#yes this is from a while ago (spain i think madrid specifically)

[memoirsofagenie]

Treading in Hasekura’s Footsteps: AICR’s “Black-Tie” Annual Circolo della Caccia Dinner

by: Genie

 “The world listens more to witnesses than it does the masters, yet if it listens more to the masters, it is because they are, above all, witnesses.”

-- Pope Paul V

      Among the recurrent, “Black-Tie” happenings at the prestigious Circolo della Caccia, are the yearly “Serata del Cinghiale” (Boar Soirée) at the end of February, the Christmas  Dinner, and the introduction of  new members, with a speech given by the youngest member at the end of the evening.  However, for almost a decade now, the American International Club of Rome (AICR) members have been able to also partake in this charming rituality of olden flair thanks to the kind dinner invitation of M.E., both an AICR Board Member and a Circolo della Caccia member, naturally!

     During this magical January evening – and the upcoming 2013 edition will be very special, for it falls on AICR’s 60th Anniversary– guests are greeted by the heraldic eagles and  dragons as they walk through the imposing colonnade and past the romantic nymphaeum of Palazzo Borghese, only to step into one of Rome’s oldest –if not, the oldest- elevators and climb to the “piano nobile,” where this intertwined, utterly spellbinding Chinese box catapults them even further back in time. Amidst the black-and-white regal portrait sequence of the illustrious guests that have entered the Circolo at some point in their lives, the spectacular frescoes and the intricate backdrop of gold-leaf covered stuccoes of the dining hall, the elegance of the maitre d’ and of the waiters in traditional livery are merely the last details that hark back to princely times, heightening the pervading nocturnal, dreamy state and momentarily removing people from reality.

     Matter-of-factly, it is known that Rome is a city where history is embedded within history. The Circolo della Caccia is no exception to this rule, thus making it almost impossible for the public curiosities not to be titillated. History also helps to predict the future, albeit in this specific case, knowing the history can surely, if anything, make the dinner experience more enjoyable altogether. For this reason, it was imperative to embark on a virtual time-machine to discover some interesting, behind-the-scenes details of one of the Eternal City’s (many) best-kept secrets.

     The Circolo della Caccia (literally, “Hunting Club”), is undoubtedly one of the oldest, most exclusive clubs of Rome. Founded in 1869 on an initiative of Prince Francesco Borghese, its original denomination used to be Circolo di San Carlo, due to its first, modest location. Upon inauguration, it was located in front of the San Carlo church, at the crossroads between Via del Corso and Via delle Carrozze. It then moved to Palazzo Verospi, on the other side of Via del Corso, and changed its name to Circolo della Caccia, in view of the large presence of members of the Roman Society for fox hunting, a “sport” introduced by Lord George Stanhope, Count of Chesterfield and practiced by the aristocracy in the Roman countryside, concurrent to the birth of the Circolo itself. On this note, a magnificent canvas originally donated to King Umberto II, probably the most representative one currently displayed at the Circolo, serves as testimony of this now forbidden pastime, which is nonetheless still simulated in the outskirts of town.

     Going back to the chronological overview of the Circolo, before reaching its current site, it relocated two more times: first, to the now-demolished Palazzo Bonaccorsi, lastly to Palazzo Marignoli. Finally, on August 31, 1922, it moved to its definitive location, which coincided with the former rooms of Paolina Borghese (Napoleon’s sister) at the eponymous palace in the old ‘rione’ (neighborhood) Campo Marzio: Palazzo Borghese, otherwise known as the “Cembalo” (Harpsichord), due to its exterior shape reminiscent of the Baroque instrument.  

     Having unveiled this greatness, a question lurks beneath the collective minds: How does one join the Circolo della Caccia? The main pre-requisite for membership is to belong to nobility. An important founding member was writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, who had also been admitted on the basis of his Gold Medal to Military Valor. An aspiring member should also be referred by three other members and has to undergo the traditional practice of the white balls vs. the black balls. The former indicate a positive vote, whereas the latter indicate a negative vote. Each negative vote annuls five positive votes. Hence, it comes as no surprise to learn that its honorary members include personalities ranging from King Juan Carlos of Spain, Prince Charles of Wales and his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, all the way to King Albert II of Belgium.  By the same token, it is equally normal to note that the Club has issued quite a few exemplary rejections, Paul Getty being a case in point. To this day membership is almost entirely male. The library, the game room and the reading room are off-limits to women, who are nevertheless admitted– escorted– to the guest quarters.

      Given these premises, and realizing the privilege it is to cross the threshold of the Circolo for even just a few hours, this article is only brought to completion by asking some questions to Mr. E., without whom the idea of writing it might not have materialized in the first place:

Mr. E. when did you first join the Circolo della Caccia? I joined the Circolo della Caccia during my freshman year at Harvard. The year was 1978. My grandfather was the former President of the Circolo as well as my godfather. 

Would you care to share an anecdote (some anecdotes) you are most fond of concerning the Circolo della Caccia? I have many fond moments at the Circolo. The fondest one however was to hear my son give his acceptance speech as a new Circolo della Caccia member two years ago! 

What prompted you -rather, gave you the idea- of organizing a Circolo della Caccia dinner for AICR members? Quite a few years ago, I thought it would be a fun idea to celebrate the holidays by having a black-tie dinner and having as guest our own Honorary President and/or VPs. If I recall initially, we had just one Ambassador. After a while two came.

Do you have a favorite ‘edition’? If yes, could you describe why it is your favorite? Last year, for the first time in AICR history (and probably in Rome's history!), AICR was able to have ALL the US Ambassadors in Italy (many readers may not know this, but we have three). It was absolutely a smashing success! This type of event is what makes AICR so unique. It is not often that this can be pulled off. In today's society, when everyone is always in a rush and often does not have the time or patience to "get dressed up," I think the beautiful clothes worn by our guests (ladies are often in very elegant long dresses!) wonderfully blends in the rich historical surroundings of the Circolo. A lot of thanks go to our Manager who always "manages" to organize a perfect seating and ensure that the dinner goes smoothly. Also, thanks go to our President who always "wows" us with the wonderful bouquets that are on the table and that are given to our Very Important Guests of Honor. §§§ 

     In closing, another important episode haunts the Circolo’s saga. In the fall of 1615, the Japanese-Christian Ambassador Hasekura Tsunenaga entered Rome after an extenuating sea-odyssey that had begun two years earlier, by orders of Shogun Date Masamune. Masamune was the King of the Japanese city of Sendai, and Hasekura’s mission was to ask for Pope Paul V’s (Camillo Borghese) spiritual support, which would have helped the Shogun gain absolute power. The expedition made pit-stops in Acapulco and Madrid, crossing both the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean, before reaching Rome with its surviving crew (less than half of what it was at the beginning of the journey).  Hasekura finally met with Pope Paul V “Borghese” at the Quirinale, and his emaciated expression –as a result of the hardships endured at sea-  has been immortalized on yet another beautiful painting at the Circolo della Caccia, where he is depicted wearing his distinctive regalia. Hasekura finished his multiple diplomatic encounters by the end of December, and headed back to Japan on January 7, 1616.

     Over four centuries after Hasekura’s Roman visit, AICR members get to walk “backwards” in his footsteps, for January, contrary to the Nipponic Ambassador’s agenda, is the ideal month to be in Rome, marking the time to “witness” Pope Paul V’s “Borghese”  legacy, lavishly bequeathed through the Circolo della Caccia. Hence, of all of AICR’s special events, the Circolo della Caccia Dinner is one appointment –THE appointment– that should definitely not be missed.

 Rome, 13 December 2012

[27timescinema]

INTERVIEW - LUX PRIZE - RODRIGO SOROGOYEN

By Pau Vall Capdet

Rodrigo Sorogoyen is a well-known Spanish director and scriptwriter who has gained both critical and popular regognition in his short, yet specially intense career. Born in Madrid in 1981, Sorogoyen debuted in 2011 with Stockolm a unique romantic drama which was critically acclaimed and already projected a very promising career. In his following two feature films (Que Dios Nos Perdone and El Reino) he has proven to master the political and police thriller genre by establishing his own cinematic style. Last year, he surprised everyone with his thrilling short film Madre, which was selected for the Academy Awards. 

I had the enormous privilege of meeting Rodrigo during the Venice Film Festival, as his fourth feature film Madre (which explores and amplifies the same plot introduced in his previous short) premieres during this year’s edition of the Mostra. Additionally, his seven-times Goya winner film El Reino has been selected for the 2019 edition of the LUX Film Prize by the European Parliament.

If you had to measure the current state of the Spanish audiovisual industry, would you consider that its health (in terms of quality and creativity, but also regarding the number of completed movies and the results at the box office) has improved during the last decade?

It depends on the movie. Although, I think there is a type of movie (which used to be the classical mid-budget Spanish film) that was quite easy to produce and distribute in Spain. Those kinds of movies were normally related to a type of cinema that wasn’t risky or bold at all (I consider this to be the bad part of these films, even though the good part is they actually could be made and were seen in cinemas). Nowadays, only big-budget films can go forward and have a place in the market (normally conventional, low-risk features). Thanks to the digital revolution though, some independent, creative and narratively courageous low-budget movies can be produced.

How does it feel to move from making a low-budget film through crowdfunding (Stockholm, 2013) to directing a film with a much larger budget, (and a more mainstream projection) as it is the case of The Realm?

I lived this evolution in a natural, spontaneous way. Personally, I haven’t thought about it that much. Even though I manage more money, my work (with the actors, camera and so on) has remained the same. My method of working is identical: I create a script that must be translated into moving images (I don’t mind if there’s a lot of money or not, what is important though is that the budget fits the movie’s needs and structure). It would be absurd to produce Que Dios Nos Perdone using crowdfunding, but it was definitely a perfect method for Stockholm.

In previous interviews, you frequently mention David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson as basic inspirational directors for your last two movies. But what are your mentors in Spanish cinema?

