#and i did an outside gig with one of the violas too. so it's not like i've NEVER talked to them before | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

waveypedia · 3 years

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New Days

Rymin Week Day 4: Off the Train

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Ao3

Contrary to popular belief (his parents), Min-Gi is not a morning person.

He’d trained himself into getting up and going to bed early, first at his parents’ insistence, then as a necessary skill for all the classes he was taking in high school (Gotta make that college application shine!). Yet given the choice, he would happily stay up all night and wake up extremely late.

On the train, all of Min’s obligations and restrictions suddenly vanished. Although his schedule was primarily dictated by not dying, which led him to sleep and wake up at odd hours (and telling time on the train is a complicated task anyways), he started sleeping in later and later. Now that he’s off the train, and most of his days consist of driving, songwriting, and practicing, he’s free to wake up as late as he wishes.

It’s why he finds himself slowly slipping into the world of wakefulness one unassuming Thursday morning. The van is already moving, as per usual - Ryan doesn’t mind the quiet mornings as Min sleeps away. Golden rays of sunlight peak through the van’s windows.

In the driver’s seat, Ryan is spotlighted in one. The sun’s brilliant hues turn his brown hair into shades of tree bark and make his soft skin glow. He’s beautiful.

Ryan is a morning person, in contrast to Min, but he would very much like to be a night person. They’ve spent ages lamenting the fateful injustice. Unlike Min, who used to force himself to go to bed early even if it meant lying awake in the dark for hours, Ryan chooses to just run on little sleep. He’d go out and party and/or perform all night, crash for a few hours, and wake up at his usual time.

He’s been getting better, though. Just like Min, they’ve both been making bounds of progress now that they’re off the train and free from restrictions. Every time Ryan goes to bed at a decent hour, it eases the worry in Min’s heart.

They’re both doing so much better now. Min never thought he’d be grateful for getting spontaneously kidnapped by a magical death train, but he and Ryan are so much happier now than they’d ever thought they’d be.

Ryan glances over, smiling fondly. “Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

It’s a running joke between them, one that started way back on the train with Kez, but Min’s heart never fails to make a little jump whenever Ryan calls him beauty.

“Morning,” Min replies, stretching. He digs around in a bag at his feet. “Did you move the songbook?”

“Yeah, I was working on it earlier,” Ryan says. He jerks a thumb behind him without taking his eyes off the road. “I left some new lyrics and chords for you to look over.”

Min smiles. “Thanks.” Following Ryan’s directions, he grabs the songbook, a blue pencil, and his coveted mini-synth. Items in hand, he carefully slips into the passenger’s seat and buckles up.

Ryan shoots him a quick grin and turns his music off so Min can write.

For the next few hours, they stay as they are - Ryan keeps them on track to their next gig, while Min tackles the lines Ryan wrote earlier. It was a bit of a learning curve, figuring out how to write songs together, when they first started out. Ryan only knew chords and tablature, while Min only knew notated music from his viola days. Now, though, a couple months into their journey, they’ve worked out a good system. Whoever comes up with lyrics or a melody first (usually lyrics, and usually Ryan) will pen it along with any chords or notes they can think of. The other will look it over, edit it, and add the missing element. It usually makes for a solid first draft.

Min twirls the pencil in his hand. Blue. His favorite color. Ryan usually writes in a red pencil, from a set of colored pencils he stole from his younger brother before leaving. It makes contributions easy to distinguish when writing and editing.

Every so often, while Min looks over Ryan’s ideas, he’ll pull out his mini-synth and tap out a melody. Both of them find it easier to create melodies with an instrument in hand. Min may not play his mini-synth on stage like Ryan plays his guitar, but it still makes him happy to play it regularly. Not as a toy, not as something he has to hide from his boss and his parents, but as a genuine instrument.

As he writes and plays, Ryan listens. He keeps his attention on the road and map, but chimes in every so often with little affirmations and suggestions.

“Is that a D?” Ryan muses. “Under a G?”

Min thumbs the corner of the page. “Yeah, I think it sounds cool. Thoughts?”

Ryan graces him with a patented Ryan Akagi grin, all teeth. “I like it! I’ll look it over when you drive.” Ryan squeezes his fists on the steering wheel. “I’m really glad we’re working together, Min. This is way better than anything I’ve written solo.”

Min ducks his head, cheeks flushing. “Oh- Uh- I like writing with you too,” he replies. “

In the afternoon, they pull over and Min takes the wheel. Sometimes at this time they stop for food - they’ve made it their mission to catalogue all the small restaurants across Canada and America on the way to New York for future reference. But today Ryan got a late start on driving because he was songwriting (“Inspiration strikes when it strikes, Min! Who am I to deny my muses?” Never mind that Ryan is uncharacteristically close-lipped about what/who said muses even are), so they eat separately in the car. They step out to stretch for a minute, and Min hands over the songbook and food. Then they’re off again.

Ryan makes a few more edits with his red pencil, but they always collaborate on the second pass. At both of their insistence, they have to wait until one of them isn’t driving to truly discuss it. Min thought he might have to put his foot down on this, but Ryan was insistent - he’s an experienced driver and knows far to well just how dangerous and difficult driving is.

The afternoon passes without much fanfare. Min keeps his eyes on the road while Ryan edits and eventually breaks out his guitar. The highway is long, flat, and unassuming. Few other cars pass them.

It’s for that exact reason Ryan gets an idea that is both brilliant and stupid.

“Min. Min. Minminminminminmi-”

“What.” A feeling of dread washes over Min before the words are even out of Ryan’s mouth.

Ryan grins toothily at him. “I’m gonna stick my head out the window.”

Min chokes on air., surprised. “Wh- Ryan. Why would you want to do that? Didn’t you have enough thrills on the death train?”

“Eh,” Ryan says, shrugging. “I’ve always wanted to do it, but i couldn’t exactly do it while driving when I was touring alone. Besides, my parents would never let me.”

“For good reason,” Min grumbles, but in his gut he knows Ryan’s already won.

Ryan frowns at him. “Look, I’m not stupid. I’ll be careful. I won’t lean so far out of the car that I’ll fall. I’ll come back in if there are more cars or it looks like I might hit something.”

“Or if we start turning,” Min warns.

Ryan’s replying smile is blinding. “Does that mean it’s a yes from you?”

Min rolls his eyes. “Just try not to die. If I show up to the venue with only half the band, the manager won’t be happy with me.”

“Yes!” Ryan punches his fist in the air and dances triumphantly - or, he dances as much as one can while sitting in the seat of a moving van.

Ryan rolls down the window and sticks his head out. He’s crouching on the seat, half-standing, in order to fully fit through the window. His upper body is out of the car. His arms wave and flail, making his jacket sleeves flutter even more violently in the wind.

Min starts to shout a warning, to yell about safety precautions, to give into the panic in his heart and yell get down, but the words die in his throat the minute he lays eyes on Ryan’s face.

Ryan is joyful. Euphoric. Happy. He has always been a smiley person, but times where he is truly, unadulteredly happy are rarer than you’d think. Here, riding half-outside of the van while they drive to their fame and dreams, he seems truly free.

Min smiles. God, he loves that man.

Ryan glances back, the light reflecting off his glasses, and flashes Min an adrenaline-fueled grin and a shaky thumbs up. His ankles wobble a bit. Before Min realizes what he’s doing, he reaches out and grabs Ryan for support.

Ryan’s mouth drops open in a small ‘o’. Min moves to take his hand back, but before he can, Ryan twists and reaches back inside the car to grab Min’s wrist, stopping him in his tracks.

Min freezes.

Ryan is smiling, more bashful and careful now than before. He’s still happy, but… nervous? Anxious?

Min’s heart flutters. He manages to smile back.

“I got you,” he says, although it comes out as a whisper.

“O-oh,” Ryan whispers. His eyes are wide and soft. “I… thank you, Min.”

Min ducks his head awkwardly. “You’re welcome.”

The rest of the drive is quiet. It’s not awkward, but it’s not as comfortable and natural as it usually would be.

Something has changed.

Min grips the wheel tighter and stares down the road, for a lack of real target. If looks could kill, the road would be up in flames.

It’s… confusing. He’s not sure why a change in their dynamic is so upsetting and off-putting. He and Ryan have gone through so many changes over the years, and they’ve always been able to come back to themselves in the end.

Besides, it’s not like they had an argument. Or even a misunderstanding. All they did was hold onto each other to keep balance. Why does this feel so monumental?

Min chances a glance away from the road to look at Ryan. He’s curled up in the passenger seat (because Ryan seems incapable of sitting normally when he’s not driving) with his guitar. The songbook, flipped open to their latest draft, is balanced precariously on Ryan’s knee. He’s bent over to read it accurately, which must be difficult, especially in the dim light. But he seems to be managing. He’s humming softly to himself, almost too quiet for Min to catch it. As he’s focused on the road (no matter how much he wants to listen to Ryan’s ethereal yet natural and homey singing) the melody floats in and out of focus. Ryan is also plucking at his guitar, playing mostly individual notes instead of chords. It’s calming and comforting, not to mention beautiful. If Min weren’t driving, he might just fall right asleep. Even though he’s the one playing, Ryan seems drowsy as well, judging by the way he’s leaning against the back of the seat.

As they draw closer to their destination, Ryan seems to consciously shake himself into wakefulness. He sits up and puts the songbook away to focus fully on his guitar. As Min pulls off the highway and navigates the city streets, Ryan tunes his guitar and warms up.

They run through a couple vocal exercises together, practicing harmonies and lyrics as well as warm-ups. Min is a bit shaky since he’s focused on the road, but he and Ryan know their songs by heart, and the warm-up does the job. He’s still a bit jittery as he pulls into the venue parking lot, but that’s normal. He hasn’t quite shaken his stage fright yet, but as long as he has Ryan at his side, he’s able to perform. More than that, he has fun performing.

Besides, Ryan confided in him a while back, before their first real show. “You’re not the only one with stage fright, Min,” he’d confessed. “Yeah, I love it, and the adrenaline basically cancels out the fear, but it’s still there. You just have to go for it.”

Min had felt comforted enough to perform with that, with the admission that even the seemingly-fearless Ryan Akagi, who’d always seemed more at home on a stage than at his actual home got stage fright. But then Ryan had hesitated, glanced down, and taken Min’s hand. Min’s heart had nearly stuttered to a stop in his chest. He almost missed what Ryan said next.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter if you get stage fright or not,” Ryan had said cheerfully, too cheerfully, although Min barely noticed. “All that really matters is if you enjoy what you’re doing. It’s more admirable to conquer your fear in order to chase your dreams than to not have fear.”

Min had smiled back, shaky but euphoric. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, not unlike how he felt onstage. “That’s very profound.”

Ryan had laughed and squeezed his hand. “Eh, I have a lot of experience. Listen to me, I’m the master!”

The mood subtly shifted with the joke, and suddenly they were laughing and Ryan let go of his hand and they were pushing the synthesizer on stage and it was all a blur from there until the curtain went down and Ryan was squealing and hugging him and picking him up and screaming We did it! You did it!

What a first show.

Min shakes himself back to reality and pulls into the venue parking lot. Ryan jumps out of the van before Min is fully parked, despite Min’s loud protests. He rolls his eyes and lets Ryan run ahead anyway.

While Ryan gets checked in with the manager, Min parks and unloads Barold and the rest of their equipment (which is pretty much just Barold now, since Ryan took his guitar with him in his haste). He heads inside, he and Ryan set up, and then they’re standing onstage behind a lowered curtain, waiting in darkness and silence for their cue.

Suddenly, Ryan turns around and flashes Min a thumbs-up and a bright smile. It’s more jerky and jittery than usual, probably because of the nerves and adrenaline. He seems a little more on edge today, though.

“We’re gonna do great!” Ryan promises, grinning.

Min smiles back. “We’re gonna do rad,” he replies. The tension between them dissipates, and the curtain goes up. Ryan turns toward the crowd, beaming his particular I’m-on-stage-but-I’m-really-enjoying-myself smile, and greets them. The crowd goes wild.

Energy floods Min’s body, and he grins back at the crowd. Ryan counts them off, and they burst into their opening number with the power and passion it requires. The crowd screams, but Min can barely hear them over the music and Ryan’s voice.

He’s living. Far more than he ever was before.

They both are.

After the show is a blur of chatting with audience members, grabbing something to eat, and scheduling another show. By the time they head to the hotel, Min’s exhausted. But he dutifully puts all the equipment in their hotel room and locks up the van before he collapses into bed.

Ryan is already in their room when Min comes in. He’s sitting on the bed, facing away from the door, with his hands on his lap. Most striking is the absence of his guitar. Ryan may have been playing all day, but it’s rare for him to be without his instrument and yet so still like this.

Ryan, to his core, is always moving. Even when he’s not physically moving, he’s always singing, humming, thinking. Yet now, he sits in absolute stillness.

“Ryan?” Min whispers. His voice is quieter than he intended, but Ryan jumps at it all the same.

When he turns, he’s smiling disarmingly, but it’s too wide and shaky to be natural. Ryan may have convinced someone else with that expression, but Min knows him too well to be fooled.

Min strides into the room with three short steps, locking the door behind him. He stops in front of Ryan, so close their knees are almost brushing. Ryan blushes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I- Nothing.” Ryan won’t meet his gaze.

Min scowls. “Come on, Ryan. Aren’t we past this? Didn’t the train teach us not to do all this not-talking crap?”

Ryan flinches. “I- Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m just… thinking.”

“About what?” Min finally moves, stepping around Ryan to sit on the bed beside him. He takes care to keep his voice soft and gentle. He doesn’t want to scare Ryan again. Whatever’s going on seems to have him skittish all of a sudden.

Ryan bites his lip. “Min, I… you know I care about you, right?”

Min blinks, surprised. “Of course I do.” Hesitantly, he reaches out to take Ryan’s hand, running his thumb over Ryan’s knuckles. “I care about you too.”

Ryan blushes. His cheeks are nearly scarlet right now. Min’s a bit too tired to unpack that all on his own right now, but he knows it means something. It spurs him on, gives him a burst of courage and energy in the adrenaline crash phase after a show. “I’m glad we’re-” He’s about to say friends, but the word dies on his lips. Suddenly, it feels all wrong, but he can’t put his finger on why.

Slowly, Ryan turns to face him. His eyes are wide and anxious, his lips slightly parted, but there’s a set determination in him that shows in his face. He reaches out to take Min’s other hand, and… leans in closer.

Min finds himself leaning in simultaneously. Soon they’re close enough Min can feel Ryan’s breath on his lips. It’s hot in more ways than one.

Oh. Oh.

So that’s why today, Ryan’s hand on his wrist, the trusting and yet shocked expression of his, felt so weird and so right at the same time.

Their eyes meet. A silent exchange passes between them.

Do you want to do this?

Yes. Do you?

Yes.

If asked after, Min couldn’t say if he initiated it or if Ryan did.

All he knows is the gap between them is now nonexistent, and Ryan’s lips are on his, and suddenly it’s everything he’s ever wanted.

The kiss is slow. Hesitant. Exploring new territory, figuring out boundaries. But it’s not awkward.

No, they are Ryan and Min, Min and Ryan, Chicken Choice Judy, and they have come much too far to be awkward. They’ve been building towards this moment since they first met, even if they didn’t know it.

It feels like a found puzzle piece of himself Min didn’t even realize he was missing. Now, he is complete. Now, they are complete.

Now, they are both truly living their lives to the fullest.

this fic is just: *headcanon* *headcanon* *headcanon* *hea-

oh man i almost didn't finish this one in time. it's still the 12th here, though (by a couple hours!), so i'm good! it's hard to write a full one-shot every day, but i've already come farther than i thought i would! i told myself i would finish this today, and i did! i also told myself i would finish the week and my remaining prompts, and i will. :)

title is from new days by dreamcatcher. that's the second time i've used it as a title but the last one was for a zine fic so i can get away with using it here, lol. i really love that song, so that's why. the lyrics translation are absolutely nothing like this, but for some reason it gives off road trip vibes (at least to me), so it works really well for this particular piece!

okay confession time: i think this is the first kiss scene i've ever written lol. i was writing it and i was like "hey wait a minute i have no clue what i'm doing have i done this before??? i don't think so???" it didn't help that i didn't intend to write a kiss scene, but i got to the place where i'd intended to end it and it felt like the natural progression. i'm gonna go research good kiss writing after this. i would've done it while i was writing, but i didn't want to post this any later than i had to

i have a bunch of infinity train snippets and wips i wrote right after book 4 aired and my interest in the show peaked, and i really thought i had something that would fit well for off the train but i guess i didn't?? maybe i just daydreamed it and never actually penned it skfhksl. so i was kind of flying by the seat of my pants for this one. i think it's my favorite of rymin week so far though! it was also the most fun to write. i really love introspective pieces. ryan and min off the train, after their relationship is repaired, when they're in a much better place and truly happy with each other, is also my favorite time in their lives to explore. they're so much happier and healthier, and they can truly start to explore themselves and realize their dreams.

if you have a piano or something on hand you should play the d and g notes together. they sound heavenly. in choir two years ago we had that chord and i have never forgotten it because i love it so much.

if you ever wanna talk infinity train, writing, these amazing characters, or really anything hmu here on my tumblr or twitter! thank you for reading, and please leave a reblog/like/comment if you enjoyed it!

