#where is that post about not having a sense of object permanence of oneself in other's lives because... i sure don't have that 🤡

[starchild--27]

>.>

[funkymbtifiction]

Can you help me find my type please?- I have been torn between Infj and infp for a little while. I had settled with Infj originally, but in hopes of not being mistyped I am also considering the possibility of me being an infp. There are certain aspects from both types that I resonate with....

You are a wonderful, creative, imaginative ISFJ. Let's look:

On a daily basis I feel as though I am constantly preparing for events or situations in hopes of having some sort of control over my environment. It’s not so much that I want to control people, but I want to know what’s going on around me constantly in order to be prepared for what’s coming next. Being prepared gives me a sense of peace because I know what is going to happen so there’s no unwanted surprises. <- strong Si

When I’m completing an assignment for one of my classes, I always evaluate my options and pick which one is best depending on the circumstance. For example, recently I had to write a paper, psychoanalyzing a character with mental illness from a movie. While there are plenty of movies with characters that have mental illness, I quickly came up with two that I had previously watched since a familiar movie would make the analysis easier for me. Then I was able to narrow it down to one based on the complexity of the characters involved in the two movies and which one had more interesting information to discuss in the paper. This thought process was done quite quickly in my head. <- Si. You chose a character you are intimately familiar with to streamline the process (this is not abstract thinking, this is a useful, practical sensory method of easily accomplishing it)

I like to know the deeper meaning of things and I constantly do that even when I’m out for a walk. For example, if I’m out on a nice sunny spring evening and so see a lovely tree with green leaves. I might start to think about how these leaves are so bright and lively, but in a few months they will change color and fall, then the tree will completely loose its leaves. However, in the end the tree always comes back to its happy state with green leaves swaying in the cool breeze. I would then relate that to the human circle of life. Humans actually don’t have much time on earth, but every stage of life we experience is just as valuable as the next l. There’s will be moments that are more positive than others but they all teach us lessons that are valuable. Once one life is gone another life begins and the process goes on and on as humans evolve through generations similar to the changing leaves of a tree through seasons. <- 100% gorgeous example of Si and Ti. Si knows what is permanent, and sees what things were, what they are, and what they are becoming, the permanence of things. What LASTS. What outlives us. What has stability. What does that tree mean to me? Who has sat under its branches? Who has leaned against it? What has sheltered beneath it in a storm? What can this teach us (Fe) about being human? What do we learn from our life experiences (Si)? A lovely, sensory abstract comparison (Si is abstract, just not abstract in the way Ni is).

When I am with a group of people, whether I know them or not I can easily get a feel for the atmosphere and adhere to what is expected of me. If they are sad I will be somber with them while trying to comfort them if I feel they need it. If they are happy I will be happy with them and try to keep them happy. If people are angry I usually start to feel anxious because I don’t react well to anger. Peoples emotions heavily influence me ever since I was little. <- Fe. My ENFJ says Fe is like being a chameleon. You have no choice but to change colors around other people, to adapt yourself to them so you can reach them on a level they can understand.

My thirst for knowledge is constant and never ending. I’m never satisfied because I know there’s more to learn. When I start researching something about a certain topic, I read article after article, watch video after video, and look at as many posts as I can pertaining to that topic solely for the sake of learning more about it. <- Si detail gathering.

Actually, there have been many times where I’ve completed assignments in a different way to what was “expected” simply because it felt for logical to me. I understood it better that way so I completed the assignment that way. Also, I enjoy helping my friends out with their homework which I usually do. When I am checking my friends work I am easily able to point of mistakes or errors in their work that they were not able to notice. <-Si and Ti. All I can say is thank God for ISFJ proof-readers, I owe them a debt of gratitude. ;)

When I’m not thinking about the future, I’m thinking about memories that I’ve made. These memories are usually triggered by a pretty scenery or an object that holds a lot of meaning to me. For example, sometimes I’ll look outside of my bedroom window when the sun sets and every time I do that, I get emotional thinking about the times I would walk down these streets as a kid and how fast time flew by. I remember how the area changed and people that I loved left to continue their lives. Then I think about how one day I won’t be looking out of this window, but out of the window of my own home looking at a different scenery and introducing new people into my life. It gets me thinking how beautiful life is and how much we take for granted. Usually after these moments I feel very appreciative for the life that I have and the wonderful people in my life. I conclude that I wouldn’t want it any other way. <- delightful SiFe. Warm, centered in what one values for oneself (the things special to me - Si), leading into low Ne thoughts about the future and what it means to be human.

Ever since I was young I felt like I understood things that other children or people did not pick up on. This usually pertained to social cues. I’ve always known how I was expected to act based on the atmosphere of the situation and how the people around me were behaving. However, it seemed that others didn’t really care as much. Children would behave however they wanted and even if they got yelled at by the teacher they would carry on the next day. I didn’t understand how they didn’t know how to behave or why they didn’t seem to care. Also, I always take into consideration the feelings of people, but I’ve noticed over the years that many people don’t care as much. In my everyday life I try to be kind to everyone I encounter. If I were to ever make someone upset or feel a negative emotions I would feel like a horrible person. However, I see other people offending each other all the time and they don’t seem to care. I don’t get how people could easily be so insensitive towards others. In addition, I have always had very good problem solving skills. When people would not understand something, I would immediately try to help them because somehow I understood it without much prior experience. I was just able to figure it out based on observations, which I didn’t see a lot of people doing as much while growing up. <- strong Fe. FJs can automatically know what is appropriate or not and adjust to a situation and become uncomfortable when others do not, because then the "rules" of social engagement are being broken, and it will make everyone uncomfortable or not know what to say or do within the situation.

I doubt I need to go on. You love to make cherished memories, the hallmark of an ISFJ. Memories are all we have, they connect us, they give the world meaning, and we build them around what holds great personal significance to ourselves, yes? ISFJ. Embrace it. Feel at home in it. Love it. :)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

- Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase

Sir Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit tower was completed in 2012 at a cost of £19 million ($27 million). It was intended to be a permanent lasting legacy of London's hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, assisting in the post-Olympics regeneration of the Stratford area. At 376 feet (114.5 metres) it became the UK’s tallest public artwork.

London Mayor Boris Johnson put into motion a design competition that was held in 2009 and it called for designs for an "Olympic tower". A 9 panel commission made of the great and the good was set up to recommend to both Johnson and the government. It received about 50 submissions. Boris Johnson had said that his early concept for the project was something more modest than Orbit, along the lines of "a kind of 21st-century Trajan's Column", but this was dropped when more daring ideas were received. Boris Johnson was believed to want something like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty what he and the government settled on was something completely different with Turner-Prize winning artist Sir Anish Kapoor in partnership with Cecil Balmond of Arup Group, an engineering firm.

Kapoor said that one of the influences on his design was the Tower of Babel, the sense of "building the impossible" that "has something mythic about it", and that the form "straddles Eiffel and Tatlin". Balmond, working on the metaphor of an orbit, envisaged an electron cloud moving, to create a structure that appears unstable, propping itself up, "never centred, never quite vertical". Both believe that Orbit represents a new way of thinking, "a radical new piece of structure and architecture and art" that uses non-linearity – the use of "instabilities as stabilities." The spaces inside the structure, in between the twisting steel, are "cathedral like", according to Balmond, while according to Kapoor, the intention is that visitors will engage with the piece as they wind "up and up and in on oneself" on the spiral walkway.

The Independent described Orbit as "a continuously looping lattice ... made up of eight strands winding into each other and combined by rings like a jagged knot". The Guardian describes it as a "giant lattice tripod sporting a counterweight collar around its neck designed to offset the weight of its head, a two-storey dining and viewing gallery". According to the BBC, the design incorporates the five Olympic rings.

Upon its launch Johnson said "It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel." Nicholas Serota, a member of the design panel, said that Orbit was a tower with an interesting twist, with "the energy you might traditionally associate with this type of structure but in a surprisingly female form.”

When Anish Kapoor’s commission for the Olympic Park in London was unveiled no one really noticed, as most viewers thought it was still under construction.

Orbit confused viewers for sometime, but when they realised that the twisted metal structure in place was indeed an artwork they were up in arms. It was soon slammed by critics and citizens alike.

Overall reception to Orbit was mixed, but mostly negative. With regard to its potential as a lasting visitor attraction, The Guardian's Mark Brown reflected on the mixed fortunes of other large symbolic London visitor attractions such as the popular, but loss-making, Thames Tunnel; the Skylon structure, dismantled on the orders of Winston Churchill; and the successful London Eye. When plans were first reported for an Olympic tower, the media pointed to a manifesto pledge of Johnson's to crack down on tall buildings, in order to preserve London's "precious" skyline.  The Times criticised the idea as a vanity project of Johnson's, with a design "matching his bravado", built to "seal his legacy", surmising it would be compared to other similar vanity projects such as the "wedding cake", the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II built in Rome, or the Neutrality Arch, a rotating golden statue erected by Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov, while comparing Johnson to Ozymandias. Art critic Brian Sewell said "Our country is littered with public art of absolutely no merit. We are entering a new period of fascist gigantism. These are monuments to egos and you couldn't find a more monumental ego than Boris."

The Times reported the description of it being the "Godzilla of public art". In October 2012, ArcelorMittal Orbit was nominated and made the Building Design magazine shortlist for the Carbuncle Cup - an award for the worst British building completed in the past year, which was ultimately awarded to the Cutty Sark renovation.

Jay Merrick of The Independent said that "[Orbit's] sculptural power lies in its ability to suggest an unfinished form in the process of becoming something else", describing how its artistic riskiness elevated it above the banal artworks of the public art movement that have been built elsewhere in Britain's towns and cities. Merrick was of the opinion that it would be either loved or hated, being a design which is "beautifully fractious, and not quite knowable".

Jonathan Glancey of The Guardian described Orbit as "Olympian in ambition" and a "fusion between striking art and daring engineering", and said that, the Aquatics Centre apart, it represented the architecturally striking Joker in the pack, given that the rest of the landscaping and architecture for the Games "promises little to get excited about". He believed it would become a "genuine eyecatcher" for the Olympics television coverage, with its extraordinary form being a "strange and enticing marriage of sorts" between the Eiffel Tower and the un-built early Soviet era Tatlin's Tower, with the biblical Tower of Babel as "best man".

The Times writer Tom Dyckhoff, while calling it "a gift to the tabloids" and a "giant Mr. Messy", questioned whether the Olympic site needed another pointless icon, postulating whether it would stand the test of time like the London Eye and become a true icon to match the Eiffel Tower, or a hopeless white elephant. Suggesting the project had echoes of Tatlin's Monument to the Third International, and especially Constant Nieuwenhuys' utopian city New Babylon, he asked whether Orbit was just as revolutionary or possessed the same ideological purpose, or whether it was merely "a giant advert for one of the world’s biggest multinationals, sweetened with a bit of fun".

Rowan Moore of The Guardian questioned if it was going to be anything more than a folly, or whether it would be as eloquent as the Statue of Liberty. He speculated that the project might mark the time when society stops using large iconic projects as a tool for lifting areas out of deprivation. He questioned its ability to draw people's attention to Stratford after the Games, in a similar manner to the successes of the Angel of the North or the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. He also questioned the piece's ability to strike a chord like the Angel, which he believed had at least "created a feelgood factor and sense of pride" in Gateshead, or whether it would simply become one of the "many more unloved rotting wrecks that no one has the nerve to demolish". He postulated that the addition of stairs and a lift made Orbit less succinct than Kapoor's previous successful works, while ultimately he said "hard to see what the big idea is, beyond the idea of making something big".

Fellow Guardian writer John Graham-Cumming rejected comparisons to icons like the Eiffel Tower, which had itself not been intended to be a lasting monument, only persisting into public acceptance as art through being useful; he also pointed out the Colossus of Rhodes collapsed within a few decades, and the Tower of Babel was "constructed to glorify those that constructed it." He suggested that a future mayor should reconsider whether it should be pulled down. Questioning its corporate role, he believed that meant it looked less and less like a work of art and more like a vanity project.

Even Sir Anish Kapoor acknowledged the criticism and said of its clunky features,“It’s an object with all its elbows sticking out and it is slightly awkward, but I think I made it for that reason, I wanted it to be slightly awkward.”

After the 2012 Olympic Games, the Orbit tower was used as an observation tower, running at a loss of £520,000 ($884,000) in 2014–15, according to the BBC—or losing up to £10,000 ($17,000) a week in 2014, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Amidst the rising clamour of the costs matched only by the disdainful disinterest in the massive sculpture, something had to be done.

To appease Londoners, ex-London Mayor Boris Johnson brought in Carsten Höller to add a slide to the 376 feet tall artwork, making it the highest slide in Europe.

Kapoor later said he was pushed into the high profile collaboration by Johnson. Kapoor would later say that Johnson’s request “felt to me as if it was turning the whole thing in the wrong direction.”

“It was not always my thinking. The mayor foisted this on the project and there was a moment where I had to make a decision - do I go to battle with the mayor or is there a more elegant or astute way through this?,” he told the Guardian.

“I knew of Carsten’s work so I thought, well, who better than a fellow artist to join up with and make this a positive story rather than a negative… Luckily, and thankfully, Carsten was open to it, so we found a way round this,” Kapoor explained.