I try not to have role-models at all. I believe it’s better not to have conscious mentors because they may interfere with my vision and my way of working. Of course, I do appreciate and admire a lot of Spanish (and foreign) directors, but my movies are not based on other’s work. Every day I’m facing more questions involving the directors I admire but I try to stay away from their vision because I believe it could interfere with my own.

The degree of credibility that the characters of The Realm��convey with their performance is thrilling (if we consider their rhythm, their speaking manners and gesturing). Where is the line, the border between reality and fiction, in The Realm? Can reality overcome fiction in terms of likelihood?

Well, I believe reality always overcomes fiction. In fact, there were some actual true events (that happened in Spain) which we decided not to include in the script because they would be unbelievable, not credible at all for our story. For instance, Granados (an Spanish corrupted politician) ended imprisoned in the same penitentiary he had previously built as a politician some years before. Therefore, we thought this could lead to bad scriptwriting (like those American commercial movies where the man who constructs a jail suddenly ends up there as well) as in a feature film I wouldn’t believe the story, at least not from the spectators’ point of view.

In some interviews, you mentioned that the film is not intended to judge or criticize, but to portray a specific reality by giving the viewer the tools to evaluate what he is seeing on screen. Humanizing a corrupt politician creates a problem of moral ambiguity. Did the preproduction process help humanize seemingly dark characters?

Yeah, I guess it did. This was already thought and planned during the script process. Actually, it was kind of the starting point of the film, the key idea: take a well-known enemy for the people and get to know his ordinary familiar and political life. I have to recognize it was partly due to Antonio de la Torre’s obsession with talking to real politicians to make the main character as realistic as possible, and it helped a lot actually talking and hanging out with them. Also, it was very helpful to listen to the scandalous leaked audio phone calls between them, which made obvious that their language is as rude and common as any citizen. We’re wrongly used to the fiction works in which the politicians and the powerful only talk politely and calmly, and I wanted to change that (as in Spain it’s obvious we don’t speak like this). This made it easier for the actors as well.

Your trajectory as a director has consolidated your cinematic style and method: hand-held camera, constant closeness to the characters, interior scenes shot using wide lenses, a soundtrack with thrilling electronic music…. Are you aware of having established, with your four movies, your personal style?

I am conscious of some of the things you mentioned but I guess not as mindful as an spectator can be. I prefer working without thinking that I am creating a style as a director. This way I don’t judge and get obsessed with my work and don’t fall into repetition or the constant thought that I may be paraphrasing myself. I just prefer not thinking about it. It is a fact though, that if I watch my movies, I can observe that there are some filmic patterns which are reiterated.

Naturally, I do think about all the cinematic elements to shoot and direct actors properly along with Isabel Peña (my co-scriptwriter) and while we’re writing the script I visualize and project each scene in my mind.

How will the distribution of the film evolve from now on after being selected for this edition of the Lux Prize?

Well, this is kind of hard to answer because I’m immersed in a whole new adventure right now with Madre, my new film. I feel it’s a joy and a pleasure that new audiences can experience the movie from all over Europe. It makes a difference to not only be present two weeks during the theatrical release and have the chance to be in international European film festivals. Therefore, this will give more visibility and life to the movie.

Do you think that a new European film network should be created and reinforced against the American industry for example?

Absolutely, I don’t know who wouldn’t want that. Anything ready to confront the American blockbusters who manage to succeed everywhere in the box office is a good idea. We should have a stronger Spanish distribution system that works similar to the French model, which succeeds in supporting its industry so as to survive and grow. It’s a pity that people only watch one or two European movies every year.

Two years ago, you presented the critically acclaimed short film Madre. In this edition of the Venice Film Festival you are releasing its follow-up, this time as a feature film. What is the story behind Madre? Did you think about making the film when you were shooting the short?

Well, the short movie was born as an attractive and interesting film exercise to me and also to the spectator. By all means, I already knew Madre could be the first scene of a movie and the short being so successful made it easier for the feature to be produced and financed in such a short period..

Besides, the idea behind the short film came from one friend of mine who lived the same experience portrayed in the film. It didn’t end badly, she just received a call from his son who didn’t find his father, but unlike the movie, he luckily found him, and everything came back to normal. She mentioned to me it was the worst minute of her life. This is the source of the movie’s plot and from here on Isabel and I started asking ourselves how the story could continue and be developed into a full script. I think there are a lot of topics in the film’s narrative that can’t be simplified into one single argument or thesis. It was also a fun exercise: we have this start, now how do we continue her story?

At the moment you have already demonstrated mastering the genre of the political and crime thriller. Would you like to approach other genres or ways of narrating?

Yes, all of them! (laughs). Actually, I’d love to shoot a science fiction film and I already have two comedies in mind! Obviously, the important part is the plot, the script (and as I spend one or two years working on it certainly has to be appealing). However, I am indeed really fond to keep changing the shape and genre of my films.

[mastcomm]

A Composer Puts Her Life in Music, Beyond Labels

She was supposed to end up in Paris.

When the composer Tania León was 9, her piano teacher, traveling in France, sent a postcard back to Cuba with a picture of the Eiffel Tower. “I don’t know what happened to me when I saw the card,” Ms. León, now 76, said recently. “I went to my family, and I said, ‘This is where I’m going to live.’ And I became obsessed.”

A few years earlier, her intrepid grandmother had marched her to the local music conservatory in Havana and demanded that she be enrolled. They didn’t usually take students so young, but Ms. León already showed promise: Even at 4, she would press against the radio at home, dancing to salsa and singing along, with perfect pitch, to the classical station.

Following rigorous, European-style conservatory training, and inspired by her teacher’s postcard, the young pianist set her sights on France, intent on becoming a touring virtuoso and helping lift her family out of poverty. After years of waiting, she landed a free flight to the United States through a resettlement program. In 1967, at 24, Ms. León left for Miami, intending to travel on to Europe.

But right before boarding the plane she learned that she would not be permitted to return to Cuba, and upon entering the United States, she discovered that she would have to stay at least five years before she could apply for citizenship. She was trapped, a citizen of nowhere.

“That’s how I arrived: already traumatized,” Ms. León recalled.

But she soon reached New York, where she began carving out an unusually varied artistic path and resisting, even at a time of increasing focus on multiculturalism, the identity-based labels — “black composer,” “female conductor” — that others sought to attach to her.

She eventually served as the New York Philharmonic’s new-music adviser in the mid-1990s. Although she curated the Philharmonic’s American Eccentrics series and conducted educational concerts, the orchestra, which had a weak record with composers of color at that time, stymied some of her projects and never actually played her music.

But this week she finally arrives at the Philharmonic, with the premiere of her work “Stride,” to be performed on Feb. 13, 15 and 18, under Jaap van Zweden. The premiere is part of Project 19, a multiseason initiative in honor of the centenary of the 19th Amendment, that has commissioned works by 19 female composers. Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s executive director in the ’90s, returned as president and chief executive in 2017, and was eager to finally program Ms. León’s music.

“Here we are,” Ms. Borda said in an interview, “coming back to an important artist and enfranchising her, over 20 years later.”

Ms. León’s trajectory in America, from displaced pianist-in-training to compositional force, began with upheaval. Not long after she arrived, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; Ms. León barely spoke English, but found herself shouting slogans at antiwar protests. She was overwhelmed with stress, and her hair began to fall out.

But propelled by talent, tenacity and a bit of luck, she began to reverse her fortunes. She played her way into a scholarship at the New York College of Music. Substituting for a friend as an accompanist to dance classes, she was spotted by the famed New York City Ballet dancer Arthur Mitchell. He was starting a new venture, the Dance Theater of Harlem, and recruited Ms. León as music director.

Soon, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine were teaching Ms. León their repertoire. “What freaked me out the most,” she recalled with a laugh in an interview in the Philharmonic’s archives, poring over old program booklets and photographs, was “when I found out that Stravinsky was alive, and that Stravinsky had written three or four ballets for Arthur Mitchell.”

At Mitchell’s behest, she began conducting, improvising and, increasingly, composing. Her tendency was to say yes to every opportunity, and not fret too much about what it might entail. “People that I respect a lot, they tell me something seriously and I think about it, but I don’t become negative,” she said. “He told me, ‘Write a piece.’ And I said, ‘Wow.’ So I wrote the piece.”

She honed her voice in large-scale, percussive dance works that dabbled in the serial techniques in vogue in the 1970s. The Dance Theater became an international sensation, and its tours even took her, finally, to Paris.

At last she was able to return home, through a Cuban government family reunification program. Visiting Havana in 1979, she went first to the cemetery to see her formidable grandmother, who had died while she was abroad. She played recordings of her new compositions for her father, who remained skeptical.

“He told me, ‘Where are you in your music?’” she recalled. “He knew something about me that I was not addressing in my sound.”

“When you come from one land into another, one culture into another, you want to be assimilated,” she added. “You want to learn the traditions, you want to learn the gestures.”

To remind her of her roots, her father took her to a Santería ceremony, where she heard the polyrhythmic music that she had absorbed growing up, but which had remained absent from her early professional work.

She returned to the United States, and soon after, her father suffered a stroke and died. Visa issues kept Ms. León from attending his funeral. She began having nightmares in which she heard pounding drums. She was working on a piece for solo cello, and started to sketch out a movement based on her father’s rhythmic gait, in the style of a syncopated montuno. The grand mixture that is Cuban music — its intricate grooves, melodic inflections, arrays of drums — began flowing into her compositions.

A series of probing works followed through the 1980s and ’90s: “Batá,” with its eerie evocations of Yoruba rituals; “A la Par,” a piano-percussion duo that moves from murmuring chromaticism to a coolly contained guaguancó rumba; and “Indígena,” in which trumpet fanfares herald riotous explosions of orchestral color.

“I was searching myself, trying to address something,” she recalled of those years, describing it as a period of “trying to understand my own culture.” The music’s central impulse is a forceful, bustling modernism, with angular and pointillistic gestures undergirded by kinetic, perpetual motion.

