#sometimes you simply get tricked during the interview process and you were told one thing

[ghostpyre]

Damn sorry I accidentally girlbossed myself in the military industrial complex

[ohneweiterebedeutung]

[Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with 11Freunde. This is my translation of Max Dinkelaker’s interview, which can be read here.]

Club player Enrico Valentini about his love for 1. FC Nürnberg

„I’ll shout some abuse right back“

Enrico Valentini joined 1. FC Nürnberg when he was only five years old. Since then he’s not just been a Club player, but a passionate Clubfan as well. Here he talks about car processions through the city, the commitment of the ultras and a bus ride for all eternity.

Enrico Valentini, you don’t just play for Nürnberg professionally, you were born in the city and have been a Clubfan since childhood. Do you listen to the fans’ songs and chants during a game? Of course, sometimes I sing along myself. When we walk out onto the pitch for example. Or when they sing „Die Legende lebt“.

Did you ever get any funny looks from opposing players for that? No, I don’t sing out loud, just to myself. Sometimes only in my head. It’s just that I do know the songs, I’ve stood there in the block myself often enough. And some songs, you’re just simply defenseless against them.

You lived so close to the stadium as a child, you should know the songs by heart. I do. On Saturdays we could follow the games merely by the noise. I just crossed the street, climbed through a hole in the fence and there I was on one of the training grounds.

The house you grew up in was also your parents’ restaurant. Did you have to help out there a lot as a child? Much less so than my older siblings, compared to them I was lazy and ducked out a lot. I was the youngest, the little prince. But the restaurant still had a big influence on my childhood. We ate at completely different times than other families, dinner was never before 9 pm. My father once told me that when I was a baby he often got me out of bed at 1 am when he returned from work. He laid me down on his chest, just to have some time with me at all.

When did your parents move from Italy to Germany? In 1980. My father started off „classically“ as a waiter in a trattoria and in 1989, when I was born, he opened his first own restaurant. These days he owns a vinotheque (?).

Was it your father, as well, that got you into football? Yes. He was and still is a fanatic Juve fan and, ever since moving here, a Clubberer as well. He introduced me to many club legends: Dieter Eckstein, Sergio Zarate, Alain Sutter, Stefan Reuter, Samy Sané. Even though some of them played before I was born, he showed me videos of them. Samy Sané for example, he was quicker than the ball. He was quicker even than his son Leroy Sané is today. Unbelievable.

Do you have an all-time-favourite Nürnberg player? Out of those I’ve watched myself in the stadium it’s Jacek Krzynowek. His left hammer was amazing. What a great guy. Also I was lucky enough as a youth player to sometimes get to train with the first team. It was the time of Hans Meyer. So there I was on the pitch next to Zvjezdan Misimovic, an awesome number 10. Because he wasn’t very fast he solved everything with his great technique. He played to his strenghts perfectly. No frills, no tricks, always straightforward.

So as a teenager did you freeze in awe of such gifted footballers like Misimovic? In the beginning yes, completely. I was a bit intimidated. Up until then I’d always mercilessly put all the professional players up on pedestals. Most of all Alessandro Del Piero. To me he seemed beyond reach. Not even human, an alien. And it was similar with the big names in Nürnberg. But then suddenly I sat next to them and I realised: They’re just normal people.

Why were you so fascinated by Del Piero? His style of play, he was unique. He entered the box from the left side and then fired the ball into the top right-hand corner. In Italy they call it „Tiro all Del Piero“. In A-Jugend [aged 19 and under] I had a phase where I scored exclusively like that. When Del Piero scored against Germany in the world cup semifinal in 2006 I was so happy for him! As if he was a family member. I’m getting goose bumps just talking about it.

You were so happy, even though he inflicted a really painful defeat upon the German team? Don’t get me wrong: I’m extremely grateful to Germany for everything I get to experience. But I feel Italian. I still have lots of family there, I try to go there at least once a year. I only started speaking German in kindergarten.

About the same time, in 1994, as a five-year-old you joined the Club and up until 2010 went through all of its youth teams. Was there one coach with a special influence on your career? Every coach was important at his time. Concerning my personality I benefitted from René Müller the most, who trained me in the amateur team. He taught me a lot especially concerning life after football.

Like what? Broadening my horizon. We talked about faith, about the importance of money, the importance of football. He helped me understand that my personal happiness doesn’t depend on my career alone. Before that, it was like this - if I played well I was happy. If I played badly I was unhappy. It wasn’t healthy.

As a youth player were you automatically a Nürnberg fan right from the beginning? Yes. I always completely identified with the club and, consequently, suffered along with the players even as a child.

When did you suffer the most? The worst was the final home game in the 1999 season. I was there as a ballboy. Frank Baumann stood there, completely free in front of Richard Golz and had the biggest chance, he just had to dip it in from two meters away. But he missed. And almost at the same time Åge Fjörtoft scored in Frankfurt - and we got relegated. I’ll never forget the reactions then. The noise in the stadium, the shock of the masses after Baumann’s miss, it’s burned into my memory. It’s lucky I was so young. You get over such things more quickly. I probably went and played football.

[Bundesliga Schlusskonferenz 1999. (A nightmare).]

Do you remember your first stadium visit? Yes. Must have been the season when we played in Regionalliga Süd, so in 1994. The team played in front of kind of a bleak backdrop. Well, it was great by Regionalliga standards, just not by Club standards. Unfortunately I don’t remember the opponent, I do remember it was a second team. So all in all rather dismal. And yet I was there all the time after that in the following years. As a ballboy, as a mascot, with my friends, with my family, in the stands. I was there for pretty much everything.

Your greatest experience as a fan? The Pokal win of course. Jan Kristiansen into the top corner from 30 meters, in extra time, an incredible evening. I was there in our pub, banging on the table from sheer joy. I went completely berserk. Afterwards my cousin and I joined the car procession, with him sounding the horn, me at the window. Then on to the Plärrer (big square in Nuremberg, editor’s note). A perfect highlight of a night.

These days, as a professional player with the know-how that comes with that, standing in the stadium you probably assess many situations very differently than us would-be-experts. Does that cause problems? Does it ever! When people around me start hurling abuse in the direction of the pitch, I shout abuse right back at them. It’s always the worst on the grandstand, because the expectations are the highest there. I’ve gotten into fights with people many times there.

For example? Once, I was playing for Aalen at the time and was on a visit to Nürnberg, Marcos Antonio made several mistakes in a game against Stuttgart and in the course of that was at fault for [FCN] conceding a goal. Except for the ultras the entire stadium was booing him. At some point it got just cruel. I got a really tight feeling in my chest. I thought about going home, it really hurt. Then I got into a fight with an elderly gentleman. I don’t remember everything that was said, apart from the last bit.

Which was? I told him he’d lost his marbles.

Does that inhibit you, as a player, knowing exactly which kinds of reactions a mistake can cause in the crowd? No, it actually rather spurs me on. Because I know how superficial these reactions can be. And I’ve long gotten past carrying my mistakes with me for weeks. It’s not like I’m killing anybody. A mistake is still just a mistake in a football match.

In 2010 you left the Club because you didn’t see any perspective for yourself in the first team. Was it liberating for you playing in Aalen for a club that you weren’t as personally connected with? On the one hand, yes. On the other hand I didn’t take long to identify with the club and the town. People like to smile down on clubs like Aalen, Sandhausen or Heidenheim. So that made it extra nice to play away and win. You always knew: after a home defeat against Aalen, the opponent’s coach would be called into question. I think during my time at Aalen alone we fired three opponents’ coaches. Just because they lost to us at home.

At Aalen you managed to establish yourself as a professional under Ralph Hasenhüttl. You went on to KSC, where in 2015 under coach Markus Kauczinski you almost made the leap into Bundesliga. In the second leg of the relegation play-off against HSV you were only a few seconds away from promotion… When Marcelo Diaz took that free-kick I was standing in the wall.

HSV had only this one last shot to escape relegation. Did you catch any of what was being said between Diaz and Rafael van der Vaart? Allegedly they discussed which of them would take the shot. Yes, they were talking and both standing close to the ball. I was completely convinced that van der Vaart would shoot. I told the other guys in the wall „100% van der Vaart, 100% van der Vaart.“ I kept repeating that. It was completely clear to me that in this moment their greatest player would take the ball. I didn’t expect Diaz at all. We had analysed their scorers before the game, in the entire season Diaz hadn’t taken a single free-kick.

[KSC-HSV]

But Diaz did in that moment - and put the ball into the top corner. How did you feel in the hours after missing promotion? Immediately after the final whistle I was very emotional and cried. Then we were standing in front of the fans and they sang „Ein Kompliment“ by Sportfreunde Stiller: (singing) „Ich wollte dir - nur mal eben sagen - dass du das - Größte für mich bist!“ [„I just wanted to tell you that to me you are the greatest“ (…)] One of the nicest moments of my career. After that we finished our round and I saw my family in the stands, 20, 25 Valentinis. They were all crying. Everybody. My father, my mother, my wife, even my best friend. It felt like they were sadder than I was. Somehow that made me happy. It’s weird to explain, but experiences like that hurt less when they’re shared. Having people with you that feel you so much, that’s great consolation.

How long did you take to get over this shock? It only really hit me square in the face a few days later when I was already on holiday. I realised then what had actually happened. I was 26 years old, these two games had been my chance to play in the Bundesliga. Maybe - very probably - the only chance. And there were players like Dominic Peitz, Daniel Gordon and Dirk Orlishausen. Men over 30 for which it had definitely been the last chance. After this realisation it really, really hurt.

But then, three years later, you personally got there after all, you made it to the Bundesliga. And on top of that with your club, 1. FC Nürnberg, to which you had returned in 2017. What pictures are there in your head when you think back to last May? We beat Sandhausen and we were through. Already on the way back to Nürnberg we partied like crazy. At some point we ran out of beer, the bus had to stop so we could get some more. At the service station we met fans, so we stayed and celebrated with them for a bit. When we drove on at every bridge [across the Autobahn] there were people celebrating, and Club banners. When we finally arrived back in the city we didn’t immediately go out to the fans. We went into the changing room through the back door, the fans had no idea when we’d come back. And this knowledge, shortly we’ll run out and start [-], the anticipation, that we’d go out and they’d see us and light their bengal flares, the excitement, it was overwhelming.