@ryminweek

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smeraldos · 4 years

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Cheers

Summary: In a time of shoulder pads and tight deadlines, no one gives you the time of day. Good thing silver linings exist, like your annoyingly perceptive co-worker.

retro office!AU

Characters: Taehyung x Reader

Word count: 1K+

Notes: ‘70s slang: jiving = kidding, stone cold fox = a person who's beyond attractive Computer Space: space combat arcade video game Shakespeare refs: Viola disguises herself as a young man (Cesario) in Twelfth Night...basically if you’ve watched She’s The Man, you get the gist.

“All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players...” - As You Like It

"How's our employee of the month?"

Without looking up, you know Taehyung has stopped by, leaning against your cubicle like usual. He's the only one who calls you that. To everyone else, the best is Jeongguk: choice analyst, Wharton wonder-whiz, second to none.

You’re just "a team player." Sweet talk for lackey. You do the work no one else wants to do, but this evening, your boss caved and assigned you the report he'd normally give Jeongguk. The bad thing: he'd informed you on a Friday night, so you still haven't gone out for dinner.

Taehyung dangles a Kit Kat in front of your screen.

You dismiss it with a swat, making it drop on your keyboard with a clack. Now the debt your client owes is 1343400000000 bucks.

Stellar.

"Shoot," Taehyung says, rushing over the second you bury your face into your palms. "Sorry, I--"

His apology dies when you uncover your face, laughing.

"What are you sorry for," you ask lightly, gesturing to your screen. "Look at those zeroes. It's like we've won the fricking lotto."

Hesitantly, Taehyung takes a glance. His handsome face -- yes, you admit he's a stone cold fox (although the hottest thing you’ve seen of late was your monitor burning up) -- is devoid of humor.

"Oh, come on," you insist. "I can fix this in a jiffy. Why don't you ask me that question? The one we always joke about."

Instead, Taehyung offers you a look soft with concern. “What’s wrong?” He asks.

"Work, obviously.” You lay your head on the desk, too tired to open up your heart like Pandora's box. “My life. You not asking the right question."

"Fine. You want me to ask you how it feels to win a million?”

“Feels like a scam, thank you."

Taehyung sighs, claiming Jeongguk’s seat next to you. "You can't keep doing this, _______. Take a break."

"Tell that to Jeongguk."

"He isn't here."

"That's funny, I didn’t notice," you say, and it’s cruel, but you don’t care. You’re sick of being in Jeongguk’s shadow. "You should get going, too. Wouldn't want to be left behind with the bottom feeder."

Swiftly, you sit up, correcting the debt and letting the formulas do the trick. When you reach over to click on another sheet, you realize your mouse isn't there. Or anywhere under your desk, for that matter.

"Taehyung," you bite out, "stop jiving. Give me back my mouse."

"You're not a bottom feeder."

"Thanks. Now give it here." You pin him with a look that leaves no room for leeway, holding out your hand expectantly.

He places his on top. "I'm being serious."

"So am I."

"Listen,” he says, “you're not Jeongguk."

"Clearly,” you quip. “Life would be a lot easier if I were."

Again, Taehyung sighs, visibly exasperated. "Jeongguk this, Jeongguk that. You’ve gotta stop putting him on some pedestal and beating yourself up because you can’t be like him. You’re ruining your own worth, you know.”

"Like I have any to begin with,” you scoff. “No one thinks, Oh, _______, now there’s a woman I respect. No one. Shelley is the only other woman in the office and she's been at this gig for years. She's always giving me flack. I know she's angling for a promotion that should have happened a long time ago and everything's a competition, but I can't survive being me. I just can't." Outside your window, diners and disco clubs dazzle the night, washed out by the glare of your office. The stupid fluorescence is too strong, imposing a reflection of your cubicle onto the city.

"I know it’s not much," Taehyung starts, giving your hand a brief squeeze, "but if it's respect you want, you already have it. Let me give you my two cents, too?"

“Sure."

"Don't play their game. If you stick with Jeongguk’s level when it was meant to hold you back, you won't win." “So you're saying I'll lose?” There's an edge to your voice. Taehyung, of all people, should know the last thing you need is a friend shooting your hopes down.

"Think about what their game is based on in the first place. A system where men and women have equal value or one where women would always mean less?"

"That's why I'm fighting," you counter. "I have to prove them wrong."

"It's hard to prove anything when they're set on keeping you down."

"But I can try."

"Aren't you doing that already? And how did that turn out?" "I can't believe you," you seethe, ignoring the tears pricking your eyes. "I’ve worked way too hard for you to reduce it to nothing, you--" "I know,” he cuts in, gentle. “I know. You've worked your tail off, and no one deserves more credit than you. But if they won't admit that, if they see nothing, what's the point of playing their game?"

You don't want to know. All this time, you'd thought the best way to be seen was to beat the men at their own work, and that meant besting Jeongguk, who almost all your colleagues seem to worship. You'd adopted a tone as brisk as you walked, ditched your collar dresses for crisp pantsuits (the stiffer the shoulder pads, the better), and timed your work so you'd always finish before Jeongguk. Lately, your efforts seemed to bear fruit: you were invited to meetings and then there was the report your boss assigned. But having a foot in the door meant little when you had to act like a man for it. They still ushered you to the back, anyway, and no one asked for your opinion, let alone remembered your name or what you did. They just didn't care. And that hurt more than sticks and stones ever will.

"Nothing, alright?" You tell Taehyung at last, wiping your tears bitterly. "I get it now. All the world's a stage and I played the fool."

"Not the fool," he disagrees, taking your mouse out of Jeongguk’s drawer and plugging it back into your computer, "Cesario. And now you get to be Viola again."

Trust Taehyung to know you're referring to Shakespeare. You smile, shaking your head, and he pulls you up into a hug.

"Welcome back, _______," he says. "Let’s celebrate with a round of Computer Space? It’s on me."

You laugh into his shoulder. “You’re such a sore loser, Kim.”

"Bogus. I wasn't playing seriously last time."

"We’ll see about that.”

#bangtanarmynet #taehyung x you #taehyung x y/n #taehyung x reader #taehyung scenarios #taehyung imagine #taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #bts au fic #bts au #bts fluff #bts angst #my fic

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be-ready-when-i-say-go · 4 years

Note

Thought about something cute like reader and 5sos singing on the same festival and she’s dating cal 😭 and they switch with her guitarist and drummer boy and at first she didn’t notice but they they start to have so much fun together at the stage dancing together and doing stupid shit them following her around as she tries to prevent herself from giggling too much and actually singing 🥺🥺 and later she walks down when 5sos are performing with crystal Kay and Sierra omg 😳

+ I’m sorry I’m annoying but part two to my last asks!! I just imagine calum being all heart eyes for her minding his own business tho playing his guitar but every time he doesn’t have to use vocals or his bass he caught her hand or keep her close and ahh singing wildflower to her!!’ When at first the girls just wanted to have fun on stage with them but Calum just keeps her close the whole time singing to her and her singing back with him and being all funny and giggly together ooof

Thanks for your suggestion! It took me a minute to get to it. I did combine it with a few other suggestions. One person asked for drama and someone asked for angst. And viola! Here it is.

This is the last part of the Distance series! I’ll do an epilogue if folks want to send in some suggestions for it! HUGE thanks to everyone that sent me ideas! This series wouldn’t be what is it without you guys!

Find the Distance series masterlist here! Here’s my main masterlist! CW: 18+ (Smut). Angst. Lots of Fluff.

Songs I played: Woman and From The Dining Table by Harry Styles!

Here it is at a WHOOPINg 9.6k. Enjoy!

_____________________________________________________________

The release of her album is followed by a tour. At first, she’s excited. Her mind runs wild with possibilities. Her fingers can’t keep up fast enough with every wonder and question she sends to Calum and thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind the incessant buzzing. He takes each question in stride. It’s nice, in a way, for him to have the wisdom to give her. Like she doesn’t have to go in blind like he did, especially since it’s just her. He hopes he can make her feel a little less alone on the road. It can be a hard road to travel alone.

The glimmer starts to wear off fast. Rehearsals turn her into a zombie. She’s up fairly early stretching, taking her dog for a walk, trying to remind herself that everything’s going to fall into place like it needs to, but the second she walks into the rehearsal space it feels like everything is going to fall apart. That somehow everything she’s ever wanted on tour is just too much, too much out of the budget, too much because she doesn’t have the weight to her name just yet. And maybe it’s a lot of glitz and glamour. Maybe she is asking for too much. Maybe that would be her downfall.

Her phone buzzes. And she pauses, sitting on the floor with her mic in hand, and glances over to it. It’s Calum again. Another message that she won’t actually read until some ungodly hour in the night. He’s got to be up to his throat in worry. She can’t seem to think enough to text him back during the day. Too much is going on. She feels like she’s going to sink, just through the carpeted floor and through the concrete foundation and bury herself into the dirt. Maybe that would be a better fate for her.

She turns her attention back to her notebook, with the crude drawing she made when she was trying to set the stage. “Let’s just,” she sighs. “Let’s start from scratch.”

And it works. Though it’s long and arduous, she’s able to figure out how to set the stage, finalizing the neon design. There’s a rough draft at the video that will be playing behind her for a wardrobe change. By the time she’s able to crawl into her sheets, it’s nearly 1 am. There’s barely enough energy to keep her eyes open to send Calum an apology text. When she wakes, she grins at her dog waiting patiently at the side of her bed. “Ready to go, bubs?”

They give a tiny whine and rest their snout on the covers. She laughs, “Yeah, you’re ready to go.” She manages to brush her teeth and slips into a change of clothes before going out for a run.

Between showering and getting dressed, she checks her messages. Happy to hear that you got things straightened, baby. Reach out whenever you get a breather, reads the text from Calum.

She responds with a good morning text and then switches over to her email. At the top is an email with ‘urgent’ in the subject. She’s praying it’s not more bad news. She doesn’t quite have the heart to withstand more bad news after the progress they made yesterday. It’s details about a festival date in LA. That perfectly lines between her break between the European leg of the tour and the North America dates. She doesn’t even think twice about agreeing to the festival show.

Right as her day winds down, from a shockingly smooth day of rehearsals, Calum calls her. And though she’s drenched in sweat from the light choreography and running it for hours, she stops and answers. “Hey, baby.”

“Oh, she lives!”

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

“Only kidding. I know you’re hard at work. It’s just really good to hear your voice. How are rehearsals?”

“Really good now. Once we got over the hump, it’s like smooth sailing.”

“Good, I’m glad. I was calling. We got word a couple days ago about a festival show right when you’re on break between legs. And I was hoping you had some free time, just to hang out.”

She can’t contain the smile, leaning her head against the window. The evening twilight has already settled outside. “I’m joining that festival too. And we’ll be hanging out in LA for a few days for rehearsals and then shipping out. So absolutely, we can hang out. I miss your face. And Duke. God, I miss Duke.”

He laughs. Of course she emphasizes her longing for his dog over him. But he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I really can’t wait to see you.” It falls from his lips in a whisper, a secret between the two of them that no one else can be in on. But the boys see it. Everytime his phone buzzes he does his best to look at it as soon as he can just in case it’s her. It’s harder to get out of bed, especially when he hasn’t talked to her in a while. “Can’t wait to kiss you again.”

“You’re a sap, you know.”

“But I’m your sap.”

She giggles, softly, watching cars whizz by. “Yeah, you are my sap.”

_________________________________

Her tour starts off well. And even though it’s her first time being out on the road like this, a constant bouncing around, and completely flipping her normal routine, she manages to cope pretty well. And it helps of course when she calls her friends, or talks to her dog. But it’s still definitely draining, pouring every bit of herself out on stage and then having just enough time to recoup before doing it all over again. There’s value in it, when the lights lift, and she can see the crowd that’s gathered just for her. It’s surreal and makes her feel like she could do this all the time. That the only thing she’d ever need is the sound of a crowd singing her songs back to her.

In her dressing room, she swaps the gold earrings for a pair of acrylic ones, these jade green. “You’re too quiet on me,” she says, flicking her gaze down to her tablet.

Calum picks his head up. “It’s hard to say much when perfection’s staring you in the face.”

She grins, hooking the earring back on. “Thank you, but that’s not what I meant.”

“We just got word about two more festivals in the same week you have your break. One’s in LA still, the other one’s a little ways out.” There’s no need to fake the funk anymore, or hide it away. She has another three weeks of shows before her break. And maybe he expects her to fly off the handle. Maybe he expects her to throw a fit, about how they had made plans, and it’s the only time they’ll get for each other for months.

But she doesn’t. She nods, fingers twirling over her rings. “What are they others saying?”

“They’re itching to get back on stage. And from a business standpoint, it’s money in the pocket of course. But I know we made plans and I feel like an ass. But there’s also the band, too.”

“Our jobs aren’t easy,” she sighs. “Take the gigs.” Calum can see her eyes tearing up just a little. “Mind if tag along on the LA show?”

“Of course not. I’m really, really sorry, buttercup. I’m so sorry.”

She waves her hand, trying to keep the tears back. If they fall, they become real. It’s his job. Just like it’s hers. “I get it.” It’s tight as it leaves her throat. And it takes her a second, plus a few sips of water to get control of her emotions, and clear out all the tears that threaten to fall. He wishes he could say more, or do more. But it’s like the words die in his throat. And he’s left, mouth gaping, wishing and wanting, but unable to do anything.

“Does it look bad if I just forgo my heels tonight from the start? They’re killing my feet on stage,” she laughs.

It’s a small grin, upturns a corner of his mouth but doesn’t keep it up for long. “You usually end up kicking them off anyway, halfway through the show.”

“Someone’s been scrolling through my name on Twitter, huh?”

He does. Watching her is mesmerizing and he’s sad that he can’t get the chance to see it in person, so he resorts to the fan videos. But he’s yet to admit to it. “I do not do such a thing.” And there’s giggles. A fit of laughter as she looks over the outfits and plucks her oversize denim jacket and figures even in the shorts, she can make the docs Calum surprised her with work. So she slides into the worn red leather shoes and starts lacing them up.

Calum whistles, heart racing just a little. He didn’t know those shoes had made the cut. “Look at you.”

She strikes a pose but laughs. “Do I look good?”

“You look fucking amazing, buttercup.”

__________________________

The sound of the crowd roaring before her ears turn on will always make her heart race. Calum said he would try to sneak side stage, but considering that he had to play on the mainstage right after her set on the side stage, it might not be for long. She didn’t mind that. But she hadn’t seen him. Not a blond crop in sight, of course if he hasn’t changed his hair since the last time. Her bassist strums the opening cord and it sends the crowd into a tizzy. With her guitar strapped around, she rolls out her neck, lining up.

As they walk out onto the stage, they launch right into the first song. She feels her fingers buzzing as she strums. But it feels good. The LA sun is hot but she kind of welcomes it versus the heat of the stage lights. There’s still a small breeze. It comes in waves for sure and she can tell that her pits are going to be soaked by song three. “How’s everybody doing?” she shouts into the mic.

There’s cheer in response and she laughs, hearing it reverb for just a moment. “That’s what I like to hear. Just want to say thank you for coming to see me play today. Your support truly means a lot to me.”

She continues on for just a few more seconds and right as she goes to introduce the fourth song of her set, everyone in the crowd starts to get rowdy. She thinks nothing of it, as the song starts. But she knows something is happening and she turns to check her drummer and in her spin, there’s Calum, her bassist’s bass slung over his shoulder, fingers sliding over the frets, plucking at the strings. Not that she doesn’t think Calum would go for a mint green bass on his own, but she hasn’t seen one in his collection just yet.