She also became an outspoken advocate for cultural diversity. Alongside her pathbreaking career as a conductor, Ms. León spearheaded a pioneering outreach program at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and led community concerts across that borough. She oversaw major festivals of Latin American music with the American Composers Orchestra, served as music director of the Broadway production of “The Wiz,” and testified at city hearings about the integration of pit orchestras. Today, she directs the wide-ranging festival Composers Now, which is going on across New York through February.

But as her career unfolded, Ms. León bristled at attempts to define her. Her background is mixed — she has family roots in Spain, France, Africa and China — and the seemingly binary categories of race and gender circumscribed her individuality.

“I am tired of all our labels,” she said in 1986. “I am nothing that the people want to call me. They do not know who I am. The fact that I am using this physical costume does not describe my energy, does not describe my entity. My chosen purpose in life is to be a musician, a composer, a conductor. This is the way I am making my contribution to mankind.”

She saw herself as a global citizen, a cosmopolitan figure boxed in by categories that had confined people of color for hundreds of years. The scholar Alejandro Madrid, who is writing a biography of Ms. León, observed recently that this ethos was grounded in her arrival in the United States in the late ’60s, toward the end of the civil rights movement.

“Identity politics are very strong,” he said of that period, “and she never felt very comfortable with it.” He added, “The ambivalences she has about blackness come out of the specific experience of her being in New York at this time, and being always labeled something that she didn’t believe she really was.”

Ms. León’s position is largely the same today: She praised the Philharmonic’s Project 19 as a “reparations gesture” but also argued that “any label limits the person.”

“I honor all my ancestors in my skin, and in my character, and my presence,” she said. “But I don’t go around saying I’m Cuban-Italian, or I’m Cuban-French, or I’m Cuban-this and Cuban-that.”

Nearly two decades ago she moved to Nyack, a village on the Hudson River north of Manhattan, seeking more space. “I always lived in places where, every time I looked out the window, I was looking at someone else,” she said.

Today, Ms. León remains a bit astonished by the trajectory of her life and career. “I consider what happened to me to be a miracle,” she said. She attributes some of her success to mystical forces, adding: “I still talk to the spirits of my ancestors.”

Her music is still infused with a vigorous pluralism, although it is a bit more relaxed — less harsh, less busy — than her earlier efforts. (Little of her recent work has been commercially recorded.) The Philharmonic will present a Nightcap concert on Feb. 15 that explores her myriad influences, with guests including the jazz harpist Edmar Castaneda.

“Stride,” her new work for the orchestra, is inspired by two women: the suffragist Susan B. Anthony and the grandmother who was a major presence in Ms. León’s life — a progressive who embraced socialism as soon as it reached Cuba. “Stride,” unfolding in a series of fitful episodes — thickets of glassy strings, declamatory brass and contrapuntal juxtapositions that evoke Charles Ives — is both solemn and celebratory.

It is also aware of the racialized limits on the enfranchisement that women won a century ago. Its final moment offers a note of prophetic dissent: As two percussionists symbolically ring 19 tubular bells, a third plays a rhythmic pattern based on a clave from West Africa.

“That is the symbol of the people of color,” Ms. León said. “It’s like, this is next.”

“It’s the 100th anniversary,” she added. “A lot of things have changed, a lot of things need to change, and that is my very personal comment. That we’re celebrating something that was handicapped, and something that is still handicapped.”

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[phillymakerfaire]

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    Break Through is a podcast series about making. Making discoveries, making a difference in the community and making the world a better place. It’s the stories of startups and inventors who are developing products that have social value by solving real world problems. It’s about artisans and entrepreneurs who have broken through the mold to live their best lives.

  

Welcome to episode number three of breakthrough, a NextFab may podcast series. I’m your host, Ron Bauman, founder of Milk Street Marketing, and a member of NextFab. Our guests on this episode is Maria Schneider, a visual artist who originally hails from Madrid, Spain, and holds degrees in law and finance. Maria is a beautiful example of someone who took their passion and turned it into a profession. Her work is on display at an impressive list of corporate locations and art galleries throughout the region. We started by talking about how, through a love of digital media and beautiful things, she found lasers and inspiration in urban architectural landscapes.

Ron Bauman: Maria, thanks for taking the time to join us here at NextFab South Philly and speak with us.

Maria Schneider: Thank you. I actually love to come here and I come here very often. Sometimes weekends, sometimes during the week, but I at least three, four days a week.

Ron Bauman: Are you a full time member?

Maria Schneider: I am a full time member, yes. And I spend… Some weeks I am here every day. Sometimes from 10 to 10 or sometimes a little less.

Ron Bauman: Wow.

Maria Schneider: But, yeah.

Ron Bauman: That’s awesome. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Maria Schneider: Well, I am an artist and I’m really from Spain. So I moved here and then I found out that art was my passion even though my background is in law and finance, which is what I came to the U.S. But after that I started working with traditional media and little by little I found, well I found lasers. I was working with Philadelphia, and I took out to a NextFab and I found out that lasers existed. Yeah, I found lasers. Because I don’t come from the technology field, for me was kind of like a new thing and I really wanted to work with that. So I started using lasers into my art and that’s how I came out to be a member of NextFab and I started doing that.

Ron Bauman: Awesome. Where are you from originally?

Maria Schneider: I’m from Madrid, Spain.

Ron Bauman: Oh nice.

Maria Schneider: But I have been here forever, so.

Ron Bauman: And you came here for work professionally, for law and finance?

Maria Schneider: No, no, I came here as a student. I started to study a masters. I came to study a master in finance. I studied law and then finance and that naturally informs a lot of my work is very conceptual in some ways. But then I was in corporate for a while and decided to become an artist because for me it was a way to master the expression, like some people write books, and I thought I could really do more, much more like with my… visually, and that’s how I came out in the artist. And I didn’t like the corporate world and I end up just doing this full time.

Ron Bauman: Have you always been passionate about art?

Maria Schneider: Yes, I always like art but is for me… Yeah, always love art. I like beautiful things. So anything that is beautiful, which is a very broad concert, but it’s not that I went to a museum when I was little, I never did that. But I always like beautiful things and I always wanted to express myself, so for me art is a way of self expression more than anything else.

Ron Bauman: And now you’re selling your art through your website, mariarschneider.com?

Maria Schneider: No, actually… Well, I do sell it through my website, but it’s not directly. It’s more my presentation card. I work mostly with art advisors and I… When they call me and then they see my work, they ask me to present proposals to specific spaces. So most of my work is done on commission for the people that, they liked the work and they have a specific space.

Maria Schneider: And all my work is very specific to where I do it, because I work a lot with cities. And last few years I have been working specifically with invisible cities, is what I call. In every part of a city that is certain areas that nobody wants to see or they have been demolished, so destroy or decay. And I… My idea is to be in all that that is invisible, or people don’t want to see, to the forefront. And that’s how I try to work that into my art.

Next, Maria explains how she aims to tell the hidden stories and history of neighborhoods, where she finds inspiration, and how she fuses technology and art to create a unique narrative form.

Maria Schneider: What I do is, that for me to bring to visibility, to this parts of the city, I found out that LEDs… I love technology even though I didn’t really… Technology is very new to me in so many ways, but anything that is really new, for me it’s very attractive. When I started working with the lasers, then I discovered, well you take sun light and then you applied to the image, then you change the perception.

Maria Schneider: So I you started working on layers. Like every perception, you look at something and you have three layers, like basically it’s your knowledge, and I try to highlight what you don’t want to see with LEDs. So I started incorporating that into my work, try to highlight what you don’t want to see, but at the same time makes you think about it. So it’s like your first round. And then I create kind of the different areas of the city built into that.

Ron Bauman: So it’s a lot of cityscapes.

Maria Schneider: Yes, I do now, mostly, I do cityscapes. and the cityscapes are because of that, for example, you go to Kensington in Philadelphia.

Ron Bauman: Sure.

Maria Schneider: Kensington’s an area that has been… It was really decay and it was really a blight. And in the last few years, a couple of years, maybe three, it has been changing, gentrifying, but there are many bones in that part of the city that they disappear. There used to be a lot of industry and that was demolished. And with the industry, you change the makeup of that neighborhood. Kensington, when you go to Kensington, there are many areas that have disappear or the industry has move away, but there are still many buildings that, they kind of like have a history. So the idea is to bring that, to kind of like tell people about it.

Maria Schneider: Like, there was something here that you don’t know, but it was here. So I will have a landscape and a cityscape of Philadelphia, the very nice areas that everybody wants to see, and then incorporate that with areas that they are invisible to most people because, well, they don’t go there or they have disappeared.

Maria Schneider: The same thing, for example, with the Parkway. I did the series with the Parkway with InLiquid and then what I did with that is… The Parkway came about to be because they, the demolished about… I mean all the industry, like Baldwin Locomotive was on the Parkway in the, like, hundred years ago. So when they demolished that, all the people that work, some those going bankrupt, but other people have to move away. And then they beautiful Parkway. So there was a changing neighborhood by the change on the history of the buildings of the neighborhood.

Maria Schneider: So it’s kind of like bringing the history back to the present with the LED,  lasers and the landscapes, so.

Ron Bauman: Awesome. Where else do you find inspiration for your art?

Maria Schneider: Actually, I am very… I have something, it’s called, like, the euphoria. Which, ideas is like… and always like looking at things and thinking how you can do something with that, and change it. So, many of the ideas, just looking around. I am always driving around. I go to the most remote areas of the city, and not only of Philadelphia but in other cities. And I tried to find the places that people don’t go to, or people that they find the other, kind of the edge of the neighborhood. And I explore it constantly, everywhere. When I go up to a new city or city I have been to, I go to all the places from the nicest places to the places that people really don’t want to be. So for me, I just love that. It’s very lively. I love cities.

Maria goes on to tell us about her experiences as a member at NextFab, what entrepreneurship means to her, and the benefits of being part of the making community.