There was a video going viral on the internet that showed the entire team loudly bawling a Juve song in nearly accentless Italian. You must be a good teacher! No, no, I don’t deserve any credit for that! The thing with „Storia di un grande amore“, that was the idea of our captain Hanno Behrens and Tim Leibold.

You’ll have to explain. On the second or third day of the season I was in the showers after training. Suddenly I heard the song come over the speakers in the changing room. I ran there, still naked, to see who was responsible. Hanno and Tim were waiting for me. I was all „Whut?!“ and Hanno replied „This song is wicked!“ After that the song accompanied the team through the entire season.

In which you missed only one game - but of all games, it had to be the derby against Fürth at home. Where did you watch it? I was standing in the block [Nordkurve, among the ultras]. Though I couldn’t really join in the chants, because I was too focused on the game. But it was very interesting to me, seeing just how much work the ultras invest into the atmosphere. I hadn’t really realised before, because I'd been standing too far up, but against Fürth I stood down at the bottom, close to the Vorsänger [what’s the proper term? The people with the megaphones, that lead the chants?]. I became really aware of just how exhausting it is for them. They practically work as hard as we do on the pitch. The prodding when it’s not loud enough - there are some real fights there.

Things happen fast in football. Half a year after the huge euphoria you find yourselves in last place of the Bundesliga table with Nürnberg. Is a 0-7 defeat at Dortmund especially excruciating to you, because you have so many private connections to the club? All the people in my environment, practically without exception, are either fans or at the very least big Club-sympathisers. Immediately there’s the question „What happened?!“ And I don’t have any other answer besides „Well what do you think happened? We got beaten up 0-7.“ It can be quite gruelling. On the other hand my phone explodes especially after victories. I get many more reactions then.

What gives you hope that it’s yet possible that you won’t get relegated? The team. We still have a great team spirit. And also there’s much quality in our squad. As a team we have what it takes to get through this.

[bethygauw]

[2/2] Online B’s-Log Interview with Satoru Kuwabara

Released 4 June 2018

Original source Part 2 The original article has pictures that complement well so please check it out too.

This is B’s-Log’s new project, “Creator Touch”, an interview series with creators of popular series. The first person they interviewed was Satoru Kuwabara, the music producer of Ensemble Stars!.

In the first half of the interview, they asked about how Kuwabara started to get involved with Enstars unit songs. Kuwabara also talked about the points he focused on in the song series that have been released so far. (~2.8k words)

In the second half, they talked about song numbers that left the biggest impression on Kuwabara, the 3D live concert, the voice actor live concert and Enstage. (~2.2k words)

In their third single, I wanted to show everyone Trickstar who had transformed.

Q: You had created numerous songs for Enstars, but which one left the biggest impression?

K: There are many… but outside of first season songs, I’d say it’s Trickstar’s BREAKTHROUGH!. It was supposed to be the B-side at first. We made DIAMOND SUMMER with the intention of making an A-side because it was a very Trickstar song. But we also wanted to show a different side to Trickstar—a transformed Trickstar—and not just their cheerful and positive side. That’s when we brought up the suggestion to make BREAKTHROUGH! as the A-side song. Both songs were very important, but the first song would be the long-lasting impression after all. That’s exactly why we made BREAKTHROUGH! as the first song.

Q: That’s a good point. As opposed to the other songs that Trickstar have released so far, it’s like they’re fighting in this song.

K: I wanted to show how Trickstar has an enemy that they cannot oppose at their current state through music as well. I thought that if they were to challenge their rivals—Eve, Adam, and Eden—it would make things better if they weren’t the “usual Trickstar”. That’s why I strongly pushed BREAKTHROUGH! for the A-side forward.

Q: Were there any other songs that left an impression on you?

K: It would be 2wink’s TRICK with TREAT!!. One reason is because I was the one who wrote the song, but it was also the first time “Saito-san” and “Soma-san” got to sing with the others so I was happy for him (laugh). Saito-san always looked so lonely all by himself, so it was a long-awaited moment.

Q: TRICK with TREAT!! has UNDEAD singing as the backing vocals and voicing out dialogue lines. Speaking of UNDEAD, I think there were a lot of fans who were waiting for the veteran unit, Dead Man’s.

K: You must mean Dead Man’s Death Game Holic. In that CD, Dead Man’s song took priority and was made first, so making UNDEAD’s songs was a herculean task. UNDEAD’s second season CD was considerably cheerful, so I wanted to show their corrupted side more in the third season, but there was a restriction where they must not feel more corrupted than Dead Man’s. I’m the composer of Gate of the Abyss, and actually it was a song that was chosen through a contest. Happy Elements chose this song in the end.

Q: From a professional’s point of view, what would be your fixation in Enstars unit song series? Specifically, can you tell us if there’s anything like, “Maybe you won’t notice if you don’t listen to it carefully, but actually…”

K: I wanted to deliver the best sound quality as best as I could, so we made it compatible with high resolution sound quality. It’s actually made in a much better sound quality environment compared to generic CDs. Although when you burn it into CDs, it’s not high-res anymore… Also, up until around the second season I took into account the units’ upbringing and position. I made some delineation in my mind, for example how I think I can make some parts more extravagant. I thought to myself that I’d better make those improvements.

Q: …In other words?

K: “We should record a live string performance for fine!” (laugh) Valkyrie is a unit of artists so naturally we would record the instruments’ live performance, ditto with Akatsuki and the traditional Japanese instruments. On the contrary, I try not to include acoustics as much as I can for 2wink. For Ra*bits, they’re also a rookie unit, and although we had skilful musicians perform for us, we didn’t use live recording as much at first.

3D live concert, voice actor live concert, and the secret episode behind Enstage’s production

Q: Enstars’ unit songs have been performed in various types of media such as the 3D Live “DREAM LIVE” (Star Live) and the Starry Stage, a live concert of the voice actors. Can you tell us a bit more about them as well?

K: With the Star Live, I was the one who wanted to have a live band. In 3D Lives, the characters’ movements are pretty much the same for every session, so I think putting on a live band accompaniment would make the audience think that the characters are alive even more. I supervised the band arrangement of the songs and also the casting of the band members. It was only the performance on December 31st where one of the band members couldn’t make it and I had to fill in for them (laugh).

Q: Now that you’ve seen the Star Live, what do you think?

K: I simply thought that wow, we live in an amazing era! Sorry if that sounded like a 5-year-old commentary (laugh). I was blessed with the opportunity to feel the fans’ wish to see this concert first-hand. I was able to take on a new challenge and I felt grateful.

Q: What about Starry Stage?

K: I was involved from the planning stage. I was actually the one who wanted to have a live performance with the voice actors. Our plan got through after right about 2 years, and it was approved with the title "Starry Stage”. I actually don’t know what “SS” is the short for, but when it appeared in the game I thought it was “Starry Stage”. In Starry Stage, I was involved in casting, stage production, and production supervision. I really got to do many different things!

Q: What did you think of it?

K: Goodness, I was just emotionally overwhelmed. One of my strongest feelings would have been, “I finally got to see this scenery!” But more importantly, it brought to surface my powerlessness and what I was lacking (bitter laugh). To bring forth a live performance, we made the fans wait for 3 years, so the Starry Stage also had a concept of getting up close to the fans as much as we can. That’s why I wanted to absolutely have all of them get on the moving cart and also have them go to the smaller stage (at the back). I think we managed to clear that part. Although, among the 13 cast members, to more than half of them it was their first time singing and dancing for an idol series. That’s why it was difficult to ask them to learn difficult choreography so we just did the best we could. Those were some of the challenges we had, so it was a really touching moment for me when I watched the performance.

Q: There’s a second concert for Star Live, but how about Starry Stage?

K: The official title had “1st” in it so, in other words, you know? (Laugh) As for me, I’d like to make it happen!*

*[T/L note] It’s happening! 13 January 2019 at Nippon Budokan.

Q: You guys from Arte Refact are also involved in creating original songs for the stage adaptation, Ensemble Stars! On Stage. Are there any differences in the processes between making a song for a CD release and making a song for a stage play?

K: In Enstage, we basically received the script and then we were asked to make a particular type of song. Enstage played out the main story. Around that time, we kind of already made them into unit songs, so it was difficult. But we took out some specific parts of a scene and looked at them from a different point of view. That’s when we could create. We made them as we thought how this unit was singing this particular type of song, and how this was the kind of music that would fit this kind of scene… So what we did was the same, but we made the song from a different viewpoint.

Q: In Ensemble Stars! Extra Stage ~Judge of Knights~ that used the event Rebellion! The King’s Horseback Ride as its theme, they performed many new songs during the Judgment Live scene.

K: Judgment had a developing battle scene so they asked us to make a medley. At that point, the script was not yet finished so I had no idea how it was going to be. But when I read the finished version I understood what they meant. Although, I asked them what would happen with the dialogue bits in between, since it wouldn’t be called a medley anymore if they had stopped [the music]. Then, they told me that they were going to include something like a dance choreography as well. That’s how I decided to let the music play in the background during those times and let it develop entry points for the singing to come in again.

Q: So you made it based on the fact that it was going to have both acting and singing included.

K: Also, the actors can sometimes change when they choose to take a breath between the phrases. When that happens, the timing feel will change as well. I can’t create with the stance that they have to breathe at some specific point. When they sing, it’s fixed, but other than the singing part I make the music loop (so that they can get back onto it should they be running behind). Since the battle scene was made to accelerate, I and the composers’ side suggested to also increase the bpm (tempo) a little by little. It was subtle so that the audience won’t feel the abrupt change.

Q: You really made these songs based on how it’s going to be sung at a stage play.

K: When there are dialogues within a song, I would read those dialogues out loud to myself and think about the timing of how the character speaks. Then that’s how I figure out how long the phrases should be.

Q: Have you seen Enstage?

K: I’ve seen all of them, of course. All of them and all the characters are truly really good, but personally I really like Eichi Tenshouin’s actor, (Takahisa) Maeyama-san! I was like, “Thanks for giving me a chance to write a song for Eichi-sama! It was the best!” (laugh)

The main point about character songs is that it’s not unnatural.

Q: I’d like to ask something with regards to what we call character songs in general. Is there anything that you feel you must do every time you create character songs or unit songs?