If it weren’t for the verse coming back up, she knows she would just stare. Singing into her mic, she throws a few glances over to him. Waiting as the harmony comes in and Calum slides up to the music, voice smooth in her inner ears, she almost melts right there on the spot. She hadn’t quite thought about the way his voice would sound with hers, but god, he harmonizes like an angel. She finishes the verse, with a small break before the chorus again. The stage is kind of small but while facing the crowd, she can’t quite see to her sides.

She knows though. She can almost sense when Calum approaches her. She giggles just a little into the mic, watching him smile at her. His head bobbing like it always does when he gets into whatever he’s playing or listening too. Calum plays next to her, watching the way the sweat trails down her forehead, but doesn’t streak an ounce of her makeup. He almost gives in, almost bends in to kiss her on the cheek, but he doesn’t. He lets her voice and the song carry him away, into his spin and up to the drummer’s stand. One foot on the riser, Calum bobs along, laughing at his expression, the raised eyebrow that says it all.

She gets a small break to watch the way Calum interacts with her band. Almost as if he’s known them just as long as she has. And in some ways, he probably has. She talks about Calum to them and talks about her band to Calum all the time. Once the song ends, Calum throws one hand in a tiny wave, before smiling over at her. “Didn’t scare you, did I?” he asks, away from the mic.

She shakes her head, sure that her cheeks will hurt after this. Laughing, she thanks Calum as he walks off stage. And she knows, she knows she shouldn’t. But she jogs after him, as her bassist comes back on, sending a smile over her shoulder too. It’s in that moment that it becomes clear, this was planned. Catching Calum right in the wings, she catches his wrist, tugging him in close before kissing him. It’s quick, but Calum’s heart races in his chest. She runs back out. “Sorry about that guys. I did not expect that.”

And as they get back to their set, Calum watches her for one more song, the way she dances around the stage. Their gazes lock just before he leaves and he blows a quick kiss, before his security are running him down the stage steps and across the festival grounds to get back to the mainstage in time. “How’d it go?” Michael asks.

“Well,” Calum grins, throwing his brown and black bass over his shoulder.

“Get any smooches?” Luke teases, smacking his lips together, while his arm is slung over Sierra’s shoulder.

“And if I did?”

“On stage?” Michael screeches.

“No, side stage. I almost kissed her on stage. But I didn’t want that all over the internet.” Considering that they aren’t official publically in any capacity, it would just cause more headache. Their set begins and Calum knows she has to run across the festival, so he’s not worried when by the time they step out and get three songs in, she hasn’t shown up at the side of the stage. And by the time, Calum regains consciousness enough to check again, there she is, standing off to the side, still in what she performed and breathing hard but she waves, gently from the side.

Out of reflex, once the chords are played, he gives a small wave in return. She returns the blown kiss from earlier and the other girls laugh softly at the action. “God, you guys are so fucking smitten with each other, it’s insane,” Sierra jokes.

There’s no denying it she knows. They’re like lovesick puppies and though it would normally annoy her, it’s nice. Without another word, she sips at her bottle of water and watches Calum, with all the laughs and grins he gives, pouring his soul out onto the stage.

And though the video calls, and the calls, work. They’re not quite enough. Her tour comes to an end, but just around the corner is Calum’s tour with the band. She think she might be able to sneak another week away before she starts working on her album, but then she gets asked to perform at some more festivals in her home country. And, who is she to turn that down? The more shows she plays, the more her name is out there, the more streams, and the merchandise is purchased. It becomes an endless wheel. Things just keep going, and going, and going and the whole time, she keeps looking for the breaks. For the thing that can put her life on pause and let her feel normal again.

Everytime she thinks she can get real time with Calum, it ends up short. He has something that comes up. She has something that comes in. It was the festival in LA and now her festival run. It’s his tour and her sophomore album. Why had she met Calum when she did? Was the universe playing a cruel joke on her? Was it taunting her that it could give her everything she wanted and then threatening to have it crumble? Sitting her hotel room, her phone shakes, another call from Calum. She doesn’t answer it, staring at the fridge in her room. She could get a drink. Wouldn’t be hard just take it from the mini fridge.

Her phone stops shaking. And then a minute later, it chimes, letting her know that a voice message has been left behind. The third one and more likely than not it’s from Calum. She wants this. She wants the relationship, but lately, it felt like there was no time. There was no time for anything. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t pause. And that’s all she wanted. That’s all she wants right now. She doesn’t want to open that voicemail to Calum pleading with her to answer. She wants to get back to when things were easier. And obviously, they were easier because they both had nothing to do.

Swiping her room key and her wallet, she heads down to the bar in the hotel. She orders herself a glass of wine. The glass makes a soft click as it settles down in front of her. She takes one sip. And it’s a little bitter, the red drier than she remembers it being. Soon the glass stares back at her and she can see her warped reflection. Would it just be easier for them to take things down a level? Is she afraid of hard work or more afraid of heartache?

With another two glasses of wine in her, she climbs back into the elevator and it takes her up, floor by floor until it digs and the doors slide open. The room is dark when she reenters like she left it the AC blasting. But she can see the blue light of her phone, on the desk, lighting up that corner of the room. Is it fair? If she wants to bolt, if she wants to cut ties so it makes things so much easier for them? Why couldn’t it be easy?

Calum’s sure he’s going to pull all his hair out. One moment, things are going good. They get a little tight for sure with their schedules never quite lining up to allow them more time together. But this is the third day in a row that he’s gone with nothing from her. No texts, not a returned call. Not even a meme in their Twitter thread. Nothing on her finsta. Her regular account post mainly about her upcoming shows. But he is as closed to being blocked without actually being blocked.

“Hey, I-I don’t know if something’s gone wrong. But please, please call me back. Or text me. Or send me a voice message. Something. Anything. Please? If I did anything, please let know what it was? I’m worried. Am I losing you?”

He ends the recording and sends it. Maybe he ought to stop reaching out so much. Should he wait for her to respond before sending more? But he doesn’t want to lose her? He doesn’t want to lose what they have. He hasn’t found it with anyone else in all his searching and even in his not searching. This fell into his lap and he can’t stand to lose it. Not when there had to be something to do to save it.

His phone sits for another day and half before she calls. He hands shake as he goes to answer it. He almost doesn’t want to answer it. His vegetable stir fry even threatens to come back up his throat. It’s not even burnt this time. But somewhere in his mind, somewhere deep, he had figured she wouldn’t ever call him back. He would be cursed to always wonder what went wrong. “Hey,” he breathes as he answers the call.

“Hey.” It’s croaky, like she might’ve been crying. And then it’s silent. Neither one of them are sure how to bring it up. Neither of them know how to ask what’s lingering between the two of them seems almost too much for words.

“Did I do something?”

“No,” she sighs. It would be easier if he had. It would be easier if she had. It would be easier if both of them were just bad for each other. “It’s just hard.”

“Talk to me. Let me in. We can figure it out.”

That’s the whole crux of her issue. She had let Calum in. She had let him so far in that it was starting to seem impossible to stay in her country and work. She had let him so far in that she wasn’t sure it would be possible to go months without seeing him properly. He was in everything, her bookshelves, her closet, her studio, her lyrics, her studio, in her sheets. Everything reminded her of him. And it just hurt in a way that she didn’t think being in love could hurt. In her silence, Calum continues on, “Let me look at something.” He scrolls through the emails, looking at the dates.

“How? How do we figure it out? On your tour, the only break you have in my country I’m in promo. And after that, you only get a day here or there. Everything’s so mismatched now.”

Calum blinks the tears that are stinging at his lower lash line. “Something’s gonna give.” Something has to give. There has to be something. Calum goes back to emails. What would be the magic code for them?

“I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

His throat jumps at her words, heart racing. “No, don’t say that. If you say that, I know what comes next.”

“Maybe it would just be easier, Calum.”

He is sick of it. Sick of things always blowing up in his face. But he can’t make her do something. He can’t make her take the words back, even if he wants her too. “We said there was an us.” It’s not accusorary as it falls from his lips. It just hurts. Things were going so well for so long, until time proved herself the ultimate judge yet again. “So what now?” The walls of his house start to push in closer on him.

“I’m not saying I never wanted more for us. I’m not saying that I want to cut you completely out of my life, Calum. I wanted so much more for us.”

“Me too. I want more for us.”

“Is now a good time though? Is now going to allow us more?”

Calum wants to laugh, it bubbles in his chest and he knows it’s delivery would be dry but he swallows it back down. “If you’re always waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll be waiting for a long time.”

“Maybe there’s a better time for us. Not a perfect one. Just a better one.”

“Maybe,” he whispers.

“You know, you’re in everything right? When you said to let you in, I couldn’t help but think that was my problem. You’re in my goddamn sheets. You’re in everything. When the sun rises, it’s like watching you smile. If you think I’m shutting you out, that I’m trying to save myself, I want you to know that I’m doing the exact opposite. I am drowning. In everything. In you. In whatever the fuck it means to be a musician. I am drowning and I can’t bear taking you down with me.”

He couldn’t possibly be in everything, not when she was in everything for him. In his journals, in the strings of his bass. When he sits down at a piano, he can’t help but think of the throaty notes that start the song she wrote about him. He can’t help but hear her voice, Brown irises and black tattoos. Maybe they were both drowning and couldn’t see anything but the water invading their own nostrils and lungs. “You’ll always be there,” Calum says, sniffling. The tears shock him, he hadn’t felt them until they’re running down his neck. He doesn’t even know where there is, but he feels it in the cavity of his chest.

_________________

That video is going to haunt him. And it’ll haunt her too. Whenever they see the videos and pictures of when Calum surprised her on stage it always shows just how fucking happy they were with each other. How things really were working for them. But right around the corner, right as she runs behind the edge of the stage, the world doesn’t see the kiss. They don’t see the tears that followed phone calls. They don’t see how schedules always seems to be running in parallel but never fucking intersectiong. That’s all they needed. Just one point to intersect, to meet again at, and maybe they would still be tagging each other in stupid memes. Maybe they would still be talking until crazy hours of the morning. Maybe they would still be writing small poems about each other and always posting them, but never saying who they were about.

Maybe if they just had the one chance to intersect again, her second album wouldn’t be about him. Maybe she could’ve talked about the way the clouds surf in the sky. Maybe she would have pondered the questions of existence without it being tied up in lost love. Maybe Calum would’ve had more to say in interviews. Maybe then, no one would ask him about his love life and it wouldn’t hurt to goddamn bad every time one of the other boys would jump in to save him. Maybe Calum wouldn’t feel like a rock sinking to the bottom of the river and seeing the sunlight just above him, but never having the willpower to push back up.

He hadn’t removed her number. Hadn’t unfollowed her on her finsta. Hadn’t blocked her on a goddamn platform. Because somehow that felt like a harsher step. Like a permanent close, like he was trying to erase who she was and what she had meant to him. It’s stupid, he knows. It’s insane and it’s not helping him in the slightest, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Maybe part of it was that natural and sometimes detrimental curiosity if that person was suffering just like you. He wanted to know if she bled just like him, if her pain was just as vicious as his.

Calum watches the video loop back again. The way she bites her lower lip but runs after him. The crowd is still screaming. They are still cheering. They are still buzzing. After saving the tweet, he drafts a message to her: I know you’ve moved to New York. I hope you’re enjoying it. City makes you feel anonymous doesn’t it? I have two days off during this tour. Maybe we have our better time now? I’m sure by now you know all the best places in town for pizza. I could be down for some cheesy delights.

Should he send that? His fingers shake. What’s left for them after a year and a half? They’ve still supported each other. He retweets about all her singles and videos. She praises the band’s new music in interviews. They aren’t unknown to each other. But somehow they feel like two ghosts. There’s a glass wall between and they look at each other just in passing. They never touch. They never intersect again. Instead, he exits the messaging app, but doesn’t actually delete the words.

When he goes back to the message thread, about a week from their dates in New York, there’s no shock that the app hasn’t saved it. And he feels partially relieved. He exits the app again and goes back to his mindless scroll through Instagram. An app saved him this time.

There is nothing to save him though, when he walks into the green room and spies her shrugging a coat on. The New York mornings are a little cool to the start. His heart is now in his throat. He’s not sure if he should swallow it back down. “We can go,” Ashton says quietly, taking him back his arm gently.

And somehow, like her ears are tuned in on everything, she hears something like her name, something like a soft wisp of a voice. When she looks up and sees Calum, donned in all black, though his long lined jacket has some white stitching and embroidery, she’s sure she could melt into the floor. He still looks good. Still has the same quiet pout to his face that makes him look slightly less approachable but it changes in a heartbeat when he smiles. She grabs the strap to her bookbag purse.

She knows it was her that ended things. She knows that seeing Calum here in front of her, should make her feel embarrassed. But somehow, all she wants to do, all she’s ever wanted to do since that phone call is embrace him one last time. Tell him that he’s still handsome as ever. Promise him that she meant what she said, that he was and still is in everything. “C’mon. We gotta go,” her security tell her.

But all she can do is stare at Calum. Unzipping her purse, she finds the note, the letter she never had the courage to send him and with a deep breath, she walks over. Ashton looks like he could probably murder her. And she doesn’t blame him. She could never blame that instinct to protect the ones you love especially from the ones that hurt them the most. “I’m sorry,” she says, holding out the white envelope. “For everything. And if we don’t ever get that better time, know I’d only ever wish the best for you.”

Calum’s fingers barely grasp onto the note before she’s sidestepping him. The boys circle around him, like they’re just waiting for his word to pounce. She steps through the heavy glass door. And she’s leaving him again. She’s going to slip through his fingers. Again. Pushing through Luke and Michael, Calum swings open the door. “Wait!” he calls out.

She stops, spinning on her heels to face him again. Calum jogs down the corridor. All the offices have windows. Everyone is probably watching. With both hands cupping her face, letter between his fingers and all, he pulls her in close. “You’re not leaving me again. You’re not going to walk out my life a second time. Not without me putting up a hell of a fight.”

“You shouldn’t fight for me. Not after what I did.”

“Meet me tonight. Let’s actually talk about it. I’ve been holding so much inside and if, god forbid, if it’s not now if we had our shoot and we fucking blew it, at least I’ll know for sure.”

“Does 8 work for you?” She tries so hard not to wrap her hands around his wrist, not to slide it up his forearms and tug herself into his chest. And god, he still smells the same. Old Spice and Gain. It feels so right to press herself into his chest.

“Yeah,” he mumbles into the top of her head. It’s still the same scent as before in almost two years, he can’t even believe it.

She takes a step back, patting at her pockets and pulls out a pen. Pulling the envelope from his fingers, she scribbles down a name and address. “If this place is too far from your hotel, just call me.” He watches her, jotting down more numbers. “It’s my new US number.” While handing the infor back to him, she grins just a little. “Don’t lose it now.”

Calum laughs, remembering the first time she delivered that line to him. “I won’t. Promise.”

Dear Calum,

There’s no real way to say this that doesn’t make my chest feel like it’s been punched in. I shouldn’t have let you go. There was a way to make it all work. There was a way so that you and I could’ve pushed through. I was just too scared of things going too right, going too well. Maybe that sounds dumb. Or maybe that sounds insane. But the truth of the matter, I messed up. I’m sorry. And you don’t have to ever forgive me. You deserve the ability to move on. You deserve everything good that comes to you in the future. I want you to be happy. Even if it’s not with me. Even if our better time has passed.

You deserve to be happy.

Calum reads over the letter again. Still not sure how his lungs are still operating because he was positive all the air had been exhaled. It’s the fourth time he’s read it today. Since he had Michael read it out to him in the green room. He would’ve asked Ashton, but knew that Ashton would’ve told him not to worry, to keep moving forward. Because he had, in a way. He had thrown himself into music. He had tried to chase after her in other people. He had read all the books on poetry, and love, and philosophy. But something down in his gut told him that he would never let her go again if he got a second chance with her.

He looks at the date. She wrote it six months after everything went south. Maybe she forgot to send it. It had his name on it--just never fully addressed out though. She could’ve messaged him. Emailed. Called. Literally anything and he would’ve answered. But hadn’t she? What held her back? And just as he goes to read it over one more time, the door chimes open. He looks at his phone. Just as the time ticks over to 8. And when he glances over his shoulder, there she is. In the same jacket from before.

The little pizza shop isn’t too loud. Most people come in just to get their few slices and then dip right back out. She smiles, waving just a little before sliding onto the stool next to him. She points to the letter, that he hasn’t even moved to put up, “Sorry it’s not my best work. I thought about finding a synonym for happy but nothing fit right.”

With a breathy chuckle, Calum folds the letter up, slipping it into his pocket. “What do you recommend off the menu?”

“God, with this place, anything.”