Maria Schneider: Actually I find it a very creative, very enlightening community, and I even, when I could do some of the work in my computer at home, I love to come here because I think that is a lot of things that just… With seeing what other people are doing. Even you don’t talk to neighbor, everybody’s very, very friendly but it’s very focused, so everybody will be working on whatever they are doing. I always ask people, “What do you do? What’s your company about?” And it’s because for me, I’m extremely curious and always, like, intellectually very… My curiosity is like, “I want to know about everything I can know.” And I just see here there’s so much energy of people that just is very inspiring to me. So I love to be here for that. Like, everybody is very young and very kind of, like, go and get it and do it that I just love that, so.

Ron Bauman: Do you consider yourself an artist or an entreprenuer?

Maria Schneider: Both. Because, I mean, artists is very nice and you can do all these nice things, but you have to sell it. Otherwise you have to survive because, you know. For me, so it’s both. You have to sell your art. And that’s how I consider myself both, so.

Ron Bauman: That’s awesome. So how are some of the other ways that NextFab’s helped you as an entrepreneur?

Maria Schneider: Because, many times when I have specific issues of, like, the building of the process. For example, if I have to build a frame, well, I am not a carpenter, but they will help me. They help me actually to build my own frames, which now I don’t do myself, but I had to learn how to build them to really have somebody else do it. So they helped me in every question. Like today I had two questions about, I was trying to do something with Illustrator. I asked them. So it’s always very supportive community that will tell you, “Oh, this is the way you do it.” There is a lot of expertise here, a wealth of expertise, and I love that. So it’s kind of, like, really nice.

Ron Bauman: Awesome. So what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to venture into this type of art form?

Maria Schneider: I will say, just come on and start trying and start, like… Come here and start being curious. And you can always, just by looking around, you’d have an idea. Come and see how you can execute the idea. So I feel that’s very important because you will have the support and you come up with an idea. They will kind of, like, help you to go along and then you can do, you have the equipment, and you have the technology and the expertise, too. I mean you have to do it, but they can give you kind of a push. So that’s why.

Ron Bauman: So I guess, you know, one of the things we really like to do really kind of draw into the heart of the passion and the inspiration. Is there anything that you think, no pun intended, but sparked some of the creative juices in you to sort of go in this direction with your art? I mean, what made you choose LED lighting? I mean, you could have produced this art and the numerous different ways.

Maria Schneider: Because I thought LEDs… Because I think LEDs have very… Because I love light.

Ron Bauman: Okay.

Maria Schneider: And I love, like, I will love… I’m not an engineer, but I will love to learn everything about light and how light change things. Like, when do you project like different ways, do you change the perception of things? And even is like having, from a conceptual point of view for me, when you look at something, there are many perceptions, many layers you can look at. You can be, I don’t know, an intellectual in so many ways. There are so many things you can do, but light changes everything, so something that is very dark. So for me LEDs were kind of like the easiest way to use within, now. But I am always exploring, like new things come up and looking at how to do for example, like, do sound with my work.

Ron Bauman: Okay.

Maria Schneider: And anyway. So I am going, always pushing and making much larger pieces, which are much more complicated.

Ron Bauman: So you primarily work in the electronics department for the LED lighting?

Maria Schneider: No, actually, because is… Well, ideally is not that. What I do is pretty simple considering what some of the people here do. But I use electronics, yes, just to hookup the LEDs. But most of time I used the lasers. Lasers is my theme. Try to use the lasers in so many ways. Like, there is a lot of things to learn with it, like how you can really make it really much more interesting. So I work with that.

Maria then describes her artistic process, trying new things and how she never does the same thing twice.

Maria Schneider: The way I work is like, I take my… First, I will take an image, I maybe just take a photograph myself, or they can just sometimes open open a stock. You have many pictures of like cities and places.

Ron Bauman: Sure.

Maria Schneider: So use many of historical pictures, I use a lot of that, too. Like, I don’t know, Philadelphia has a great archive of historical photographs, so I take those. Then I digitize them, I start working with them because I-

Ron Bauman: So you pulled them into Photoshop or Illustrator?

Maria Schneider: Yes, I put it into Photoshop, and then because I’m very intuitive, sometimes is that is not my process, I never repeat same thing twice. So I start with Photoshop and a picture. I start looking, like, look this way. It’s kind of, like, very intuitive. So I start changing the picture so is like what I think should be the final image.

Maria Schneider: So it takes me a while, but I know how I want it to look like, but I’m not sure. So I kind of sometimes unexpected, like the perfect mistakes, which I love. So I started doing that.

Ron Bauman: Happy accidents, we call them. Yeah.

Maria Schneider: Exactly, happy accidents. So I start doing like a back layer of that. Then I color them with specific paint and I do a layer of color that the I peel . And then I do another layer in which I will also use Illustrator and Photoshop, and then transfer to InFluid to do. I start with a very thick line to a very thin line. And it’s… That’s how, like if I want to emphasize, for example, a building that has been demolished, so I will try to put that in the front, and then try to do the lights and that’s how to put the LEDs around. But I’m always exploring new things to do, like I’m using certain kind of paints and then I start using three or four pains within the same work. And that’s how I usually work.

Ron Bauman: So you have the vision in mind when you start the process of creating and then you figure out how you’re going to get there through trial and error, and just sort of tinkering?

Maria Schneider: Yes, is because usually when I do certain… Most of the work, as I told you, is like for specific spaces.

Ron Bauman: Sure.

Maria Schneider: So if I want a project, for example, I’m working now in a project in West Philadelphia. It’s a specific building and they have required, the requirement is to use west of the, the city in general, but then also west of the city and buildings of the city that they, kind of, like, is the old Philadelphia. And then I have to start finding out how to layer all those images to make a vision of, “This is the future, this is the past and this is what we are here, and that’s how this place is so beautiful.” And that’s how it works, so it depends.

Maria Schneider: I also finish another series, it was the connection in which I… Because the person that the client needed, wanted, loved water and loved the rivers. So I end up using different buildings within the city that they were meaningful to this company, but also using the rivers. So I took, use all the rivers of Philadelphia or the, excuse me, the bridges of Philadelphia. So I use the Benjamin Franklin Bridge because it’s the east-west connection. Then the north-south connection, the South Street Bridge, connecting the city, plus the buildings that they were there. So it was very specific ideas and I have to put in all together to make it work.

Ron Bauman: That’s awesome.

Maria Schneider: I mean that’s, that’s how I’m working with cities, but now I also started working with gardens. Somebody wanted to be doing something with layers of, like, Longwood Gardens. So I’m trying to incorporate much more color and use that, using which is landscape, but within the buildings. So it’s always exploring, but also using the city of Wilmington, which is a very different area, and… It’s kind of like, always the people say like, I would like to have these ideas, like, okay, let me see what I can do with that.

We wrapped up our conversation by discussing what the future holds for Maria and where she wants to go with her business and her art.

Maria Schneider: Well, I would like to do really large works, and I would like to create really very large works, and I would like something-

Ron Bauman: How big?

Maria Schneider: I don’t know, like, five by eight feet.

Ron Bauman: Five by eight feet, okay.

Maria Schneider: Five feet, like, really large pieces, like with a lot of layers, a lot of light, and maybe light that goes, like, flashes and comes on and off, and then becomes kind of like, disappearing and appearing without being like a disco kind of effect. And I don’t know, that’s how I would like to do. Maybe to be a big museum someday.

Ron Bauman: Yeah, that’d be great.

Maria Schneider: To be at the MOA, actually. I don’t know. That’s why. I artist, I want to create beauty, but at the same time I wanted to create something that you like to see that, just go and see it.

Ron Bauman: So it adds to the value of the static of the landscape of the city and in our environments, and our communities.

Maria Schneider: Yeah. And then to make people aware of, like, sometimes I incorporate saying words into my art and then is kind of create message too. So I don’t know.

Ron Bauman: All right. So you’d help tell a story in a really different, sort of impactful way.

Maria Schneider: Yeah, yes, exactly. Is telling that story, but you can look at it without knowing the story and still like it. You don’t have to explain it. So I love my art to be, you look at it, you like it, but there is a story behind that makes me more interested once you know it. So that’s how I try to work. And I was thinking constantly.

Ron Bauman: Of course. You’re an artist.

Maria Schneider: I was driving, driving and thinking, I’m driving and thinking, just how I can do and get things. So.

Ron Bauman: Well, Maria, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

Maria Schneider: My pleasure. Sure thing.

Ron Bauman: We wish you the best of luck.

Maria Schneider: Thank you.

Ron Bauman: We can’t wait to see more of your art.

Maria Schneider: Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Break Through. I’m your host Ron Bauman, serial entrepreneur, founder of Milk Street Marketing, and NextFab member. To learn more about how NextFab can make your ideas come to life, visit nextfab.com, and be sure to follow #NextFabMade on social to see what our members are making.

The post Break Through: Maria Schneider appeared first on NextFab.

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NBA Summer Vacation: Emotion of the Oceans

There is motion in the SVW ocean and by that I mean an awful lot of dudes are way out in the wild blue yonder this week. A few did it really well—I mean really well, like an impending humanitarian award is on the way well—and a couple should stick to spending the rest of their summers on the dry side, lest they wanna become completely washed in the annals of these hallowed, a-little-sticky-from-aloe-vera-sun-balm halls.

Marc Gasol

Marc Gasol, who just a week ago was keeping tabs on the organic garden he planted in his yard last summer vacation, was out in a dingy rescuing migrants stranded in the Mediterranean. There is no joke here. Marc Gasol spent the last week volunteering with the NGO Proactiva Open Arms and much of that was spent out in the open water recovering the bodies of migrants and helping to bring survivors safely to land. The NBA is a progressive league, it gets talked about a lot, but it is occasionally without due credit given to the players who make it that way.

Rating: Just Marc Gasol, absolutely doing the most.

JaVale McGee

A nice transition into our regularly scheduled tittering and trash talk on the way player’s choose to spend their offseason is JaVale McGee pretending to pick up his daughter’s play phone and totally tear a new one to the would-be caller on the other end.

Rating: 9021UH OH!