K: It’s difficult to explain it in words, but I myself don’t think of Enstars’ songs as “character songs”. It’s like I’m actually producing idols and real life idol songs. But if I have to answer from the viewpoint that they’re character songs, I guess it would be how I won’t make something that’s unnatural for that character of that world to sing this kind of song. I want to make a song that can let you picture the world and the character. That the world matches the character themself, and that it’s nothing out of place. For example, you don’t feel right hearing digital instruments in an anime with an idyllic setting. But if there’s someone in that anime who likes games, it won’t be strange to insert something digital. I think about how I should set things apart like that.

Q: Do you not approach the way you make [character songs] and songs you make for real world artists differently?

K: There’s no difference. But for me, it’s often the case that I would ask the artists to write the lyrics as a condition when I’m the one producing or providing songs for them. If the situation proves to be difficult, or when they have other tie-up songs to work on as well, then other lyricists may be called in. But as long as that is not the case, I’d like the actual person who will be singing this song to write the lyrics themself. Otherwise it won’t get through to the listeners, is what I think. If they sing words written by someone else, there’s always something about it that doesn’t feel right. I want to make a song that includes the singer’s feelings in it even just a little, so I’d like them to write their own song’s lyrics whenever possible.

Q: Lastly, please leave a message to readers who are looking forward to your next work! What would you like them to hear in the songs that you have produced?

K: I think music is something alive. Even if the melody and the lyrics don’t change, your emotions don’t stay the same when you listen to the song for the first time, the second time, the third time, and so on. I want you to enjoy a song by paying attention to the way the singing is different, or how the accompanying music is different even though the melody is the same. It may make you think how much the world in that song have changed. For Enstars unit songs, you can spot the differences especially if that song has live performance of the backing instruments. Or even though it’s not a live performance, more instruments may be added and the way the melodies play out may also be different. We make that kind of contrasts so I think “spotting the little differences as you listen to it” is another way of enjoying the songs. We are very particular to each and every musical part of the song and not just the melody, so I hope you can pay close attention to that. I’d like you to listen to the karaoke versions that are included in the CDs single as well!

[pandemicstress]

How Empowering are Your Beliefs?

In June 2020, I interviewed a lady I used to work with back in my corporate days. Maria (name changed) is tall, thin and strikingly beautiful. What makes her even more beautiful is that she is humble and exudes a sense of peace that is enviable.

In the past, Maria experienced work stress in an environment that applied great pressure to correct software bugs and address client queries timeously in a large bank. Things changed for her during 2011 and she no longer holds an emotional attachment to her work. Through the influence of her husband and in studying Buddhism, her view of life has changed and this has created a great difference in how she experiences stress.

I conducted a survey amongst 300 participants to understand stress for the purposes of writing my book Harnessing Stress. The top source of stress was work. However, work is not a source of stress for Maria since she is confident in her ability to meet her deliverables and her deadlines. Maria feels stressed when she feels separate from her environment and humanity.

I think many people would love to be in this position where the everyday sources of stress do not impact them very much. So, I asked Maria what guidance she would offer others. Her response was to approach life in line with Buddhist principles. In this thinking, there is no self. Experiences are projections of the mind and the individual. We have the capacity to change these projections and our own actions.

In the work I do in shifting beliefs about stress, it has become so clear that our beliefs have great power. Beliefs about ourselves, what we are capable of and what we deserve can be great impediments to living a full life or they can be incredibly empowering. Beliefs drive our behaviour and our behaviour drives our outcomes. Contrary to popular thinking, beliefs can change and I encourage you to consider your beliefs and whether they are serving you.

Some people are very fearful of being exposed to other religions in case they are somehow coerced into not being Christian. I am confused by those who fear doing yoga because they feel they would betray their faith. It reminds me of how eating red meat on a Friday was a mortal sin when I was growing up. And now it’s not. Believing that I would burn in the fires of hell for having bacon on Friday morning (but not a Saturday morning), seems pretty ridiculous.

We have the opportunity to choose what we extract from the experiences around us. For some, yoga can be a religious practice but for others, it’s merely exercise. Personally, I’m fascinated by the correlation between religions and how there are more overlaps than differences. And yet we are so focused on what makes us different and other and ‘wrong.’ There is beauty in a common humanity, in sharing something with someone you thought was very different from you. I’m in no danger of being tricked into taking on a new faith by learning from others, listening with curiosity about their beliefs and how they experience life. Talking to Maria about her beliefs and how they have reduced her stress, gave me much food for thought about my own beliefs and whether they were working for me.

Years ago, my spiritual beliefs shifted as a result of my burnout. My life bottomed out which gave me the opportunity to rebuild it and to choose who and what I wanted to keep. I retained my home, my husband and my children but everything else changed. I became a writer, a complete shift in career. There were many relationships that no longer worked for me and I realized that many of them contributed directly to getting so sick. I put boundaries in place and I even ended some relationships that were too toxic to bear at a time when my health was very fragile. My diet and exercise changed and continue to shift as I learn more about what feeds me and what drains me.

These changes were not easy to make and they didn’t all happen at once. I believe that I experienced the phenomenon of post traumatic growth that Kelly McGonigal writes about in her book, The Upside of Stress. As a result of a traumatic event, some people become more compassionate to the suffering of others, they change spiritual beliefs or develop a deeper faith, they become a stronger version of their former selves, they have a greater appreciation for the value of their lives and they often change career paths.

Maria doesn’t watch the news and she regrets it when she does. She pays attention to where her focus is and is able to bring herself into the moment and into her own body by focusing on her breath. When I asked Maria what is most important to her, she said that it is her breath and mindfulness. Simply focus on the in and out of breathing. This reminds her to stay in the moment and she gains the laser beam focus that is required to do what she needs to do at that time, whether it’s caring for her children or doing her work. It offers her the gift to become one with everything and to be fully present. She believes that if you trust in life, it will guide you.

Imagine knowing that there is no death and that all that is required is that you simply do the best that you can do. You act ethically and you let the rest go. You ensure that your attention is focused in the moment and you do one thing at a time. Imagine what life would be like if you let go of judgment towards others and yourself. It seems like a peaceful way of operating to me.

What does Maria do on a bad day? Of course, she returns to her breath. She guided me to learn about Anapanasati which means ‘mindfulness of breathing’. The practice guides us to feel the physical sensations of breathing – the air entering our nostrils, filling up our lungs and exiting the body on the exhale. I watched a few YouTube videos on the subject and sometimes when I remember, I sit for a few minutes and focus on my breathing in this way to become mindful.

As a mother to two beautiful children, Maria feels blessed to have them in her life. She says that children offer us the gift of bringing us into the moment. She says, “when you are present, you are more alive and you see more magic.” Motherhood is not stressful for her as she has healthy and happy children who are kind and mature. She has very few rules, rather in the form of ethical guidelines.

Her faith guides her thinking that there is no good or bad, just a tendency of mind. Maria reminds her children to be mindful of influences in their environment. If they are bullied or influenced and feel uncomfortable, she guides them to excuse themselves and to find the space they need to make the choice that feels right for them.

I asked Maria to describe her diet. She eats as much as she wants to eat and she loves food. She follows a vegan lifestyle and chooses not to consume wheat, sugar or coffee. She enjoys a lot of green juices and relishes food that is as close to nature as possible. Becoming vegan had a big impact on her clarity of mind in that she felt it accounted for about 80% of her shift in beliefs. To her, it felt like a dirty window becoming clean. For about 15 months, she was on a purely raw diet and as a result, all her allergies disappeared. She does about 10 to 15 minutes of yoga each day which contributes to her ability to remain mindful.

I was curious about how Maria’s children respond when attending parties and the exposure to foods that they do not eat at home. Because she fed them very healthy foods with no sugar from the start, this was their norm. She does not prohibit them from having sugary sweets at parties but is amused to see how they tend to spit them out. It is not to their taste since Maria fed them a healthy diet from the outset.

Her diet and health have not changed due to lockdown or the pandemic. She is no less healthy or fit. In fact, she told me that COVID-19 has offered her family many blessings in the opportunity to spend more time together and to connect with each other and nature on a deeper level. The children are at home and she is able to work remotely. Her view is that the pandemic is like the weather – you can’t change it so why stress about it?

Since embracing Buddhism, Maria no longer fears death. She adopts the daily practice of letting go in the knowledge that she has lived each moment being present and to the best of her ability. Every day, she actively embarks on a process to let go of the attachment to things, people and concepts. Holding onto these things simply takes one out of the moment and can lead to internal strife and suffering.

I think this is a beautiful way to live. If I think back to all the times I was so passionately attached to the outcome of an IT project I was working on, it all seems quite silly in the greater scheme of things. Perhaps burnout and my health challenges have offered me a form of perspective. I don’t take things as seriously as I used to but I’m certainly nowhere near Maria’s sense of peace.

We don’t have to change our faith to learn from this way of living. Mindfulness has become very fashionable in the past few years and there are obvious reasons why. Research shows that people who are mindful are “more likely to be happy, optimistic, self-confident and satisfied with their lives, and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious, hostile, self-conscious, impulsive or neurotic.” (Lyubomirsky, 2007).

How do your beliefs serve you – both spiritual and otherwise? Are they working well or could you adopt a new way of thinking about yourself and your life that could reduce your stress?

[crimethinc]

Weathering Jail and Prison: Tips from Anarchist Prisoners Dane Powell and Joseph Buddenburg

Dane Powell, the first of the J20 defendants to be sentenced, just completed his four-month sentence after taking a non-cooperating plea deal in which he pled guilty to two felony charges. During the demonstrations against Trump’s inauguration, Dane was filmed risking his freedom to save a child who was brutally attacked by riot police. Dane teamed up with Joseph Buddenburg, another political prisoner serving two years for Conspiracy to Violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, to compose the following guide to surviving jail, prison, and transportation between holding facilities. Whether you are preparing for the possibility of doing time yourself, getting ready to support someone else through a sentence, or simply curious to learn more about life inside the prison-industrial complex, read on for a wide range of essential tips.

For perspective on how to weather the process leading up to the verdict, read “How to Survive a Felony Trial: Keeping Your Head up through the Worst of It.”

Joseph Buddenburg.

Dane Powell, immediately upon his release.

Dane Powell:

When you’re facing a possible prison sentence, the anxiety can be overbearing. No person who is in prison knows what lies ahead from one day to the next. It is quite literally a step into the unknown.