Judging by the unforgettable success of Höller’s slide installation at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, it’s easy to imagine what made Kapoor click and extend the invitation to the Belgian-born Stockholm-based artist.

“One makes artworks for other reasons than profit,” Kapoor told the Guardian. “I understand this is run as a so-called attraction, which I have problems with personally… I want it to be slightly more highbrow than that, without wanting to be pompous about it. There’s a difference between a fairground ride and art,” he added.

Höller, meanwhile, took a more lighthearted approach, urging people to embrace “the amusement side of it.”

“A child might be here purely for the slide, while the serious art lover might see this in purely formalistic terms. I personally like the confusion, that you don’t know what it is but it still creates a very unique experience,” he told the Guardian.

 The ArcelorMittal Orbit re-opened to the public on 5 April 2014. Since then it has done below average business in attracting people to come and visit it or try the slide.

The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which runs the park where the sculpture is located, released numbers revealing the sculpture’s sizeable debt and a steep drop in visitors. Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal had provided a £9.2 million ($11.2 million) loan to help pay for the original construction of the sculpture, but this loan has ballooned to £13 million due to the accrual of interest.

Ticket sales to the observation platform and a tunnel slide designed by Carsten Höller were meant to help repay the loan, but low visitor attendance prompted a £58,000 ($70,000) loss in 2018/19 alone. Visitor numbers have dropped from a high of 193,000 in 2016/17, when Höller’s slide was introduced, to 155,000 in 2018/19.

It’s not just an artistic folly but a commercial one too.

It's not wholly fanciful that such artistic scuptural landmarks can help lift places. No one can put a figure on jobs created or investments made in Gateshead thanks to the Angel of the North, but it has at least created a feelgood factor and sense of pride. The Bilbao Guggenheim of 1996, still the archetype of such town-boosting, certainly placed a relatively obscure city at the centre of attention.

Buildings can't do it alone and if people find their attention has been drawn only to a wasteland, they will go away again. The Guggenheim worked because there were also dull practical things in Bilbao such as new transport infrastructure and business parks.

But the most important ingredient of a successful icon is that it works artistically. It has to strike a chord, sound the right note, catch a mood, win hearts and confound sceptics. In other words it has to be aesthetically pleasing because it’s good art made by equally by great craft and graft.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit has become an unloved rotting wreck that no one has the nerve to demolish.

[prashantrana85]

Visual Style: Expression, Aesthetics and, narration in photography

From the beginning, our eyes encounter photons either directly or indirectly. So to speak, under normal conditions, our interaction with the outer world begins with visual contact. Of course, all other senses play their role in this interaction. But, seeing and hearing stimulates the mind at first, because these can work through distances, whereas, other three require physical contact with stimuli.

So, what happens when seeing and hearing stimulates the intellect and emotions? In that instant, seeing and hearing turns into vision, and the act of listening. And, from that moment onward, these senses analyze the world. This analysis usually leads to acceptation, rejection or intrigue.

It is clearly comprehensible that within the frames of regular conditions, we begin with visual diagnosis, even before listening. As John Berger said “It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it,” within this establishment, we appreciate, admire or detest, and in certain instances we are simply curious or astonished. And, in the soil of this establishment, emerges the sapling of visual style with its fruits as expression and aesthetics.

What is visual style? As John Berger said “Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen,” this realization influences a person to try and appear as visually appreciable, or at-least acceptable. This effort to be visually appreciable and, acceptable is visual style at the grass-root level. Is this phenomenon of visual style only limited to people? Of courses not; it is applicable to every visible entity.

As spectator, one applies this understanding of visual style on people, places and things one sees and, classifies them as pleasing, disgusting or intriguing. As the spectated, we use this understanding of visual style to decorate ourselves, our places and things that we create. For example, person X going to a party would try to put on their best clothes and, to carry their best appearance. Here, they apply the criteria of visual style on themselves, but once they reach the party, it is probable that person Y catches their gaze, because he or she is dressed (in accordance to understanding of visual style of person X) in visually pleasing manner, which can also be referred as beauty.

When David Hume writes “The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same,” he highlights the subjective nature of visual style. This branch of subjectivity bears its first fruit, which is expression. Let’s go back to the example of person X. They applied this subjectivity on themselves and, person Y to justify what is visually pleasing to them. But, when person X would’ve to create something, for example a photograph, they’d apply their subjective expression in that act as well. Even if the task is assigned by someone else, it will contain traces of person X’s individual expressions. This subjectivity is what distinguishes Richard Avedon from Robert Capa. Although, their medium of expression was same, their potential stimuli, and expressions were different.

This subjectivity becomes evident in mediums of visual art and, media and communication such as photography, music, textual expression and design. In this moment second fruit called aesthetics, comes to existence. All mediums of expression such as poetry, theater, music etc. are as inseparable from aesthetics as image making. But, since we are discussing visual style, we will discuss visual art and photography.

Expression is an act and, aesthetic is how one decides to perform that act. To explain this lets take the example of person X again. When they dressed up good for the party, it was an expression. But they decided to wear a particular colored dress, with a specific fragrance and pair of shoes, appropriate for that particular kind of occasion, it turns into aesthetic.

Often, aesthetics is defined as a set of principles concerned with beauty or its appreciation. Is it really that simple? Victor Burgin says “What we see … is not a pure and simple coding of light patterns that are focused on retina. Somewhere between the retina and the visual cortex, the in flowing signals are modified to provide information that is already linked to a learned response. … evidently what reaches the visual cortex is evoked by the external world, but is hardly a direct or simple replica of it,” Roland Barthes put this as “I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe and I think,” and John Berger expresses that “Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Genius, Civilization, Form, Status, Taste, etc.” all three of them talks about similar or same concept, but yet in different ways. And, this selection of different ways represents their personal aesthetic expression.

I use expression and aesthetics together, because both are weaved together as the fabric of visual style. But, with these statements one can surely derive a conclusion that expression and aesthetic are not independent of society and psychology. When it comes to modes of visual communication such as photography, this influence of society and psychology is very important to understand, because photography bears responsibility towards both; the viewer as well as the creator.

Talking about social influence on aesthetics, I prefer to call it as Macro Aesthetic; which is derived from society, culture, and politics etc. This determines the issue, event or sentiment which a photographer decides to portray, and the general ways of viewer’s perception. Photos from modernist and post-modernist era, or works of photojournalists influenced by a certain political movement, are an apt example of this. Roland Barthes talks about this influence as a spectator when he coins the term Studium saying, “It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in stadium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions,” and Martha Rosler talk about this influence over photographer pointing out “The Bowery, in New York, is an archetypal skid row. It has been much photographed, in works veering between outraged moral sensitivity and sheer slumming spectacle,” in her essay.

On the other hand, I believe there is also Micro Aesthetics, which emerges from within the photographer, and is influenced by psychology. It influences the selection of subject and not only its way of portrayal. It is determined by personal experiences, hopes or ambitions of the creator as well as the viewer of the image. As a viewer, Roland Barthes calls it Punctum when he says, “It is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.”

To simplify, I’d say; Macro aesthetics is where either photographer or spectator or both are playing the photograph as a musical instrument. They’ve control over the selection of theme, shapes, colors, issues and cultural knowledge or curiosity to enhance that knowledge, by studying the subjects portrayed. They’re involved but not participating in the image.

But, Micro aesthetics creates circumstances where either photographer, or spectator, or both are being played like a musical instrument by the photograph itself. Here, they participate in image making i.e. the photographer and spectator, share a part of inner self with the photograph. But, it is next to impossible to set permanent principles around it, because what might socially affect one could psychologically influence the other, and vice versa.

An example to this can be the recent trend in photojournalism, where photos of war and refugees, flood the media. These images might contain Barthes’s Studium for people from safe countries but, they’d have Punctum for persons that encountered war. Similarly the photographs might be results of Macro aesthetics of a photojournalist who hail from a safe country, but for a photographer who faced or is facing loss due to war, those photos might be an outcome of Micro Aesthetic expression.

These expressions can be static, dynamic, geometric or sculptural etc. depending upon the personal psyche of creator. And, can be sympathetic, empathetic, objective or symbolic for creator as well as spectator, depending upon their reference point within the image.

At macro level, aesthetic expressions are connected to society and culture in terms of trends of how one expresses oneself. But, this connection is not strong enough to behold subjectivity. At micro level, subjectivity works to expand the horizon of visual style. One can say that we are going through this phase of expansion of horizon in photography. From the descriptive documentary style to interpretive communicative, and in some cases even symbolically expressive.

The direction of this expansion is still blurred. But I presume that text, sounds, and films are gaining importance as aesthetic additions, or tools in visual style of photographic presentations. Reason behind this anticipation, is the lesser amount of time that spectators invest in image viewing, due to fast paced lives. Flood of images in online and offline visual media. Also, text, sounds and moving images, prevents misunderstandings in global society, by clarifying the meanings of symbols and intentions of the photographer. It appears that inclusion of other senses, than just sight is the next step. We’ll see.

By – Prashant Rana

Every Sunday we discuss live though Instagram @prashantrana_official (Link - https://www.instagram.com/prashantrana_official/ ), at 16:30 (04:30PM) Indian Standard Time (12:00 Central European standard time). The discussion is based on diary entry of Fridays. We pick one topic of photography to write about, and post it here on the website. And, on Sunday at the given time, we talk about that live on Instagram. (Next session on 15th March 2020.

The session is later posted on Youtube - Zikr: Conversations in Photography (Link - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy129cJLS3_vQN8wUFls_Mg?view_as=subscriber )

So do subscribe and follow. Looking forward to our conversations.

[ricardotomasz]

Such is life! Behold, a new Post published on Greater And Grander about The Dancing Rabbit: Jane Szabo

See into my soul, as a new Post has been published on http://greaterandgrander.com/2019/01/the-dancing-rabbit-jane-szabo/

The Dancing Rabbit: Jane Szabo

As part of Greater And Grander's ongoing focus of great artistry in the 21st century, we are highlighting several artists who are making a splash on the art scene.  Jane Szabo is a Los Angeles based fine art photographer with an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Her work investigates issues of self and identity. Using self-portraiture and still life as a vehicle to share stories from her life, her work merges her love for fabrication and materials, with conceptual photography. Szabo brings many facets of visual art into her photographic projects, incorporating sculptural, performance and installation elements into her work. Her imagery is often infused with humor and wonder, ingredients that draw the viewer in, inviting them to linger and to have a dialogue with the work, and themselves. Her background in the film industry, creating prop and miniatures for theme parks, and overseeing set construction for film and television, undoubtedly informs her creative process.

Szabo’s work is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Art & History (MOAH) and her photography has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster, CA, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Yuma Fine Art Center in Arizona, and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Oceanside Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Colorado Center for Photographic Arts, San Diego Art Institute, Los Angeles Center for Photography, Tilt Gallery in Arizona, Houston Center for Photography in Texas, Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, the Kaohsiung International Photographer Exhibition in Taiwan and fotofever in Paris, France.

Images from the series Family Matters were featured in a billboard, a community project organized by MOAH - The Museum of Art & History

Her photographs have been featured in many publications and blogs including: The Huffington Post, Lenscratch, Silvershotz, Mono Chroma, Bokeh Bokeh, L’Oeil de la Photographie, F-Stop Magazine, Foto Relevance, Fraction, Your Daily Photo, A Photo Editor, Don't Take Pictures, Art & Cake, Diversions.

Why did you get into the arts?

From a pretty young age, I knew that I didn't want a corporate office type job.  Deciding to become an artist was a choice to not be chained to a nine to five job wearing business attire.

I was in high school when I decided that the arts made sense for me.

Jane Szabo on location near Seattle © Jane Szabo 2018

Why did you choose to go to art school?

 I got an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. I picked Art Center because it seemed to be the most structured and demanding program, and I knew I needed to be challenged, and that the formal structure would force me to stay focus and succeed.

I am so happy I got the education I did, when I did. Graduate art school does not teach you how to make art, but teaches you critical thinking. It teaches you how to think about why you are making the work you make, which is exactly what I needed. The critical thinking skills I learned at Art Center have helped me become the artist I am today.

What advice would you give to a prospective student who is applying to art school?

Be willing to learn and think in new ways. Be ready for a lot of hard work. It’s an incredible time to explore and find new ways of working - but don't become a copycat and mimic the work of your instructors.

My biggest mistake was not networking enough. Take advantage of your peer group and stay connected with them after school. I also think art school is the perfect place to experiment. Don’t come into school with a perceived way of working and a rigid mind set. Be open to change!

What difficulties did you encounter?

I was really young when I went to grad school.  That was good for me as I had the energy to do school, and the day job. But, I really didn’t have the depth of knowledge about the art world and contemporary art that is gained through experience. This artistic immaturity made it more difficult for me to comfortably enter the gallery scene after grad school.

What did you do after art school?  Did you have trouble finding work when you first got out?

I actually started working in a job in the film industry the second semester of grad school... and kept working through the entire degree program - it enabled me to pay my rent, insurance and food, which was a huge help. Working during grad school may be too much for some, but it actually helped keep me sane.

What was the first large artistic project you worked on that you were proud of?