James Harden

What’s UP James Harden in a trashy, regular ass tank top, flipping the hang loose hand while laser strobe lights illuminate your face?! Turns out all it takes to set James Harden free is setting him loose on the shores of Ibiza with Real Madrid Captain Sergio Ramos and frankly it’s dumb of all of us that it took this long to figure out!

You’ll be happy my sleuthing skills have peeled back another layer in this euro-rave onion, specifically why is Harden wearing that top, because from Ramos’s own documenting of this night we can see they are not just at some regular party, they are at a FOAM PARTY.

Rating: The big buildup that lasts for close to three minutes before the beat drops and every whistle is blasting and the foam cannon is pilin’ up the suds around you like so many cloud castles in heaven.

Steph Curry

We cut live to Steph Curry now, jumping fully clothed off the top of a boat. While we are not here to judge all selfless actions this summer vacation we are certainly going to judge this one. He doesn’t have trunks? He’s got to do this in what appears to be like, athletic technology warm up pants that probably shrink wrap to your legs once you hit the water?

Rating: Oh (splash) brother.

Dwyane Wade

Wade is in China, and we can only hope it’s because he’s hot on the heels of the Mr. Hyde of SVW, China Klay. In any case, he’s paused on his hunt for a quick round of golf and I am not a fan nor knowledgeable of that sport but could they not get him a taller club?

Rating: Fore out of five.

Manu Ginóbili

Aside from being in Vancouver, this looks like a nice trip for Main Manu and the entire Ginóbili family. I like to think that he’s getting familiar with the places DeMar DeRozan once set foot in before coming to Toronto for the main event, so he will have some skin in the conversation when Deebo brings up all the things he misses about Canada.

Rating: I’ll let my famous saying about Vancouver speak for itself—“Once you’ve sea-n one wall, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Oh my goooosh, look at our little gladiator ROMEin’ around, checking off all the sights and staying, considerately to his GF and the general public, low to the ground. My only hope is that we get a shot of Giannis high-fiving Christ in The Last Judgement, on the ceiling of the ol’ Sistine. He’d only really have to stretch on tip toes to do it.

Rating: Watch out, Eternal City, there’s a new cooler, younger, taller, Pope in town.

Lou Williams

Paris continues to be big and so does standing or sitting on some type of plinth. The supposed 6th man of the year (Fred VanVleet was robbed) has chosen either onyx or ebony, could also be a big Bose speaker just flipped around, to stand on and do the funny gag. Look how happy he is.

Rating: 6th man to attempt this gag on this particular day, maybe.

Boban Marjanović

Here’s Boban in a quarry of some kind, stalking toward the camera with his socks pulled high. Wouldn’t it be incredible if he gets really into BMX culture this year and is constantly almost caught wheelie-ing the white hot sides of the L.A. River? The LAPD are stumped, who is this giant shadow racing away every time on a tiny bike, leaving wet tire tracks all the way back to the Staple Center?

Rating: They’ll find some fancy pegs in Lonzo Ball’s locker, L.A. Boban rides again.

Jaylen Brown

Jaylen Brown is in Bali doing tarps off and fanny pack on, doing the kind of nervous smile one does on vacation when someone has pushed you into something you aren’t quite comfortable with. Out of frame I am imagining a pack of monkeys glaring at him with their beady eyes, rubbing their little paws together over what kind of gear they are going to nab off this guy.

Rating: An up-to-date rabies vaccine and one long look at the warnings, I hope.

Mirza Teletović

Ah yes, exactly the scene the Turkish folk poet Yunus Emre was attempting to set in his 13th century banger "Mirza at the Grand Bazaar."

Rating: Gives a whole new meaning to telenovela am I right?

Willy Hernangómez

Here we got a great, extremely contoured shot of Willy’s back as he soaks up the sun in the ancient port city of Cádiz, Spain.

Rating: How sweaty are you getting just looking at this? The answer is extremely.

Tim Hardaway Jr.

Double feature for THJ! What I wouldn’t give to get this in a slow-mo video but you gotta take your summer refreshers where you can get ‘em, folks. This is the exact yin to Willy’s yang (get your god damn minds out of the gutters) up there.

Rating: How quenched are you getting just looking at this? The answer is extremely.

Taj Gibson

Somebody wants to be this summer’s solo banana boat boy! Taj is floatin’ in the ocean off the coast of Pesaro, which is way up on the back side of the top of Italy’s boot, on what looks to be a rescue device but is maybe just some kind of Euro pool floatie more streamlined than the traditional mattress. In case there was any doubt that he’s fully in the Eat portion of his Eat, Pray, Love offseason, here he is giggling and having some spaghetti,

Rating: He’ll be sad when it’s time to say goodbye to this trip.

Malcolm Delaney

The Hawks guard has scooted a little farther south for a break in Miami where he’s getting some assistance getting on, or else a chauffeured ride on, this jet-ski. No reason to be out here having fun but not being safe.

Rating: As the SVW rhyme goes—“A ski on land, hold a friend’s hand. A ski on the water, let’s not repeat Sean Kingston’s mistakes.”

Sam Dekker

Double Dekker’s just the latest to be captivated this offseason by the Greek Islands, but this dude’s on ‘em for his honeymoon. One thing’s for sure, I’ve never felt less cool than when I realized Sam Dekker and I have the same style of jumping off things into pristine waters, that is, somehow bunched way the hell up in our bodies and plugging our noses like little loser babies. Congratulations, Sam!

Rating: Enjoy all that water up your nose while Sam and I breathe easily from ours!

Matthew Dellavedova

Here we have my and summer’s natural enemy, Matthew Dellavedova, holding onto a hammerhead shark with his eyes squeezed shut, praying for the photo to get taken so he can put it down. You know what, Delly? Why even pick it up in the first place? How would you like it if someone was hanging onto you by the butt and the back and lofting you high above your home? Come to think of it that must be what dunking feels like, but without the debilitating terror because the ball is not a misunderstood creature. Not that you would know what it feels like to do that.

Rating: I won’t.

Cameron Payne

Wherever Payne is—and he looks as confused about it as I am—he should stay there as long as possible, in that exact same shirt, wearing those exact same steampunk shades, squinting off into the exact same middle distance, because lord knows what’s happening to and for the Bulls this season.

Rating: If thou gaze long into an infinity pool, the infinity pool will also gaze into thee.

Marco Belinelli

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but I can’t help picturing Bellinelli fluttering out this big, Turkish beach towel for two in a place called “Fliper & Chiller” on the Balearic Islands as the same welcoming gesture he will make to my eternal guy DeMar DeRozan this season back in San Antonio. Belli I’ve never needed you more.

Rating: Sobbing. But this beach looks nice.

John Wall

Like catching someone mid-sneeze, blowing out birthday candles, or the second they start to hurl going down the last huge hill on a roller coaster, the moment this photo was taken it became Summer Vacation For John Wall.

Rating: Extremely end of July.

NBA Summer Vacation: Emotion of the Oceans published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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48 Blurry Hours in Amsterdam

Today I found myself on my couch sipping some coffee before work. I woke up a little early, turned on the television, made my coffee and began to read and re-read this card I got about a year ago at a networking dinner hosted by Keith Ferrazzi. The card says the following on its front side, “If money was not an issue, how would you spend your time?” That’s an easy question. I would travel. I would explore the world while simultaneously exploring the inner workings of my being. Life is short, there are no guarantees. The idea that I should not dawdle in life is exactly what took me to Europe to celebrate my 35th trip around the Sun two years ago.

I chose to head to Europe and specifically Spain because I wanted to run with the bulls. This was a tough decision for me because my birthday happens to land on July 14th which is Bastille Day and apparently France knows how to party on that day. The one thing I kept thinking about in terms of where to ring in my special day was that I could party in France any Bastille Day but given that I have had worsening knee pain the window for running with massive bulls while hungover in Spain was likely closing sooner than I would like. I decided to buy a one-way ticket to Amsterdam for $400 USD and said “Fuck it, whatever happens it will be fun.”

I mentioned my decision to fly to Europe to a few folks at my cousin Tank’s 4thof July party a couple of days before I was scheduled to head out and Tank’s dad, whom we call “Pops,” mentioned he might be interested in a good run through Spain. I told him my plan: Fly to Amsterdam on July 6thand party for two days, take a quick flight to Madrid and hang for the night, hop on a train to Pamplona in the morning so that we could run and rage there for a few days. Pop’s said he would look into it. On the morning of July 6th,I woke up to an email from Pops stating that he was on his way to Amsterdam and to find him there so we could wreck shit. FUCK YES! I lit up a joint, stuffed my pockets with THC infused gummy bears, summonsed my Uber and made my way to LAX.

I arrived at LAX and immediately started drinking with a group of French soccer fans. I found myself passed out in a cramped seat near the airplane bathroom a few hours later. I made my flight. I hurried off the plane as soon as I could. I took a few photos of the rain soaked tarmac at the Schiphol airport and messaged Pops. I made my way to the ClinkNoord Hostel and he met me there. Turns out Pops had no place to stay yet and our first order of business after lighting some legally purchased sacred kratom and marijuana was to find a place for him to crash. My hostel was fully booked. We dropped off our luggage at my hostel and Googled a bunch of places. We found a small hotel on the other side of the river, Pops checked in, and we were off.

The next 48 hours were a blur. The skies were cloudy. It sprinkled here and there but overall the weather was pleasantly cool for July. We smoked ample amounts of the Devil’s Cabbage all in the name of cultural immersion, we drank many local beers, stuffed our fat faces with doner kebabs, and rode bicycles everywhere. My inner fat-kid loves Amsterdam. According to my journal, we paid the Popeye’s Coffee Shop a visit. For the July bullet journal design, I created a simple calendar in my journal using my favorite bullet journal highlighters. Tank recommended this place and it did not disappoint.  We smoked a joint in the basement while sipping on Americanos. We then made our way to Barney’s for some burgers and ice cream milkshakes right after Popeye’s. Marijuana, burgers, milkshakes. It was all so damn good. We rolled up some joints in Barney’s and planned out our day.