They settle back down on the stools, paper plates not fully supporting the extra large slices and a stack of napkins between them. The grease runs down his chin and Calum feels it rolling too. But his hands are full trying to keep his slice from falling. She laughs, dabbing at his face with a napkin. “I still see you’re the messiest eater around.”

“Hey, hey, it’s not my fault,” he grins. Their giggles dissipate as the bell chimes again, a signal of another patron entering. “What happened?” The question doesn’t feel full enough, doesn’t feel like it fully encapsulates all the confusion he holds. But yet, those are the only words he has.

“A lot started happening all at once. Your tour, my second album. More shows. It just-I felt like I couldn’t breathe. That I wasn’t a person. And maybe part of it was selfish. Maybe I was trying to save myself all along and I was just telling myself and you that I wasn’t selfish. I really am sorry. Like, if I had known, god if I had known that doing that would’ve caused all the pain it did, trust me, I wouldn’t have. If I could go back and tell myself, that crazy shit happens and you just gotta learn how to keep your cool, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It was a mistake letting you go. But at the same time, reaching out felt wrong too. Like I would’ve been ruining the peace you had created for yourself. And I didn’t want to do that either.”

“You know, I felt like we had something different. Like that was really going to be it for me and I had finally figured out this whole being in love thing. That I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. And maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I saw something happening and didn’t do anything.”

“We were living continents away. With everything happening, you weren’t seeing all of it. No need to blame yourself.” She takes his hand, slipping her fingers between his, twisting at the silver band around his middle finger. “I do want you to be happy, Calum. I want you to be so happy it just can’t be contained.”

“I was with you.” He squeezes her hand, willing her to look at him and not the street in front of them, through the glass.

“I’m still not in L.A.”

“But you are in the same country as me now and I will take that.”

“You’d still take me back after everything?” When she looks at him, brows furrowed together, Calum knows he’s a goner. He always was with her.

“I would.”

“You’d be crazy.”

“I am already crazy. Because I’m tempted to ask you where you’re staying and if I could stay the night.”

He’s leaned in to her, just a hair. And she leans in too, resting mostly shoulder to shoulder. “You are crazy,” she laughs softly, taking in the reflection of the neon lights on the street. “But maybe I’m also crazy too.”

The night is cool again. Both of their boots scuff the concrete. She doesn’t stay far from the small diner, a ten minute walk really. With fingers threaded through each other, they walk huddled close up the sidewalks. The wind whips across their faces. They dodge piles of trash on the edge of the sidewalks and they keep their heads down so as to not attract a crowd. “How do you like New York? Got to be a huge shock?”

“It most definitely is. I like feeling anonymous here. With so many people around.”

“I know you said you don’t do well with people and New York feels like the opposite of the place you want to. Especially not in the city.”

“I mean, I still don’t do great with people. I’m in the city for the time being. But I have my eye on a few places further out. But after everything, I felt less lonely here. I don’t know. No one cared about who I was. No one cared what the fuck I was doing here. And I liked it better that way. Back home, everyone knew. Everyone looked at me like I was a broken vase. Here, no one gave a shit. It’s move or be moved here. Forced me to come to terms with everything. Forced me to accept everything I was trying to hide.”

“Do you need to go to your hotel? Grab or bag or something?” She asks just before they pass the opening for the subway.

“I have my roomkey. It’s all good. All the interviews were today.”

“As long as you’re sure.”

He gives her hand another squeeze. “I’m sure.” They reach the door to the complex and she digs out her keys, opening the front door. Calum follows her through the second set of doors. The elevator is a little janky as it carries them up, and definitely tiny. In the space, they’re pressed chest to chest. There are a few extra lines around her eyes, he notices and runs the pad of his thumb over the skin. It’s just as soft as it’s always been. She feels so familiar under his touch, yet so new.

It’s not a far ascent and she laughs when he pouts as she pulls away. “Just like four more steps.”

It’s true to word, when they step out of the elevator, her door is directly in front of it. Her keys jingle just a little as she works the lock and pushes into the chipping red paint of the door. Her dog leaps from the couch, greeting her and then barking just a little when they spot Calum. He laughs, kneeling to hug them to his chest. “You still remember me, huh?” he laughs, as they attempt to lick his face and jaw. “Oh, too long, I know. Sorry, bubs. Didn’t forget about you.”

She takes his jacket, hanging it by the door. “Want anything to drink?”

Calum shakes his head from her couch, working at his shoes. “No, I’m good, thank you.”

She nods, watching as her dog claims Calum’s attention. But she can’t find an ounce of herself to be mad or annoyed. So she slips out of her shoes and puts them up, before getting herself a bottle of water. When she settles onto the couch, she just laughs at the antics. Calum keeps trying to say something but at every twist, her dog is right there, plopping themselves in his lap. Calum eventually gives up and wraps his arms around their body, scratching lightly at their fur.

“Someone missed you too,” she teases, putting her two fingers really close together. “Just a tiny bit.”

His laughter echoes in her head. “Yeah, clearly just a little.” He lifts his head just a little when he feels the wet tongue at his chin. “So, you’re working on your third album?”

“On and off,” she admits. “Playing more shows than anything for the time being. I don’t have to think. Everytime I think too much I end up fucking something up. So I’m just taking it easy for the time being. Taking some brand deals.”

“You’ve got a collab coming out soon, right?”

She nods at the question, laughing as her dog finally settles down. “Yeah, next month. I’ve always lived kind of a boring life, you know that.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know.” He can finally shift, as her dog wanders over to the water bowl, so that he can sit in front of her. It’s a dangerous game. He’s played it before with her. But he takes her chin into his hands. “We haven’t really talked in a while.”

“Is there something you want to say, Calum?”

“Yeah,” he returns simply. Her breath hitches, eyes searching his brown ones for something, anything that tells her what’s going on. “I wonder if your lips still feel the same. I always thought about the way you’d laugh sometimes into a kiss. And it used to haunt me. But right now, I want to find out if anything else has changed.”

She wastes no time, pushing up and sealing her mouth around his. His hand slides to the back of her neck and she pulls at the collar of his shirt. They fall into each other, then falling into the arm of the couch. She exhales her laughter, still pecking at Calum’s lip. Her fingers tease the skin of his upper chest and neck.

“I was right,” he grins.

She hooks her finger around the gold plate. “I guess you were.” She pulls him back in for another kiss, slipping her hands into his hair.

As his lips trail over her jaw and down to her neck, she thinks about the time at her apartment back home, Calum woke her up with kisses down her jaw. They still feel the same. Maybe even a little bit better. His finger push up the hem of her shirt, squeezing at the flesh of her side. She sighs and Calum groans at the sound. It sets off everything in his body when he hears her quiet noises of pleasure.

“Is this okay?” he asks, pulling away to look at her as his fingers brush over her skin. “I don’t want to push you or take things too fast this time.”

Being with Calum feels like no time has past, if she’s honest. She doesn’t have the butterflies, just the comfort of someone she’s known for a year. And it sort of feels like they’re picking back up from where they left off. “I’m okay with it.”

He grins and she sees it--that rising sun in the gleam. His forehead rests against her. “I kinda feel like we have a lot of lost time to make up for.” His lips brush just over hers as he speaks.

She exhales her laughter again, but agrees. “Just a little bit. I really am sorry.”

“We all make mistakes. You just have to communicate with me, okay? That’s all. Talk to me this time. If you feel like you’re drowning, let me help. Please.”

She pushes up and Calum settles back down into the cushion, taking her hands into his. “I know things won’t be like, perfect now. But I guess, it’s really important that we do get to spend quality time together.”

“It is. And I know my tour schedule is pretty packed right now, but there’s another longer break in about three weeks. They’re LA shows. I don’t know if you have plans, but if you do, we can hang out then.”

She has to laugh because here’s the trouble all over again. “Booked recording sessions then.”

“Okay, well, the week after that is the break between legs. What are you doing then?”

“Nothing.” There’s a break between sessions, and she had just planned to use the time to breathe.

“I’ll fly you out then. Just you and I and my rehearsals. But that’s besides the point.”

Laughing, she rests her head into his bicep. “Just you, I, and your rehearsals. Got it.”

“We’ll have to better plan out things, that’s all. We’ll have to look at both our schedules and make sure that there’s sufficient breaks and time together.” He guides her head up. “I want you. And I mean all of you. I can’t stand to lose you again.”

“I just have to make sure Ashton doesn’t kill me.”

“He’s protective, yes. But not an evil. I’ll talk to him. Don’t you worry.”

“He did write a whole song about how he’d bury a body for you. So I think I have a little bit to worry about.”

Calum laughs, shaking his head. “Maybe just a little bit.” Her grin makes him want to bottle it. He wants to carry it with him in his pocket. Leaning closer, he kisses her again. “But right now, it’s just you and I. There’s nothing else but time for us right now.”

She hums. “I like the sound of that.”

Fingers trail back under shirts. She drinks down his moans as they tease, barely touch. Calum’s shirt is discarded in the living room and her is pulled off in the hallway. Calum holds her face in his hands, memorizing the way her teeth sink into his bottom lip in the gentle nip. He moans. Fuck, she feels so good against him.

Her spine shivers as his fingers trail to her back and unsnap the band of her bra. As the fabric falls from her shoulders and she tosses it somewhere, Calum takes a hand just to cup her. His fingers roll the erect bud and she sighs again, mouth falling slack against his. He laughs. “Hmm, that’s right. Someone does like their nipples played with.”

She grins though, blinking open her eyes. “Don’t think I forgot that you don’t listening to rules and like a little pain.”

Finding her waist with both hands, Calum holds her in close. “You wouldn’t dare.”

She bends her knees, just a little and with hot and open mouth kisses she trails down his chest before taking her teeth into the meat of his peck. Calum jolts, a grunt falling over his lips and throat. “I would dare,” she returns.

They fall into her sheets, the same golden ones from before. They’re just as soft against Calum’s skin. It’s warm, as their skin heats up. Her skirt has landed somewhere to the floor and Calum pushes his hips up as she shrugs the denim down. She kisses over his thighs, moaning just a little. Calum lets his eyes flutter close at her soft kisses.

Everything just feels right. Even as Calum takes a nipple into his mouth, tongue teasing her just a little. Or when she kisses over his length. But right now, she tosses her head back when Calum pries her legs open kissing up her inner thighs. “I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispers, watching as she clenches, more of her arousal leaking from her.

She huffs, pulling a hand through her hair. “You sure do know how to make a girl sweat.”

“It’s a speciality,” he laughs with a wink before kissing her clit. She balls on fist around her sheets, stomach completely clenched. The last thing she wants is to have to wait much longer for anything. The anticipation can be a good thing, though she’s doing everything she can to keep her cool. That is, until Calum finally takes the first lap from her and she unravels, a moan leaving her throat as it mixes with a whine.

He takes his time, pushing her thighs and knees to give him all the access he could ever want. Calum licks another stripe over her, before sucking her clit into his mouth. She taste better than he could’ve ever imagined. Every sound she gives--moans, groans, or a whine--rattles in his brain and spurs him on. One of her hands finds it’s way into his hair and she tries to push up with her hips and his face down into her core. But it’s not like he needs the assistance or the reminder. When he trails down to her opening, his nose brushes over her clit and her body is reeling.

“Oh, fuck,” she whines, feeling the coil in her lower gut tightening.

Calum hums at the sounds, and when she praises him, tells him that he’s the only one to make her feel this fucking food, he rewards, slipping a finger into the mix, pushing up into her. “Is that so?” he asks, watching her head dive deeper into the pillows.

“God, Calum,” she huffs.

Another finger finds it way inside, pushing and curling in all the right places. Her body feels like it’s on fire. She feels like she’s a coil so tightly wound she’s going to break. His tongue flicks across her click, lapping at her. And that’s it, that’s the right combination to send her over the edge. Over she goes, with a yelp, her orgasm rocking her frame and toes curling as she cries out for Calum.

He keeps her going, keeps curling his fingers at her. So lost in the way she sounds. And when the huffs turn into a hiss, he pulls back. She beckons him up, kissing him and tasting her own arousal coating his lips and tongue. He’s careful not to settle fully against her, but it’s quickly changed when her legs come up and lock around his waist. “I’m not gonna break,” she laughs, when he finally let’s go and sinks into her.

She swallows his response with a kiss but it doesn’t matter anyway. Her hips come up and Calum rolls onto his back, letting her settle atop him. Her nails rake down his skin and she sucks at his neck, he’s sure it’ll bruise just a little but it’s okay with him. His nails dig into the flesh of her hips, not sure if he wants the friction right now or if he just needed to revel in the feeling of her against him.

“Shit,” he whines when she rocks over him. “I-fuck.”

She laughs, pulling away to reach into her drawer. “That sounds about right.”

Calum delivers a swift swat to her ass at the joke, but laughs anyway. “That is not funny.”

“Then why are you laughing.” When she turns her attention back to him, condom in hand. She stretches down to kiss him again. “Did I ever tell you you’re not the only one that likes a little pain?”

His eyebrows arches and he smooths over her ass before delivering another spank to her opposite cheek. She sighs, eyes fluttering close just a little. “Oh, buttercup, you should’ve never told me that.”

“We can save it for another time? Because right now the only thing I can think about is riding you until the sun rises.”

Kneading at her breast, Calum grins. “Now, that sounds about right.”

There’s a moment, right as she settles down on him fully, that they both moan at the feeling. Calum because of the warmth and slickness, her because of the stretch. Her head is dizzy again with need. She steadies herself with her hands planted on his chest and rocks. All she can focus on is the girth of him, stretching her completely open. It makes her toes tingle and she falters, falling into his chest, but starts a new cadence, pulling up and settling back down on his length.

“Holy shit,” he huffs. She buries her face into the crook of his neck and Calum coaxes her out, to look at him. “You don’t get to hide from me, not again. Wanna see that pretty face when you cum.”

Her hips are still rocking but she nods, eyes fluttering close just for a moment. Calum kisses her, and it’s his turn to swallow down the moan she feeds him. She pushes back up, pulling her own breast between her fingers. Calum loses the top of his head, he’s sure, watching as she rides him. His fingers trail over her hips, up to her stomach. “Why’d you have to be so handsome?” she teases breathy.

He’s not sure how to respond. Unsure of the heat he feels is a blush or the sweltering of arousal flooding his body. She takes one of his hands, trailing it towards her heat. And Calum takes the hint, thumb circling the bundle of nerves. Her head falls back on her neck as a hum builds in her chest. Calum kneads at her right breast, pulling and pushing at every button he can to have orgasm again for him.

A high pitched squeak falls from her. The bed taps against the wall, but neither one of them really cares. Her orgasm washes over it, like a wave crashing into the shoreline. She shudders, clenching around him and falls again into his chest, but pushes up onto her elbows, remember Calum’s early demand. “Fuck,” she whines when he starts to fuck up into her. He pulls her body up and she’s useless, body still like jello from her orgasm. Her words catch in her throat.

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her ear when she bites down onto his shoulder. “You know I like the pain.”

“Feel so good,” she returns. “Calum, shit, you feel so good.” His hips start to stutter, trying to ride out for longer, but knowing that inevitably he’s at the end of his rope. She kisses over his neck. “Cum for me, yeah? Please.”

Who is he to deny her? Who is he she to defy her? He ruts up once, twice, and she clenches hard, taking most of the wind of his third thrust but he cums hard, arms squeezing her to his chest and he knows he’s loud in her ear as he groans. Though, it’s suspected that’s just the sound she wanted to hear as she seals his mouth with hers.

Calum wraps the towel around his waist. She’s already under the cover, with them flipped down for him. She pats the spot in the mattress. He can see some of the hickies covering her chest that he left behind. Without much thought, Calum dries off a bit more and then slips between the sheets. “Hey,” she whispers. “Come here often?”

“My first time actually. But the first of many, I hope.”

Her nose scrunches as Calum taps it. “Yeah, of many. I brought your phone into the room. Put it on my spare charger. And I know that it’ll go off at 5:55 AM. No, you don’t have to turn it off. I know it’s important to you.”

“You--you still remember that?

“I don’t know if you really remember. But when I said that you were in everything, you were everywhere. I meant it.” She turns to her back, the sheets tucked up to her chin. Both of them are bare beneath them.

Calum’s taken up drawing random patterns on her stomach as he holds himself up on his elbow, facing her. “I remember. Could never forget that.”

“Guess we might’ve meant for something more, something better.” Her voice is soft. The blinds in her window let the lights of the city in. Nothing about it is quiet as sirens pass by. Calum lets his head fall into her pillows. She turns, both of them now facing each other again. Her arm slides over his waist. He throws one of his legs over hers.