One of the first big projects I worked on, shortly after graduate school, was building and painting props for Euro Disney (now called Disneyland Paris). Though this was not my personal fine art, it was a period of intense creativity and learning, as I made things by hand: molding making and sculpting, making objects out of brass using old school sheet metal techniques, and scenic painting detailed props for close up viewing. I am still very proud of this work today.

When I first got out of grad school, the main goal was to earn a living. I was making my personal art at the time as well, but paying the bills meant that my creativity focused on my day job as a prop maker and scenic painter. This work was extremely satisfying, challenging, and fulfilling.

Map Dress #1, from the series Sense of Self, © Jane Szabo 2013 "This image was created at about midnight, in the middle of a weekend intensive workshop with Cig Harvey. This one image became the leaping off point for two series,Sense of Self and Reconstructing Self, two bodies of work that spanned three years."

When did you decide to stop working for free?

Fortunately, other than one short internship with a graphic designer during college (a great way to learn I did NOT want to be a graphic designer!) and a short film I helped a grad school instructor with, I have never had to work for free.

I do not believe in working for free, or on spec. My time is valuable. That said, I do volunteer my time to assist workshops and events for my favorite non-profit organizations.

What are you currently working on, and how did you arrive here?

I am developing a new project, involving custom constructions that I photograph in various interior and exterior environments during my frequent travels. Over the last few years, I have been dealing with elderly parents out of state. We just moved them for a third time in two years.   After selling their home, and the constant struggle to find the right assisted living place to keep them comfortable and safe, I am thinking a lot about place, and where we find ourselves. This new work seeks to address this sense of loss, and the search to find oneself.

Coffee Filters, from the series Reconstructing Self, © Jane Szabo 2015

What’s the biggest thing you depend on, in your studio?

I recently moved to a larger studio, and just having space to breathe is so essential! When I was in a smaller space, I spent too much time moving things around so I would have space to work. Now I can walk in to a clear space, with tables etc. up and ready to go. Of course, my large format printer is critical to my process. In addition to building all my props, making my photographs, I do all my own printing. Having the artistic control over the finished product is essential to me, as well as the ability to generate prints as soon as I need them.

Aunt Rosemary’s Photo Album, from the series Reconstructing Self, © Jane Szabo 2015

Did you ever pay for a program that promised big results to help further your career, but it never delivered?

There are so many “opportunities” that offer big results, for up-front fees – and you really do need to be careful. But that said, sometimes it is essential to invest in your career. I have participated in many workshops and portfolio reviews, and yes, they do come at a cost. Have they all had immediate rewards? Definitely not – but, most of them have indeed been incredibly worthwhile, and have really helped my career development.  Building relationships in the art world takes time. I have had opportunities arise many years after an initial contact at a paid event. I have no regrets about the opportunities I have pursued.

I try to do advance research and learn about the event or venue before jumping on board. This helps me avoid wasting time with questionable opportunities.

If an event isn’t as successful as you had hoped, maybe due to low turnout or no sales, you do the right thing and thank the host for including you. Be polite. This event may have been a dud, but the person who invited you may have a much better opportunity down the road. No need to have a temper tantrum and burn bridges. Behave professionally and treat everyone with respect.

Regret, from the series Family Matters, © Jane Szabo 2018 "This piece was conceived during a still life workshop with Kimberly Witham. Before the day began, I fully saw the image in my head. I did some mock ups during the workshop, and saw what was working, and what wasn’t. I completed the final construction and made the image from my home studio."

Did you ever embarrass yourself in a job interview?

Haven’t we all felt that we wish we had performed better, responded more appropriately to a question, etc.? Now my motto is to just be myself. If they don’t like me the way I am, then we are not a good fit.

What’s been the highest point of your career so far?

Without a doubt, having a work purchased by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) last year for their permanent collection was the high point!

Gridding the Space, from the series Sense of Self, © Jane Szabo 20145 "The series Sense of Self was an exploration of imagery inspired by performance art, not a documentation of a performance."

What kind of networking works best for you?

I don’t think clubs are really where it is at for career development – but I have certainly have had amazing opportunities and sales come through networking and even social media. Advancing your art career is all about building relationships!

I would first start networking by getting involved in your local non-profit arts organizations. Volunteer your time to help out at their events and you will start meeting other artists and people involved in the art world.

If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?

I am not sure I would change a thing! Even though I have some regret that I had to take a long chunk of time off of making art to make a living, I know that time was spent learning practical construction, business management and interpersonal skills that are invaluable to my career as an independent artist today.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice, from the series Family Matters, © Jane Szabo 2017

What motto do you try to live your life by? 

Just be nice! Be a nice person, help others, share your knowledge, and build community. This way of living gives back in so many ways!

Where’s your favorite place in Los Angeles?

The foothills! Escaping from the city is the only way I can stay here. Though I have a studio space at the Brewery in downtown LA – I find I am making much of my work in my home, nestled in the foothills. I have set up an art table in front of my big living room window where I can watch the birds and other wildlife scamper around in front of me. Being amidst nature is important to my happiness.

What are your future goals?

Now, I have been able to reduce my hours at the day job, and focus almost exclusively on my career as an artist, I am dedicated to pushing my work and my career forward. The primary goal is to make fresh and compelling work. I strive to get this work out into the world, on a national and an international level.

Jane Szabo is represented by: Foto Relevance Gallery, Houston, TX. https://www.artsy.net/foto-relevance/artist/jane-szabo Susan Spiritus Gallery, Irvine, CA  http://susanspiritusgallery.com/artist/jane-szabo/ United Photographic Artists Gallery, Tampa, FL. http://upagallery.com/artist-jane-szabo/

#AbstractPhotography, #Art, #ArtRace, #Artist, #ArtistInspiration, #Artistry, #Artoftheday, #ArtRace, #ArtsProgram, #Artwork, #BuyArtPrints, #Instaart, #IntimatePhotography, #LosAngelesArtist, #MixedMedia, #PortraitPhotography, #Sculptures

[thedummymen-blog]

DIALOGUES AT THE PORT OF THE UNBOUGHT: Part 1 By the DummyMen

“The Ethiopians are black, the Egyptians thieves, the North Africans cruel, the Damascans liars, and of these four peoples it is the Black who will soonest lose the imprint of the stamp which marks his nature.”

MZ(Dumdum): Part of the general unease of black Africans who come across the discourse of afropessimism, outside, of course, its coming on the heels of two distinct formulations in the 1980s and 1990s that go under the same name and thus may confuse the listener as to which afropessimism one is being confronted with (and this polysemic history of the term with regards to both inside and outside the continent I think is an underexplored theme) is where and how to situate oneself in regards to its locus of enunciation - the U.S-, its articulation of blackness, and its argument that blackness is in a symbiotic relationship with slavery, a symbiosis consummated in and as social death.

One way to broach this unease, or even attempt to abate it, is through the thematic of the black forced to leave and the African left behind. This approach that perhaps privileges an idea of a splitting of a once-whole unit, whether filial or affilial, is not unrelated to the popular rendition of a western modernity that goes on to stipulate the parameters of the properly political, philosophical, social, cultural, scientific and economic. The Atlantic basin, or the New World, thus offers us the proper subject of the political -in whatever guise- against which the rest of the globe now must stand in contention. In this scenario then, the black slave becomes the ultimate degraded non-subject whilst black Africa is geographically lumped in with the rest of the colonized world, and historically locked firmly within the 18th and 19th centuries  along with (anti)colonialism’s concomitant articulations of conflict, oppression, and most importantly of course, liberation.

But our African reader still has questions. How then is she to think of the slave relation in Mauritania between the Haratin and the al-beydan? What of the pressures exerted by the Egyptian and Ottoman forces, or at various periods the Hijaz, on the bilad al-Sudan (literally ‘’the land of the blacks’’ from Arabic which in turn was translated into English by British and American mappers as ‘’Negroland’’ and ‘’Nigritia’’ respectively) via a racialized permanent servile status of its inhabitants? Wherever one looks one is faced with provincially customary distinctions made between, say a Fur and a Fartit in Western Sudan, a Jilec and a Jareer in Somalia or a Habesha and a Barya in Ethiopia. These convoluted local histories themselves are then entangled within a wider orbit of a slaving, slave-trading or slave-holding (or all of the above and more) paradigm that boasts of a much older and long-standing appetite for African slaves in the Indian Ocean basin. If we take seriously the assertion by Frank Wilderson and others that slavery and blackness become imbricated at some point in the 7th century A.D. and follow Bernard Siegel’s thesis that “slavery must be considered in its relationships to the entire social structure’’, then the black African today is left with an unenviable task with regards to the ethics involved in making methodological and political sense of the aforementioned ‘’convolutions’’ and ‘’entanglements’’. But then again, when was the black African ever not in an unenviable position?

AJ(Yumyum): Exactly! The position is unenviable no matter what side of the Atlantic or Indian Oceans, Red or Mediterranean Seas one is on. And here, between all sides of the East & West and North & South divide there is an ontological sameness, a shared ontological misfortune, that often gets ignored. And those distinctions in Africa proper between a Fur and a Fartit or a Habesha and a Barya are unthought and unquestioned sociopolitical positions that have seemed to somehow come from the heavens. But you, as is Wilderson, are making the point that this has not always been the case. And this relational matrix in the hinterland and coastal regions is ignored because I think it is deeply painful to draw these sorts of conclusions that something is happening on the inside of our psyches and on the inside of our romanticized and prefixed places of species origin.

Now let me attempt to bring these twin universes (Africa and the Americas) of existence together. On the African continent you have, as Tsenay Serequeberhan points out, “the inherited and taken for granted self conception of African “liberation” as the guise and mask of neocolonialism”. And similarly in the US context Saidiya Hartman, when speaking to the legal emancipation of the slave, asks the question: “Suppose that the recognition of humanity held out the promise not liberating the flesh or redeeming one’s suffering but rather of intensifying it?” By connecting and thinking about these two historical happenings together we learn that liberation and emancipation as legal events do the work of intensifying the suffering of the afflicted in quotidian and lessly spectacular ways in the everyday. Hereby binding tighter and hiding more cleverly the unattended corrosive open flesh wounds derived from the cultural unconscious in the form of the stereotype beneath the ego structure of the slave’s psyche. That is to say that if we do not do the heavy lifting now and think about how we have been negotiating captivity and about how the ruses of liberation and emancipation have been originary to our political, social, cultural and economic delusions, then the tragicomedy, our existence in the invertible, will be on play ad infinitum.  

The truth is that, as David Marriott reminds us, “Fanon [in ‘Black Skin White Masks’] makes it difficult for us to avoid facing the fact that the ego just is where the stereotype returns - but the stereotype is just the real occupying the ego” and this trojan horse is “the enemy attacking the ego from within”. This means that the stereotype that seeks to disfigure the ego returns to itself as the psychic force that has been sent from without to terminate it. And this is all unconscious. One’s alienation of one’s self from certain aspects of one’s self is a mystifying and fetishizing practice that enables one to save themselves from themselves(??). We can call this objective vertigo a tragicomedy. You introduced me to this text by way of this quote taken from a larger one you first threw my way. And damn! It was a vibe I damn near couldn’t handle.    

Nevertheless, the ruse of liberation beyond the imposition of structural adjustment programs, unfair trade treaties and the like is that “just as Christianity and civilization once [were used to serve] the purposes of conquest and empire, [new code words like] "good-governance," "global stability," "development," "economic growth," "international cooperation," "food aid," "cultural exchange programs," "human rights," "rule of law," etc.[...are the way] the West now perpetuates its hegemony.” In light of this the Sisyphean like failures of post-colonial Africa we can see the same unconscious Fanon identified in ‘Wretched of the Earth’ is still operative. Hence, “at the level of the unconscious, therefore, colonialism was not seeking to be perceived by the indigenous population as a sweet, kind hearted mother who protects her child from a hostile environment, but rather a mother who constantly prevents her basically perverse child from committing suicide or giving free rein to its malevolent instincts. The colonial mother is protecting the child from itself, from its ego, its physiology, its biology, and its ontological misfortune.” This unconscious line of thinking has been calibrated in very predictable and unethical ways as of late - spurring the growth in literature focused on pointing out the good that the colonial project in Africa brought to its inhabitants; even being bold to the point of recommending that these colonial arrangements be reduplicated.* Here the indelible legacies “of [irreparable] separation - and [eternally persisting] continuities” are the issues, that up to this point, “African philosophy has failed to take up”. The psychological effects (and affects) of the “the slave trade and colonialism” cannot be ignored by the Black-African. It is now more pertinent for us to look to this. For the “lingering doubt of the very possibility of self-government” is becoming ever more pronounced. And this entails for a inward look inside ourselves by ourselves and for ourselves as we simultaneously excavate (as best we can) the outside from within ourselves.   