Amsterdam is a visually stimulating place. The sun doesn’t set until sometime after 10PM, the streets have canons just chilling on random corners, party goers drink heavily on private boats cruising through the canals. The buildings look like gingerbread houses and castles. The Red-light district has all sorts of fuckery going on at any given time. This place is wild, legal marijuana, legal prostitutes, and legal magic truffles. All sorts of people walking the streets just having a good ol’ time. At one point, I got cursed out by a prostitute during the midday rush. Pops and I turned a corner and walked through a small street filled with doorways leading to some version of BDSM ecstasy. In my defense, I did not realize that taking photos of these women is frowned upon.

Pops and I decided to avoid anything looking like an organized tour like the plague, I feel bad for people on tour buses hopping on and off with their selfie sticks and hermetically sealed, germ free vacation packages. Pops and I decided to do the opposite of those lifeless souls…we rode bicycles dangerously close to cars in opposing traffic. We dodged pedestrians. I felt like I was in a James Bond movie driving my bike next to the waterways. I couldn’t help but think about what the fuck I was doing in Europe. I spent many of my formative years sleeping on floors and garages because we were piss poor and now I’m riding free through one of the prettiest cities on Earth. Life is good.

We visited the Rijksmuseum while under the influence of a nice sativa. I love museums. Amsterdam did not disappoint. Vermeer’s and Rembrandt’s work hung all around me. The Gallery of Honour was impressive. I remembered learning all about Rembrandt’s use of light sources in my high school and college art classes. Many of these paintings were larger than I could ever imagine from looking at a text book or online. There was a massive library in the museum filled with old books, essentially a bibliophile’s dream. Parts of the museum were dedicated to showing Nazi propaganda. This was hard to look at in some cases but it was important. Art should shake the viewer on some level.

Pops and I continued to wander off the beaten tourist path and found ourselves in the Jordaan area. We determined that based on the angle of the sun and our proximity to the equator that now would be the best time to get massages. Lucky for us the Jordaan had a massage place next to a nice bar. We had some drinks with the local crowd after our massages. We met the owner of this bar, a massive beast of a man with a kind heart. I don’t recall this gentleman’s name but man his fucking hand felt like a bear claw when he placed it on my shoulder and asked who we were and how we found his place. Turns out he was a former professional fighter who opened the bar with his father in law, who happened to be a former professional race car driver, after retiring from the fight game. This cat liked the tattoos that Pops and I have collected over the years and decided to show us his. He lifted his shirt up to show us some massive Brazilian flag tattoo spanning the width of his barrel sized chest. We all drank a lot. The bar owner encouraged it. Pops and I didn’t want to be rude to our host so we obliged and drank heavily for maybe two hours chatting with our new friend about life in Amsterdam and the Jordaan. I would absolutely go back to that area. They loved us there. Two Mexicans from LA and we were brave enough to walk a few blocks away from the tourist zone. Life rewarded our curiosities with good people, food, and drink.

For the record, Pops and I do not speak Dutch. Pops can barely speak Spanish. With that said we decided it would be fun to smoke a joint on our way to the train station in Amsterdam before hopping on a train to the Eindhoven airport in Utrecht. We booked a ridiculously cheap flight to Madrid on Ryan Air and could only fly out of Eindhoven. Fuck it more adventuring for us. The train ride was scary because for the first hour I wasn’t even sure we were on the right train. Pops slept. I wrote in my journal and looked out the window at random farms and windmills. This shit was weird for me. Los Angeles is lacking in the farmland and windmill department. I grew up around homeless people and gangbangers in Pacoima. It was culture shock on some level.

I had time to think on this leg of the trip. Headphones on, journal out, I couldn’t help but get into my feelings a little. I was dehydrated, smelly, sweaty, sporting some weird ass raccoon print tank top. I am certain the folks on the train looked at me like a damn alien. I thought about what we just did, we smoked over an eighth of weed each day in Amsterdam, rode bikes like maniacs through the city, hung out with complete strangers, bar hopped in the local zone. At one point Pops and I were in some part of town kinda far from the Red-Light District partying with a bunch of non-Americans. Pops is a bad ass for a 63 year old. He started egging on some large “Bros,” you know the frat guys who sport Tap Out gear but likely never fought, into fighting one another. Pops got tired of their tough guy posturing and called them all pussies for not fighting each other already. These guys were terrified of Pop’s little crazy ass. Meanwhile 20 feet away a crew of girls kept drunkenly stumbling onto each other. I have video of this somewhere. Amsterdam is wild yo.

Europe is the “Old World” people have lived in the same communities for generations. This is a huge contrast to my transient upbringing. Moving each year chasing that first month of free rent where ever we could. Making new friends each year. My experience in LA is worlds apart from what people experience in Europe, at least that’s how it felt. I liked it though.  Even if I didn’t know a soul in Amsterdam it still felt good to be in a place where people have real roots. These roads have been around for ages. Kings and their armies have marched through these old European streets for hundreds of years. There isn’t anything like that in the US. American heritage is a mashup of many things. The history of humans is a short one. The history of America even more so. It felt weird to know that over the course of human history millions of souls died on the land we were on. I reflected on what this meant to me at various parts of my trip. The sense of belonging, the sense of community, history both personal and on a larger scale.

My impressions of Amsterdam are probably not too different than yours. I felt like everyone was happily glowing, looking put together like living breathing H&M advertisements. I liked Amsterdam. Not entirely for the weed though that is a good selling point but mostly because of the people and culture. I thought it was amazing that so many paintings in the museums depict water wars and navies in battle due to the Dutch being a seafaring people. It was a contrast to what I’ve seen in other museums where the artwork depicts land battles and marching armies. Equally impressive was the variety of street art. Banksy’s were everywhere along with countless other artists’ work in cleverly placed spaces throughout the city. I also enjoyed that fact that this was a cyclist and pedestrian friendly city. The bike stations situated on the barges were amazing to look at because of the sheer number of bikes crammed on them. I wondered how often people lost track of where they parked their bikes. I especially loved taking the ferry across the river from the main part of Amsterdam to the Noord. I think my favorite memory of the trip was my last night out, I hopped on the ferry back to the Clinknoord and watched sunrise while sitting on my rented hostel bike. I could see the big Amsterdam letters on the roof of the train depot. I was in Europe.

I was happy that Pops came along. Pops is wild man. He told me some crazy stories about his memories of the seventies. Some guy once pulled a shotgun on him while he was sitting in his car and Pops’ homeboy snuck around from behind the guy and snatched the gun away. Pops then proceeded to beat the shit out of him as soon as he got out of the car. I’ve heard variations of this story from Pop’s wife Connie. This story wasn’t surprising. Pops was a lunatic in his day. LA breeds that shit. I love LA but damn if the street and prison cultures don’t make some crazy ass people. I relish the moments when Pops decided to wild out because it usually means I am gonna laugh at the wild shit he says or does next.

All of these thoughts floated around my mind as I watched miles and miles of farmland scroll past me on the train. We eventually made it to Eindhoven. I was relieved that I chose the right train platform and hopped on the correct train. Pops and I smoked our last joint outside the Eindhoven airport entrance. I exhaled smoke as I walked into the airport. We left our little half smoked joint on a bench just outside of the airport doors for the next person to enjoy. We drank beers on the deck while watching planes take off. We had a few hours before our flight to Madrid. This was the calm before the next part of our trip. I messaged my mom that we made it safely to Eindhoven. She expressed her worry over my plans to run wild through Pamplona. My reply, I’m good mom, probably I won’t die but if I do this is a far better death than dying on the toilet or decaying slowly over time in a shitty cubicle or on the 405 freeway. I am the voice of reason here.

48 Blurry Hours in Amsterdam was originally published on Passport Required

[filosofablogger]

Hello friends, and welcome to the WEEKEND!!!  People tell me that since I am retired, every day is the weekend for me, but let me tell you … it ain’t so!  I have a fairly rigid weekday schedule that helps me stay on track with housework, cooking, laundry, then I write two daily posts for this blog, each requiring a minimum of about 3 hours, usually closer to 6.  Add to that time to pay attention to the Significant Seven, answer email, pay bills, roll smokes, chat with friends … 24 hours are simply not enough!  On the weekend, however, the girls take over cooking & cleaning duties (I refuse to let them touch the laundry), so it gives me a bit of a break.  Today, I felt like taking a bit of a journey to try to find new and unique things around the world.  Are you with me?  Good!  Strap on your imaginary seat belts, and let’s head to … Thailand!

Specifically we are going to the Elephant Poo Poo Paper Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Yes, you read it right, and yes, it means exactly what it says.  It is where they make paper from elephant poop!  According to Atlas Obscura …

“Making paper from elephant poop is a sustainable, eco-friendly alternative to traditional tree-based products. By not using trees, it helps reduce deforestation and makes sure the abundance of animal waste isn’t wasted. The paper is entirely sanitary and stink-free.The process of transforming elephant poop into everyday paper is actually pretty straightforward. Once workers have scooped the poop and gathered it, they then wash the waste so that only the plant fibers remain. The fibers are then boiled and sanitized, then mixed with other non-wood pulp fibers. Finally, the intriguing mixture is screened and dried, just like typical wood-based paper has been for thousands of years.

Visiting the Elephant Poo Poo Park gives people an up-close encounter with the whole process. You’re even invited to get involved, so be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. The park also has information about traditional paper making, which began in China nearly 2,000 years ago. In addition to the tour, people can check out the cafe and “poo-tique” to pick up souvenirs.”

Who knew?  I don’t think I would much enjoy working there, though.

I was planning for us to hop just a few miles north to visit the Chiang Mai Tiger Kingdom, where visitors can actually snuggle with the tigers, but I learned some disturbing news and decided I would pass that one up for today.  And so … on to … Wales!