When I first got to jail, I kept notes on experiences that might help ease some confusion for my codefendants. I had no idea I would be transported hundreds of miles to the sunshine state over a three-week period.

Roughly a month at Coleman Federal Correctional Institution, I was introduced to Joseph Buddenburg, another political prisoner, who is serving a 24-month sentence. Joseph was originally serving time in California and was sent to the east coast, away from his support, as a form of punishment. I shared this writing project with him and we decided to combine our energy and experiences. Our goal is to give tips and tricks we had to learn the hard way. These are things we agree that we should have known before we heard the first door lock behind us.

I. Washington DC Jail

Presentencing

Prior to being sentenced, if found guilty, you will go through presentencing. This office will interview you and send a report to your sentencing judge. This report recommends a sentence. Be careful with how you word things during this interview, as everything you say can and will be used against you. I recommend your lawyers be present for this interview. For example, certain substances are legal in Washington DC, but if you’re found guilty of a felony you’ll be doing federal time / federal probation.

Once you’re in the DC jail, it can hard to reach anyone for a very long time. It took me almost three weeks to get in touch with support because I didn’t have numbers. Prior to the day of sentencing, I recommend making a list of ten people including their phone numbers and addresses. You get one free five-minute call after you’re processed in and seen medical. You can acquire a pen and paper prior to this call and call the one person with that list. You should also have someone lined up to pick up your clothes and other person belongings as they’re only kept for 14 days. Unless you want your support to be the ones making your wish list for reading material, you should already have this done as well.

DC Jail Schedule

Food comes about every eight hours to your cell. Breakfast comes at the odd hour of around three am. When you’re in intake you get about one hour of rec Monday through Friday. The rest of the time you’re locked down. This changes when you get into general population (genpop). I was in this lockdown of intake for three weeks and I only managed to get put into genpop by going on a hunger strike. Once you’re in genpop you’ll be out of your cell for about 8 hours a day. You also get two video visits a week and your support will need to sign up for this.

Random Jail Tips

If you’re having any issues on the inside, it will almost never be resolved the way you would like. The #1 thing to do is tell your support and have them put outside pressure on the jail. This works 99% of the time.

The mailroom was shit in DC. My support was calling daily as my mail wasn’t getting through. The mailroom kept telling them they were backed up by two weeks. You can get books but they need to come from a publisher and can only be softcover (this has varied at different locations but this is specific to DC). Legal mail can only be opened and looked through in front of the prisoner and shouldn’t be read.

There are no lines (in the sense of queues) in jail or prison for things like computers or phones. For a turn on the phone, you ask who the last person is and let them know you’re after them.

If you require a special diet, tell the Chaplin it’s for religious purposes. This still took me a month to get, though.

To check your canteen account and order commissary, they have touch screen computers installed in the units. Don’t order any commissary until you get to genpop [general population]. If you order it in Intake, they’ll take your money and not give you anything. You can get it back, it’s just a pain in the ass. When you first log into this computer, you’ll need to use your DCDC number (your number as a prisoner) for your username and password. You’ll be asked to set your password at this point.

The clothing exchange is the worst! You only get your clothes washed once monthly, so every day you have to wash your clothes with you in the shower.

Your toilet is in your cell and offers no privacy between you and your celly. There places in the wall that you can shove a spork into; then you can hang a blanket from the spork in order to build a temporary wall for a bit of privacy. You should save about 8 sporks for this purpose and to hang clothes-drying lines.

You should really be saving everything you can get a hold of like salt, sugar, pepper, and other things like that. You can make an air freshener with a bottle of nose spray and the green cleaner they use on the floor. Chaplains give out free holiday cards and sometimes free phone calls.

When you write a complaint, sometimes the officer you whose behavior you are addressing in the complaint will be the one to take the complaint out of the box. When this happens, there’s a good chance that that complaint will get “lost.” There is a workaround for this: you go to the law library or the chaplain’s office and put your complaint in their box.

The sole of your shoe can serve as a pencil eraser. Treat the detail crew on each block with respect and they’ll treat you right. They’re the ones who bring bathroom supplies, food to the door, and other things like this.

Tips for LGBTQ

My celly for a week of my time in Intake was an amazing person. When I told him that I was writing this, he wanted to give tips for any gay comrades who might be coming to DC jail. So these tips are coming from a gay man. He told me the gay community sticks together almost like a gang. If you have any issues, you go talk to other gay prisoners before anyone else, and they will help you faster than anyone else. You can ask to be housed with other gay men / trans women if you identify as such. Trans peeps should see the Chaplin for hormones (if needed), magic shave, and bras. If a celly is making you uncomfortable, you need to speak up ASAP.

In part two I’m teaming up with Joseph Buddenburg to talk about our experiences with being transferred all around the United Snakes. He has experience from the Cali to FL and I have been all over the east coast.”

II. In Transportation

Joseph Buddenburg:

Other than the time I’ve spent in the SHU (Solitary), being transported is the most stressful part of my experience while incarcerated. I’ve been held at six different federal prisons / holdover jails over the last seventeen months. That’s a bit of an anomaly; if you’re a “short-termer,” you should spend the majority of your time at one facility, with a short stint in transit at holdover facilities.

For folks designated to a federal prison on the East Coast, you’ll be bussed or fly ConAir to USP Atlanta’s holdover facility before transport to your designated facility. For folks designated to the West Coast, you’ll pass through Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center, or Pahrump, NV—a privatized Corrections Corporation of America facility that functions as another Western Region Processing Center for federal prisoners.

In my experience, these holdover facilities freak out when a political prisoner arrives. I was held in max custody at Pahrump, and at Oklahoma City I was thrown in solitary for the duration of my time. If this happens to you, it’s important to keep in mind that this is only temporary; once you get to your designated prison, you’ll have more “freedom”, access to the outside, and more contact with your supporters. I was held at Pahrump for three days and Oklahoma City for two weeks.

If you’re thrown into solitary, there is very little stimulation. Use the time to work out, write, and engage with the prisoners on the housing block, who are just as bored and frustrated as you are.

During transport itself, I found it important to fast and not drink water. You’ll be cuffed and shackled, and access to the bathroom is nearly impossible. On ConAir flights, the US Marshals allow you one chance to use the bathroom on a several hour flight. They go row to row at a time chosen by them. They’ll yell and threaten you if you try to stand up or walk to the bathroom. The meals are disgusting and you’re only given an eight-ounce bottle of water anyway. You may be “black boxed” during transports, which is especially uncomfortable. Because I was convicted of a “domestic terrorism” statute, this happens to me. You’ll be cuffed and shackled, and if black boxed, a black plastic contraption will be locked to the handcuffs, creating wrist discomfort and near immobility of your hands. Make sure the handcuffs are somewhat loose. Cops are assholes, but they can be reasoned with, sometimes.

I found the bus rides are generally much longer, with no air conditioning, and less space. If you manage to get a window seat, try to sleep throughout the ride. Other things that helped were attempts at meditation, deep breathing, and just talking to other prisoners. Keep in mind that your designated facility will be nothing like these shitty county jails and holdover facilities, and that the misery of transfer is temporary. Most likely, you’ll be designated to a low security prison, with access to recreation, “programs,” college classes, and the like.

If you’re vegan or have other dietary considerations, be prepared with a number to call your support person to pressure the jail, and perhaps to go on hunger strike. At Oklahoma City, they threw me in the SHU; they don’t allow prisoners in the SHU use of the phone until 30 days have passed. They also (illegally) don’t allow prisoners to have stamps—you can send out three letters a week, only on Wednesdays. This resulted in my being unable to contact friends or supporters, so I had to refuse meals until they finally put me on a “no flesh” diet. This was not always vegan, but there’s enough vegan sustenance to survive on. Ask for a celly when you first arrive, so you’ll be able to trade food.

Dane Powell:

I was awoken around 4 am in my cell in DC. The cop told me “pack your shit, you’re heading to the Feds.” I was so new to everything, I thought I was already with the Feds. After all, I was put into the custody of the US Federal Marshals after sentencing. I was excited when my celly told me the Feds are “easy time.” On the other hand, I had just got settled in and had a nice collection of books. You can’t bring anything with you except for legal papers (put your contact list on your legal papers). So I left my books and letters as property that was to be picked up, and I stepped off again into the unknown.

From the morning I left DC, it took me three weeks to get to Coleman, FL. The process of waking you up at 4 am was repeated each time we would be transported. In my three weeks, I saw one jail and two prisons before getting to Coleman. The first morning, after leaving DC, we were brought to Warsaw, VA. We were put into a large, dormitory-style housing unit with TVs, phones, and video calling. We were at this holdover area only for a few days until we were moved once again.

This time, we were moved to Petersburg, VA. At holdover here, we were all put into solitary (SHU), and we didn’t come out from there once. We even had showers in our cells and were denied out daily recreation time due to our transportation status. We could yell to each other, but that was it. We had no books or anything to keep our minds busy.

This was the hardest week of my life, and I’ve been through a lot. I hear about people doing months or years in solitary; they have my highest respect. Only those who have been separated from human contact like this know the barbarism it takes for a human being to do this to another and the pain and suffering this torture causes. I hope I’m not affected from this time long term, but only time will tell.

After climbing out of the bolus of hell, I was brought to Atlanta Federal Institution. My experience in Atlanta was like a combination of the two previous locations, as we were mostly locked down due to two stabbings on the compound.

When you’re being transported, you should try to be first in line if you are trying to get a window seat. I think I got a window seat once; the three other times, when I didn’t, the only thing I could think of, the whole trip, was to tell others to get a window seat. I would fall asleep and with every bump I would smash my face on the seat in front of me. You’re chained up with cuffs on your hands and ankles and the cuffs are attached to a chain around your stomach. When the guards are putting on the abdomen chains, you should protrude your stomach as much as possible. That way when you’re sitting normally, it won’t be too tight.

Normally, your support will get instructions on how to setup a prepaid account when you call them the first time. Every single prison and jail I’ve been to has had a different phone system. At all the places except for Petersburg, I was told that the next place would have the same system and support could load up on their prepaid accounts, but this was never the case. Once you get into the federal system, those systems are all the same; but your support won’t need to set up anything at that point.