I’m not sure if you remember the Africa-Compton map that Kendrick Lamar put on display during his 2016 Grammy performance, but it captured, to the great dismay and disapproval of Afropolitans everywhere (one can recall the flurry of op-eds and blog posts that came to the defense of the particularity of the ethnic and national identities of Africans. And the feverish way in which Lamar’s presumed ‘hotepery’ and penchant for race essentialism was rigorously denounced), the shared ontological sameness between the ‘beneficiaries’ of legal-politico ‘non-events’ of liberation and emancipation by way of unveiling the cartographic reality of international Blackness. The political and cultural conditions that made Fanon write that “colonialism, little troubled by nuances, has always claimed that the “nigger” was a savage, not an Angolan or a Nigerian, but a “nigger” are still in place. Still, Lamar’s Africa-Compton map in one fell swoop illustrated, as Sylvia Wynter put it, the “connections and correlations between the contemporary state of Africa and the United States’ Black jobless inner cities and their correlated prison system.” If the Americas are the Slave Estate proper then Africa is the den of slaves. I mean even aspiring African politicos with neoliberal proclivities such as Berhanu Nega (leader of the Ethiopian opposition group, Ginbot 7) understand this to a certain extent when he says: “whether you are called Abebe or Jimmy if you know how this country [(America)] works as you should, then, you must know that you are all ‘niggers’ in their eyes.”

[lupine-publishers-sjo]

Lupine Publishers | Fast Track Treatment for Puberphonia

Lupine Publishers | Journal of Otolaryngology

Abstract

Puberphonia is most often treated using voice therapy (vocal exercises) by speech-language pathologists or speech therapists that have experience in treating voice disorders. The duration of treatment is commonly one to five weeks. Indirect treatment options for puberphonia focus on creating an environment where direct treatment options will be more effective. Counseling, performed by the, a psychologist, or counselor, can help patients identify the psychological factors that contribute to their disorder and give them tools to address those factors directly. It may take long time. Patients may also be educated about good vocal hygiene and how their behavior could have long term effects on their voice. In some cases when traditional voice therapy is ineffective, surgical interventions are considered. This can occur in situations where intervention is delayed or the patient is in denial, causing the condition to become resistant to voice therapy. Surgical treatment correction needs voice therapy for a long time follow up. We use voice pitch analyzer to detect puberphonia and get the confidence of the patient. We explain the clients how by our method of pharyngeal resonance manipulation we get the male voice. By our procedure using uvula and soft palate as a source of generating male voice we eliminate high pitch voice and nasal phonation.99% of the cases we get the male desired voice in the first instant of pharyngeal resonance manipulation. We teach breath of fire, kundali yoga to maintain the voice and make it as a habit.

Keywords: Puberphonia, speech therapy, boys talking in female tone, pharyngeal resonance manipulation, childish voice, voice breaks, feedback, genes influence in voice

Abbreviations: SRS: Session Rating Scale; ORS: Outcome Rating Scale; DNA: Deoxyribonucleic Acid; F0: Fundamental Frequency; R: Roughness; B: Breathiness; A: Asthenia; S: Strain

Aim

The aim of this article is to review the extant literature on puberphonia, stressing the significance of building confidence for effective practice and the need for more research in this area. We build the confidence for treating doctors and ailing puberphonia clients. This is achieved by foster identification, effective pharyngeal resonance manipulation treatment. Clients happy with the ancestral voice and we give a fast track package.

Object

One important objective of puberphonia treatment is to foster professional confidence and consequently competence in patient communication and clinical (physical) skills-two components vital to the profession. Professional competence can be conceptualized in terms of knowledge, abilities, skills, and attitudes displayed in the context of a set of realistic professional tasks, whereas confidence in oneself symbolizes the belief that one has the ability to do things well or deal with situations successfully. How confidence can be fostered as an integral part of puberphonia is not well known and research is still scarce. Voice therapy for puberphonia is a promising modality of treatment but not much reported in literature. Our new pharyngeal resonance manipulation in the treatment of puberphonia is similar to voice therapy. Instead of external voice therapy or external conventional laryngeal massage, we do internal pharyngeal manipulation. It is cost effective, less time-consuming procedure with no complication and gives excellent results. We do easy identification of puberphonia and get the confidence in undergoing treatment. Identification by voice pitch analyzer, get the confidence by showing the normal anatomy of their larynx by laryngeal endoscope. Puberphonia patient will understand their inappropriate use of high-pitched voice beyond pubertal age in males. It is usually seen in the immediate post-pubescent period with normal larynx [1].

Break Through Therapy by Fast Track

Patient feels and hears their normal low-pitched voice on the first instance of our special pharyngeal resonance manipulation. Few recognize (10%) their ancestral tone in their new speech. Because each of these approaches implies speed, there are high success rate in treating puberphonia and the meaning of each successful case create a new life and way of life distinctions among them. An approach called informed feedback treatment or FIT does just that - uses a client’s feedback to inform their treatment. FIT “is all about empowering the client and increasing the client’s voice. After treatment by pharyngeal resonance manipulation in puberphonia clients get the normal voice and speech. We do a live recording their new male voice on their own cellphone and they have seen the video then and there and get a feedback and practice [2]. Specifically, FIT involves routinely and most importantly formally soliciting feedback from clients about the process of therapy, working relationship in puberphonia management and overall well-being. The formal aspect of FIT is key because most think they ask for feedback, but when they’re observed live or on video, they don’t do it nearly as much as they believe. Receiving ongoing formal feedback from clients has clear-cut benefits. It’s been shown to boost the effectiveness of therapy, including enhancing clients’ wellbeing and decreasing dropout rates and noshows. And it makes sense: Once we know precisely how the client is feeling, they’re better equipped to adjust treatment accordingly.

Vocal cord assessment

These patients underwent detailed ENT evaluation by an ENT surgeon and a stroboscopic evaluation was done using Kay Pentax 9105 System. Stroboscope was used to obtain a visual assessment of the vocal cords. The stroboscopic evaluation provided measures of vibratory behavior of the vocal folds such as presence or absence of mucosal wave, vibratory symmetry, and amplitude; type of glottic closure; hyper function; arytenoids movement and symmetry; ventricular movement, etc. Stroboscope also yielded a measure of the patient’s fundamental frequency (Fo) during sustained phonation.

Phonatotary apparatus assessment

A perceptual assessment of patient’s voice was done using the GRBAS scale. This scale consists of judgment of voice quality on the basis of Grade (G), Roughness (R), Breathiness (B), Asthenia (A), and Strain (S) in voice production. The severity was graded on a 4-point rating scale, on which 3 being worst and 0 being normal [3].

Treatment Methods

The voice therapy treatment protocol included therapy techniques commonly applied for achieving lowering of pitch. Some techniques which were commonly used were as follows: a) Humming while gliding down the pitch scale, i.e., humming while gliding from a higher note to a lower note b) Phonation of vowel sounds with a glottal attack, i.e., forceful initiation of voice during production of vowels. c) Use of vegetative sounds like cough or throat clear to initiate voicing. d) Production of glottal fry (i.e., lowest possible pitch which the patient can produce). e) Digital manipulation of thyroid cartilage during vowel production-patient is taught to apply a gentle inward push on the anterior aspect of the thyroid cartilage while sustaining a vowel.

The other treatment available is digital laryngeal manipulation, in which thyroid cartilage is being compressed, and patient is asked to speak. Later on, patient is taught to repeat this procedure at home to sustain male voice [4]. This again needs a lot of patient encouragement and follow up. No corrective surgical procedure is available except Pau H et al. [5]. who has reported first case of surgical correction of puberphonia by mobilization of hyoid and superior halves of thyroid cartilage and reducing cricothyroid distance by opposing mobile hyoid to fixed cricoid cartilage by 2 non-absorbable figure of eight sutures.

We employed fast track treatment

Figure 1: Age incidents of patient.

The method reported by the author; while doing examination of the pharynx by tongue depressor or direct laryngoscope examination of a patient of puberphonia few are able to bring out normal male voice while they cough or talk. We have used a novel approach by pharyngeal resonance manipulation which gives immediate and permanent relief. We do manipulation at the level of uvula. This, our method is referred by Sudhakar Vaidya et al. [6] in his article (No reference is available except from M Kumerasan [7] (Chennai), who has published his work in book “A research work in Otorhinolaryngology” in 1992). Between August 1992 and November 2019, 600 puberphonia patients were included: The Fast Track program involved: integrated coordination between puberphonia males, their parents, friends and relatives. This procedure is done as outpatient training in hospital with faster transfer to a natural ancestral speech. Primary outcomes were functional speech status and quality of life measured through questionnaires at baseline. Outcomes were analyzed using a linear mixed-effects regression mode (Figures 1&2).

Figure 2: Outcomes were analyzed using a linear mixed-effects regression mode.

Results

The time duration of voice therapy according to Vrushali Desai et al. [8] ranged from 1 to 10 months (average-3.6 months). Pitch and quality of the voice became normal in 78.9% and 35.2% of patients respectively. It is estimated that within four weeks of therapy voice changes could be achieved. This time is shorter for subjects who present vocal hyper function. Of the same, the subjects without hyper function could require more time of therapy. Regarding the duration of therapeutic progress, there are studies that make between 6 and 24 months of follow-up after speech therapy, maintaining frequency values. Regarding the choice of approach for puberphonia, most of the reviewed studies agree that the best therapeutic option is to start with speech therapy and if this type of therapy does not provide positive results it is possible to seek a surgical option. On the other hand, the investigations reveal that the therapy is very efficient in relation to the number of sessions, since in the same month it would be possible to obtain consistent changes in the voice. We do” Pharyngeal resonance manipulation” at the first instances itself and brings the desired low-pitched voice. We train them for three days by practicing breath of fire yoga and make it as a habit by doing the same yoga for 21 days [9].

Follow up by feedback method

Two of the most popular measures of feedback [10] are the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS) and the Session Rating Scale (SRS). The ORS, which a client completes at the start of a session, asks about their wellbeing. The SRS, which is filled out at the end, asks about our performance. For instance, one item asks if the client felt heard, understood and respected during the session. Another asks if they worked on or talked about what they wanted to. It had a huge impact on their improvement. Feedback was especially critical for clients who had a huge impact on their improvement. Feedback was especially critical for clients who weren’t getting better, since this group tends to leave therapy early. Seeing and getting their desired tone in their voice even found a boost in retention rates. We found that clients in the feedback condition showed about twice as much improvement as clients who didn’t provide feedback and in fewer sessions. We found that using feedback measures leads to fewer noshows and dropouts. The results of the technique were grouped into excellent, satisfactory and poor. The success rate of direct laryngeal manipulation in first sitting was 99%. Puberphonia is not a rare disorder. Even though we have found our own simple method of puberphonia relief in 1990 [7]. Vigorous propaganda is done since 11 November 2016. In a short period in one center we got 600 till date (28/01/2020) cases indicates that prevalence of puberphonia is high. Apart from impact on voice of patient, puberphonia also has impact on the psycho-social aspect.

Discussion

Professional confidence in puberphonia management

In health care there is a complex interaction between provider and patient; this remains at the very core of the healing process and has always had a pronounced impact on patient health and recovery. The complexity of this interaction has historically distinguished the puberphonia practice profession from the rest of the ENT, medical, problems. Confidence, defined as a belief that one will act in an effective way, is expected to play a critical role in how a clinician makes decisions, utilizes his or her skills, communicates with patients, treat and get the desired result. Puberphonia treatment needs much more than that because it reflects client’s self-esteem and future life. Yes 99% of future life depends on their voice.

Voice and genes relationship

The human voice has appreciated that the quality of the voice influenced the society in big scale. While on conversation whether male or female usually notice their pitch quality, quality of the voice, phonation style and so on Also when same person talks again over phone many people recognize their voice by their quality of the voice. Many researchers found that the relationship of the voice quality and genes play a vital role in determining their offspring’s voice [11]. Although voice production is a complex functioning of much system, we can see the voice resemblance runs in many families. In the family when the baby born people will be very happy and explore the features of the baby of its resemblances of the nose, ear, hair ,facial appearance and so on. In addition, in their family the elders will compare and recognize the baby’s appearance and resemblances of their ancestor .Simply because these variability’s run in their family, since, these will be written in the Gene (DNA). Similarly, we can see not only their ancestor’s features and also their voice also written in the gene (DNA). In particular, for males, during their puberty voice change occur, that time only people recognize and compare young adult voice with their father or forefather voice.

Genes influence on the voice

Genes are segments of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that contains the code for specific protein that functions one or more types of cells in the body. The chromosomes are structure within the cell that contains person’s genes. Researcher revealed that the human has Forehead box protein P2 is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the FOX2 gene [12] also known as CAGH44, SPCH1and is required for proper development of speech and language. FOXP2 is a transcription factor, meaning that it encodes for a regulatory protein. The gene shared with many vertebrates ,and it generally play a role of communication the other species Chimpanzees are also found FOXP2 gene, but it had some mutational changes and they differ than human version. In human FOXP2 gene is located on the arm of chromosome 7 at position. So, with this evidence, it clearly denotes that the genes are segment of deoxyribonucclic acid (DNA) and it play a role in how our voice determination. Although how a child’s voice develops owes something to mimicry of their parents, people from the same family will often sound alike because laryngeal anatomy is dictated by your ancestral DNA just like every other physical trait. It’s the slight variations around this anatomy that make our voices distinct. Gene factors cause variations between members of the same sex with males and females and voice being categorized in the voice type. Actually, voice qualities are largely determined by the size and shape of the larynx, neck, throat and facial structures all determined by genetics.