Now, I have a few great friends who live in Wales, and one of them I know loves his beans, but I had no idea that beans was such a … national treasure?  Here we are, then, in Port Talbott, where we find the Baked Bean Museum of Excellence.  A museum … baked beans … really?  The museum is owned and operated by a bean-obsessed superhero called Captain Beany, formerly known as Barry Kirk.  Now way back when, Barry was working for British Petroleum as a computer geek at one of their chemical plants. Then, in September 1986, Kirk decided to try for a new world’s record, and life has never been the same since.  What record, you ask?  Sitting in a bathtub filled with beans … for 100 straight hours.  And it was then that he first got his idea for a complete transformation into Captain Beany.  It took some time, but in 1991 he quit his job, legally changed his name, and then he began the physical transformation, painting his head and bald pate orange, and donning a golden cape, pants, gloves and boots.  Since then, he has run marathons, pushed a can of beans along a beach with his nose, bathed in a bath of tomato soup, climbed a mountain, and had 60 baked beans tattooed on his head.

The museum is in the living room of his 2-bedroom apartment and is crammed full of baked bean memorabilia and orange furniture.  Since his apartment is a ‘council flat’, which I believe is similar to subsidized housing in the U.S., he is not allowed to charge admission, but he does accept donations from the 100 or so visitors he gets each year.  And Cap’n Beany is a generous man, donating all proceeds to charities such as Sport Relief, Cancer Research and the British Heart Foundation.

And now, I really hope you brought your jackets,  for we are headed someplace quite cold … Norway!

You know what it’s like, traveling on the interstate highway system and after a few hundred miles, you really need to stop for a potty break and perhaps a cup of coffee to help keep your eyes open.  Those rest stops, though … you never know what condition you will find them in.  But this rest area, named Uredd Rest Area, is situated along a section of the Norwegian Scenic Route. It overlooks stunning views of the fjords and the open sea, and is a popular spot for visitors and locals to watch the northern lights in winter and the midnight sun in summer. And, it is quickly gaining fame for being home to what may be the most beautiful public toilet in the world.As part of a project to enhance Norway’s scenic highways with innovative architecture, a sleek viewing area with marble benches and amphitheater steps leading down to the water were built along the roadside. And next to them, a striking, wave-shaped public restroom.

Made of frosted glass and concrete in a minimalist design, the structure seems to glow in the dark as the glass is lit at night. In the daytime, the facility offers just about the most breathtaking view you could hope to enjoy while taking care of business.  Just look at that scenery … makes you want to sit here forever … except that I’m getting c-c-c-old.

Let’s grab a quick bite to eat … and warm us up … before we head back, shall we?  As I realize that a number of my readers are vegan, I picked a place we could all find something to love.  So let’s head over to Madrid, Spain, for some barquillos.  You guys all like barquillos, right?  What … oh, don’t worry … it’s Spanish for waffles. These particular ones are very thin, rolled into shapes like cones, and ever-so delicious.  Now here in Madrid, we will get our waffles from a street vendor, but there’s a little something you have to do first.  First, you have to play a game of roulette with the vendor!  No, not the Russian sort … just the plain ol’ sort.There’s one now!  See that red tin canister?  That’s the roulette game, and the wheel to spin is on the top of the canister.  You can pay once to spin for either one or two barquillos or pay more and spin as many times as you want, racking up waffles until you stop or the ticker lands on one of the four golden markers, at which point you lose everything. You are so going to love these … you can get them dusted with cinnamon or vanilla and covered or stuffed with chocolate and other flavors.  I love them with fresh strawberries, but it’s probably a little too early in the season for those.  Enjoy your barquillo!

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed our travel today, and I hope you all have a terrific weekend!  Love ‘n hugs from Filosofa!!!

Saturday Surprise — Let’s Explore! Hello friends, and welcome to the WEEKEND!!!  People tell me that since I am retired, every day is the weekend for me, but let me tell you … it ain’t so! 

[greateacheropke]

Welcome (Me) Back (?)

So things have been a bit... negative in the last two posts here.  Just like last year, I had a rough 2/3 of the school year (in that I felt inundated with work and didn’t have time to write) but the topics of the last two posts didn’t really help motivate me to say anything positive here.  So let’s write about some positive things.

First of all, what a school year it has been.  Yes, there has been a lot of work - I am writing something about that, for later - but it’s also been a lot of fun!  Just like in Egypt, where I only really found a social circle that worked for me in year two, things really clicked this fall.  No offense intended to all of the other beloved members of La Sagrada Familia - Caitlin and Jacob, friends who still live in Madrid; Carolin from Hamburg, who learned how to share and hug; Virginia aka Maria aka Grace from Athens, applied mathematics student; Thør from Copenhagen, whose name was never Thør but no one could pronounce it, conspiracy theorist like no other that has ever lived; Karina from Toronto, with us for only a few short weeks; Rollie, Martin, the Turks, travelling Irish guitar guy, and all the other couch surfers who have stayed with us for only a few nights - but the apartment eventually became the home it was intended to be, with Caroline and Maura joining forces with Jonny and myself, as we planned to do over a year ago now.  We’ve done just about everything but bathe together, but it’s come close.  This is the home I have been missing since leaving Egypt.

There have been many adventures this year!  Here are just a few from 2016.

In August, following the events previously commented upon, I traveled to Portugal to see Lagos on the southern coast.  Many people travel to Lagos to party, I guess, but I went to scuba dive and see the southwest corner of continental Europe.

There are lots of places to stay, but João from Lagos4U runs a very friendly and open place, as long as you don’t mind crowded rooms.  I think I was in a 10 bed dorm and the bathroom was inside the room, so there was a lot of noise between people coming in and out at night and using the restroom and showers. Since I was diving, I was asleep pretty early every night, but I dealt with the noise fairly well (Egypt training still paying off).  The town itself has got a nice marina and long stretches of beach, and lots of fresh, cheap, delicious seafood (go to A Barrigada) and a seriously great burger (”Toucan Burger” from Nahnahbah).

It’s just a pain to get to, as I took a bus and had to transfer in the middle of nowhere, with no easy way to communicate with the drivers other than me saying “Lagos” and them pointing at an empty street corner where, thankfully, another bus showed up in a few minutes to take me the rest of the way.

After Lagos, I took a bus to Portimão and did a few hours tour of the area through the company Bike My Side - a fun dude drove me around in a sidecar of his motorcycle and took me up through Monchique to the top of Fóia, the highest peak in the Algarve region.  It was a fun time, something different to do, but was a little pricey.

From there I went back to Lisbon to see Scott and Jen, two friends from Egypt who were staying in an airbnb for most of the summer.  I had visited Lisbon briefly in May and had some sense of the city, but they had experienced much more and shared with me some of its wonders: Bifana, a pork steak sandwich that we topped with mustard and hot sauce, would be #1.  I love these things (on a more recent trip back to Lisbon I had 5 of these in 48 hours).  I can personally recommend O Trevo, Ginginha Popular, and Zé Dos Cornos.  All are dirty, cheap, and cater to locals.  With vinho verde on tap, you can get an awesome meal for under €4.

Lisbon is somewhat famous for the pastry known as pastel de nata, said to have originated just outside of the city, in Belem.  There is no need to travel to Belem and wait 20 minutes in line for these (although Belem has its own sites to take in), just go to Manteigaria Fábrica de Pastéis de Nata in the city, below Bairro Alto.  Lines are not that long, although there is no seating.  €1.70 for a pastel de nata and an espresso.

If you’re thirsty, obviously Lisbon has plenty of wine options, and is famous for the green wine (which, while refreshing and is what I always order with my cheap meals, I could honestly take or leave).  The beer scene in Portugal is still emerging, and Duqye Brewpub and Beer Station both have plenty on offer.  The local liqueur should be sampled at A Ginjinha, apparently a pretty famous, well established shop (sells one type of drink, served two different ways, and is about the size of my bathroom). It was recommended to me even down in the Algarve region as a place the man speaking to me had never been to but had always heard about.

The church known as Igreja De São Domingos is one of my favorites on earth due to its unique looks - there are still many signs of a 1959 fire.

Finally, the LX Factory is a little out of town but is hope to some nice hipster stores and restaurants, and some good graffiti.

Really, I love Lisbon. One of my favorite cities to visit, hands down.  Cheap, great food and drink, on the water...what isn’t to love?

In late September, Jonny and I went to Hamburg to visit the aforementioned Carolin (we took no pictures! sad face).  Hamburg was a nice little German city to take in with our expert local guide and host.  The red light district, while famous, pales in comparison to what can be found in Amsterdam, although the forbidding gates (stupidly male only) are a nice visual touch.  Good company and of course good food and beer, the trip was not without its surprises and bad memories - suffice to say, Cohen’s “Hallelujah” has been ruined for me. But overall a trip that we are all glad happened. And the Germans have great parks! Look at how happy this guy is.

In November, the four of us went to Rome, ostensibly for a work trip, but really used it as an excuse to see a bit of the city and stay in a hotel room for free.  We didn’t really get to see or do too much, but we had a lot of fun sharing a room together.

For Thanksgiving, we all went to Budapest. Here we were joined by Ryan (Caroline’s friend) and Emma, the American that I met in Spain who, at this time, was living in England... I am dating Emma.  Here is a terrible photo of us together.

Budapest is a rad place, ripe for making bad puns on its name, mixing beautiful old history with soviet grunge. The food was good; I don’t remember specifics, just a lot of fried dough and meat stews. Really hardy stuff, for hardy people (you’ve got to be strong to drink the local pálinka). They have these neat “ruin bars” which have very artsy hipster feels to them. The biggest that I saw was called Szimpla Kert, and it was a shit show, so I did not get to explore much. Definitely seemed like a cool place to go back to during the day to try to take it all in. But if you like salvaged furniture, what you really need to do before your Budapest trip is look up the official schedule for "lomtalanítás" - “gypsy christmas” is my favorite translation - and walk through any districts that are having them. We found one by accident, and it seemed as though the refuse spread out before us like an endless sea of scraps. Teams of people went through it with backpacks, headlamps, I think I saw one person taking notes in a book of what they had taken or left behind for a second pass. Must see.