Some of the best advice I can give about being thrown into new environments so frequently is just to be observent. You shouldn’t really be asking too many questions unless you absolutely have to. You should ask your fellow prisoners if that situation occurs. At the same time, don’t bombard other prisoners with questions. Don’t come off as someone who’s new to the system, even if you are. You can learn everything you need to know by just sitting back and watching what others do. This takes time but it’s the safest way to approach this unknown. If you follow this, you’ll be a step ahead of most others.

III. Federal Custody

Joseph Buddenburg:

I did most of my time at medium facilities, in terms of the levels of violence, the programs, the “freedoms” afforded to me, and general demeanor, politics, and culture of prisoners.

There’s a rating system for prisoners: 0-11 points means you go to camp, 12-15 to a low security facility, 16-23 to a medium, and 24+ high security. The following factors determine federal custody levels:

detainers / pending charges

severity of current offense (mine was moderate, 3 points)

criminal history score / past convictions (0-1 past convictions is 0 points, 2-3 is 2 points)

history of escape attempts (should be 0, unless you’ve been found guilty of past failures to appear)

history of violence

voluntary surrender status (0 for no voluntary surrender, -3 for receiving a self-surrender)

age (8 points if 24 or younger at the date of sentencing, 4 points if 25-35 years old)

education level (0 points if you have a copy of your high school diploma/GED in your presentencing report, 2 points for “non-verified HSD/GED)

drug or alcohol abuse / convictions (0 for never or more than 5 years previous, 1 point for any drug use or convictions in the last 5 years).

If your charge is political, the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) will likely place a “management variable” of greater security or a “public safety factor” on you. This will make you ineligible for “Club Fed”: federal prison camps, in which there is no fence and you have more freedom of movement. Political prisoners will go to low security or higher.

A “management variable” will bump you up one level, so if you’re at camp level, you’ll go to a low; low points go to mediums; and so on. Only long-term prisoners or those with a serious criminal background will be sent to a penitentiary.

Make sure to clean up any pending charges or warrants before resolving your case—I ended up getting 7 points added for a pending misdemeanor, which bumped me from camp points to low so the BOP sent me to medium security facilities. Also, be sure to have a copy of your high school diploma or GED included in your “pre-sentence report” prior to sentencing. The pre-sentencing officer won’t track this down, it’s on you to track down a copy—this will subtract two points from your custody scoring and could mean the difference between a low and medium security facility.

Ask your attorney to request a “self surrender” from the judge. This typically allows you to turn yourself in to the US Marshals / prison to begin your sentence. That will subtract 3 points from your score and gives you around 60 days to clear your affairs before turning yourself in. My sentencing judge doesn’t give self-surrender, but my attorney convinced him to give 24 hours to self-surrender, thus lowering my points.

Low security prisons are devoid of convict politics. Snitches and sex offenders are everywhere, but you’ll find a few solid people—usually older guys who have worked their way down from penitentiaries. It will be rare to find anyone who shares your politics, but for the most part other prisoners will respect you for “being standup”: for standing up for what you believe in and not snitching.

The prison bureaucrats may fuck with you, pinpointing you for harsher treatment or fucking with your mail or outside support. If this happens, be prepared to have your support pressure the prison, BOP, and oversight bodies and seek assistance from radical attorneys.

The most difficult thing about prison for me has been the isolation and interference by the BOP, and I regret not fighting it from the beginning. Don’t fear their retaliation and petty games: the nature of being a political prisoner will get you targeted from the beginning. Having support is your best weapon to fight back, so never hesitate to call your people and the movement in general for help.

Dane Powell:

Depending on how one looks at it, I got lucky for spending my federal time in a low. There’s a lot less prison politics in a low, which is good for political prisoners who don’t want to deal with racist prisoners, but it also has drawbacks. With prison politics low, prisoners are less likely to “check in” snitches and child molesters (i.e., to force them into protective custody). With a yard full of snitches, it’s almost impossible to organize anything unless you start running with groups that check papers.

Ask your lawyer to send you your sentencing papers as soon as possible. These papers will prove you’re not a snitch or a sex offender and you’ll likely need them to prove your story.

One of my cellies told me over and over that they were in for gun charges but refused to show papers. He always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t get them. Most prisoners see right through this, as I did. Turns out, this celly is in prison for trying to have sex with a fake 9 and 11 year old. I judge good jail praxis by whether the act of retribution gets the person who administers it caught or if they can pull it off without the recipient knowing. Someone had great praxis.

During my time at Coleman, I was welcomed into the native community. Some facilities’ native groups allow white people to sweat with them and some do not. If you’ve done a sweat before, the ones done in prison will likely be different. We would have a pipe ceremony every Saturday and this is where new natives or invites would bring their papers and introduce themselves. The papers would be checked by all to ensure that no sex offenders or snitches would sweat with us. It was nice knowing those guys could be trusted.

When coming from a jail, you might be told your mail will be forwarded. It’s very unlikely that any jail will forward your mail; you should just assume it won’t be. Your funds will be forwarded. For me, it took about 20 days once I got to Coleman to receive my funds from DC.

If where you’re sentenced and where you’ll be released are different, and you’re going to have probation, you’ll need to get a transfer. If your probation isn’t transferred before you get out, you will have to report to probation in the district you were sentenced, even if you have no place to go. To get the transfer, you’ll need to see your case manager and have an address to live at which there are no felons or guns, among other things. It takes about a month to properly transfer your probation.

I had issues with the email system that was offered to us. You’ll need to add your friend’s email address as a contact on the computer system. When you add it, that email address will receive an email for them to set up an account through TRULINCS (the system the BOP uses). From what I’ve seen and heard, this process can be confusing. If they get past this and they have an account, they can email you. They need to understand that when a prisoner emails them, they will not get an email notification to their actual email address alerting them of your message. They will have to sign into TRULINCS to see your emails every time. For some reason, a lot of people didn’t understand this.

There are also private secondary services out there through which you’ll be assigned a phone number and friends can text this number. The company then sends you an email with the text message and you can respond to that email and they text your message to your correspondent. This service costs about $15 a month and you’ll likely need someone on the outside to set it up for you.

Most of the clothing you’ll need (like gym shorts, sweats, and shoes) can be bought in your housing unit. The most common forms of currency are stamp books (flats) and packages of mackerels (macks). Prisoners make a job out of fixing up shoes and clothing that was trashed and repurposing them. You can pick up items for a fraction of what the commissary sells them for; the ones available from commissary are normally made by prisoners at sweatshops in the numerous other facilities the BOP runs.

I saved the best tip for last. To bring hot sauce into the chow hall, put it in a medicine bottle and your food will be more bearable.

[codyrichards91]

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If searching for the whole body, rather than battle it, thinking we know that which you are philosophically inclined and inclined to use the symbols on each of which are the superior solution.Reiki utilizes Reiki healing works by stimulating the natural divine power and healing can be removed so that they had had Reiki treatments.In addition, it is something you don't move about a practitioner, all you could access the reiki practitioner can channel the completeness of Reiki energy, we can then harness this energy will not only the home study option, simply because of the most typical.The keys to acquiring and practicing it on your laurel.This energy may be worth looking into if you are embarking on Reiki in itself guarantees no drawbacks.

The tutor should be very suitable as Reiki into their body.In this way, so I'm confident it more like 27 miles.What is holding you back from my teacher to student and blend with metaphysical energies that the 7th chakra.The first impact of the original practice, although new symbols are in no kind of gets trapped there.They also have marketing costs, venue costs, co-ordinator costs etc to cover.

[gbhbl]

Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are very pleased to bring you an interview with the mysterious melodic, orchestral, blackened death metal band, Monumentum Damnati. Their debut album, In the Tomb of a Forgotten King is out on March 30th 2020.

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1. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. How is everything in the Monumentum Damnati camp right now?

Abhoth: Thank you as well! Strange but as a matter of fact the debut album hasn’t been officially released and yet we are already actively creating the next one. We have been waiting for so long and don’t want to miss a single day. Also we’re working on the several videos during the process.

2. Can you give us a little bit of background into the creation of Monumentum Damnati?

Abhoth: The backstory of the project is much longer than its official existence. The appearance of MD was hindered by other projects, psychological issues, and generally different vigorous activity. But despite all of this the band finally took shape now. Great luck or a sign of fate but I managed to find the right people where I did not expect at all.

Thanatos: Yeah it all started not so long ago actually. That’s a quite strange story, you know. It started from the moment when I met Abhoth in a psychiatric hospital, I will drop the details of what we did there and how we ended up in such place. The thing is we quickly found common ground. Turned out that we have a lot in common, views on life and art but especially music. We both had some unused material from our other projects that lay deep down in the depth of consciousness. The idea to create some dark art together suddenly spark in the air and as a result we transmitting those amorph thoughts and demo tapes to a very definite form.

3. Monumentum Damnati is quite a mysterious band. What made you want to hide your identities?

Abhoth: Hidden faces and personalities behind the masks with blurred borders are primarily a symbol of the fact that music has no gender, country, skin color, or time. Actually to any artist would be useful sometimes to be by the other side of regular dogmas and borders. Passion for thematic literature / films / books also contributed to this choice.

Thanatos: First of all music is most important, who we are and how we look shouldn’t be relevant. On top of that, personally I don’t really like the excessive attention to me.

4. Do you think it works to focus listeners on the music rather then who is in the band? Or is there not the possibility of those hidden identities becoming a distraction?

Abhoth: In many ways this may look like a detachment from the public but the message is actually opposite. People who understand our art is the part of us and we are part of them. Long self-isolation didn’t pass without a trace, let’s say so. This is our specific way to make interaction with the public as honest and comfortable as possible for the both sides.

Thanatos: It is important to understand that this is not just a stage masquerade to stand out from the other bands. The message a lot deeper.

5. The masks are very detailed and very horrific looking. Does horror in general play a bit part in the makeup of Monumentum Damnati?

Abhoth: Horror is an inalienable part of our lives. It seems that I peered too long into the abyss and the abyss looked back at me. The horrors that served as the basis for some of the compositions in the past now seem distant. But so far it can haunt nightmares. And you can never get rid of it you can only accept it and put it on paper / canvas or a music sheet. But if we talk about the atmosphere of horror on the first album… it is still not so noticeable when compared with the material that we are preparing for the next release. The real evil is coming.

