of Guthrie Lonergan, Internet Group Shot, 2006. Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser.

Lonergan uses the language and culture of the internet for his often humorous work, which frequently itself exists online. He’s transcribed the intro riff of HBO GO videos for guitar, which can now be found on ultimate-guitar.com. He created an M&M avatar—like the Microsoft Word paperclip of old—that spewed artspeak on the homepage of the Hammer Museum as part of the institution’s “Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only” exhibition last year. Among his videos on view at The Armory Show, Babies’ First Steps (2005) compiles digital home videos of that joyous moment, highlighting how an intimate milestone becomes consumable fodder for all to see when shared online.

Ana Roldán

B. 1977, Mexico City • Lives and works in Zürich

Instituto de Visión • Presents Section, Booth P8

Displacements #14, 2012. Ana Roldán Instituto de Visión

Displacements #16, 2012. Ana Roldán Instituto de Visión

Roldán was born in Mexico, and, despite a move to Switzerland in 2000, the politics and culture of Latin America still suffuse her practice. At The Armory Show, a selection of prints from the artist’s 2012 “Displacement” series is based on photographs from the catalogue of a 1970s exhibition that explored the representation of death in Mexico since antiquity. Roldán has fractured and rearranged images of stone sculptures, suggesting the various ways in which we break down history and rebuild it based on our individual influences. The artist moves between sculpture, performance, and photography, and often references language in her work—from printed text to inscrutable, neon-lit squiggles.

Fiete Stolte

B. 1979, Berlin • Lives and works in Berlin

albertz benda • Platform Section, 13

Portrait of Fiete Stolte in his Berlin studio by Wolfgang Stahr for Artsy.

Stolte is off to a promising start in 2017. Just months before his work heads to the 57th Venice Biennale, where it’s been tapped for Christine Macel’s “Viva Arte Vida” exhibition, the German conceptual artist opened a solo at albertz benda’s project space, his first in the United States. Coinciding with that exhibition, the gallery is presenting a number of Stolte’s works at The Armory Show. This includes an interactive photo booth from which fairgoers can take away passport-sized portraits for $100 apiece.

The installation, Eye (2014–2017), is part of curator Eric Shiner’s Platform section, for which large-scale projects and installations have been dotted across the fair. No ordinary photo booth, Stolte’s machine is equipped with a carefully arranged camera and mirror that allow viewers to capture their own silhouettes as reflected onto their pupils. “The project stages the eye as a mirror to the world,” says Stolte from his studio in Berlin. As the artist affectionately recalls, the project was inspired some three years ago while looking into the eyes of his wife.

At the gallery’s booth, Stolte will also show two pieces from a series called “Smoke (after Still Life with Candle).” In them, the artist creates sinuous neon wall works that are modeled after smoke rising from blown-out candles, which he captured in an earlier series of polaroids. It’s a meditation on time, like much of the artist’s work, which subverts, manipulates, and transforms how humans conceive of and organize their world.

Woody Othello

B. 1991, Miami • Lives and works in Berkeley, California

Jessica Silverman Gallery • Galleries Section, Booth 815

Woody Othello, I Can See You But I Don’t Hear You, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Woody Othello, Faceless Face Jug, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Othello creates cartoonish ceramic sculptures of mundane objects, but with a twist. The artist instills in his sculptural forms a human quality, such as in I Can See You But I Don’t Hear You (2016), a large ceramic telephone whose sunken form and wilted receiver make the object look weary and fragile. In other works, Othello has added surrealist additions to objects—a fingernail to a teapot spout, for instance, or a pair of ears to a jug. With characteristic wit and irreverence, the artist has also made more grotesque works, such as his wacky human figures that he calls “festers,” or his paintings composed of mashed potatoes and food coloring.

Caroline Achaintre

B. 1969, Toulouse, France • Lives and works in London

Arcade • Presents Section, Booth P24

MadCap, 2017. Caroline Achaintre Arcade

Ibis, 2015. Caroline Achaintre Arcade

Whether peering out from giant, tufted-wool wall hangings, painted ceramic sculptures, watercolors, or ink drawings, it’s hard to miss the mask-like faces in Achaintre’s work. Drawing from German Expressionism, primitivism, and post-war British sculpture—plus a score of other influences, spanning sci-fi to carnival masks to horror films—she’s developed a cast of works that are receiving growing acclaim. This momentum was cemented with her first major survey, at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, last fall. Don’t miss her fantastic textile wall sculptures at The Armory Show—like MadCap (2017), with a gaping hole for an eye—which are hand-tufted in wool, a material she’s mastered over more than a decade.