She’s content like this, where she can kiss across the tattoos on his chest. Though she can’t really see the one just under his peck, she thinks about the question poised there. Why would she choose anything other than Calum? It remains quiet for a while and she thinks he’s fallen asleep until his chest rumbles.

“We were. It was just a matter of getting there. Finding the right path for us.” He’s positive, as she shuffles in a little closer that this is it for him. And if he has to fight hell, heaven, or high water, he’d do it all for her.

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peace-coast-island · 3 years

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Diary of a Junebug

Movie night with a bunch of oranges

Today was a busy day consisting of harvesting oranges and bringing out equipment for tomorrow. We've got a pretty good haul - and probably way too many oranges than we can handle. Thankfully I still have room in my inventory for other fish/bugs/shells or else I'd be kinda screwed, but I should try to make more room just in case.

Then again, there's still the possibility that I end up slacking off and spend the last day trying to collect as many oranges as possible before the deadline. I don't know why, but when it comes to collecting fruit I almost always find myself rushing at the end. I hate having to use up fertilizer in batches but sometimes you have no choice.

At least for this event I have some help so here's to hoping I don't have to break out the fertilizer at all. Probably wishful thinking, though it doesn't hurt to hope. With five extra hands helping out, why wouldn't we be able to get a lot done?

It's good to see Lotte, Mitch, and Gene again along with Willow, Frank, and Paisley. I haven't seen the latter three in forever since they've been super busy so imagine my excitement when I found out that Gene's working with them on a new movie.

The new movie's another adaptation of Paisley's short stories, Flower in the Wind, which will be directed by Willow and starring Cheyenne Ruthie in her film debut with Gene and Frank as part of the supporting cast. Cheyenne used to live in the neighborhood near me and Daisy Jane and we reconnected a while back after running into each other on social media.

In fact, she's planning to drop by the camp sometime in the near future as she's going through some pretty big life changes and could use a bit of a breather when things settle down a bit. Along with the upcoming movie, she's also in the process of moving and making up for lost time with her dad. I'm happy that things are going well for her and knowing Willow and Paisley, Flower in the Wind is sure to mark the start of something greater for her.

Willow, Frank, and Paisley are all former members of Jamie's entourage. Willow Chasen's a writer and director known for classics like Crossfire, Fighting Stance, Paper Dreams, Train Whistle Blowing, and many others. She's been named one of the greatest directors of the decade and she rightfully deserves that honor. I'm a huge fan of her work so I'll admit that I have high expectations for the new movie.

Frank Dunston and Paisley Kusuma are bloggers who used to run Behind the Spotlight, which chronicled the behind the scenes of the entourage members. Before coming to the island, they made the news when they were abducted and held hostage by a former detective who used to work for Frank's aunt Diane. His uncle, Eldred Dunston, is a well known actor who got Frank and Paisley interested in acting.

The two have been best friends for a long time, they have a sweet relationship. We joke that they're like an old married couple but it's all strictly platonic. They share an apartment and raise Paisley's daughter Lizzie together. Lizzie's named after Diane as she figuratively and literally saved Paisley and Frank's lives. The whole ordeal with the abduction brought them closer together and also wound up kicking off their careers.

While they have been doing a lot more solo projects since leaving the entourage and ending the blog, Frank and Paisley are still a duo. Flower in the Wind happens to be their first movie together in over a year, something they said they've been enjoying as they missed working alongside each other.

Paisley's a writer and author who runs a blog called The Flower Writes which she updates sporadically with life stuff and her creative process on her latest projects. She does some acting in supporting roles though she prefers to be behind the scenes, having established herself as a writer and producer over the years. She's also one of the writers for Robert's upcoming show Mount Barley, RFD so that's another reason to be hyped about it. Maybe someday she'll be sitting on the director's chair but she says that for now she's happy where she is.

Frank has been acting on stage and screen, starting out on small roles alongside his uncle until he got comfortable with the spotlight before making a name for himself on his own. He also dabbles in photography, having once run a blog for that before becoming a freelancer. Speaking of that, Daisy Jane's his next client as she's in need of professional pics for her upcoming shop update. Since he doesn't live too far from here, he's offered to make the commute to help Daisy Jane out for future shop updates, which is great as she finds taking product photos is one of her least favorite aspects of running a shop.

Lotte's been busy with the bakery while Mitch is working hard at the orchard. Gene's been making time in between acting gigs and his day job to visit home often, getting back in touch with old friends he hasn't seen or heard or spoken to in years. It's good to hear that things between Gene and his dad have improved since I last saw them. Lotte and Mitch can finally rest easy now that their family's back together. Although I haven't known Gene for long, it feels like I've known him forever and can't imagine him not being here.

Interesting how one's presence (or absence) can leave such an impression.

It's a good thing Mitch's here for a harvesting event as he's got a vast knowledge on a variety of plants and produce. Thanks to him, we were able to venture outside the camp to find more oranges. Who knew that Starsnatch Grove has a bunch of different varieties of oranges? Perfect oranges, starburst oranges, rainberry oranges - there's so many more that I've never seen or heard of before!

Turns out that Starsnatch's soil is ideal for citrus and that around this time of year is the peak of their season. Mitch really did his research about the camp and its surrounding areas. He also showed me other places for fruits and veggies, which will be useful for future reference.

So we've been wandering around Starsnatch, collecting all kinds of oranges and exploring the area. Rainberry oranges look like rainbow berries, hence the name, and the taste kinda reminds me of an orange spice tea. Cinnaorange is a new variety I've never seen before as they're rare and according to Lotte, they make a good marmalade. Sunkiss splash is an unusual orange with a sunburst pattern on its skin. The tree is kinda hard to care for, which is why there's not a lot of them and the orchard where Mitch works is one of the few that grows them.

With all these oranges, there's a lot we can do with them. I don't even know where to start as there's so many possibilities. Good thing we have Mitch and Lotte here to help us out!

After a busy day of collecting oranges, catching up, hiking, and coming up with ideas for tomorrow, it felt fitting to end the day with a movie marathon. So we watched three Sound Stories movies while enjoying sweet and tangy oranges.

Firefly Garden is one of my absolute favorite movies ever. Pretty much everyone I know considers this one of their favorites, including my mom. From the stunning animation to the gorgeous soundtrack and heartwarming story, it's no wonder it's a classic. Noelle and Sophie are hands down some of my favorite characters of all time.

The second movie we watched was Neighbors, a cute movie where nothing much happens yet it's so soothing and entertaining to watch. The art is breathtaking and expressive and it really adds to the story. It's a bit of an offbeat, unconventional kind of film, one I initially thought I wouldn't get into but ended up enjoying a lot.

Bee and the Quill is the latest Sound Stories movie and I loved it. The story's a bit hard to follow, but that's the point. As usual, the visuals are stunning and the whole dragon fight sequence was amazing to watch. Viola's journey to find her sister's ghost is one of those stories where you don't know exactly what's going on so you just roll with it and open your mind to the unknown.

Tomorrow we're gonna take a break from harvesting oranges to have some fun in the kitchen with our new discoveries. I'm looking forward to trying a bunch of new teas, especially with the rainberry oranges. We'll be making orange tea cake, orange juice, salads, and all kinds of other recipes we may stumble across. Then at night will be another marathon of Sound Stories movies where we'll be watching Snowflakes and Floating on Clouds, both which I've somehow never got a chance to watch yet.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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grimelords · 6 years

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Hello and god bless, I have finally finished my November playlist a week and a half into december. Disco, Guns N’ Roses, an entire doom metal album and everything in between. Please enjoy.

Extraball - Yuksek: Aside from the extremely nice electro bass I think what I appreciate most about this song is that the chorus seems like the sort of thing you could sing in a round, or as some kind of children’s clapping game.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: Let me be the first to apologise for putting an 80 minute doom metal album as the second song on this playlist. I’m sorry. It was selfish and it won’t happen again. That said, please listen to this because it is transformative. I’ve listened this a lot this month and it’s really affected my mood I think. Doom metal is one of the only genres that takes itself seriously enough to release an album that’s just one 80 minute track but I really can’t fault them for doing it. This is a piece of music that demands to be listened to in full, and while it does naturally divide into movements like anything else this long would, it would be weaker overall if it were split into individual tracks or listened to individually. A lot of the playing on here, which is very sparse in long sections feels like ritual music of some kind - a feeling that’s compounded by the length when you’re absolutely lost within it. It makes electric bass and drums feel like modern ritual instruments and this album feels like an invocation of the spirit of loss itself.

Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis: For some reason I keep thinking about and listening to different versions of Sixteen Tons. This is Merle Travis, the orginal songwriter, but this is a new recording he did in 1989. Notably I love the very plaintive solo in the middle of this, but I especially love that he changed the lyric at the end to say “I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford” which feels like an agressive rebuke or a solemn nod but I can’t tell which.

Looking Up - Michael Smith: My girlfriend sent me this song because she heard it on the podcast Good Christian Fun which as I understand it is an exploration of the bizzare world of american evangelical christian media. Anyway this song rocks. It sounds like Todd Terje remixed the theme to some lost 80s sitcom and I really can’t get enough of it.

Wild - Beach House: This is such a beautiful song. I love the tinny drum machine and the live drums that sound programmed constrasting against the huge wall of guitar and synths. I used to listen to this album a lot a few years ago when I worked night shift and it reminds me of standing on top of wine tanks in the cool night air at 2am texting my now girlfriend as she went to bed. Sorry.

Piano Concerto No. 3 In D Minor, Op.30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto - Sergei Rachmaninoff: I had a friend in school who did his licentiate degree in piano in year 12 and was obsessed with this piece. One day he took me through the whole first movement and showed me how the theme is established and comes back in different forms over and over again throughout and basically taught me how to listen to classical music which was very kind of him because it’s something I’m only really appreciating now.

Verklärte Nacht, Op.4: String Sextett for 2 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Cellos - Arnold Schoenberg: This is an early Schoenberg piece before he got into that good good atonal serialism, but it does still have moments that presage what was to come. I don’t really have much to say about this other than it’s a very good place to start with Schoenberg because it’s like proof that he was a human man at one point.

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - Harry Belafonte: I’ve really been thinking about how work songs like this and like Sixteen Tons become international hits. This one especially, in the 50s, was it because it was a really good song (which it is) that a lot of people related to or was it a sort of exoticism about funny banana song (which to be fair, it also is).

Boogie Wonderland (12" Version) - Earth, Wind And Fire: This is the song you hear playing from the other side of the door when you get to heaven.

Apollo’s Mood - The Olympians: This album is basically a collection of Daptone All-Stars under the name The Olympians just doing their thing and it’s really amazing. I especially love the harpsichord in this, an instrument that doesn’t get nearly enough of a workout in soul music. Also, I don’t really know how to describe it but I really love the way the snare roll that starts it off and comes back a few times sounds - buzzy and busy without rushing anyone.

Saturn - The Olympians: This is the song you use for your montage at the end of a James Bond movie that’s just four minutes of him relaxing and drinking different cocktails by himself that the critics called ‘wholly unneccesary’. In the drums and bongo break he does a little dance and falls over.

November Rain - Guns N’ Roses: As far as overblown classic rock epics go, I really wish November Rain had the cultural place of bad song Bohemian Rhapsody or Stairway To Heaven because underneath the 9 minutes of stings and bullshit it’s actually a very beautiful and sad song written by an idiot.

Sisters Of The Moon - Fleetwood Mac: With the current wytchy cult that Stevie Nicks has around her it’s easy to forget that she wrote songs like Sisters Of The Moon, a song explicitly about a witch converting other women to witchery. I love the big extended phrase of guitar chords in the chorus and I’m very mad about how this song fades out just as it’s absolutely going off.

When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin: Rounding out this unexpected classic rock trio is When The Levee Breaks which I was thinking about because I was thinking about The Big Short. This song sounds so good and there’s been so much written about the famous drum sound and the production but what I only learned this month is that it was apparently recorded at a faster tempo and then slowed down afterwards, which explains a lot about a lot of the sounds in here.

Bad Liar - Selena Gomez: This is maybe the pop song of the year honestly. It’s so good in every single aspect, especially the when she says’ oh baby lets make reality, actuality, reality’ which is a very weird lyric. So is 'you’re taking up a fraction of my mind, every time I watch you serpentine(?)’. Great stuff all around.

Hello Miss Lonesome - Marlon Williams: I saw Marlon Williams a year or so ago and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to because things just kept going wrong. Broken strings and misunderstandings and all that sort of thing, and the highlight for me was in this song the drummer got overconfident and started pushing the tempo near the end and eventually tripped over himself so badly they had to stop and start again.

The Voice Of Q - Q: Here’s how you can tell a song is good: you can only find it on Spotify on a compilation album called 'Cocaine Boogie: 24 Kilos Of Underground 80s Dance’. This song seems like a classic case of 'somebody bought a vocoder’ and it’s very very good, another fantastic entry in the canon of interplanetary disco. I also love the children sadly pleading with Q to come back at the end, because the song hasn’t really given you any understanding of who or what Q is other than a being with a voice who is from space.

Take A Trip - Rev. Utah Smith: If I were, hypothetically, to start, for example, a UFO cult, I would definitely have my congregation sing this song. I love it so much. Outside of the fun premise it does what good gospel music should do and completely uplifts my spirit by promising a better life after this one, and if I get to go there by rocket ship, well that’s all the better.

Normal Person - Arcade Fire: I love the little 'do you like rock and roll music? 'cause I don’t know if I do.’ he sings at the start because it sounds like they’re into their 13th hour of recording or something. I love the lead guitar that sounds like it’s severely undernourished but trying its best and I love how strangely heavy the bass and rhythm guitar is compared to a lot of their other songs. A good song to sing along to while you’re driving.

Top Of The World - Kimbra: I don’t know exactly how or why but Kimbra made a Kanye song. Playing the dual roles of Kanye and Featured Artist she does a great job and once again defies whatever I thought she was going to do next. I can’t wait for the album, I hope it has even more Raps.

Eric’s Trip - Sonic Youth: I’ve never gotten much into Sonic Youth because they seemed way too New York Cool for me, so imagine my heartbreak when I found out the lyrics to my favourite song of theirs are wholesale lifted from an Andy Warhol film. I still have a lot of love for 'my head’s on straight, my girlfriend’s beautiful, it looks pretty good to me’ though.

I Hope I Sleep Tonight - DJ Seinfeld: God I’d be embarrassed if I blew up on soundcloud with the name 'DJ Seinfeld’ and then had to keep it when I put my album out. This album varies pretty wildly in quality but I really love this track, the synth melody that just careens around wildly while the rest of the song happens nearby is what does it for me I think.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: “In an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, Jaar said “I was watching a documentary about bugs. It said that if they looked at the sun, they’d die. I thought ‘Oh, that’s funny; that’s cute’ and I wrote a track about it (…). If you find something really special in a tiny story about bugs, it could have a much bigger meaning than that. I like the idea of turning life into this miniature thing”.” He’s used this particular voice modulation on a couple of song and it really cracks me up because it so thick and textured and just plain silly but somehow it suits the song perfectly.

Long Strong Diamond - Baggsmen: This is a song I remember seeing on Rage late at night years and years ago. The guy was dressed up as a werewolf and kidnapping some girl but he gets so distracted by his song about being a werewolf that she ends up escaping. Extremely mad to find out that the guy in this song from years ago that I love is none other than personal enemy of mine Jake Stone from Bluejuice.

XO/The Host/Initiation - The Weeknd: Trilogy could well be the best album of the decade. Remember when The Weeknd was this mysterious anonymous guy who was firmly a character and not an actual guy who seems to actually believe what he’s singing? I love Trilogy because the progression across the three discs from like 'cool indifferent party guy’ in House Of Balloons to extremely deranged cult leader in Echoes Of Silence is very satisfying. Initiation especially is great because it’s like a cool fun song about a party mixed with some extremely dark shit about the clocks not working so you can’t tell the time and the blinds not working so you can’t see outside in a scary pitch shifting voice. “And all I wanna do is leave 'cause I’ve been zoning for a week and I ain’t left this little room, trying to concentrate to breathe” but you absolutely MUST meet my boys.

This Guy’s In Love With You - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: Anyway here’s a change of pace. A very peaceful song about just fucking dying if she won’t be your girl. I love how dramatic this song gets before completely stopping and starting again into a very relaxed trumpet line.