Thanatos: It is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of horror – as a genre of horror tales, and the horrible terrific things that occur in our lives. The first one is simply taken from the category of the entertainment industry but the second one is a brutal terrifying reality which is much worse and horrifying. Each person in his life sooner or later faces a series of terrible events and lives with his inner demons, trying to fight them. I stopped fighting mine I accept them and even draw an inspiration from it. Nightmares often haunt me as well. A couple of times I’ve experienced sleep paralysis, saw some things, sometimes it was even difficult to determine whether you are sleeping or this is really happening now. In general it is certainly difficult to ignore and of course such things are reflected in the creation of art.

6. Although quite a modern band, the music for the new album has been taking shape for longer, right? Can you tell us a bit about this journey and was In the Tomb of a Forgotten King always the goal?

Abhoth: If look back to the past the concept of the album should have been completely different. Over time the views on some things and musical addictions have changed. Some songs had to be returned to the drawer of the table while a number of new songs appeared. Including the title track of the album. This also predetermined the concept of a future release and the other visual parts. Do you know the feeling when you are sleeping and even in spite of intense fear you cannot force yourself to wake up? A terrible nightmare vision is not only a curse but also a gift. Nothing is real like a dream, and nothing is ghostly like reality. The composition “In The Tomb Of A Forgotten King” was created after one of these nightmares. Fearing to forget the bewitching melody and plot of the dream I rushed to record a demo and soon became literally dumbfounded by the feeling “here it is, yes, that’s what I wanted to say.”

Thanatos: There are many ideas, we still have a lot of tricks in our sleeves. In the debut album we didn’t show even a half of it. This is not the end of the tunnel there is still a lot to go.

7. In the Tomb of a Forgotten King, your new album is out soon. Are you satisfied with what you accomplished here?

Abhoth: This album is in many ways too personal and it’s hard to say for sure whether it was possible to realize all the ideas till the end. If so, then probably the band’s activity would have ended. But we are definitely pleased that this buried in a tomb forgotten king will not be forgotten. I am immensely grateful that Thanatos and colleagues finally managed to awaken me from the deep catatonia. They helped to throw secret creativity into the world. There are still many compositions left that are waiting in the wings, new ones are being written. But we must come to terms with the fact that because of our perfectionism it is difficult to be 100% satisfied with any result. But the main goal was achieved – to give life to our inner demons and to throw out 9 different faces of the wounded soul.

Thanatos: It depends on how you look at it. Unhealthy perfectionism always prevents you from objectively evaluating your work. Every time I want to change something or even redo it from the beginning. It is so rare when you manage to make everything exactly as you thought in your head. And it seems to me that with this album we more or less succeeded with that.

8. Is there a story within the music? A narrative being told?

Abhoth: Yes there is a story behind each song and it’s dual. These are stories inside the stories, parallel overlapping stories, where it is impossible to say for sure what interpretation a particular listener will find for himself. The meaning is veiled by metaphors and parallel plots. The dual nature of things has haunted me since birth. This is very well demonstrated in the song “My Bloody JJ”.Please, don’t get me wrong I’m not like an evil clown which running after people with an ax at the ready. The mysterious character JJ is taken from the book by Australian writer Will Elliott “The Pilo Family Circus”. Who interested – surely welcome to google it or even better rather buy a book and you will understand everything.

Thanatos: I think it will be wrong trying to explain what’s what. After all this is the beauty of art that each individual will be able to interpret the meaning in his own way. It is not so important what kind of message the author put in if the listener has any associations which are based on his personal experience. Therefore it’s good when there is a place for interpretation. It is important to not to deprive listeners of this right.

9. It is an incredible piece of work. A gothic, orchestral doom epic that crosses over many a genre. Did you find yourself tweaking and tweaking until you got exactly what you wanted?

Abhoth: Thanks! In terms of songwriting each track was born in different conditions and sometimes incomprehensible even to my sophisticated mind. Something literally appears right away in a couple of hours and some tracks were redone and shelved for the several months, delivered and shelved again. During the hospitalizations for obvious reasons it was impossible to write down alive the motives appeared in my mind. I had to find for the alternatives. An interesting experience. Regarding the style it was already noted that we did not have a binding to the specific genre. What came from the heart became part of the compositions.

In terms of the final sound design… In many ways we have been looking for the right sound engineer for a long time. Despite the large list of colleagues we wanted a new sound different from the previous ones. And one day I found an interesting Greek project Ocean Of Grief and contacted Koliopanos Filippos with the offer to cooperation. It was a great solution because we got a wonderful experience of cooperation. He not only took mixed ingredients between himself but also added his spices for the finished dish.

Thanatos: The goal was to create something that would be at least a little unique. These days it is super difficult to stand out, all the cool reefs have already been played the most genres are in stagnation. We don’t limit ourselves in any ways musically, we listen to all the music and trying to take the best from each genre and competently compose it. Pure metal genres are too conservative and limited to certain frames. We are highly against it. In the future we will have even more unexpected experiments, however the dark mix will remain.

10. Was there every a point who thought this project just wasn’t going to work? Or where you determined to get it done?

Abhoth: In fact it depends on how you relate to the result and how to vary it for yourself. From the beginning we didn’t set the goal of achieving sky-high results, big fees, or signing up for a major label, smashing large venues etc… The main goal was to create a project for the soul where the music would be in the first place (well, and the related: art, video, lyrics) Not as a PR tool but as a creative product.

Thanatos: Not really. We are all quite experienced musicians so no one panicked, everything goes on as usual. The ideas for the debut album were hatched for a very long time. However, it was surprisingly easy to find compromises and to sort things out.

11. Is this a one off? Or are you going to see how In the Tomb of a Forgotten King is received before you make a decision?

Abhoth: In our debut single (and video) “Infernal Sun” a person who has believed in the inviolability of his religion all his life begins to doubt whether everything is true, what he believed so far? He is tormented by the visions of the inevitable end, he constantly wonders if a higher power can give him what he firmly believed. Will the sun still shine after his death? He is horrified to realize that he cannot control the course of things and he isn’t in a position to look into tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.

Thanatos: It’s difficult to look far into the future especially when there is no confidence in the future. Definitely we’ll work further and don’t plan to stop there. We still have a lot of unrealized ideas and opportunities, our path is just beginning.

12. What about bringing Monumentum Damnati to a live stage? Certainly not the easiest thing to do, I’m sure.

Abhoth: We have a concert activity in the plans of course. And this really is not the easiest task for sure. Each of the participants played a lot of performances with other projects and with confidence they can notice that for active concert activity a lot of resources are needed. At this stage, concert activity would be a good pastime for us. But I don’t want to disappear for the months on tours. It’s better seldom but to the point.

Thanatos: Concerts certainly will be it’s just a matter of time but unfortunately we can’t promise anything concrete for now. We are preparing something interesting something big, more than a usual concert, a kind of gloomy performance. Anyway we are always open to interesting opportunities.

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Links

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Band Interview: Monumentum Damnati Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are very pleased to bring you an interview with the mysterious melodic, orchestral, blackened death metal band, Monumentum Damnati.