Dorian Gaudin

B. 1986, Paris • Lives and works in New York

DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM • Galleries Section, Booth 400

Nathalie Karg Gallery and DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM • Platform Section, 7

Missing you, 2016. Dorian Gaudin Nathalie Karg Gallery

This should be an eclipse, 2017. Dorian Gaudin DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM

Following his first three solo shows in 2016, Gaudin is in the throes of another busy year. Fresh from opening his first institutional solo at Palais de Tokyo in February, he’ll present a large sculpture that propels itself back and forth along a 20-foot stretch as part of curator Eric Shiner’s Platform section at The Armory Show. Whether expressed in sprawling kinetic installations or warped metal wall sculptures, Gaudin’s work dissects our reliance on and fetishization of technology. Presented in a time when scientists and engineers are making great headway in expanding machine intelligence, this sculptor’s structures seem to have minds of their own.

Joshua Citarella

B. 1987, New York • Lives and works in New York

Carroll / Fletcher • Presents Section, Booth P23

Portrait of Joshua Citarella in New York by Daniel Dorsa for Artsy.

In the year 2025, Citarella isn’t doing so well. Donald J. Trump has just rounded out his second term as president, and the world is a mess—half underwater, with basic services nonexistent, and with only the 1% able to afford efficient transportation that avoids the floods (via Uber-esque helicopters, naturally). Meanwhile, Citarella sits in a cramped micro-studio, surviving on potatoes and dried lentils while waiting for coveted freelance assignments to arrive via an ultra-high-speed internet connection.

Let’s be clear: This is only one possible future, the artist’s conjuring of what an “anarcho-capitalist” America might look like. It’s the subject of SWIM A Few Years From Now, a 12-by-8-foot photographic triptych that Citarella debuts with London’s Carroll / Fletcher at this year’s Armory Show.

The piece has the slickness of a dystopian IKEA catalog spread and recalls Josh Kline by way of Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham. It’s a departure in style for 30-year-old Citarella, whose altered photographic works have often focused on abstract textures or found images—and whose projects on the internet have involved hawking assisted-readymades on Etsy with collaborator Brad Troemel.

But SWIM’s canny blend of analog photography and digital trickery offers fresh potentials for the artist. He says the fictional future-self-portrait represents “the way I want to work” and envisions scaling up similar compositions into many-paneled installations.

Irreverent, and not without a dash of humor, the piece appeals in its immediate accessibility, despite being grounded in deep research and economic theory. Citarella talks exuberantly about the books that have inspired him, including Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek’s Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (2015).

“When the election happened,” he says, “every artist on earth took a moment to think, ‘How do I respond to this?’” Citarella’s own response is pointed, whipsmart, and sickly entertaining: a monstrous vision that feels all too plausible.

Sarah Pichlkostner

B. 1988, Salzburg • Lives and works in Vienna

Josh Lilley • Galleries Section, Booth 836

Sarah Pichlkostner, Kay calls me all the time in other words fly me to the moon. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.

In an era where optimization and streamlining are the watchwords of industry, Pichlkostner’s work explores how these qualities manifest in materials themselves. This takes the form of an emotionally driven alchemy, with the artist creating minimalist sculptures out of quasi-industrial materials like blown glass, metal, and brick powder. Fresh from completing a two-year residency at De Ateliers in 2016, Pichlkostner presents sculptures at The Armory Show that are more figurative, at once hinting at familiar forms (a human face, a telephone), but that appear melted, morphed, or perhaps not yet quite finished.

Alexandra Noel

B. 1989, San Diego • Lives and works in Los Angeles

Bodega • Presents Section, Booth P28

Alexandra Noel, Demons Abreast, 2016. Courtesy of Bodega.

The Importance of Another Dinner Party, 2017. Alexandra Noel Bodega

Noel, who is also a writer, creates compact paintings and sculptures that capture the sensuality and drama of domestic life. Painting with oil and enamel on panels that are often just over five inches wide, she portrays bedrooms and bathrooms like stage sets, with exacting detail, developing emotional weight through fanciful furnishings and decorative wallpaper, rather than human inhabitants. On view at The Armory Show with Bodega (where she had a solo show in fall 2016), other works zoom in on the interior of a dog’s mouth or the backside of a female nude, similarly conveying enigmatic moments of intimacy, like windows into a person’s private thoughts.

Carlos Reyes

B. 1977, Chicago • Lives and works in New York

Galerie Joseph Tang • Presents Section, Booth P37

Black door code 31A5 à gauche puis 2ème étage tout droit à gauche, 2016. Carlos Reyes Galerie Joseph Tang

(Untitled) Nr 1, 2017. Carlos Reyes Galerie Joseph Tang

Reyes is an artist keenly attuned to the aesthetics of a room or a gallery. His contribution to an exhibition at Galerie Joseph Tang last November included hand-blown glass cylinders that protruded through small circular holes in the gallery windows. But his work also playfully collapses the idea that aesthetics and politics are separate. At London’s Arcadia Missa in 2015, Reyes drew from political pamphlets and posters made by Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, reviving the revolutionary words of the long-dead communist by laser-etching them on, among other materials, dried mushrooms. So far this year, Reyes’s work has appeared in group shows at Cave in Detroit and Praz-Delavallade in Paris.

—Artsy Editors

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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