Relationship of ancestral voice and gene

In our hospital we are correcting Puberphonia client’s voice (female) by using Resonance Manipulation Therapy treatment method. In that we selected 600 cases and did research of the voice and the genes influence in their Ancestors by using convenient sampling technique .At the time of the training time many have exclaimed that their voice resembles their father’s voice, some claimed as uncle’s voice and few claimed grandfather’s voice and many could not recognize their voice quality. This may be due to or probably in our family system has changing from joint family to nuclear family system. Secondly gene influence on voice may be their fore father and people cannot recognize, because they are not existing now (Table 1). The table clearly denotes that among 600 samples 90 (16%) had their father’s voice,58(9.6%) had uncle’s voice, 32(6.4%) resumed grandfather’s voice and 340 clients not known their voice quality their voice. This may be probably because of our new mutated family system and our forefather’s voice may not know by existing generation [13].

Table 1: Genes Influence in Voice Quality.

Conclusion

Acoustic Analysis: Fundamental Frequency (F0) was assessed pre- and post-therapy for all the patients. The average value of F0 before therapy was 208 Hz, and following therapy, it lowered to an average of 125 Hz, which was a significant improvement.

Stroboscopic Findings: Of the 600 patients,500 had normal stroboscopic evaluation. Seven of the 100 patients had minimal phonatory Gap as the only clinical finding. The remaining stroboscopic parameters were normal. Since the pre-therapy findings were not clinically significant, the stroboscopy was not repeated during the follow-up.

Perceptual Ratings: The pre-therapy perceptual ratings revealed mild deviance in overall grade, asthenia, and breathiness. The post-therapy ratings showed improvement to a “normal” overall rating with no perceptual evidence of breathiness and asthenia. The pre-therapy high-pitched voice had lowered to a normal pitch range at the end of therapy. Puberphonia fast track identification, treatment, building confidence and care as habituation programs were effective in that multi-trauma patients improved their functional status and quality of life. A faster (maximum) recovery in functional status was observed for fast track at 1st day compared to other modalities of treatment. At twelve months follow-up no differential effects between treatment conditions were found.

[whispelanix]

Suicide “Masterpost” By A Suicidal Person

Hi everyone. I’ve decided to do something different with my time today instead of posting dumb memes and mediocre art. I think I’ve made it clear based upon the title of this post.

Now you may be thinking – “Why are you doing this? What events occurred to make you suddenly want to talk about such a topic!?” Allow me to explain:

I personally, am currently experiencing severe depression and suicidal thoughts and it’s been going on for years, the suicidal part being more recent. Today Australia held an interview this morning on the topic of teen suicide and how we stay silent on the agenda. As someone who is struggling, I thought that instead of contemplating my own life, I could help spread awareness to save another.

Continue on further if you shall since I will dive into sensitive topics. The choice is up to you entirely, but if you want a better grasp of understanding, I will do my best to explain different areas of this situation.

So read on if you may, as I give you a “Suicide Masterpost Presented by a Suicidal Person”.

Let’s start with the basics. First of all: What is depression?

Depression is a common medical condition which can be often described as being in a really dark place that’s difficult to escape from and can create the feeling of numbness. Naturally, everyone can feel sad or low from time to time. It can last for months to even years and a lot of the time, occurs without reason. Depression is more than just that – it’s a serious condition that affects your mental and physical health.

How does this relate to suicide?

The links between depression and suicide are generally quiet strong. In fact, about 2/3 of people who commit suicide are depressed at the time of their death. Here are some more statistics…

·         One of every 16 people diagnosed with depression eventually go to end their lives through suicide

·         The risk of suicide in people suffering major depression is 20 times that of the general population

·         People who have experienced multiple episodes of depression are at greater risk of suicide than those who have only experienced one episode

·         Those with dependence on alcohol or drugs in addition to being depressed are at even greater stakes for suicide

Does self-harm have anything to do with this?

Absolutely. A lot of people cope with depression this way as it usually gives the person a sense of feeling against the emotional numbness. Self-harm is generally a coping mechanism, but can become a habit as they search for a relief from the stress. There are many different names given to self-harming. Some of them being:

·         Cutting

·         Self-mutilation

·         Self-inflicted violence

·         Parasuicide

·         Self-abuse

Cutting isn’t the only form of self harm, however. Many other behaviours are:

·         Overdosing of medication or drinking poison

·         Burning your skin

·         Scratching your skin which results in bleeding or welts

·         Picking your skin

·         Pulling your hair

·         Hurting yourself with fists or other objects

·         Punching walls or objects to hurt yourself

Keep in mind though, not everyone who is depressed hurts themselves, just like not every suicidal person is depressed. But self-harm can eventually trigger suicidal thoughts, as simply hurting yourself might eventually not be enough to cope with the emotional pain.

What are the common signs of depression and suicidal thoughts?

No two people experience depression or suicide in the same way. Multiple events can cause a person to feel like they’re not worth anything and that the world is a better place without them.

Common signs of depression are constant tiredness, being annoyed by small things, too little or too much sleep, eating too little or too much, chances of physical pain, lack of self-care, isolation, lack of interest, numbness, beating yourself up, forgetfulness, lack of concentration and suicidal thoughts.

Signs of suicide are threatening to hurt oneself, searching ways to end their life, or just having someone generally talking or writing about suicide, especially if the behaviour is very out of character for that person.

Many of these signs are experiences that should not be ignored, even if it’s just one of them.

How many people commit suicide annually?

Approximately one million people commit suicide each year worldwide. This equals to about one death every 40 seconds or 3,000 suicides per day. For every individual who takes their life, at least 20 of them attempt. The global morality rate of suicide is if 16% for every 100,000 people.

Who can I talk to if I’m experiencing depression or suicidal tendencies?

Here is a compiled list of suicide hotlines from around the world. I’ve included names of the country/continent/city in their main languages as well for non-English speakers (despite the fact that everything has probably been translated depending on where you currently live):

Argentina: +5402234930430

Australia: 131114

Austria (Österreich/Avstrija/Ausztria/): 017133374

Belgium (Belgique/België/Belgien): 106

Bosnia & Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina/Босна и Херцеговина): 080 05 03 05

Botswana: 3911270

Brazil (Brasil): 212339191

Canada – Inside Montreal (Dans Montréal): 5147234000

Canada – Outside Montreal (Hors de Montréal): 18662773553

Croatia (Hrvatska): 014833888

Denmark (Danmark): +4570201201

Egypt (مصر): 7621602

Finland (Suomi): 010 195 202

France: 0145394000

Germany (Deutschland): 08001810771

Holland: 09000767

Hong Kong (香港): +852 2382 0000

Hungary (Magyarország): 116123

India (इंडिया): 8888817666

Ireland (Éireann): +4408457909090

Italy (Italia): 800860022

Japan (日本):  +810352869090

Mexico (Méjico):  5255102550

New Zealand: 045861048

Norway (Norge): +4781533300

Philippines (Pilipinas): 028969191

Poland (Polska): 5270000

Russia (Россия/Росія/Rusiya): 0078202577577

Spain (España): 914590050

South Africa (Suid-Afrika/Iningizimu Afrika/Mzantsi Afrika): 0514445691

Sweden (Sverige/שוועדן/Ruotsi): 46317112400

Switzerland (Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera): 143

United Kingdom: 08457909090

USA: 18002738255

Who else could I talk to for further assistance?

If you need to talk to someone you can get to know, one of the best options would be a psychologist or a counsellor. That way, you can get to know one another and hopefully not have to repeat the same story over and over again. Talking to a parent or a friend can help in situations as well for when you have no one to talk to. Remember that getting problems off your chest is more effective than bottling them up.

I’m too afraid to talk to anyone. I’m scared no one will want to listen. What should I do?

Take a few deep breaths and try to calm yourself before talking to someone about your problems. Depression can stand in the way of seeking any assistance and that alone is very risky. A good website to check out is Students against Depression. I’ll provide a link to all of my sources in the end.

What can I do about medication?

NEVER put yourself on antidepressants without guide from a professional. Different medication can put you on a high at first, but slowly bring down your mood even more then you wanted, further fuelling your depression and/or suicidal thoughts. Visit a psychiatrist who can help with the diagnosis and give recommendations of the best medication suited for your needs. Always do research on side effects of your prescribed medication as well so you know what you’re in for.

No one will miss me. Why bother?

NEVER say that. That is the biggest lie you could ever get yourself to believe. Suicide isn’t just squashing another ant on the face of the earth. It’s the removal of an entire existence of a being. The most tragic thing a person can do is end it all. When you go ahead and kill yourself, that’s it. It’s over… forever.

Let’s say someone you know decides to “leave this world” so to speak. You don’t get to see them again. A whole personality has been wiped off by a preventable situation. Everything that person has went through – from taking their first steps, the birthdays that were celebrated, the moments they laughed, the moments they cried, the people they met and the sights they saw. It’s vanished all with that one person. Each experience of life is unique – no two people are the same but everyone should be treated equally. Whether you know a person or not, the knowledge that someone you’ve made contact with has killed themselves is horrific. Having to wake up one day knowing you have to move on whether you like it or not is heartbreaking. Depression and suicidal thoughts make you blind to how much people actually care, which is devastating. The effect is has on the world around you is permanent. Don’t ever let yourself think that way.

How can I distract myself?

Find things you enjoy doing, whether it’s watching a movie, listening to music or reading a good book. Anything as long as it makes you happy.

Sources:

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression

https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/clinical-resources/depression/what-is-depression

http://www.211palmbeach.org/links-between-suicide-and-depression

https://www.youthbeyondblue.com/understand-what's-going-on/self-harm-and-self-injury

http://www.health.gov.au/mentalhealth

https://www.healthyway.com/content/common-symptoms-of-depression-that-shouldnt-be-ignored/?param4=hwy-google-ppc-aunz-de&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=signs%20and%20symptoms%20of%20depression&utm_campaign=998820936&adgroupid=48935477723&network=g&creative=235821275988&device=c&devicemodel=&matchtype=b&adposition=1t2&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj8iz-6fC2QIVmQgqCh26wwGXEAAYAiAAEgKxVvD_BwE

https://save.org/about-suicide/warning-signs-risk-factors-protective-factors/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/234219.php

http://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines

http://studentsagainstdepression.org/get-support/building-support-networks/whats-stopping-you-getting-help/

[potterlivesrp]

sample application.

Below you will find my sample application for Seamus Finnegan (FC: Thomas Doherty)! Thank you for your patience as I got this all together. I do want to make the strong point that the freeform section is absolutely up to you. I mean it when I say you can do whatever you want! I have elected to write a bunch of headcanons because that works for my personal character building process; if you want to do something different, please do! Good luck to everyone who is applying, and if there is anything I can do to help, please do not hesitate to let me know.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name/alias: Honey

Age (18+): Twenty three

Preferred pronouns: She/her

Timezone: GMT+11

Life responsibilities: 8/10. In addition to being the admin, I am also a newly minted PhD student (yikes!). Between all the chaos that entails, I am actually quite good at time management, so I am here for the long run! If ever I need to duck away for a few days, I will make a post on the main and the OOC blog just to keep everyone updated.

OUT OF CHARACTER - Q&A

Answer the questions in the application here! No, I won’t give away the answers.

IN CHARACTER - BASICS

Full name: Seamus James Finnegan

Age and date of birth: Twenty years old (December 10th, 1980)

Zodiac sign: Sagittarius

Gryffindors born under this sign are exuberant and full of good humour. They are intelligent, but often do not make the best of students, because they would rather be outside enjoying the fresh air or off studying on their own. They aren’t good at diplomatic silence; if a teacher makes a mistake, the Gryffindor Sag will draw attention to it right away, usually loudly and in front of the entire class. At length. These students can get into trouble - their hot tempers make for easy dueling matches, and their impish senses of humour inspire a great many practical jokes. Still, they rarely mean anything malicious. They’re too jovial to harbour malice. These Gryffindors are likeable extraverts, on good terms with practically everybody, and they generally do all right in the end. Many excellent Quidditch players come from this sign. (Source)

Ex-Hogwarts house: Gryffindor

Gender identity: Cisgender male

Sexual orientation: Homosexual panromantic

Faceclaim: Thomas Doherty (if I were an applicant, I would put three FCs here in order of preference!)

IN CHARACTER - IN DEPTH

PERSONALITY TRAITS

POSITIVE: Generous, curious, idealistic, humorous, energetic, adventuresome, enthusiastic, brave, optimistic, confident, flirtatious.

NEGATIVE: Inconsistent, impatient, upfront, brash, undiplomatic, tactless, disorganized, careless, superficial, gullible.

HEADCANONS

Although he would loudly object otherwise, Seamus is a bit of a country bumpkin. His father was a muggle farmer when he met his mother, who was a field officer for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The way they met was hardly romantic: she was there to investigate an outbreak of grindylows; he was about to call the council about the strange creatures infesting the water supply for his flock of sheep. But in a twist that is now legendary, Mary didn’t tell James about her magic until after they were married. This was hilarious to a young Seamus, who never tired of teasing his parents about their mutual deception. “Didn’t she give anything away?” Seamus would demand, laughing, and his father would grin, “Aye, I did wonder why a woman so beautiful would look my way.” Theirs was a happy home, one full of good humor and light-hearted conversation. Both of Seamus’ parents were Irish: national pride was not so much an aspect of Seamus’ upbringing as a permanent feature. Endlessly curious, Seamus would pour over old family photographs, nose nearly pressed to the unmoving faces of his father’s side, fingers tracing the crinkling smiles of his mother’s ancestors. In many ways Mary and James had parallel families, despite being magical and muggle respectively. They had seen famine and hardship, cruelty and poverty. The Finnegans were working stock, all calloused hands and sun-browned skin. Seamus burst with pride when he thought of his family’s blood and sweat that had seeped into the green fields of An Neid��n.