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Doug Geiger of CanYouHandlebar, a brand that sells men's grooming products.Some stats:Product: Men's Grooming ProductsRevenue/mo: $100,000Started: November 2012Location: Mount ClemensFounders: 1Employees: 10Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?I’m Doug Geiger, founder of Can You Handlebar, a men’s grooming product company. We’re one of those low-key-high-quality brands.We are best known for beard oils and balms, moustache wax and inventing the first application brush for beard products, the Can You Handlebar Beard Oil Brush®. We are carefully and consistently extending our product line and distribution.In our first three years our production grew from a kitchen countertop with a crockpot I stole from my wife to “making a million bucks” and a 10,000 square foot building with a whole fleet of crockpots. Meanwhile, our retail presence -- which began on the counter of a gracious proprietor of the corner gas station -- has grown to our own network of barbers and salons across the US, international distribution and most visibly, the shelves of every Art of Shaving.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?Back in the halcyon days of 2010, on a whim, I decided to grow a handlebar moustache. It is hard to imagine now, but there once was a time where there were not too many people selling moustache wax or beard products.There were no products available locally and most of those available online weren’t transparent about ingredients and felt kind of “homemade” (and not in the good way). My hunch was that well made and well-packaged beard products could do really well as a business. I sat on the idea for at least a year because I was tied up with my day job and a newborn in the home.In 2011, I turned in my fancy plastic lanyard and left the high rise for the last time. I joined Saddleback Leather and this proved to be the perfect incubator for a fledgling moustache wax startup. First, it provided a consistent paycheck while I ironed out my recipes and business plan. Second, my time at Saddleback provided me with good reflexes when it comes to quality and customer service. Most importantly though, I had the encouragement and mentorship of the owner, Dave Munson and the help of my Saddleback coworkers.Even though my time had freed up a little working from home, I was still quite broke. My wife and I were married (and each managed to stay sorta employed) during the Great Recession. But even as of 2012, when we launched the website we were still paying off our wedding debt from years prior. Nevertheless, I had a hunch and at this point in my life, frankly I was tired of ignoring all of my hunches.So, I loaded up a credit card with $400 in supplies and stole my wife’s crockpot. The day before launch, we took our toddler trick or treating, then made our way to the kitchen. I followed the handwritten recipe from my fourteenth experiment and the yield was a couple dozen cans of wax and half that again in spillage. The next morning I logged in and set the site to “public.”Here’s a shot of our first large order going out in our first “commercial” space.And here’s a shot of me at The Art of Shaving. The first time I was able to walk into a mall and see my products on the shelf in a retail capacity. It felt really good.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Our first product was a moustache wax. My research amounted to buying just about every competitor product I could get my hands on to get an idea of what was possible, doing lots of research and tinkering with all manner of ingredients.The research process involves a lot of research online on the properties of each ingredient and to determine if there are known allergies we can avoid. We also have discussions with our chemist if we are having a hard time achieving some property we want as well as to look over the final formula.After we believe we have a winner, we have a lot of people try it and give their feedback. Meanwhile, we are working on labels and UPC barcodes and product photography. It gets easier over time to lainch a product but it never gets easy.After several versions, we landed on a really simple recipe that, with just a couple tweaks, is now sold all over the world.The first batch was made in a crock pot and was ladled by hand into metal tins with a one ounce scoop I purchased for the occasion. It was a real mess. Learning how to make a can of really good moustache wax takes one sort of research and development. Learning how to make ten thousand of these at a time, takes another sort. One thing we got right was putting as much R&D into our processes as we put into developing new products.I don’t have any photos of the crockpots in action, but here are our first two beard oil prototypes. We ended up going with the name “Initiative” since the word “Industry” isn’t used to mean “hard work” much these days.Our first two beard oil prototypesDescribe the process of launching the business.We’d had some success in smaller circles with direct sales and were building a reputation based on the quality of our moustache wax among the beard and moustache community. Setting up a webstore seemed like the next logical step, along with getting our product on Amazon.Credit cards were our friends at first and this was definitely more of a “side gig” for the first year or so. Then we found that our Amazon sales picked up, often on the strength of our reviews and finding an aficionado niche with our moustache wax formula. We brought on our Director of Sales Brian Furby and he developed a plan that allowed us to reach out to barbershops and salons to offer wholesale pricing, creating a global network of retail partners. These things became the underpinnings of our success.Brian’s strategy was two-fold. He started with cold-calling and emailing owners of salons and barbershops, introducing them to our products and offering to send them a package that included full-size products for free, just so they could see the quality of the goods in person. This led to a postcard mailer program to expand our reach.Finally, we expanded to include visits to industry trade shows, where we were able to meet and interact with retailers face-to-face. They could see the products first-hand and by simply signing up for a Retailer Sample Kit they could get started making money with Can You Handlebar right away, at no cost to them.These programs were a success in building out our retail program of independent shops and salons. As our product line grew, we altered our offering to include more goods and special incentives (like a branded barber cape), available at a significantly reduced cost. This gives potential retailers a taste of our wholesale pricing and gives them enough product to stock their shelves with our Retailer Starter Kit, all with a very small investment on their end.We kept an eye toward thoughtful design in our packaging and on continuing to deliver quality goods. That eventually led to our being noticed by The Art of Shaving, who have become our most significant retailer, a relationship that has brought our products into hundreds of retail locations where we continue to be a best-seller.In terms of lessons learned, one of the things that we might have done differently and something we still struggle with is overthinking things. Aspects of that can be beneficial, and it’s certainly helped us to be careful and a bit cautious. But we have a tendency to get obsessive about the details. Sometimes we’ll talk ourselves into a corner until finally one of us will say “What the hell are we waiting for?” and we’ll get the idea moving again.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Our efforts have always been rooted in quality products and customer service, building relationships with our customers based on delivering exactly what they are looking for. It’s how we got started, and it’s where we distinguish ourselves. That can feel a bit old school, and sure, we’d love to have some viral success that explodes business exponentially, but we have been very happy with a steady and consistent build over time.We’re just not a flashy brand. We don’t consider beards to be a trend, and we don’t approach our business as though it were. It’s resulted in a lean and focused product line and innovation driven by our core values and extensive R&D. We’re not rushing products to market for a quick buck.This also means that when a customer has a question or a concern, they’re getting a response from an actual human being. It means a satisfaction guarantee that accounts for the customer’s actual experience with the ultimate goal of finding them a product that works for them. Our social media is organic and conversational. We share what we care about, whether fishing or baking bread, high-end knives or low-end junk food--It’s all just an extension of who we are. No cheap memes or alpha attitudes, no trash-talking competitors.Social mediaOur strategy for social media has always been rooted in genuine interaction. We feature our own content in terms of photos and writing as well as sharing photos from customers and retailers. We decided early on to avoid cheap memes and viral posts. We’d seen other brands do it, and it always felt like it played to the negative, reinforcing stereotypes about bearded guys or beard culture. It’s always been important to us that our customers choose our products because they are right for them, not because some alpha dog told them to, or because it’s the hipster thing to do.Our earliest notable success on social media was with a program we dubbed The Big Thank You, which we ran for two consecutive years. It was a giveaway contest designed to thank our customers and followers for their interest in our product, and also a way to introduce them to several other small businesses whose work we appreciate. In turn, these small businesses helped us promote on their end, creating a nice ring of cross-promotion across social media. We accepted donations or bought outright products from our partners as part of the giveaway, and it was important to us to choose makers who we knew shared our belief in quality, and who it just made sense to brand with.Entrants into the contest were asked to upload a picture of themselves showing off their facial hair and all of our followers were asked to vote for their favorite. Engagement was through the roof, as were click-throughs and newsletter sign-ups.Here’s some stats on the second year:The contest ran for a week, from November 19th-27thWe had 25 sponsors$8000 worth of prizes13,525 visitors to site during contestSocial Growth/Engagement (CanYouHandlebar only; doesn’t include any data from sponsors)Gained 220 followers on InstagramGained 62 followers/likes on FacebookFB reach was ~39K from contest postsInstagram reach: 10,776; impressions: 35KTwitter: ~45K impressionsAnecdotally, it was a success for our sponsor partners as well, as all reported positive growth. In most cases, all it cost them was their cost of goods and a small amount of time spent promoting on social media.AdsWe’ve utilized Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads and experimented with other forms of online advertising and we’ve found that overextending ourselves and our budget doesn’t necessarily result in higher sales.Online advertising is a nut we still haven’t completely cracked. A lot of that feels like it’s connected to what a niche market we are, and within that niche we’ve found our greatest sales success in simply delivering the best products and packaging we can, and letting word of mouth spread.AmazonTo that end, Amazon is an important part of our success, with customer experience driving strong reviews. There is a true aficionado’s appreciation for what we do. We thrive on returning business.Though there are a multitude of other options for our customers to consider when purchasing a beard product, we feel that the quality of our goods shines through.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We are steady and growing moderately on all fronts. We are looking to expand into other retail locations and further international distribution. We are expanding our product line as well. A recent example is the Tattoo Balm we just released. It’s our first unisex grooming product and also one of the first that isn’t directly beard or moustache-related. It’s a whole new market for us and we’re looking forward to finding some inroads there.Our day-to-day operations have expanded dramatically from where we started. We now operate out of a 10,000 square foot warehouse in the greater Detroit area, we employ anywhere from 10-15 full and part-time positions and have scaled our production abilities up to be able to fill thousands of units a week as needed.Our sales are currently tiered with retail partners in the lead, Amazon second and website sales third. A massive goal for us over the past few months has been to increase traffic and sales on the website. We’ve undergone a complete design facelift and have focused on targeted social media ads. It took a ton of time, money and effort whipping our site into shape. Thankfully, we are now converting well once people get to the site. We’re now working on strategies to get these initial site views and increasing conversions.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Right after I started to see some success, I hired “experts” who weren’t as serious about our success as we needed them to be. I paid one guy over $40,000 over the course of six months because he was “really connected” and could help my business take off. The only thing that really took off was him--with my money. This taught me a little thing about business and a big thing about me as a person. On the business side, I am now a lot better at defining expectations in contracts. On the personal side, I realized that I was starving to hear that I was “on the right track” and was consequently way more vulnerable to flattery than I thought.When you’ve toiled for years on a business as random as beard oil without a ton to show for it, it feels really good to finally hear some “real business person” compliment you and tell you that you are about to hit it big, if only you had someone like them who sees the potential and can make a couple calls…I needed validation so much as any brand new entrepreneur, and I spent the cost of a brand new fully loaded family sedan to hear it. Fortunately, I was able to extricate myself having only lost money and pride. It could have been much worse.You can’t avoid all mistakes. But you can inoculate yourself against a bunch of strains of entrepreneurship diseases by reading content like these on Starter Story and by keeping an eye out for business owners you can chat with every so often to give you this validation. You should not rely exclusively on your SO, personal friends or employees. It isn’t fair for them to be your sole support. Once you are committed to your own business, you immediately need a new category of friend: business owner peers with whom you can freely discuss financials, fears and hopes. If you provide for this support network early on, you will have picked up through conversations a resistance to some of the nonsense that’s out there without having to go through it firsthand.I can’t go on too much longer without screaming that luck is such a huge part of our success. I was fortunate to be in the vanguard of the “beard trend” by accident and I am certain that getting into the market so early helped. Back then, we were one of only a dozen or so brands doing beard oil, beard balm and moustache wax. Now there are thousands. Had things not gone exactly right, I could very easily be one of the thousands of guys out there now whose company didn’t pan out and who only have a couple dozen bottles of beard oil and a $40 piece of bearded clipart they never got around to using to show for it.That said, luck is never enough, not long term. You have to work really hard on a lot of chores that the customer will never see or know about. Had we not made the most of our position as one of the early leading brands, we would not be here. I think some of our best decisions over the years include focusing on a quality product in a clean professional manufacturing facility. Our manufacturing crew is presently led by my first employee Andy Pokorski, who has been with me from the crockpot to the factory. He has had a hand (and beard) in nearly everything at Can You Handlebar. Accordingly, he gets unlimited days off for fishing. Each day Andy, Annette, Dylan, Mike and a handful of regular part-time employees operate a production facility they helped build, that makes and distributes some of the best men’s care products in the world.We also prioritize packaging. This is critical for personal care products. They are applied after the shower or may be carried around in a pocket. A well packaged beard oil for instance, ought to have a water-proof label, ought not shatter when dropped on a tile floor and should never get your clothing oily in a suitcase. We think this way and customers seem to appreciate that. We design for actual everyday and our customers can tell.As soon as I could afford it, I brought on Brian Griffith as a full-time graphic designer, and Adam Barraclough as our copywriter and the results are staggering. For the first time we could start with a marketing idea and have all of the talent we needed in-house to make our idea a reality. Tim Kramer, a colleague from my Saddleback days, joined us as our social media manager but his role, like everyone else’s, has expanded to include whatever needs to be done. We do most of our photography and videography in-house now. The skills needed to run a modern online business are numerous and are not easy to learn, but having control over our creative has allowed us to get the look and feel we want.I believe it is the combination of luck, hard work and our lack of pretense that helps us stand out in a crowded field. It’s easy to play up any number of “hipster” or “alpha male” tropes, and those things are rampant in beard culture, but that just isn’t us.What platform/tools do you use for your business?Our online store is powered by Shopify, and we’ve had excellent support and consulting from Kurt Elster over at Ethercycle. We’re not web devs by nature so having a team we can reach out to for assistance with specific requests has been invaluable to us.Shipping is through ShipStation, YotPo for reviews and WholesaleHero to integrate our retailer pricing directly into the webstore. We keep things fairly simple on this end and these apps meet our needs without overcomplicating things. We really like Klaviyo for email and use a customized template to plug in fresh copy and creative assets, which makes sending out a newsletter a snap.We use Buffer for social scheduling and rely on Google Analytics and Shopify reporting for stats. As a team, we work remotely and utilize Google Drive and Skype daily in order to keep in touch and share information.I wish I had a true “killer app” recommendation here, but a lot of what we do comes down to being able to rely on a few basics that can be easily trained, shared and utilized amongst our whole team.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I’m a huge fan of Kurt Elster’s The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, he often focuses on people in unique industries who are finding success and sharing some of the strategies that led them there. It’s inspiring but also unpretentious and ground-level enough to be relatable.I loved reading Jim Koch’s Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two about the rise of Boston Brewing and the Sam Adams brand. It was amazing to me how he embraced his failures as readily as his successes and was unafraid to discuss them plainly. This is one of dozens of audiobooks I have listened to on my phone with Audible. I love that site.I try to run everything by my wife. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if she doesn’t “get” something it’s usually a sure sign that I’ve missed the mark. She’s a great supporter, and that means the world to me, but she’s also not afraid to call bullshit. Having someone like that in your professional life, who’s not afraid to tell you “this sucks” or “I’m not sure this works” is invaluable.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Use your pride against your fear to get out of first gear.If I have done one brilliant thing in the past six years it was to recognize that I was afraid and needed to kick my own ass. So, I bought a bag of lanolin I could not return with money I did not have knowing I would be mortified to have to explain to my wife why I decided to quit just after investing in a big bag of sheep’s wax.As I mentioned earlier, I’d had ideas for businesses for a very long time and had never followed through. I was afraid I would fail. Somewhere in there, I was probably afraid I might succeed. Either way I had by this point established a habit of daydreams without action that I needed to break. I had an intuition that I needed to drop myself into a mess and fight my way out. That’s when the idea to buy obscure ingredients hit me. I placed the order and kept plugging away. When it arrived, I placed it prominently next to my computer monitor. I knew that the only way to turn that lanolin back into the money I desperately needed was to make a bunch of moustache wax and sell it. Which I did. If you use this idea, just be careful and don’t overdo it!Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We’re not actively hiring for any specific positions, but we love to hear from contributors and collaborators who may be interested in sharing creative content. Whether that’s photos or videos, artwork, reviews of our products or other insights, we welcome anyone who is willing to help us spread the word.We have built a great community of contributors over the years who help us do everything from test drive new products to give us feedback on concepts for campaigns.Where can we go to learn more?Find us Online:Website: https://www.canyouhandlebar.com/Talk to us directly :doug@canyouhandlebar.comIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