Jasmine (demo) - Jai Paul: I’m obsessed with the cult that develops around guys like Jai Paul and Jay Electronica, who put out two songs that are so good that it drives people insane when they don’t put out any more. There’s apparently a bunch of stuff happening with Jai Paul currently that I haven’t been keeping track of but The Fader had a really good article earlier this year about how the Jai Paul leaks and how insane it made everyone. Aside from all that, the song is pure magic - just listen to it and you can understand why everyone was obsessed as they were.

Freaking Out The Neighbourhood - Mac Demarco: I remember I saw an interview with Mac Demarco talking about this song and he described the riff as just some dumb little thing he made up which is shocking to me because I am totally obsessed with how good it sounds. It’s perfect!

Bob - “Weird Al” Yankovic: Yes baby it’s Weird Al’s all-palindrome Bob Dylan parody! I was telling my girfriend about how this is actually really good songwriting because even though it’s essentially gibberish it has enough good imagery and fun sounds that it works anyway and really how different is 'may a moody baby doom a yam’ to 'transient jet lagged ecto-mimed bison’ from the Mars Volta which also appears on this list? Anyway she hated it, and rightly so.

I Have Good News To Bring - Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live from the basement church of my UFO cult, a beautiful version of Take A Trip that sounds like it was recorded on the organ of an empty baseball stadium at night.

Julia - Jungle: I have been desperately waiting for three years now for another Jungle album and they finally posted about new songs the other day and I got very very excited. This is an amazing song, every sound in it is so perfectly placed and the vocals are very beautiful and have such a rich bass for such a high tenor. I love the way the drums subtly get very busy in the last few choruses, I could listen to this song for hours.

Ray Gun (feat. DOOM) -BadBadNotGood & Ghostface Killah: I love that this song is maybe 20bmp faster than Ghostface or Doom are expecting. Doom especially sounds far more excited than he has in years and they both do really well with it. Also, I was certain the melody it breaks into in the last third was some Lalo Schifrin bit I’ve heard before but I can’t seem to find any info corroborating that. If it’s familiar to you or you know where it’s from, please reply to this post because it’s been driving me crazy.

Confessions Pt. III - BadBadNotGood & Colin Stetson: Any song where Colin Stetson has to play with others is funny to me. He’s such a self contained ball of power that him joining a traditional group like it just wouldn’t work. Sure, this song does sort of sound like him doing his own thing for seven minutes while the band sort of reacts to him but it is absolutely fantastic anyway.

Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In The Line For The Bathroom) - N.E.R.D: Remember when Pharrell was crazy? This song is total chaos. The pitched down sample in the hook, the two note bassline, the sax that just hoots once a bar. And I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful bridge, especially the 'achooo’ backing vocals.

Parties - Shlohmo: Bad Vibes was such a moment. It is such a beautiful album, and a very easy album to fall asleep to and then wake up 20 minutes later terrified and choked by your headphones because Trapped In A Burning House, the song that sounds exactly like its title and nothing like the rest of the album, came on. I have such a strong emotional reaction I really can’t explain to the cutoff samples of people laughing near the end of this song.

Bering/Human Till Born -Talkdemonic: I have no idea how I came across this album but I’ve been listening to it constantly for ten years now and I still find new things to appreciate in it. The drums especially in Human Till Born are a source of obsession for me.

Don Caballero 3 - Don Caballero: For a long time I never 'got’ Don Caballero or Hella or any of these supposedly legendary math bands, despite loving so many bands obvously influenced by them. But then one day this album, and this song especially just clicked for me. It also happened to coincide with one of the most surreal weeks of my life when I was on a cruise ship and all I listened to was this and a field recording album that seems to have completely deleted itself from my computer since then. The best advice I’ve heard for listening to this is, and bands like it is that it’s backward. The drums are the lead instrument and everything else works around that, if that helps. This song has a twisted sort of morose quality that’s really hard to pin down. Some days it is absolutely heartbreaking, which sounds silly but it’s true.

B.Y.O.B. - System Of A Down: There’s a few reasons I was thinking of this song. First and most importantly it’s because of that dog vine but the other reason is I was thinking about how there hasn’t been a good anti-trump song yet outside of YG’s FDT, and that came out before the election. This and American Idiot came out in 2004/5, and I suppose it’s only been a year since the election so we’ve got a few years yet until the real hits come out I guess. Or I suppose he’d have to actually properly declare war, which, you know.

4D/MTI - Koreless: These songs are so intertwined in my head I feel like you can’t have one without this other. 4D is such a simple, beautiful piece of music. The synth that sounds like glass and the chopped vocals getting more and more contorted as the song goes on contrasted with the propulsion of the drums is so great. Both of these songs have a meticulousness and restraint to their sound, every single piece is perfectly where it should be and nothing else is allowed. Even MTI using so much white noise feels incredibly controlled and when it totally drops out it feels like coming up from underwater.

New Lands - Justice: Remember when Justice took 4 years to write a follow up to their album that lit the world on fire and instead of doing the same thing again they made a classic rock album? Everyone was so mad. Luckily this song is incredible and everyone was wrong once more.

You Discovered The Secret And Juiced It For All Its Majesty - Venetian Snares: This is from an EP called Cubist Reggae which I think a lot about in concept alone. This is probably the song that illustrates the idea worst but I love it a lot. My incredibly unpopular opinion is that Venetian Snares is miles better of Aphex Twin and whoever but everyone’s written him off as the Rossz Csillag guy so he doesn’t get no respect. I love how detailed his music is, how every one of the million sounds seems to be perfectly placed. I think he’s in a similar position to Autechre where he’s been making and listening to only his own music for so long now that he’s forgotten how normal music sounds, which is good.

Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank: I made a playlist a couple of years ago of all the songs I sing to myself when I’m just walking around or whatever and it turned out about 6/10 had 'blues’ or 'hard times’ in the title, which is tough but it’s ok, and this was one of them. If you want to read a wiki article that’ll make you cry, read Jackson C. Frank’s, but mostly you should just listen to this, his only album.

Thermal Treasure - Polvo: I played this song for my girlfriend and during the intro she said 'you have such a wide variety of tense, off kilter music seeminly designed just to put people on edge’. I’m a huge fan of this very defensive sentence in Polvo’s wiki article 'Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band’s guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars’.

FML - Kanye West: This is such a strangely affecting song and it’s hard to be sympathetic to Kanye as a narrator sometimes (especially when he insists on doubling down on dogshit lines like “'I'mma have the last laugh indian cause I’m from the tribe called chekaho’”) but against all odds you can identify and relate to his struggle to hold onto the woman he loves and not be undone by his own worst instincts. Musically this is the best The Weeknd has ever sounded and I already love him a lot, and the way the drums lead into the sample at the end is just perfect.

Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) - The Mars Volta: This is the album I’ve probably listened to the most in my life. As a teenager I would listen to this album every night for easily a year and somehow there’s still something new to hear in it. It’s almost hard to listen to it now because I have so much Teenage Feeling attached to it but it’s still an incredible piece of work. Jon Theodore deserves a statue for his drumming on this album, and this song especially, in my humble opinion.

Life’s A Beach! - Studio: God I love Studio. I think if you tried to describe them on paper you could never make it sound like good music. “It’s sort of, balearic , reggae, guitar-led dance music and the songs go for about 15 minutes most of the time.” But it is good music! I absolutely promise it’s incredible music!

The Number Song (Cut Chemist Remix) - DJ Shadow: I love this remix because it feels like theseus’ ship as demonstrated via remix. How many parts can you swap out for similar but not identical parts before it’s a completely different song. The drums are almost the same beat, but a totally different sample.The Jackson 5 horns in the original that signal the transition to the second half are still here with the same function, but it’s an entirely different horn sample, and an entirely different second half save for 'the party’s already started, and it’s about to end’.

listen here

#playlists

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multipleservicelisting · 3 years

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Meena Harris, Building That Brand

Meena Harris, a lawyer and former tech executive, used to make statement T-shirts as a side job. Her most famous read, simply, “Phenomenal Woman.” (Perhaps you saw it on Instagram, worn by celebrities including Serena Williams, Lizzo, Ciara, Viola Davis, Laverne Cox and Eva Longoria.)

She also made hats for the “Phenomenal Mother” and sweatshirts for the “Phenomenal Voter.” All benefited various charities.

But during a summer of mass protests against racism and injustice, Ms. Harris’s apparel took on new resonance. Naomi Campbell wore a “Phenomenally Black” T-shirt for a high-end fashion event in July. Regina King accepted her lead actress Emmy in September wearing a shirt by Ms. Harris, with an illustration of Breonna Taylor and the words “Say Her Name.”

Ms. Harris’s passion project became her full-time job; she left her role as head of strategy and leadership at Uber to run her own company, called Phenomenal. She also picked up another side-gig — one that brought her more visibility than any prestigious job that came before it: campaign surrogate for her aunt, Kamala Harris, now the vice president-elect.

At the time, Ms. Harris, 36, made it clear that her clothing brand was “not something that I want to be using to promote the candidacy of a family member.” In a phone interview, she added: “There’s a lot of cool people in my family that do cool stuff. And this is my thing. I’m doing my own thing.”

But her relationship to the vice president-elect is a fact that can’t be separated from her story or that of her business.

As a surrogate, Ms. Harris offered insight into her family in ways traditional (introducing her aunt in a video at the Democratic National Convention) and more novel (during the primaries, she defended her aunt’s criminal justice record against progressives who disparaged her as “a cop” in a series of Instagram stories).

She also sold several Kamala-related sweatshirts, including one with the letters “MVP,” for Madam Vice President; one emblazoned with the phrase “I’m Speaking,” referring to the much-memed moment from the vice-presidential debate; and a third with the names Sojourner (Truth), Harriet (Tubman), Shirley (Chisholm) and Barbara (Jordan) stacked above Kamala’s, released in partnership with Win With Black Women.

But putting a campaign slogan, like “Kamala for the People,” on a shirt would be too explicit, Ms. Harris said, crossing the line she’s drawn to protect her brand and establish her own identity.

“I look at her as another figure in history and someone to be celebrated,” she said of her aunt — for example, with a holiday sweatshirt reading “Deck the halls with smart, strong women, Kamala-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

‘What’s Our Message?’

The name of Ms. Harris’s company comes from a Maya Angelou poem, published in 1978: “I’m a woman / Phenomenally. / Phenomenal woman, / That’s me.”

First sold during Women’s History Month in March 2017, the “Phenomenal Woman” shirt was meant to remind people that Ms. Angelou “came before us, and it was women like her,” Ms. Harris said, “who made it possible for the Women’s March to happen in the huge way that it did.”

She planned to split profits from the shirt between seven women’s organizations. “I thought we’d sell a couple hundred shirts, if I got enough of my friends and family to support,” she said. But on release day, she sold more than 2,000, she said. (It was modeled online by friends, including Issa Rae, who was a college classmate, and America Ferrera.)

At the time, Ms. Harris didn’t know exactly what to do with the enthusiasm, she said: “How do we keep this going? What are we talking about? What are we doing? What’s our message?” So she gave herself a mission: raising awareness around issues affecting underrepresented communities.

The Breonna Taylor shirt, released in August, flooded social media, buoyed again by a flock of celebrities. On its front, the black tee read “Arrest The Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor” in pink text (Ms. King wore it backward at the virtual Emmys). Profits from the $45 shirt benefited the Breonna Taylor Foundation. (Depending on sales, other Phenomenal products raise anywhere from $5,000 to $150,000 for a nonprofit, according to Ms. Harris.)

Inevitably, the simple T-shirt company has become a multipurpose venture, with a content arm, Phenomenal Media (for publishing articles and putting out full-page newspaper ads), and a creative agency, Phenomenal Productions (which will make videos, products and other content for ideologically aligned clients). On Jan. 19, Ms. Harris will publish her second children’s book, “Ambitious Girl.” And on the following day, one of the characters in her first children’s book, “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea,” about two sisters taking on a community project, will take her oath for the second highest office in the nation.

‘Entrepreneurial Tendencies’

Kamala and Maya were raised primarily by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a scientist and activist.

When Maya was 17, she had Meena. She raised her daughter with the help of her mother and sister, while earning degrees and building a career in law and progressive policy. Maya worked as a law school dean, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Northern California, adviser to Hillary Clinton, and her sister’s campaign chairwoman — among other roles. Since 1998, she has been married to Tony West, who was the associate attorney general during the Obama administration and is now Uber’s chief legal officer.

Young Meena Harris, surrounded by lawyers, wasn’t nudged toward law. Her first job, after graduating from Stanford University in 2006, was as a community operations manager at Facebook — just as it was expanding to the general public, no longer available only to college students.

Ms. Harris also joined the 2008 Obama campaign, in youth vote organizing and grass roots fund-raising. But finally, she decided to start law school, as if it were the “path of least resistance,” she said.

In 2014, two years after she graduated from Harvard Law School, Ms. Harris was working as a cybersecurity and data privacy attorney in Washington, D.C., when she had her first “kind of fun, provocative” idea for a T-shirt, she said. Inspired by the early Mark Zuckerberg business card that said “I’m CEO, bitch,” her tee read “I’m an entrepreneur, bitch.” (These were the “Lean In” years.)

By 2015, Tyra Banks was wearing the shirt onstage during press interviews. And Ms. Harris — who’d always identified as a creative person with “entrepreneurial tendencies,” she said — was feeling, for the first time, like an entrepreneur.

Statement as Brand

T-shirts are not a new form of expression, either of values or of protest. But unrest during the Trump administration — and the steady rise of both political expression and posturing on social media — has inspired a great number of them. Mugs, onesies, pet collars, phone cases and fanny packs, too.

In September 2019, the sisters Kate and Lisa Sokolov founded Social Goods, an online boutique for activist apparel. All of their sales include a donation — on average 25 percent of the proceeds, the founders said — to various related nonprofits. Phenomenal was one of the first brands sold on their site.

The founders see merchandise as a “catalyst and entry point for change,” Kate Sokolov said — “a way to get people to start talking and keep talking about issues.”

It’s the “keep talking” part of it that Ms. Harris has been considering herself lately.

“I think this is going to be a big question for us next year. When we don’t have the constant drama and attacks that are coming out of the administration, how do we keep people engaged in a meaningful way?” she said. “Not just the people that have been doing this work, and will continue doing this work, and are literally doing it all day every day. But regular folks.”

Communicating serious messages through a medium like apparel is tricky. Tone is paramount. Nuance can be lost. There’s only so much room on a tee.

“Just because a bunch of people liked it doesn’t mean that you should go put it on a T-shirt and sell it,” Ms. Harris said, of ideas she knew would be popular but messy.

Not everything sold by Phenomenal has a social justice message. Addressing work-from-home culture, Ms. Harris released sweatshirts in 2020 that read “Can everyone mute please?” She’s also sold pieces without phrases, like a one-piece swimsuit printed with Sonia Sotomayor’s face. Proceeds from these more general items are donated to a spread of nonprofits, rather than to a specific cause or organization.

One of those nonprofits is Essie Justice Group, an organization for women with incarcerated loved ones. Gina Clayton-Johnson, the group’s founder and executive director, said working with Phenomenal has relieved some of the overwhelming pressure to fund-raise.

“My team needs to be writing policy, running healing circles and organizing outside jails and prisons. They don’t need to be setting up chairs at a fund-raiser, or putting cute little sequins in envelopes,” Ms. Clayton-Johnson said.

‘Breaking Away’

On a phone call in August, the day after making her Democratic National Convention debut, Ms. Harris described herself as happy but “running on fumes.” She’d spent that night “drinking wine in a furry bathrobe” while watching the videos and speeches, she said.

During a conversation a few months later, the election was over but the holidays were approaching, and Ms. Harris’s partner Nikolas Ajagu, who works as an executive at Facebook, had just told her that letters to Santa from their two daughters (ages 2 and 4) had gone missing. There was a pile of laundry on the couch and the house was a “mess,” she said, using an expletive.

Because of her work with Phenomenal, Ms. Harris already had a robust following before her aunt became Joe Biden’s running mate in August. But starting that month, she began gaining followers on Twitter and Instagram in droves.

Accordingly, she has faced more criticism, trolling and general scrutiny for actions associated with her family. One recurring topic is Prop 22, a California ballot measure approved by voters in November, allowing companies like Uber to continue classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than as employees.

Ms. Harris’s stepfather is the top lawyer at Uber, which spent millions trying to pass the measure. (Her aunt strongly opposed it.) Ms. Harris was dragged into the fight as well because of her former job at Uber. In November — after the election — she decided to make it clear that she voted against Prop 22.

“I think it’s a very simple thing,” she said. “I’m very lucky to be in a family of a bunch of successful people who are doing a lot of different things. There’s interesting dynamics around that, but I’m my own person with my own views and my own platform and my own aspirations.