Even in the middle of a war, Seamus knows he will return to Kenmare. His childhood was spent helping out on the farm, flying brooms with his cousin Fergus, and playing tricks on the local muggles. None of this was ever in ill-humor, for Seamus has an especially warm approach to all people. At school it wasn’t uncommon for him to apologize profusely if one of his jokes went a little too far (once he’d stopped laughing fit to burst, of course). One of the most important things in life, he reckons, is laughter. Laughter and good conversation. Indeed, Seamus could talk the hind leg off a donkey. When he was a child, Seamus would often ride his bike into the local muggle village on an errand of some kind – the newspaper for his Da, a bottle of ale for supper – and be found some hours later, engrossed in discussion with the shopkeeper over any manner of topics: animals, weather, farming. Seamus has an open, approachable manner that attracts him to farm-hands, milkmen, beleaguered Ministry workers, bartenders. With a vast and rambling mind, he manages to pick up snippets of information that, although often untrue or exaggerated, do mean he can contribute to essentially any topic in some respect. The degree to which his contribution is useful or even heeded, however, is up for debate.

Seamus has no clue what he wants to do after the war. Survival is his priority, as is anyone’s, in his opinion. For some years, however, he and his cousin Fergus have discussed opening up a whiskey distillery. This idea often surfaces after they have had a few too many whiskeys themselves, although Seamus would be remiss to say he isn’t seriously interested in the idea. He likes to imagine himself as the salesmen, the face of the company, while Fergus can do all the hard work. Fergus, needless to say, refutes this distribution of labor, and usually remarks that of the two of them, anyone would be more willing to look at Fergus’ pretty face than deal with Seamus and all his freckles. These conversations then regress into a tussle, which Seamus rarely wins. Fergus is a slippery little fucker.

The Finnegans are a small clan, and so Fergus is Seamus’ closest and only cousin. His senior by five years, it was Fergus who introduced Seamus to the first of most things. They attended the Quidditch World Cup together (where Seamus got catastrophically drunk – at fourteen, no less – under Fergus’ careful “supervision”); they often met in Diagon Alley for a pint and a game of chess together (Fergus always loses, mainly because he is easily distracted by the barmaid); and they flew brooms together. The last is among Seamus’ most treasured memories. Fergus would say he wanted to be a famous Quidditch player when he grew up. “I’m destined for greatness,” he insisted seriously, “haven’t ye seen me skills? Lad, you’ll be beggin’ for me autograph one o’ these days, just you wait.” Fergus did in fact make the reserve team of the Kenmare Kestrels a couple of years ago. Professional Quidditch, it turns out, is more about training and hoping you stick out enough to be picked for a game than it is about fame and glory. Now that the war has struck, Fergus has returned to Kenmare to stay with Seamus’ mother and father. The Regime has little need for sports at the moment, particularly when they’re too busy murdering muggles. If Seamus writes to anyone, it’s to Fergus, and damn Hermione’s rules about owling out too often. Fergus is his one link to home: without him, how would Seamus know about the new calf, or his mother’s redundancy from the Ministry, or his father staying up late, night after night, smoking his pipe and gazing into the fire? War means more than battles; it means leaving your family behind and hoping beyond hope that they’re missing you less than you miss them. For Seamus, who is so connected to his blood, the Resistance can be a form of torture.

Seamus dresses in muggle clothes more often than not. His parents had a relaxed attitude towards presentation, with his mother foregoing wizarding robes in favor of floral dresses or comfortable slacks, and his father usually slogging through the back door in enormous green wellies, a tweed flat cap crammed over his greying hair. Seamus is all muggle black Levi jeans, tight t-shirts of bands he’s never heard of, flannel overshirts, and a denim jacket littered with magical badges. He’s often found lounging on a sofa, trainer laces trailing, t-shirt rucked up his freckled stomach, a Quidditch magazine glued to his nose. Seamus has perfected the art of claiming a sofa to oneself (this also extends to beds, brick walls, and queues outside clubs). The trick, he reckons, is in looking utterly bored and somewhat post-coital, with half-mast eyes and a ready smirk, should anyone catch his eye. Seamus does have an air of sensuality about him -- and he can be an incorrigible flirt. “I can’t help being a sex god, can I?” he’s asked rhetorically on more than one occasion. In reality, Seamus is less sex god and more sex menace. At school he was often complaining about the regularity of his shags, the quality thereof, and the attractiveness of his partners. Being a part of the Resistance has had the effect of dampening his sex drive, but only slightly. Instead, Seamus channels his frustration into dueling. Blue balls is a very effective battle tactic.

Seamus is actually remarkably ordinary when it comes to magic. He is fair at transfiguration, good at charms, and reasonable at hexes. But it’s his patronus charm that is remarkable without exception. Seamus’ corporeal patronus – and it is always corporeal, make no doubt about that – is a fox. At first he demurred when it was suggested he teach others in the Resistance how to cast a patronus charm. “I’m not that good,” he said uncomfortably, “can’t ye get someone else t’do it?” Seamus isn’t a very good teacher when it comes down to it. He is easily distracted and often goes off on tangents, preferring instead to fall into conversation than to actually direct his student’s magic. This is a shame, because Seamus does have a gift, and it’s certainly lucky that this falls into one of the most difficult areas of magic there is.

His place in the Resistance is unquestioned. Seamus couldn’t bear to be at home, twiddling his thumbs, hoping that someone else was going to save them all from His reign of terror. Part of the reason why he joined the Order for a hot minute was simply all that energy. Seamus, for all his humor and chatterbox nature, is a doer. He needs to be in the fray, to feel useful. The Finnegans never got anywhere without getting their hands dirty, after all, and hard work is something Seamus is used to. His father certainly didn’t allow his only son to lollygag about the farm when there were cows to milk or agricultural fairs to attend. Much of Seamus’ early memories take place in the passenger seat of his father’s truck, bumping along endless green fields, heading towards some distant destination, their border collie panting and bouncing over Seamus’ shoulder. The problem with the Order was that he felt peripheral. Seamus will never kid himself: he knows he’s not a leader. He doesn’t have the charisma, for one, or the attention span. Although he’s definitely gifted at boosting morale and connecting with people, he far prefers a secondary role than being right at the front (this doesn’t stop him soundly criticizing anyone he believes is slacking off, of course). In the Resistance at least there is the feeling that they are working towards something. The Order was all cloaks and daggers: now Seamus is engaged in the gritty everyday of the Resistance’s existence. Someone has to scout out new camping spots, to figure out when they should attack that Death Eater hot zone, to teach people how to cast a patronus. Seamus is happy right in the middle of the action. He needs to feel valued.

For Seamus, the war sounds like late-night laughter, hushed in the blue dark, from people sitting around a bonfire. It’s the smell of a forest at dawn, of the rain-washed clean of another nameless British moor, the cold rush of ocean air whipping over dunes. Unmade beds, dish-washing duty, the organized cacophony of group breakfast. It feels like trudging along another country track, his boots sticking in the mud, Dean bumping into his side as their readjust the straps of their backpacks. The war sounds like the music that thumped out of a muggle club that one time in London; the way it pounded into the close summer air and tangled in Hermione’s sweat-damp hair. It’s that time he and Ron found themselves stuck in an abandoned warehouse for hours, watching a Death Eater do Merlin knew what across the way, until finally she apparated at four in the morning and left them sore, tired, and stupid, snapping at everyone when they arrived back at headquarters before collapsing asleep in bed for twelve hours. It’s the red bruise forming between his fingers from where he holds his wand. The war mainly feels like one anticlimax after another, but it mainly feels like holding a cup of tea on a frosty morning in Devon, sitting outside the flap of the tent and watching the light turn from dust to silver to gold. It feels the way that Dean makes him feel: short of breath, nervous, thrilled with their proximity.

For all his positive qualities, Seamus is a flawed individual. He finds it easy to identity the alleged weak spots of other people and does not hesitate in pointing them out, often loudly at at length, with little regard for other people’s feelings. He can also be quite brusque and even dismissive, believing that he has already considered the consequences and someone else’s opinion is merely a beat too late. In addition to this, his brash nature can cause him to be sloppy, clumsy, and heedless of consequence. Taking responsibility for his actions is something he struggles with constantly. There is a reason Seamus is not put on the trickier missions, when a careful hand and a steady eye are the only ways they can succeed. He is far better in the thick of it, with his spirit burning bright, his spells shooting through the dark like jets of flame. He lacks the finesse that a true spy requires; he does, however, have the mettle of a freedom fighter, and that is his redeeming feature.

One of Seamus’ biggest problems is his ability to jump to conclusions. It’s not an uncommon occurrence for Seamus to forego any logical explanation and simply choose whichever answer is the most salacious, extraordinary, or unbelievable. And somewhere, in the crowded, bright places in his mind, these tales take on a life of their own. At school it meant he was especially susceptible to gossip. More recently, his doubt in Harry Potter exemplifies this. Seamus would never discriminate based on blood status, and that is not the reason he feels uncertain around the prophecy of Potter being the Chosen One. No, he has a problem with the fact that Harry essentially knows nothing about how to fulfill this supposed prophecy. Although a halfblood himself, Seamus did essentially have a magical childhood. His mother imbued their home with magic in all of its ordinary glory: floating teapots, evergreen flowers on the sill, self-refreshing laundry. Seamus is used to the lovely everyday of magic and the wonder it can inspire in even the most mundane of chores. Even his father, in his sentimental moments (which are frequent; the Finnegans are an emotional lot and prone to heated monologues) expresses how strange and empty his old life feels without the touch of his wife’s wand. So how can someone who has never known the poisoned touch of You-Know-Who, who never grew up with stories about his reign of terror -- how can someone like that be expected to save someone like him? Even Seamus’ mother had a rough time during the first war; Seamus has seen her scars. You-Know-Who might have taken everything from Harry -- and that angers Seamus on Harry’s behalf -- but he also doesn’t know about the grim reality of Dark magic. What a word without Light is really like. And that, to Seamus, is difficult to reconcile.

EXTRAS

Seamus’ blog can be found here!

Here is a Pinterest board for him.

This is also where I would link to two writing samples if I were an applicant! They do not have to be IC.

[leftpress]

Putting Into Practice: Adding to the Conversation on Anarchist Activity in Montreal

Anonymous Contributor | IT'S GOING DOWN | March 13th 2017

The post Putting Into Practice: Adding to the Conversation on Anarchist Activity in Montreal appeared first on IT'S GOING DOWN.

Download and Print Here

We’d like to respond with our thoughts to a text Mise en Commun (Putting in Common) that has been circulated critiquing insurrectionary projects and perspectives in Montreal. We appreciate that the authors of Mise en Common want to elaborate similarities and clarify differences, and move past bad faith. We’re taking this as an occasion to respond and to clarify ideas that we’ve been reflecting on for a few years now. We’ll try to use points of differen...

ce with Mise en Commun as an opportunity to delve further into ideas and how they inform practices, rather than limiting the scope of our text to simply addressing the critiques. We recognize that the length of this text might not facilitate a simple back-and-forth with the original authors, but our goal is to contribute to a larger discussion about these questions. We hope others will feel compelled to participate in this process of clarifying ideas and directions.

Mise en Commun makes reference to and responds to several dozen actions, attacks and small demos that were carried out in the neighborhoods of Hochelaga and St. Henri by anarchists over the last year (which have a continuity going back several years now). These actions which we’ll reference herein mostly involved destroying the facades or merchandise of businesses and apparatuses that contribute to gentrification: yuppie businesses, police, the offices of developers, luxury cars and surveillance cameras. Most of the actions we’re referencing were claimed with a communique that was published on the internet or printed and distributed in paper form (sometimes scattered in leaflet form at the site of the action) explaining the action, how it was carried out, and situating it within the particular context it occurred in. As far as claimed actions go, there was a spike in the frequency of these types of actions in 2016.

We’re going to look at how these actions are placed in the context of neighbourhoods with tensions around gentrification, what this means for anarchists who want to intervene here, and what we think this has contributed to. Through this grounding, we’ll engage the questions of communication and intelligibility, mass movements, anarchist intervention, strategy, isolation and specialization, individual freedom, and repression. We’ll then make several proposals for a multiform and combative struggle against gentrification, along with other struggles that the Montreal anarchist space could pursue.

Intelligible to whom?

“To have resonance, our actions must be communicable, to make sense for others, they must be intelligible.” – Mise en Commun

We certainly agree with elements of this. In acting, one of our primary considerations is how our actions will be understood, both by comrades and anyone else who encounters them. However, we want to be clear about to whom we are intelligible. We want to communicate with potential accomplices, people who, when they see or hear about the actions, resonate with the need to undermine that which grinds them down and makes their lives miserable, those who want to fight back. We want to be unintelligible to authority – we don’t speak their language and don’t want to, because we don’t want to fit in their paradigm so as to enter a dialogue. We want to destroy them.