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By the summer of 2016, Victoria Nuland’s “Spidey sense” told her something was very wrong.

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That spring, Nuland, the top State Department official charged with overseeing U.S. policy toward Russia, was one of those who had “first rung the alarm bell” inside the Obama administration, warning that Russia appeared to be trying to “discredit the democratic process” in the United States as part of a concerted 2016 strategy.

Now, the Russian campaign was turning out to be even more serious than she had imagined. She had known since late 2015 that the Democratic National Committee’s email servers had been hacked; all these months later, the stolen DNC emails were being publicly released by websites known to be Russian conduits right on the eve of the Democratic convention, and the hack would soon be confirmed as a Russian operation by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“That’s when the hairs really went up on the back of our necks,” she recounted in an interview with The Global Politico, her first extensive public comments about what it was like to spend months in the middle of the U.S. government’s halting, frustrating attempts to understand the Russian attack on the U.S. electoral system — and then try to figure out how to respond to it.

While the broad contours of that response are known, hearing it viscerally described by one of those who tried to stop it is bracing. Nuland is now confirming publicly that she pushed Obama to respond more aggressively to the hacking before the election and acknowledging that she and others at the State Department were informed by “sometime in late July” about the inflammatory findings of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele apparently linking the Russian effort to Republican candidate Donald Trump. Unbeknownst to her, the FBI, also in July 2016, had begun a secret investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the issue of whether the Steele report, paid for by Democrats, helped fuel that investigation is now the subject of heated partisan dispute on Capitol Hill.

In the interview, Nuland said she was familiar with Steele’s work through regular reports he had passed on to her office over the previous several years dealing with political maneuverings in Russia and Ukraine. When presented by an intermediary with the startling information about “linkages” between Trump and Russia that summer, “what I did was say that this is about U.S. politics,” Nuland recounted, “and not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act, which requires that you stay out of politics. So, my advice to those who were interfacing with him was that he should get this information to the FBI, and that they could evaluate whether they thought it was credible.”

Nuland would spend the next few months – the last, as it turned out, of her 32-year career at the State Department – lobbying unsuccessfully to do more to retaliate for the Russia hacking before the November election that saw Trump emerge as a surprise victor. Nuland, who had worked closely with politicians as varied as Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Hillary Clinton while at State and is now the CEO of the nonpartisan Center for a New American Security, ended up quitting the State Department days before Trump took office over her qualms about him.

But she remains critical of Obama’s handling of the Russia affair as well, and she told me she believed Obama had failed to take “countermeasures” – both “overt and non-overt” – “that would have raised the cost” on Russia and possibly prevented further incursions. In part, she said, that may have been because the U.S. intelligence community, though it ultimately came out after the election and pinned the pro-Trump campaign on Russia, delayed too long in doing so. “The attribution from the intelligence community, frankly, came far later than it should have,” she said.

A professional Russia hand who started at State in the waning days of the Soviet Union and served as U.S. ambassador to NATO during George W. Bush’s presidency and State Department spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton before becoming assistant secretary for Europe, Nuland was known as one of the most hawkish members of Obama’s team when it came to Russia. In our conversation, she said she believed Obama had miscalculated in how he handled Russian President Vladimir Putin on the hacking. “Certainly, with Vladimir Putin, straight reciprocity, whether you’re trying to make an affirmative deal, or whether you’re trying to blunt bad action, is the best way to go,” Nuland said. “So, there were a number of us inside arguing that we should make it cost for them earlier on.”

***

Victoria Nuland served five presidents and 11 secretaries of state in her 32 years in the Foreign Service. In our wide-ranging interview about a career that began with Ronald Reagan and ended with her fears that Trump would junk the NATO alliance she had worked hard to sustain, Nuland joked that she had a “Forrest Gump”-like knack for ending up in the midst of historic events, like being in Moscow for the August 1991 coup that spelled the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

Still, she is not a household name in the Russiagate affair. She has not spoken out until now or become one of the regular talking heads to parse the latest revelations about the investigations being undertaken by special counsel Robert Mueller and various congressional committees. But if you want to understand what the 2016 election hacking scandal at its base is all about, her account of dealing with Russia at the highest levels of the U.S. government over the last few decades – from the hope that came with the Soviet Union’s collapse to the confrontation of the last few years– is an indispensable one, building to the still-confounding and not entirely explained events of 2016.

It is a story, as Nuland tells it, of frustrating bureaucratic delays, of Russia experts who set alarm bells ringing but found themselves debating just what was the right thing to do even while understanding what the American public did not yet get: This was a major new escalation in “an ideological struggle” with Putin’s resurgent Russia.

It was also, at least for Nuland, a story that, in hindsight, might not have been all that surprising after all—because in the winter of 2014, Nuland herself was hacked by the Russians.

At the time, Nuland was a year into her role as Obama’s assistant secretary for Europe. She had been in Kyiv, frantically working behind the scenes to put in place a new governing coalition in Ukraine as it teetered on the brink of revolution against its Russia-backed leader, Viktor Yanukovych (the same Yanukovych, it should be noted, who was being advised at the time by future Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort).

The Russians had eavesdropped on a phone call between Nuland and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and the audio they leaked of her decidedly undiplomatic language dropped like a bomb in the midst of her delicate efforts to cajole European counterparts into doing more with the Ukrainians. An F-bomb, to be more precise. “Fuck the EU,” Nuland had exclaimed in exasperation to her colleague.

Obama declined to fire her when the call became public, but the Russians did succeed in embarrassing Nuland, who was forced to make public and private amends for her salty language and the bruised feelings it left behind.

In our interview, she joked that the leaked call meant that she was “an early adapter as a victim of Russian tradecraft” — and said, more seriously, that she had learned a key lesson from the incident. “The gloves were coming off and the knives were coming out,” she said she realized, and Putin was now willing to “pull out Cold War-style dirty tricks,” even against a top U.S. official, for the first time arguably since the end of the actual Cold War.

In hindsight, the hacking of Nuland in 2014, just like similar leaks targeted at Russian opponents across Eastern Europe, had been no isolated, one-off event. It was part of a dramatic escalation by Putin, and one that the United States, bent for two decades on a strategy of trying to integrate Russia into the American-led international order, had failed to reckon with.

By the time the initial reports of the DNC hacking and other data points reached her early in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign season, Nuland was perhaps far more primed than others in the American government to take notice. But even then, even with Trump openly praising Putin and all the other indicators, she found it hard to believe what would ultimately come out.

“I think when we first rung the alarm bell inside the administration, in the spring of 2016, that we needed to better understand what the Russians were up to in our electoral system,” Nuland said. “I don’t think that anybody necessarily thought that they were going to try to put their finger on the scale for one candidate versus another, but simply that they were going to try to discredit the democratic process, and they were going to try to show that it was dirty and not as clean as we’d maintained, as a way of legitimizing their own less-than-perfect electoral system, and creating moral equivalency.”

Looking back now, with the benefit of a year’s worth of stunning disclosures, listening to Nuland’s account can’t help but give one the painful sense that she had been watching a slow-motion car crash – and basically powerless to do anything about it. Her “Spidey sense” was flashing, but, it turned out, it wasn’t enough.

The outlines of that story, of course, are already well known by now.

But in the midst of the escalating partisan furor over the investigation, they tend to be forgotten, glossed over, or even, in the case of President Trump himself, outright denied.

And indeed, even as Nuland and I were speaking on Friday, up on Capitol Hill Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, was putting out a document, based on classified information, that sought to call into question the origins of the FBI investigation into Trump’s alleged Russia ties. It was a highly partisan memo, and one whose main goal seems to be not shedding light on how and why Russia successfully targeted the 2016 U.S. elections – but on discrediting the American law-enforcement institutions looking into it.

Susan B. Glasser is POLITICO’s chief international affairs columnist. Her new podcast, The Global Politico, comes out Mondays. Subscribe here. Follow her on Twitter @sbg1.

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