“Sure, you can be curious about somebody’s relationship with their family, or how their communications around these things are,” she said. But at the same time, she noted, “I’m not an elected official. I’m not formally accountable as a public servant, and I think sometimes, people do kind of treat you that way if you have a public profile.” (She later added: “It’s weird to talk about yourself as having a public profile.”)

When she talked about her decision to leave Uber in June, Ms. Harris used phrases like “breaking away” and “liberating myself.” For years, she’d felt like she was on a “treadmill of checking prestige boxes” — elite schooling, a law degree, a high-powered tech career, a treadmill powered by the ambition of her first-generation immigrant family.

Still, that ambition was fairly contained to the worlds of law and activism, “which of course, are core to who I am and how I view everything,” she said.

“No one in my family, other than me, has a business-minded bone in their bodies. I was not exposed to that at all,” Ms. Harris said. (Her stepfather didn’t take a job in the corporate world until 2014.) The idea of entrepreneurship? “That was just totally foreign.”

Now, she’s on a new treadmill. “I just didn’t really know the path to getting there,” she said.

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/2LPlJfw

#multiple #service #listing #news #local #business #ads #near #me

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bitoflovehate · 7 years

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every number :)

you’re an ass but i did it anyway because im fucking bored

ps. i hate you

1:Full name. Beth *******

2:Zodiac sign. Scorpio

3:3 fears. Clowns

4:3 things I love. Alec Lightwood, music

5:4 turn on’s. Sense of Humour, nice eyes

6:4 turn off’s. Just rude people

7:My best friend? I wouldn’t say i have one? like i always have a few close friends who are just all the same

8:Sexual orientation? biiiiiiiiiiiiii

9:My best first date? I went to a gig with this guy and his mam took us and like a year later he was like ‘that was a date btw’

10:How tall am I? 5′5′’

11:What do I miss? Not being stressed about exams

12:What time was I born? 12:27 midday

13:Favorite color? Purple

14:Do I have a crush? I don’t think so

15:Favorite quote? My grandad’s army motto ‘We Shall Be Worthy’ just because i can’t think of anything else :)

16:Favorite place? The beach at home

17:Favorite food? Bread...like any bread

18:Do I use sarcasm? Too much

19:What am I listening to right now? Arctic monkeys

20:First thing I notice in new person? Humour

21:Shoe size? 6/7

22:Eye color? Blue

23:Hair color? Naturally blonde, right now idek blonde but also brown

24: Favorite style of clothing? black jeans with anything

25:Ever done a prank call? yes

26:What color of underwear I’m wearing now? black

27:Meaning behind my URL? na na na lyrics

28:Favorite movie? this is england or the breakfast club

29:Favorite song? changes but right now it’s boys that sing by viola beach (it has been for like...a long time idk why it just makes me happy)

30:Favorite band? my chemical romance

31:How I feel right now? emo i just watched a jalec video

32:Someone I love. jalec

33:My current relationship status. single

34:My relationship with my parents. amazing they’re my pals

35:Favorite holiday. *lame voice* the one where i go to america

36:Tattoos and piercing I have. ears twice each

37:Tattoos and piercing I want. i have like 3 tattoos planned

38:The reason I joined Tumblr. i was bored

39:Do I and my last ex hate each other? um, i hate him but he doesn’t think i do lmajeinfuwvd

40:Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night” texts? i sometimes wake up to texts but they don’t say good morning

41:Have I ever kissed the last person I texted? no

42:When did I last hold hands? earlier today when i crossed my youngest brother over the road lmao

43:How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? depends

44:Have I shaved my legs in the past three days? have i shaved my legs in the past three months?? (yes i have)

45: Where am I right now? in bed

46:If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? idk

47:Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level? depends

48:Do I live with my Mom and Dad? when im not at uni yeah

49:Am I excited for anything? lots of thingsssss

50:Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to? my dad and a friend

51:How often do I wear a fake smile? idk

52:When was the last time I hugged someone? like 10 minutes ago (my mam)

53:What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me? cool but why are they in my room though?

54:Is there anyone I trust even though I should not? lol yeah

55:What is something I disliked about today? i had to revise and trump

56:If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? matt daddario

57:What do I think about most? jalec

58:What’s my strangest talent? i can balance a spoon on my nose and move my ears

59:Do I have any strange phobias? i mean...some foods

60:Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? behind

61:What was the last lie I told? idk

62:Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? videooo

63:Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens? i think and yes

64:Do I believe in magic? MAGNUS IS REAL

65:Do I believe in luck? yeah

66:What’s the weather like right now? cold as balls

67:What was the last book I’ve read? a one for my dissertation about online communities

68:Do I like the smell of gasoline? yESSS

69:Do I have any nicknames?well you can’t shorten beth but some people call me bethany, my mam calls me beebop sometimes lmao

70:What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? everything that’s ever happened to my ankles lmao

71:Do I spend money or save it? idk what money is

72:Can I touch my nose with a tongue? no

73: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me? probably not tbh

74:Favorite animal? penguins and dogs

75:What was I doing last night at 12 AM? on skype to iz

76:What do I think Satan’s last name is? trump

77:What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it? boys that sing and where do broken hearts go

78:How can you win my heart? just be nice

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? ‘jalec did this’

80:What is my favorite word? bobble

81:My top 5 blogs on tumblr? me, my other blog, none

82:If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say? ‘butts’

83:Do I have any relatives in jail? nah

84:I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power? read minds or be invisible

85:What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? um...nothing?

86:What is my current desktop picture? a standard mac one

90:Failed a class? no

91:Kissed a boy? yes

92:Kissed a girl? yes

93:Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain? nah

94:Had job? yes

95:Left the house without my wallet? yes

96:Bullied someone on the Internet? no

98:Played on a sports team? yeah

99:Smoked weed? yeah

100:Did drugs? i mean...see above

101:Smoked cigarettes? yeah

102:Drank alcohol? yeah

103:Am I a vegetarian/vegan? no

104:Been overweight? yes right now lmao

105:Been underweight? no

106:Been to a wedding? yes

107:Been on the computer for 5 hours straight? .........obv

108:Watched TV for 5 hours straight? yeah

109:Been outside my home country? yessss

110:Gotten my heart broken? yesss

111:Been to a professional sports game? yesss

112:Broken a bone? nope

114:Been to prom? yeah

115:Been in airplane? yeah

116: Fly by helicopter? no

117:What concerts have I been to? lOTS

118:Had a crush on someone of the same sex? yeah

119:Learned another language? yeah

120:Wore make up? yeah

122:Had oral sex? yeah

123:Dyed my hair?yeah

124:Voted in a presidential election? yeah well uk government

125:Rode in an ambulance? yeah

126:Had a surgery? no

127:Met someone famous?yeah

128:Stalked someone on a social network? do like..celebs count

129:Peed outside? yeah

130:Been fishing? yeah

131:Helped with charity? yeah

132:Been rejected by a crush? yeah

133:Broken a mirror? no

134:What do I want for birthday? idk

135:How many kids do I want and what will be their names? no idea

136:Was I named after anyone? no but i was meant to be called alice right up until i was born and that was after my great grandma

137:Do I like my handwriting? sometimes

138:What was my favorite toy as a child? a little mouse toy i called cheesy

139:Favorite TV Show? spn, shadowhunters, brooklyn nine nine, friends, skins etc

140:Where do I want to live when older? probably where i grew up

141:Play any musical instrument? yeah

142:One of my scars, how did I get it? I have an iron shaped one on my hand off an iron burn

143:Favorite pizza topping? cheese but it has to be burned or cold

144:Am I afraid of the dark? depends

145:Am I afraid of heights? depends

146:Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad?yeah

147:Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? yeah

148:What I’m really bad at. lots of things probably

149:What my greatest achievements are. getting into university, then going back after being really ill

150:The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me. i can’t remember

151:What I’d do if I won in a lottery. scream

152:What do I like about myself? my humour idk

153:My closest Tumblr friend. not iz

154:Something I fantasies about. idk

#jalecgarbage #ask #answered

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sabotagemcr · 6 years

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SLOWHANDCLAP - INTERVIEW

Manchester based grunge outfit Slowhandclap (Dan, Ducky and Sam) are making waves across the city for their raucous live shows and massive tunes. These guys have everything at their disposable to be one of the UK's next great rock bands. We recently spoke to Sam, check check check it:

Who are you?

We are a 3 piece rock band from Warrington but based in Manchester, heavily influenced by 90's bands like sonic youth, fugazi, dinosaur jr as well as contemporary bands like idles, shame and metz to name a few.

How did you form?

We all went the same high school but me and Ducky met when we were kids, and started playing together in bands in about 2012. We all came to Manchester for uni. Me, Dan and our mates started the band psyblings, whilst me and Ducky started slowhandclap on the side. Eventually we asked Dan to come and join slowhandclap and that was that.

Slowhandclap, great band name, how did that come about?

It was actually our now band co-manager Greg, who sang in psyblings, that came up with it. Me and him were sitting on the couch in our house and he started railing out all these funny potential band names and slowhandclap caught my ear, so I stole it! It was either gonna be slowhandclap or funzerella.

Who are your favourite new bands at the moment?

I think for all of us, and everyone in the country with their heads screwed on, idles are one of our favourite bands in recent memory. As well as shame, their album is probably gonna go down in my top 10 of all time, it's so good.

What’s been your favourite gig you’ve played so far?

Probably when we supported kagoule, we were fans of them and used to listen to their tunes all the time before we were even gigging. Our sold out headline gig for this feeling was a great show too.

Why should people come and see you live?

I think our sound its quite different to most British bands around right now, which is weird because I think a lot of the bands we try to emulate are still really deeply loved by a lot of people here. I think if you like the bands we like, then you'll get us and we'll have a good time. If not, you can roast us to all your friends, and that's fun too.

So you’re all originally from Warrington, there seems to be a lot of really good bands coming from there at the moment, why do you think that is?

I think there's just a lot of good bands coming from everywhere at the moment. Probably something to do with having a shit tory government fucking the country up, that always breeds good tunes at least. As far as Warrington specifically, I couldn't tell you, maybe because there's not a whole lot to do there and people want to find a way to get out. I think viola beach will have inspired a lot of younger Warrington kids to start a band because they know it doesn't have to be a pipe dream.

What’s special to you about Manchester?

To me, Manchester now feels more like home than Warringto. We all spent our formative uni years here, me and Dan still live and work here. It has a rich musical history obviously, and there's always bands coming up through Manchester so we're proud to be a minuscule part of it.

What are your hobbies outside of music?

Pretty much all we have time for these days is work and the band. Me and Ducky used to skate a lot before we started the band, which we'd love to get back into some time.

What’s the song writing process like?

Typically I'll write most of a song on my own, then bring it into a practice, we'll all work on structuring it, filling in all the gaps, and sometimes Dan will do the same. I'm not usually very good of thinking of guitar parts on the fly, so it works better that way. I write the lyrics and mostly do that on my breaks at work.

If you could support any band in the world, who would it be and why?

Got to say idles again, I think we would all lose our shit if we got to support them, same goes for shame. Sonic youth is a giant influence for the band, so supporting Thurston Moore would also be a dream.

What do you have planned for the future?

We're just recording our second EP, which we're really excited about. The songs on it really represent the band better than anything we've put out thus far, so we're looking forward to starting a fresh with our new direction. I think every band says this, but we plan to start gigging a ton more now too, we wanna get outside of Manchester as we've sort of confined ourselves to local gigs due to our collective lack of a driving licence.

Catch SLOWHANDCLAP live for free at Band on the Wall on the 29th of August, sign up here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/free-vibes-x-sabotage-sock-dylan-cartlidge-slowhandclap-octopus-tickets-47808597803

Watch their music video for latest single Apathy here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpbnSYnTRV4

Socials:

https://www.facebook.com/slowhandclap/

https://www.instagram.com/slowhandclap/

https://twitter.com/slowhandclapuk

#livemusic #gig #manchester #rock #grunge #alternative #alt rock

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carlculationinfinityinterviews · 6 years

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STANLÆY INTERVIEW

STANLÆY, an artist who creates music that brilliantly uses vastly textural compositions fused with a visual counterpart.

STANLÆY’s latest release titled The Human Project explores the elements and embodies each of them in both sight and sound. The Human Project is an incredibly immersive experience that’s ethereal and captivating.

I interviewed STANLÆY at The Maple Leaf Lounge Sessions in Southampton to talk more about the album and musical origins of the band.

STANLÆY-THE HUMAN PROJECT TRAILER

youtube

What was your first encounter with music and what inspired you to become a musician and what is the drive behind you wanting to create music?

I couldn't pin down a singular experience that made me want to become an artist or that led me to become a creative individual. My earliest musical memories were from listening to records that that my dad played around the house or on our many journeys to Cornwall. They were things like Kate Bush, Damien Rice, and Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. One of the earliest artists I can remember being fond of outside of my Dad's influence was Cocorosie.

I've been classically trained from quite a younge age. The first instruments that I learned to play were piano and viola.

The main drive behind my desire to create music is the process of world-making and story-telling. I love to create musical spaces with other musicians using texture, composing for all kinds of instruments but also I find lyrics very important and I spend a lot of time playing around with language.

What was the first piece of music you sought out to buy and how would you describe the experience of engaging with music at that early phase?

The first CD that I can remember owning and loving was by Sigur Ros Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur- it’s just beautiful. It’s one of those albums that I can listen to on repeat still, it really used to annoy my family so I used to listen to it with headphones secretly in my room.

How did STANLÆY begin and how did you want to achieve with it from the begin into comparison to what you wanted to artistically when it started in comparison to now?

I didn't actually start writing music till I moved to live in France for a bit, a few years ago. I had written a fair few songs before then but I didn't consider myself as a solo performing artist at that time.

STANLÆY officially began when I moved to Paris and met a guitarist called Marco Pavesi. Stanhopea was the first musical pseudonym I used because I wanted to separate my identity from the music I was making. Why the band is called STANLÆY is quite a long story with a web of reasons all tying into one another – but in short: I wanted the band to have its own androgynous body. Also, my dad’s nickname was Stan at school, even though his name is Adrian! I have always thought that was funny and I like the family link Stanley has to me.

The vision has changed a lot for what I wanted to achieve with STANLÆY. It's now become an encompassing art form that's audio visual, and ever evolving. My latest release The Human Project features a video for each song embodying the sound and image of the elements.

Tell me about the process of wanting to make The Human Project Audio Visual and the meaning behind some of the songs featured on the album and how you wrote them?

I made my first music video for The Fisherman's Wife last summer 2016 and fell in love with film making which made me decide to make an audio-visual album for my next musical project.

STANLÆY-THE MOUNTAIN COLLECTOR

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The album is an exploration of embodiment that I completed alongside my degree whilst I was studying at Southampton University. I decided that I wanted to work with brilliant musicians and compose brilliant things for them to play.

I was told that it was a very ambitious project but I knew that I could do it. I composed all of the parts and recorded/engineered everything in about six months and then premiered the film counterpart at The Harbour Lights Cinema in Southampton in May!

The instrumentation for The Human Project consisted of thirty different musicians featuring strings, harps, percussion, various different drummers and vocalists. I recorded all of the main vocals and piano parts as well.

The first song that I composed was Earth, The Mountain Collector.

STANLÆY-THE MOUNTAIN COLLECTOR

youtube

This song began with the chorus riff and the backing vocals which I demoed in Logic. I treated that idea like a sketch and applied the same creative ideas as sculpting a piece, I slowly started adding parts in Sibelius since I knew that I wanted other instruments to be a feature of that track.

Earth is about the effect of being trapped in corrupt environment that you aren't connected to and the feeling of wanting to return to your roots. The video tells the story of four rams gambling. I run away and try to find my way back to the mountains because I'm disconnected with the environment, like how I was losing the game. I return, grow and turn into a mountain in this new environment because I believe we echo the environment we are surrounded by and exposed to. The song was written for string quartet, double bass, drums, piano and vocals. I really enjoy the space in the track.

Water

Water has three sections to it and the initial creative concept was based around particles. I wanted the instrumentation to be scatty and all over the place with interlocking polyphony between the harp, strings and bass. I had choir made up of five people and had the bass playing a higher melody so that it could interject between the main vocal line. Every instrument acts like a separate vocal line or a lyric that tells a different story throughout.

Tell be about the process of playing the recorded material live. Since you've featured 30 musicians on The Human Project, what do you want musicians to experience live in comparison to your recorded material?

It would be amazing to play with an orchestra and mix all of these amazing sounds together one day! I don't know of that's plausible right know though. Also, finding a time where thirty musicians are available would be a nightmare to organise.