Even when actions speak for themselves (and certainly some actions speak more clearly for themselves than others; this is ok) we can’t rely on the leftist or corporate media to diffuse our ideas – the goal of those projects isn’t to communicate ideas, but rather to reinforce their own worldview by incorporating our ideas or actions into their narratives. It’s necessary that we develop and utilize our own channels of communication in order to be clear about what we’re doing and what we want, and to avoid censorship.

Accompanying an action with a communique can help clarify the actors’ intentions, to demystify the means by which it was carried out and to situate the action within a broader struggle or strategic line. Claims for many of the actions we’re referencing were published online on Montreal Counter-information, a local infrastructure project of autonomous communication for our struggles in the Montreal anarchist space. Of course, this often comes up against the limit of only being engaged with by other anarchists. One way the project appears to address this limit is to make printable versions of the communiques that can be posted up in the streets, and circulated through distro tables and among apartments. This attempts to open lines of communication with people who don’t exist in the same limited channels of the internet that we do.

The language of war & the spectacle

Mise en Commun criticizes the authors of an anonymous communique for “speaking of an act of war while claiming the vandalism of five businesses”, accusing the actors of fetishization of terminology, pretension, and dramatization of their own power. Generally, when we speak of war (at least one that we ourselves might be engaged in), we tend to be referring to social war – the expansion of conflict to every aspect of life, just as domination and capitalism extend beyond the real subsumption of the workplace. This social conflict is necessarily open-ended, chaotic, and contains within it an exponential growth in possible complicities. This war is an underlying reality, one which we seek to make visible through our actions and propaganda, though we must note that our own engagement with this war constitutes but a small fraction of it. The actors also explained their ‘act of war’ in writing “We will not let these boutiques install themselves here peacefully. This facade of peace is nothing more than an attempt to make invisible the war in progress against poor and marginalized people.” However, we should be conscious that ‘war’ is also the language the State uses to describe conflict, and wars often have truces and standardized logics, whereas the war we want to wage is permanent, and outside militaristic conceptions of struggle.

The critique also implies that the action was claimed in “grande pompe”, creating a spectacular situation. After this particular attack, the mass media did republish the claim in part, though this is completely out of anyone’s control and shouldn’t be blamed on the actors. Media selectively quoted “act of war” to create a spectacle – this reduction of nuance to a tagline is an inevitability when the media seizes onto actions. Of course, certain decisions in how we act or communicate can reinforce the spectacular nature of actions, but we don’t believe that every effort to accompany actions with words constitutes solely reinforcing the spectacle. The process of communication is inherently a symbolic matter, so on some level, any attempt to communicate could be dismissed by calling it ‘spectacular’. On the flip side, if we choose never to speak, someone will speak for us, using our ideas and actions to control the narrative, paint us as isolated and reinforce their own projects or worldviews – politicians, the mass media, leftists.

As we’ve mentioned, one proposal for combatting this dynamic is by attempting to open up as many direct communication channels as possible, through graffiti, posters, newsletters, autonomous online media projects: getting communication off the internet and into the streets. We find it strange that some people would blame anarchists for carrying out actions that are picked up on by the media, while making no proposal for how to undermine the impact that the media has on how our actions are perceived.

We also want to complicate a reduction of confident language to “the staging of our power” [Transl. Mise en scène – to stage a play]. It might also be helpful to point out that the current and local socio-cultural conditions, influenced by a puritan ethic, teach us to practice modesty when speaking from our hearts. In mainstream society, certain youth are allowed to think of themselves as the centre of the universe until they’re beat into submission by hard economic realities and social roles. In this context, people prefer to allow celebrities and international struggles to have all the glory and to be fetishized as objects. With this in mind, we reject a practice of modesty when fighting against that which destroys us. When we speak in a heartfelt and proud manner, with respect to actions that we pour our passions into, we can only hope to normalize a love for oneself and our life’s passions as a subversive act. Finding unmediated ways to interact with our own desires is in fact a great way to diminish the power of the spectacle, rather than reinforcing it. CrimethInc. is often critiqued or poked fun at for embracing these qualities in their writing, but they might have been on to something. If pride can be limiting, it’s more so if it becomes an obstacle to self-critique and learning, or in our interpersonal relationships, and that’s where we’d prefer to address this problem.

Mass-movement and popular anarchism in Montreal

“…We’ve had enough being on the heels of a context, waiting for a student strike or the construction of a pipeline… The context that favours us, the arena where we fight, the territory we inhabit, it’s ours to create.” – Mise en Commun

We completely agree with the statement above, and it influences all of our projects. The time to act for freedom is now.

Mise en Commun goes on to state that “It’s not in social movements that we look for [power], but rather in insurrectional moments.” This is where we differ. We don’t want to replace the Grand Soir with an anticipated insurrectional moment on the horizon, again deferring struggle into the future. Even for those who believe that collective power is only to be found in future insurrectional moments, it remains meaningful to act outside of such moments with the goal of preparing oneself for them, of laying the groundwork for them, of fomenting them. By honing our practices in the present, our capacity to intervene in future (often unexpected) occasions will be kept sharp.

Mise en Commun makes a full-circle contradiction by only mentioning the 2012 student strike as a concrete example for an insurrectional moment. April and May of 2012 is considered an insurrectional moment “not only in the sense that shit was popping off every night, but also in the sense that our relations were defined in function of, by and for the strike.”

We differ in thinking that 2012 was an insurrectional moment. We’d define an insurrectional moment as a violent creation of time and space which breaks with social roles and normalcy. If the situation at times approached being uncontrollable, it’s not because the student strike defined our relations, but in fact the opposite – because the struggle spilled out of the confines of the demand-oriented strike and the student identity after the repressive laws came into effect. Although our collective capacity for street-fighting was creatively expanded in many moments, this ultimately wasn’t matched in uncontrollable ideas or in the subversion of social roles. All of those broken windows and injured cops were successfully reframed as militant reformism, and all momentum was recuperated into electoral politics without so much as a hiccup. Our main reflection on our interventions in those months is that we didn’t put enough energy into engaging on the level of our anarchist ideas and making them relevant to the situation.

It would be obtuse to claim that no liberatory power was felt in those moments. But it would be a great tragedy to not admit the ways in which we betrayed ourselves and potential accomplices by putting our radical perspectives aside in order to respond to a sense of urgency. Even in May of 2012, it was uncomfortably clear how largely white the faces of the so-called mass were in a very multi-cultural city, in a struggle that presented itself as class-based, while lefty liberals honked the horns of their Mercedes’ in support of those disobeying repressive laws in the streets. Privilege politicians might look at such a reality and make the same mistake all over again – affirming that we need to put our individual desires aside for a demand that extends the liberal social contract (with its rights, privileges, and powerlessness) beyond the standard white-supremacist framework. But if we are to take ourselves seriously as anarchists and speak of “a culture of struggle” from our perspective and not that of a politician, let’s hold positions that make fewer compromises.

In certain moments, actions taken and claimed by anarchists have alienated and made collaboration impossible with the Left; in a certain sense, this is desirable. We think that building a revolutionary culture of struggle necessitates, not alienating every single leftist, but rather sabotaging the Left’s hold on struggles. The Left is one of the primary means by which previously uncontrolled struggles are recuperated, by diverting their energy into mediation with the authorities, and patching things up. Anarchists should engage with the Left as a barrier to liberatory perspectives and practices. A certain form of populist-leaning anarchism – inherited from the Left, and in the case of Montreal, militant student organizing – is in our view one of the greatest obstacles to anarchist projects in Montreal.

It seems to us that anarchists take this more “popular” route because they want their projects to be imbued with the social legitimacy of ‘the public, the people, the non-anarchists, etc.’. Individuals in our society are taught to feel valid only through recognition from something they admire, which they perceive as more powerful than themselves alone. Everyone is sensitive to this and that’s in part why authority still exists – it’s not simply the master’s fault. Everyone plays a role in the hierarchy. Rather than trying to break the roots of this domination at the base, populism and leftism exploit and play into this human weakness in order to create a movement. The result is a reproduction of social relations in which one acts primarily out of fear of rejection or repression if certain boundaries are overstepped. This is one way in which repression functions – every individual is afraid to be publicly shamed or isolated in prison. Within the trap of these boundaries, pacification will always win.

Comrades who subscribe to the logic of normative legitimacy oftentimes accuse those who carry out direct attacks of making their project impossible by not caring about this public legitimacy– attacks aren’t valued as a way of contributing to a context. This propagates the idea that some ‘dangerous’ acts made at the wrong time could destroy the growth of the movement. This proved true in Athens, Greece following the Marfin Bank arson (where workers died in a fire started by anarchists), but in Montreal, it seems the criteria for ‘dangerous’ is stepping outside the dictates of normative legitimacy, which we understand as integral to our project.

Looking for normative legitimacy can only invisibilize conflict in the long-term. However, if we can socially spread narratives of the legitimacy of our practices in ways that break with normative values, we come into a great, subversive power – when many other people think it’s legit to fight cops and occupy buildings, and not legit for cops to shoot us or landlords to evict us. More is possible when there is social support for our actions and when more people are breaking out of their roles and participating in struggle or illegality. This will necessarily clash with normative legitimacy – we can see an obvious example of this irreconcilability in how ‘violence’ in normative paradigms is used to designate anything with a semblance of a revolutionary horizon. It’s just as important that comrades are putting energy into arguing for the legitimacy of our practices as it is to be experimenting with practices – not with the media or politicians, but horizontally, in the streets, with neighbors, and undermining the legitimacy of the practices of the State.

Limiting ourselves to the guide of the public contains our struggles to the imaginaries of politics and the normative dictates of legitimacy. We need to make a bigger effort to act and think outside of the box, and we need to develop our own narratives and sources of meaning without being dependent on projections of ‘normal people’ – the ‘public’ is an imaginary figure useful only for social control. Domination and populism act in similar ways: by building collective values, using ‘intelligible’ ideas by and for ‘normal’ people, and absorbing and recuperating the energy of revolt. We want to nourish chaos by exploding this energy out of any structure, code, or law. To be clear, we believe that attacks need to be made and evaluated with an eye towards their resonance, and actions don’t resonate if they are unintelligible to everyone but their authors. The question then becomes how can we be sensitive and receptive to the resonance of our actions without assuming what other people will or will not be into, and thus not allowing the figure of the ‘public’ to guide our actions? We can only answer this question through experimentation.

While it’s worthwhile to find ways to interact directly with others outside of our youthful and subcultural milieus, people shouldn’t focus on organizing others into some mass-movement in order to feed their sense of legitimacy, but should organize themselves, and be clear with those we interact with about who we are and what we want. Politics (and the omissive and manipulative discourses it requires) should be avoided when building anti-authoritarian foundations.

We think a critique of the left and of populism could bring interesting reflections to social anarchist initiatives, like that of Chlag.info, which organized an assembly against gentrification in Hochelaga. From our understanding, one of the goals of Chalg.info is to build a revolutionary context in the long term, and to create a culture of struggle composed of all kinds of tactics, in order to make acts intelligible. We share this goal. They do this by reaching out to community groups, distributing propaganda, and organizing popular general assemblies against gentrification. We appreciate that they make no demands of the State, and explicitly support a diverse and solidaritous approach. We recognize that those initiatives are helping to create a social context and the long-term dimensions that are being considered, but the populist language utilized in those initiatives warrants criticism.

Elements of the failed framework of anarchists mobilizing the masses of students into a strike against austerity seem to have been transferred into mobilizing the masses of a neighbourhood against gentrification, so that some day in the future, direct actions can be embedded in this social-movement context. This framework functions through politics: a logic of recruitment, a deferral of struggle into the future, and the creation of a lowest-common-denominator point of unity publicity campaign. Whether ‘Fuck austerity’ or ‘Fuck gentrification’, ideas and differences are reduced to a political program designed to appeal to a ‘mass’. Where gentrification (or any specific struggle) offers an opportunity for us to link this struggle to anarchist perspectives that put everything into question, this political approach instead chooses to not make any of these connections or challenge the normative and respectable leftist discourse against gentrification.

Connecting this struggle to an analysis against all government, policing, colonization and social control, for instance, is thought to likely alienate many people in the projected social mass, and detract numbers from the base of supporters of a lowest-common-denominator cause. When these connections are drawn, they are limited to progressive arguments: the Chlag.info flyer “What is Gentrification” highlights the hypocrisy of specific politicians working in hand with the business elite, and the increased police presence in the neighbourhood to eliminate undesirables, while never positioning themselves as wanting a world without these institutions. The text positions the State as not being sufficiently social-democratic, and there’s no mention of what it could look like to struggle against it too. The attacks on businesses are not defended as important contributions to this struggle, but only mentioned to denounce that the city gives money to the targeted businesses and not the less fortunate population. Although the mobilizers are likely correct that their approach will bring more numbers to their ’cause’, they’re setting themselves up for recuperation by not broadening their arguments to anarchist critiques, and sacrificing quality to quantity.