In early December, I had an opportunity to go to Athens to visit Virginia, and as an added bonus see Bob from Egypt, along with a group of former students he was leading on an AP Art trip. It was great to catch up with some of my favorite people from around the world! It was a quick weekend, so again I didn’t get to eat or do too much. Obvious items were checked, like the Acropolis. Extra thrilling points were getting to vote on where to get beers (imagine my exuberance: practicing democracy in its birthplace; now imagine the despondency of the Greeks I was with: “see how far democracy has gotten us!”), checking out  Exarcheia (the anarchist neighborhood), and The Neon Exhibition: Flying Over the Abyss (seriously the best art exhibit I’ve ever been to; I felt feelings and want to go back very badly - http://neon.org.gr/en/exhibition/flying-abyss-athens/).

See, it was an art trip! And the teacher even drew me!

So anyway, yeah... it’s been over a year since most of this happened. But it happened. So I wrote some things. I might write again sometime.

[theseventhhex]

Widowspeak Interview

Molly Hamilton & Robert Earl Thomas

Photo by Shawn Brackbill

Widowspeak has grown up in a lot of ways. The band’s third album, ‘All Yours’, is one that could only come from Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas: a honed and elegant interweaving of dream-pop and slowcore rock and roll, easygoing melodies and dusty, snaking guitars. It’s also their finest release to date: ten beautiful songs that are refreshingly straightforward yet built from the same well-chosen and deftly-used tools the band has always worked with. ‘All Yours’ is ambitious without feeling laboured-over, anchored in the strengths of Widowspeak’s consistent influences. The result is an aesthetically diverse and profoundly nostalgic sound; indebted to past eras without feeling dated… We talk to the delightful Molly Hamilton about exploring the 90s, being more direct and Myspace…

TSH: As you gear up for the next Widowspeak release, is the band’s level of focus one of renewed confidence?

Molly: I definitely think the upcoming record marks a shift for me, in terms of having some clarity about what I want to write about and how I want to convey those ideas. Although we’ve had artistic intent with our other releases, I think this is the first time that it just sort of spilled out of me. The songs all came really quickly, naturally, and I think they have a cohesiveness that I’m proud of.

TSH: For you, does ‘All Yours’ very much act as a snapshot of given moments in time and does this aspect please you?

Molly: I think ‘All Yours’ was a necessary record for us to make; for my part I was still sort of processing these personal events that had happened when I lived in Brooklyn (at the time of writing that record I was in upstate New York, and right now I’m in Tacoma, Washington). It definitely felt like I was rounding up all these ideas and feelings and putting them to rest. Which in retrospect makes it perhaps less of an exciting record, but in my mind it was important to make that record so I wasn’t dwelling on those things anymore.

TSH: You’ve previously touched on revisiting some of your favourite films and music from the 60’s and 70’s to sort of get into the required headspace for the music. Is this the case once again for upcoming material?

Molly: I think if anything, the record we are finishing up right now (our fourth) is maybe more inspired by the 90’s? Not in an obviously “grunge” way or anything, but moving back to Washington State and the town I grew up in, I’m sort of surrounded by these memories which have really well-defined sonic soundtracks. We’ll always be influenced by the 60’s and 70’s, for sure, but it’s been really invigorating to explore totally different sounds and the autobiographical side of what the 90s means to me. It also felt sort of necessary to change up the sound a bit, because thematically the lyrics are touching on territory that’s a little darker than normal for Widowspeak.

TSH: Bearing in mind such challenging life event changes, how would you sup up your natural compulsions towards upcoming lyrical content?

Molly: Well, to be honest when we moved to Tacoma I was sort of about to give up on the band and try to steer my life into a “normal” direction… I’d finally finished my college degree in design, which I’d done part-time while touring the previous couple years, and was trying to figure out if I could get an actual career type job or something. And then when all the election stuff happened here, I was simultaneously feeling like music was such a pointless venture when the world is so fucked up, and I felt even more compelled to write than probably ever before. Except I didn’t really end up writing songs about politics; I started realising that maybe it can still be important to explore really personal feelings in music, even when it seems trivial compared to current events. I think most of the songs are about my struggles with motivation, and having these relatively long periods of depression and inaction, and being so unsure about things. They’re also about simultaneously recognising that technology and social media aren’t going away, but feeling so frustrated with the growing role of those things in our lives. For me personally, it can sort of intensify these existing anxieties, even if it’s perfectly fine for someone else. And that’s just my experience, but maybe someone else will connect with it, so that’s sort of what the record’s about.

TSH: I wanted to get your views on some previous Widowspeak material. Firstly ‘Borrowed World’ – what resonates with you most when you look back at this track in particular?

Molly: ‘Borrowed World’ is about debt, but not necessarily the monetary kind. They are Rob’s lyrics, but I know that he meant them in a way that wasn’t specific to his own student loans. It’s about wishing you could outrun the regrets, or mistakes in your past, which follow you around. ‘Borrowed World’ is very much about feeling trapped by debt (of whatever kind), but also being with someone who can hopefully help you momentarily forget about the crushing weight of it.

TSH: Furthermore, do you recall what type of energy and aura you were looking to incorporate as you fleshed out ‘Cosmically Aligned’?

Molly: ‘Cosmically Aligned’ was meant to feel like a non-confrontational acceptance of relationship failure. It’s about two different relationships actually, one romantic and one platonic. In both cases I didn’t blame the person for drifting out of my life (and I don’t think they blamed me for drifting out of theirs), it just felt like a natural end to an era. Astrology is sort of a backdrop for that, and the idea that sometimes people just have natural compatibilities sometimes, and not others. I wanted the song to feel warm and affectionate, like I meant the words.

TSH: Does being more unfiltered allow you to express yourself in a more wide-ranging way?

Molly: Even when I’m being unfiltered, other people would probably consider that I’m being VERY filtered, ha! So, I’m not sure, but I know that sometimes I have to just force myself to say something in a way that feels bare bones without dressing it up. I sometimes overanalyse every lyric ad nauseum. I’m trying to get better about being direct; you can be poetic without being cryptic, and sometimes too much lyrical decoration can obscure the meaning.

TSH: How do you get around the moments of feeling restricted at times?

Molly: Musically, when I feel restricted I listen to music that sounds completely and totally different than the kind that we generally make. It helps to kind of put things in perspective and see that you can find ways to bring a song into literally any direction; it doesn’t have to be the one you started out in. I also love making versions of songs, and changing lyrics, trying to play with the capo on frets, different tunings, and singing in a different key. It can necessarily take the song off a pedestal so it doesn’t feel like this precious thing anymore, and you can see it for what it is and what it needs.

TSH: With more material under your belt, how are the live shows evolving?

Molly: Our live band is actually probably the best part about Widowspeak; I think we have had to figure out how to have a good live show without fancy lighting or effects or even that great of equipment, and the four-piece situation we have now feels great. We’re relatively economical out of necessity. A lot of the songs really mutate in shows, and become these long drawn out jams after the recording version would have been done. It keeps it refreshing for us. I’m still trying to be a more engaging front person, despite having really bad stage fright, which is mostly just getting enough time in with the songs to live in them comfortably.

TSH: Was it particularly pleasing to have so many Spotify listeners/fans in Madrid?

Molly: Haha, yeah! We’ve never played Spain. Honestly anytime we have listeners anywhere that we haven’t been, or where we haven’t been a lot, is exciting. It’s crazy how the internet sort of creates these different ebbs and flows of interest. We definitely want to play in front of whoever wants to see us, so we are hoping to do a lot more touring in the next year…

TSH: What are you passionate about outside of music?

Molly: I’m really interested in design, in a sort of general sense. I have studied different areas over the years, and have dabbled in a few different mediums, and maybe will never really move past hobbyist status, but it helps me to exercise different creative muscles and get into another sort of problem-solving mode. I love thrifting; I have sort of been a lifelong treasure-hunter, not so much clothing or wearable things but furniture/housewares/art. I used to work at one, and also recently worked at an architectural salvage place. I just love old things.

TSH: What does the Widowspeak candle remind you of?

Molly: Honestly, because sense memories are so strong, the Widowspeak candle just reminds me of that tour! The candles were in the back of the van for two months and would warm up a little bit on the long drives and the van always smelled like them! It’s a great smell, sort of reminds me of being in a lakefront cabin, lighting incense, and playing cards.

TSH: Have you watched Marley and Me recently?

Molly: Not recently. Not since the first time about a year ago, in which I cried way too much. I love my dog and that movie just made it way too real that she’s not going to live forever.

TSH: Does your dog bring you most clarity and euphoria in life?

Molly: Yes. And more! She’s just such a great buddy to have around. Ruby can be really active or stationary depending on your mood, so she kind of reflects whatever our vibe is. She’s also just super smart and knowing and it seems like she understands when you talk to her.

TSH: What prompted the following tweet ‘I miss Myspace. that is all.’…

Molly: Haha, well I sort of miss the really visible community of Myspace, for both fans AND musicians, in terms of music being playable on personal profiles, and especially the Top 8 feature. It was really easy to discover new bands, and their favourite bands, and bands that sounded like them, from all over the country (and to a certain extent, the world). The current options (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) just feel sort of corny to me sometimes. Not all the time, but especially with the increased monetization of everything, and sponsored posts, algorithms, hashtags… Everything seems so much more laboured over. Myspace was a sort of great, albeit imperfect, moment of an online music community before money and “likes” took over everything, even though it was of course a company who got money off ads. It just felt less bogged down by that aspect of it.

TSH: As you look ahead with Widowspeak, what are the key incentives that you bear in mind with your musical undertakings?

Molly: I think we just really want to play a lot of shows this year. Live shows make all of this feel real; actually showing up to a venue or space, seeing who else shows up. Playing the songs in front of actual people who are actually in a physical space and listening. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that the internet has really opened things up for bands like us, to be able to reach people all over the world (which is why we want to travel more internationally!). But sometimes it can seem so abstract, the idea of being a band with some success I suppose, but not totally sure of who those “plays” are, who is listening. I love when people come up to us at shows and say they like a song or a record, or when people email us. The personal connections are really important, and playing music in front of people is so hard for me but it feels like the most intimate part. The realest part.

Widowspeak - “Locusts”

All Yours