I chose to make it more manageable for myself by arranging the pieces for a smaller ensemble, my current line up consists of bass, drums/percussion, guitars and vocal and sax. I'll have a violinist play with me eventually though in order for that to happen I'll need to find someone who is also passionate about the music.

I actually really love playing music differently to how it is on record, that's what I did when I released my first album Ouroboros. I like to keep it interesting for the musicians and for listeners. It’s really fun and sometimes a good challenge for me to rearrange everything… it’s only natural to evolve, it doesn't need to be the same.

STANLÆY-NME

youtube

How do you maintain your proficiency as a musician and ensure that you are progressing?

I try to listen to as much music as possible, I have a lot of great friends and we all recommend different albums to each other I've been introduced to a plethora of great artists that I may not have found on my own… like a photograph you get exposed to a lot of things and you get over exposed, that's the best kind of photograph.

In regards to maintaining my proficiency I am still practising classical violin and piano. I am also always learning more about the guitar and vocals. I think for me, stepping back from music to focus on other to art forms is really important too (and influenced how you therefore keep creating art) so I work on other things such as painting, film making, yoga, cycling, going to as many live gigs as I can and meeting lots of different people/exposing myself to as many different things as possible.

What are you currently listening to and what was the last form that really expand what you thought you was creatively possible?

I've been listening to a lot of Joanna Newsome lately and I've been painting a lot so it’s great to listen to put on full albums on repeat whilst I'm doing that. Something that I really love about her work is how she weaves lyrics together into such delicate/intricate stories.

I like to tell stories through songs so its inspiring to hear someone else do that. A very inspiring band I've been listening to at the moment is This Is How We Fly. They are from Dublin and feature a percussionist, wind instruments, violinist and saxophone, they basically create beautiful riff based folk jazz with soundscapes. I like to write music that has a lot of sonic textures and use instrumentation/instruments collectively to create a sonic tapestry, it’s like painting with sound and the sounds creates a space to inhabit. I love listening to bands that create music like that.

What equipment are you using?

I'm using hollow body Grestch at the moment that I have called Oak. For pedals I'm using a Boss DD6 and Electro Harmonix POG.

What advice can you give to musicians that are starting out or thinking of writing their own music or becoming a performing artist?

I'd advise that you just keep being yourself since it’s maybe easy to start thinking about “what do people want to hear?” instead of what you want to create for yourself.

What do you want people to take away from the Human Project Means?

I'd love for people to feel inspired by the album and feel like they are in the space and environment that the videos reveal. I’d like to connect the viewer sonically to the elements and for people to see music/videos from a new perspective.

STANLÆY will be performing at The Art House Southampton on May 11th, I highly advise that you buy a ticket:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stanlaey-and-kitty-oneal-at-the-art-house-tickets-45491159282

Please follow STANLÆY at the following links below and support their music:

https://www.facebook.com/StanleyStenning/

https://soundcloud.com/stanlaey

https://stanlaey.com/

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eckshecks · 7 years

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MAGNET CLASSICS: THE MAKING OF HELIUM’S “THE MAGIC CITY”

The Making Of Helium’s The Magic City

By A.D. Amorosi

To hear Washington, D.C.-born Mary Timony tell it, she could’ve easily wound up a viola player or classical guitarist. Instead, she wound up becoming the deviously clever punk-feminist writer and surrealistic prog-pop icon of Helium and, in particular, the band’s finale and masterwork, 1997’s The Magic City.

“My parents had that 1950s mentality where all they listened to was classical, and my brother is this super-great, diverse musician and writer—his hands fly like Stanley Jordan—so that level of musicality was definitely a thing for me,” says Timony. “Then I saw a Fugazi show in our hometown of Washington, and everything changed. I moved to Boston soon after that in 1989 and never saw them again, but Fugazi left a real mark on me: their energy, their lyrics, the whole Dischord thing. It was really the start of a whole social network for me. I was an outsider and my brain was confused by all I had taken in, but I was psyched.”

Timony could make hard-edged music, even if nothing she did sounded quite as blunt or furious as Fugazi. In 1990, she co-founded Autoclave, a group whose music was released on Dischord but sounded more complicated than contemporaneous punk or riot grrrl. Partly due to Timony being in school at Boston University and the band being located in D.C., Autoclave was short-lived. Timony recalls that there were few women on the DIY punk scene when Helium started in the summer of 1992.

“Back then, there was nothing but guys, these angry little punk dudes,” she says with a laugh.

So she navigated the Boston scene, dated Juliana Hatfield’s brother Jason (who had a band, Chupa, with Mary Lou Lord) and joined Chupa for a nanosecond when Lord left.

“We knew Mary Lou Lord, a busker in these parts at that point, and started a side thing with her and Hatfield,” says drummer Shawn Devlin. “But Mary Lou really wasn’t used to singing with a band, you know, so Jason says, ‘Well, there’s this other Mary that I know … ’”

When Hatfield left Chupa, bassist Brian Dunton said, “Hey, let’s play your songs, Timony.”

“I was neither confident nor motivated enough to do it myself, so that’s how Helium started,” says Timony.

Dunton became Helium’s bassist/manager, started a label to release debut seven-inch “The American Jean” in 1992 and, eventually, got under Timony’s skin. (“Brian being our bassist and manager made Mary real uncomfortable,” says Devlin.) Not long after Devlin joined, the band played several party gigs and signed to the Matador label.

“I was writing from a really personal place early on, at least on the first two records,” says Timony. “There was nothing that I was consciously being influenced by, nothing that I wanted to sound or seem like, though looking back at it all now, sonically, the frequencies of gangsta rap turned me on.”

Timony credits the low-slung production techniques of Dr. Dre and the maple-syrup bass lines of Snoop Dogg as something that caught her ear: “Super-low to super-high stuff. (Producer) Adam Lasus and I loved that stuff. And video-game music. That was huge with me. Stuff like Sonic The Hedgehog.”

Timony also mentions that topics and issues from her women’s studies classes at college would sometimes play out in her song lyrics.

“I wasn’t writing from an angry place in general unless it affected me deeply and personally,” she says. “Even though I was around what became the riot grrrl stuff of its time, that wasn’t the music I was making, either. I think it sounds like an alien coming down to Earth and looking at issues. A Cindy Sherman thing, acting out different roles.”

“I got to Mary very early on, and I have to say that everything she did was so spot-on and inventive,” says Lasus, who recorded two Helium releases: 1994’s Pirate Prude EP and 1995’s The Dirt Of Luck. (He currently lives in Los Angeles but spoke to MAGNET from New Hope, Pa., where he’s recording a Dean Ween album.) “I’m not just saying this because we’re talking about her: Helium was my favorite band at that point.”

After the dazzling-but-dark Pirate Prude and the feminist, spacious The Dirt Of Luck, Timony embarked on something much different from Helium’s uncomfortable, unconfident start. In 1995, Dunton dropped out of the band and Polvo’s Ash Bowie (also Timony’s boyfriend at the time) joined as bassist and helped usher in an ambitious change of course.

The Magic City is abstract yet contagious, cheerful yet caustic, and more impressionistic than Helium’s early work. The album is a Pet Sounds chamber-pop-meets-progressive-rock indie masterpiece, created long before any lo-fi-loving cretin would ever admit to loving Yes’ Close To The Edge, Genesis’ Nursery Crymeor watching Keith Emerson throw daggers into his eight-foot-high synthesizer. At a time when mumbling vocals, loud guitars and grunge machismo were all the rage, Timony’s freaky fable lyrics—even the fussy melodies and arrangements—were thoroughly complex and as overwrought as anything Brian Wilson and Phil Spector could dream up.

“I love that fucking album, and Helium is the best band I’ve ever fucking been in through my life,” says Devlin. “Some of her drum part ideas on The Magic Citymade me cry, because they were so labored. She knew drums because she played drums, too. I mean, I did my part over and over, then looped it four times over. And that’s how we started the sessions, which made the whole thing crazy. Plus, Ash and Mary were a couple by that time. I felt like a joke. They’re in the bedroom having sex, and I had to hang out by myself. I hung out with the guy selling merch.”

Some of Timony’s inspiration for The Magic City stems from her time with Shudder To Think guitarist Nathan Larson and his side band with violinist Joan Wasser, Mind Science Of The Mind. Timony played guitar and keyboards on the fantastical and Bowie-esque 1996 album Mind Science Of The Mind.

“I knew Nathan from high school, he dated a girlfriend of mine,” says Timony. “We were buds. He came to visit Joan—who was another pal of mine—and me in Boston, and we jammed. That was a strange record all around. Jeff Buckley was in the band for a minute. He played bass on that tour. Weird, right?”

Timony’s headspace going into The Magic City was also one of music-biz burnout. After The Dirt Of Luck, she moved to North Carolina and took a series of temp jobs. One such gig had her placing stickers on VHS tapes at a video duplication warehouse.

“Real mindless stuff,” she says. “I mean, Helium could’ve been on tour, but we didn’t feel like it. We never toured enough. I got sick of indie rock and tired of hearing distorted guitars, which is funny considering that that was what Dirt Of Luck was. I just wanted to run away from all that.”

She goes through these phases in her life even now: burned out on guitars, not feeling like touring.

“I’m probably lazier than I should be,” she says with a laugh.

Another way that Timony retreated from the indie-rock grind was listening to classic rock: King Crimson, Yes, Black Sabbath, the Zombies. Her auditory diet was odd for its time, as bloated, complex rockers in the prog or dark metal spectrum were foreign to the average indie kid.

“Nobody was really listening to prog rock back then,” she says. “Not in our scene. So what came out of my listening to those records was that, ‘Here’s Helium doing this weird thing.’ A lot of what I did then, I think, stemmed from me retreating—a real stock reaction of mine to what was considered cool or even a reaction to being a successful musician. That in and of itself is scary and tiring.”

Listening to prog rock may explain Magic City songs such as “Lullaby Of The Moths,” “Aging Astronauts” and the soulful, trippy “Medieval People.” But it doesn’t quite account for Timony’s playful, brooding fairy-tale lyrics on the album. Was Timony the sort to grow up with bedtime fables?

“That goes back to the whole retreating thing, my childhood, listening to my parents’ classical records, playing the viola,” she says. “I definitely went into my brain for The Magic City, back into my memory banks.”

The other thing that Timony recalls about The Magic City and the change in writing duties after The Dirt Of Luck is how things grew more collaborative between her and the rest of Helium. Ash Bowie, in particular, made an impact on the album.

“There’s much more of his input, us just jamming and seeing what came out of it,” says Timony. “Ash was totally supportive, pushing me in that direction—a total influence. In the middle of ‘Medieval People’ there’s this cool bomb-drop sound, an explosion sound just made by him going ‘pow’ into a microphone with the reverb turned way up. Then there’s his bass on ‘Walk Away.’ That’s where he amped up the feedback. Pretty cool. Anything to be way more out there. He’s a genius; incredible ideas, very different. Totally bizarre, but super poppy and engaging. I wish he was out there doing stuff, but he’s got a kid, a dog, a family.”

Along with having her mind blown, Timony wonders out loud if it was hard for bassist Bowie to be in her band (“As it was mine,” she says) and be a support person rather than having his own thing. Yet Bowie would go on to be a major part of Timony’s equally spaced-out, lullaby-like 2000 solo album Mountains, and he created one solo recording, Yesterday … And Tomorrow’s Shells, a collection of four-track home recordings under the name Libraness.

“I think I had something to do with the shift,” says Bowie matter-of-factly. “Helium’s sound became busier after I got into the group, for better or worse. I think the band became more creative and musically interesting over the years, but the earlier material had an immediacy and simplicity that I probably would appreciate more now … Helium generally had most of the arrangements worked out prior to recording, but would spend some time trying out various overdubs. From what I remember, most of the songs evolved during lengthy jam sessions and routine band practices. Pretty typical approach.”

Just as telling, at that point, was Timony’s move from the blunt, sharp safety of Philadelphia-based producer Lasus to the South’s whimsical jangle-pop overlord Mitch Easter for The Magic City.

“Adam is so talented and so driven and knows what’s just right,” says Timony. “We had an aesthetic on The Dirt Of Luck and wanted it to be more extreme, but he helped us bring it to a point with these really cool guitar sounds. That record could not have happened without him.”

Still, Helium knew about Easter’s reputation for the dreamlike and had heard that his Fidelitorium studio in Kernersville, N.C., was like a playground of unusual sounds and vintage instruments (harpsichords, sitars, vibraphones, Mellotrons), the likes of which fit in with Timony’s prog-classical bent.

“That’s what guided us to Mitch, who was awesome,” she says. “Our albums are influenced by our producers and where we recorded and what instruments they had lying around. Easter’s place really was The Magic City. I got a lot of use out of that Chamberlin of his.”

Preceded by the weeklong recording session with Easter for the No Guitars EP, The Magic City took its time to marinate. Timony admits it was not the easiest album to get onto three-quarter-inch tape.

“There were casualties,” she says, giggling. “I made lots of mistakes and wish I could go back and re-do a lot of it—so much for your favorite album. Maybe I should not have made 10 guitar tracks on ‘Aging Astronauts,’ or don’t play all those keyboards on ‘Leon’s Space Song.’”

Devlin jokes about the complexity and complication of many a Timony Magic Citytrack with a pragmatic laugh.

“Some of it was wack, but I could always find something tasty to put on any song,” he says.

In the end, The Magic City stands as a wall-of-sound, baroque classic worthy of Pet Sounds and Odessey And Oracle status.

“I kept pushing Mitch to add more tracks, which he had no problem doing,” says Timony. “He loved topping it off.”

Timony recalls a then-rare recording trick, which was a no-no on ’90s indie-rock records: taking drum tracks, throwing them into Pro Tools with a new, clipped edit, then dumping it back onto the tape.

“That was pretty jazzy, probably done all the time on big rock records then,” she says. “We just wanted more sounds and then some more. If it was an ordeal, we went for it. We spent a lot of time tracking that album. Maybe if we had practiced more … ” she trails off, giggling. “I think that now I practice my bands until they’re tight, but that just wasn’t my thing back then.”

So Helium was lazy?

“No, it was me,” she says. “We didn’t get super anal about what BPM was this, what transitions did we make or about taking a week off, but it was mostly me.”

Another aspect of The Magic City that Timony loves and values as opposed to any other work in her catalog is how each tune sounded different from the one before it.

“Each track was its own little thing,” she says. “That made it listenable and lasting; timeless in that you can never get sick of one sound or vibe.”

She stops to mention how Magic City’s opening track, “Vibration,” and “Walk Away” are still favorite songs that she couldn’t wait to play live again on this spring’s Mary Timony Plays Helium tour and how “Cosmic Rays” and “Revolution Of Hearts, Pt. 1 & 2” feature a Chamberlin and rainbow arrangements that never fail to amaze her.

“It’s a weird record,” says Timony. “No, really. Every song is its own little story. I’m sure it confused everyone when it first came out; that it was even uncool. Even Matador admitted that it was a record that no one would get at the time—which they didn’t—but totally would in the future. It’s more normal now, which is why it connects, but then, it was weird. Not what was going on at the time. Not real weird. Just … weird.”

The Magic City was so weird that Helium splintered afterward. Timony recorded her first solo album, 2000’s Mountains (with Tortoise drummer/vibraphonist John McEntire producing), which sounded more like a logical chamber-pop predecessor to what came immediately before it.

“By that point, after The Magic City, I just wanted to read books and do my own thing, while Ash had pretty much had enough of that rock bullshit,” says Timony. “Plus, we were a couple and broke up around then. We both retreated from the real world. The Magic City was the start of that retreat.”

Now that Timony and Matador are celebrating Helium with the band’s remastered catalog on reissued vinyl and CD, and with a full disc of rarities and demos (Ends With And), she’s ready to go back into the world she retreated from 20 years ago. Devlin is not so keen on the fact that he isn’t part of Helium 2.0, as Timony wants to try out the old material in smaller venues with her name above the title before committing to something grander.

“I kept telling Mary, ‘We could do it without Ash, that I’m totally ready,’” says Devlin.

Timony—who’s since recorded as Ex Hex and with members of Sleater-Kinney as Wild Flag—says she thought a tour would be odd with just her and Devlin playing Helium tunes without the elusive Bowie.

“He’s a family guy now; he’s not coming near us,” she says. “It’s been a fun project, even though finding the master tapes wasn’t so easy. That was an intense treasure hunt. Learning the songs, however, for the tour—Magic City, in particular—has been one really cool treasure chest to go through.”

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