The text “A Wager on the Future” puts it well :

“Anarchist ideas are more complicated to explain and more difficult to accept, because all the education and information people have absorbed throughout their lives is produced by various social structures to support the fundamental beliefs of the State, patriarchy, and capitalism. It is much easier to use progressive arguments… if you want to convince people quickly. But faced with a movement animated by such arguments, the State would have no problem redirecting or recuperating it via a reform, because these are not radical critiques that get to the root of the problem…

“…Often, the obsession with recruiting or creating a large anarchist organization or “capacity for mobilization” is nothing but a substitute that hides an absolute lack of struggles of our own. In struggle, we deepen our ideas and practices and we encounter new comrades, new complicities. It is often the people who have no struggle in their daily life, who don’t know how to find social conflicts, who propose creating large organizations based on recruitment, or creating a mobilizing capacity based on seductive techniques of communication.”

Chlag.info has one of it’s objectives to “Increase awareness among families and friends of the transformations which estrange us from our own neighbourhood”. Such a simplistic narrative of preserving ‘our own neighborhood’ (an idea that relies on a micro-nationalism) doesn’t challenge any possible xenophobic and reactionary directions from the largely white and often Quebec-nationalist residents of Hochelaga. With Chlag.info not specifying an anti-nationalist analysis of these transformations (and not even having any of it’s online content available in languages other than french), it wouldn’t surprise us at all if many residents understand this to mean non-white people coming into the neighborhood that they grew up in.

Although many anarchists participate in the group Chlag.info, they maintain a populist discourse that’s not honest about this. We find this front-group mentality of hiding one’s real perspectives behind a socially acceptable veneer to be parallel to the strategy of maoists. At the assembly against gentrification, someone from the neighbourhood asked the organizers why they were pretending to be ‘the people’ when they’re actually a bunch of anarchists from UQAM. We think it’s great that anarchists are fostering spaces for people outside our circles to organize themselves, but if they’re not genuine about what they have at stake in this, the dishonesty is apparent to everyone.

The question of to what degree actions such as a popular general assembly or even a rent-strike foster a revolutionary culture (rather than strengthening the Left) is a matter of whether we are honest about intentions from the get-go, or whether we play the game of social democratic values to get people who are more used to these kinds of legitimacy-games on our side. Contrary to the romanticization of “opacity” against structures of power (that then gets applied to anyone outside of the ‘milieu’) that we often hear being used to justify dishonesty about one’s perspectives, we believe that wearing our hearts on our sleeves will go a lot further in the long run than hiding our intentions behind the facade of the responsible community organizer, or syndicalist militant, or whatever else.

One of the ways we see anarchist populism reproducing normative legitimacy is in its marketing of ideas, which presents them in a lowest-common denominator way. Our strength does not lie in the form of publicity campaigns. Marketing will always be the terrain of power because it makes us just another advertising campaign, using the language of politics – tired and palatable explanations of why austerity (or gentrification) is bad. Having more people passively ‘agree’ with ideas isn’t interesting to us – democracy’s pacifying strategy makes any opinion acceptable, as long as it’s not tied to a practice. We certainly want to encourage intelligent critiques of power, but all those critiques are already out there, and more accessible than at any time in the past. Populism understands propaganda as the primary means to spread anarchy, but anarchism will only spread if it can exercise a force against the dominant structures, if it has a practice that actually feels relevant to people’s lives and up to the challenge of our times. If our ideas and practices aren’t spreading, it certainly isn’t because we just need more rationalized arguments against the nightmare surrounding us.

More than convincing people to change their opinions, we’re interested in contributing to motivating them to develop subversive practices, and motivation is a fundamentally emotional force. Marketing certainly also mobilizes emotions, but the deeply-emotional dimensions of anarchist ideas differ by inspiring autonomy, agency, and empowerment. We feel freedom, dignity, anger, compassion, joy, and empathy, and these feelings bring us to want to live in liberatory ways. These feelings and practices for manifesting emotion might actually speak to people as their whole selves, and validate their own emotional realities, rather than understanding them as a statistic to be convinced.

The Question of ‘Strategy’

“We don’t believe that there exist pure ‘anarchist practices’ nor anarchist struggles ‘in themselves’: there are anarchist perspectives on struggles. To hold onto the fantastical purity of certain types of action, outside of any relation to a context or a struggle, only elevates them as a dangerous fetish. Quickly, we start to think of action for action’s sake, rather than for the power that we can get from it. An accomplished action calls for the organization of the next, without ever anchoring itself in a more long term perspective.”

– Mise en Commun

We agree that there aren’t pure anarchist practices. Of course, there are no inherent intentions in breaking a window or setting a fire, and no one is claiming that. But we are interested in spreading combative practices that undermine social control (which aren’t limited to night time attacks), and these being imbued with anarchist perspectives. The anarchist perspectives which feel closest to our own emphasize conflict with authority and hierarchy, self-organization and autonomy, relationships of solidarity and mutual aid, an expansive conception of freedom that sees it as relational to all beings, and the rupture of social peace and control.

We agree with Mise en Commun that “The context that favours us, the arena where we fight, the territory we inhabit, it’s ours to create.” Direct actions taken in neighbourhoods with high tension and histories of resistance to gentrification, are interventions in these contexts and serve to push the limits of what is possible – and are hardly “outside of any relation to a context or a struggle”. It seems that the criteria for context or struggle here is relying on Leftist movement conceptions where the quantitative logic prevails; that if there aren’t masses in the street, there is no context. In the same way as destruction ‘doesn’t have revolutionary significance in itself’, neither does a social mass.

Self-organization and direct action give us power in many ways, which shouldn’t be flattened into serving a singular type of context or strategy. Acting has impacts on oneself; developing a feeling of freedom, healing, learning skills and honing practices, and bringing us moments of joy. The impacts are also felt collectively among those who organize together; developing empowerment, communication, complicity, and different forms of relationships. There are impacts on potential accomplices; through inspiration and solidarity, overcoming isolation, and contributing to wider sentiments, for instance, against the police, and the popularization of practices used to manifest them. There can also be impacts on the enemy; by sabotaging the tools of domination we can impair their well-oiled functioning, and give more space for free relations to flourish.

***

“The mystique of an insurrection that spreads, we must understand it, demystify it, analyze it, and foresee it… It is necessary to always be one step ahead on the recuperation of our struggles, on repression, to be aware of the sensitive changes in the relations of force that we seek to overturn. It is necessary to predict the consequences of our actions, to learn to recognize what benefits us and what harms us, to play one’s card right no matter the situation – changing the rules to get there. It’s necessary to conspire, to be strategists and not only tacticians. Not strategists at the head of an army, but an army of strategists.”

– Mise en Commun

Mise en Commun continually returns to the tautological aphorism that we must be strategic in our actions to feel our collective force, while rarely concretely stating

[searchesque-blog]

five Strategies No person Tells You About Winning His Heart Permanently

In relation to finding a guy to commit to a relationship, a large number of gals can not seem to crack the code.

As many of us have observed, you can get two varieties of guys: Behind curtain #1 will be the kind of guy that is positively smitten with his girlfriend - he puts her on a pedestal, treats her like a queen, and destinations her happiness above his very own. And behind curtain #2 will be the form who's labeled as being a "commitment-phobe" - he doesn't seem to delight in getting inside a partnership, acting as though his dedication is of your involuntary form.

Believe it or not, a examine by Match.com uncovered that 95 percent of males openly admit to seeing marriage as one of their ultimate lifestyle objectives.

So if this really is what 95 % of them appear to want, how can you get a man to commit and literally fall in enjoy with you?

It all comes down to how a guy views dedication. To a guy, it can be like cracking a combination lock; should the numbers will not line up, he'll be emotionally distant and unavailable, as opposed to all in. He may even come up with a number of one-liner excuses that women undoubtedly come across aggravating: "I need to concentrate on my career," "I just want room," or, "I'm just not ready to get a relationship best suited now."

But these one-liners are not lies. He really believes what he is saying due to the fact the "numbers" of his commitment code are not lining up.

To put it differently, when he says, "I'm just not ready for any partnership appropriate now," what he really indicates is, "I'm just not ready to get a relationship with you."

While it hurts to hear this, comprehending ways to get a man to commit - and why and how he chooses to lastly get the plunge - can conserve you heartache and help you to recognize guys.

The reality is, when he last but not least comes across that one particular girl who produces the ideal sequence of "numbers" to unlock his commitment mixture, he'll truly feel compelled to hang onto her. He'll commit to a partnership considering that he doesn't like to chance losing her.

So, now we know commitment isn't some type of man allergy. What you must do is discover ways to crack his dedication code and get your man to commit - and sooner or later fall in take pleasure in with you.

Less complicated explained than accomplished, in fact, thinking of the typical man is not fantastic at communicating his emotional requirements. That is where I can be found in! 

Here are five items guys (won't tell you they) need to have ahead of they will commit to a relationship and begin to fall in really enjoy with you.

1. He desires you to need him.

Among the keys to knowing methods to make your guy pleased is fundamental, animalistic wish. In the pit of his abdomen, he must want you, extended for you personally, yearn for you. He needs to miss you when you are not all-around and he has to feel a pang of lust when he has not seen you for some time. 

This desire is designed via the play of opposites. He'll crave you and after that he catches you; he'll miss you after which falls into you; he'll lust for you and then you will surrender to him. It truly is the generating and the release of stress more than and over yet again.

The way you develop this stress is through your sexuality - tease him and then give in, playfully run from him and after that make it possible for him to capture you, include levity and spontaneity to his life, give him lustful stares and after that leave the space, send him attractive notes through the day, grab him and kiss him unexpectedly. In summation, use your potent feminine qualities to contrast his really serious and calculated masculine nature.

two. He demands your respect.

Respect is really a cardinal virtue; it is the foundation of any relationship that endures and stands the check of time. Respect can assist re-ignite a relationship lengthy following the flame of appreciate and lust has sputtered. Many guys marry the lady who respects him, even more than the girl who loves him.

Guys may sleep with, speak to, and care about the woman they really like (and lust), but often adore only isn't all they will need.

Lots of this has to do with all the phrase "I appreciate you." To a man and a lady, this term can have various meanings. A man could possibly interpret it as "don't hurt me" or maybe "you're trapped." Guys see the really enjoy from a lady as additional of the commodity than some thing novel.

Certainly, the phrases make him feel very good when he hears them, however they do not sing to his soul. Males have crippling inadequacies they silently battle their whole lives.

So, figure out why you respect your guy. What are you proud of him for? What are you able to acknowledge him for? How will you make him really feel great about himself? Then, tell him. Do not inform him merely you take pleasure in him, inform him why you really like him.

An alternative strategy to express your respect will be to apologize when you've produced a mistake or mentioned something wrong. You (and he) should make the relationship more vital than person egos. When he understands you respect his character, he'll allow you in deeper, exposing other tender elements of his soul where he requires healing and support.

3. He needs to really feel emotionally protected.

The third point to keep in thoughts when understanding the right way to hold your guy pleased is his emotional health. By surrendering your anger, bitterness, or any resentment you may have towards him, you give him protected passage to become vulnerable.

This takes place by you putting your trust in him. After which, he can trust you. You the two permit oneself to be vulnerable and that assists a romantic relationship deliver the results. But for this vulnerability to get off, ladies ordinarily needs to be the initiators. Men are trying to find somebody to lead them in to the vulnerable abyss.

It happens to be a woman's courage to open up and let down her guard that inspires men to lay down their psychological shields and take it easy.

So how do you do this? Properly, it aids by knowing how males feel. He must are aware that you won't judge or criticize him. He has to really feel supported, accepted, and encouraged that you are on his side. He must know that you will not inform your friends or (worse) your mother about any errors he can make. He must know that you'll stand up for him when some others say awful items about him. He has to realize that you'll confront any injustices or problems head-on.

4. He requirements you to challenge him.

At the core of every man is challenge. Males develop via challenge. Challenge speaks to your aspect of their masculinity that innately tends to make them need to conquer and win. Challenge could be the path guys get to attain results, which in the end can make them feel respected.

Inside a nutshell, it actually comes down to getting a strong sense of your own values - realizing what's vital that you you and standing by it. This generates the challenge that strengthens the connection. An additional element of this challenge is having the ability to confront a man if you feel like people values are compromised.

This may possibly demand you confronting him whenever you consider he owes you an apology, other than letting it fall through the wayside. As you can confront him, he'll locate you extremely interesting. Even when his primary reaction is anger, the truth that it is possible to stand up to him will alter the way in which he appears at you. It will eventually challenge him to be a much better guy.

5. He must feel awe and wonder. 

The ultimate step in figuring out the best way to maintain your guy content is superior, old-fashioned excitement. Even acting slightly crazy is often a good matter; crazy, not insane - skinny-dipping from the ocean is really good, but faking your very own kidnapping mainly because he is been functioning also late will not be.

All also quite often, females are taught to really feel bad about remaining emotional, feeling 'crazy,' and acting unpredictably. But these feminine characteristics are essentially beautiful to males. Consequently, embrace your femininity and permit it to enliven your relationship. This could aid a guy fall deeper and deeper in really enjoy with you.

As soon as you embody your instinctual feminine nature, you produce the room for him to say things like, "There is just a thing about her that I really enjoy."

Read even more about this right here - 

https://geminianxss.tumblr.com/post/176959497035/five-techniques-no-person-tells-you-about-winning