#and putting that in larger contexts with help and collaboration from a whole world of people doing similar work

[nothorses]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

I think trying to find one perfect answer that applies universally is the critical mistake here. I mean, I am a gay man. I say this because as of yet, that's the clearest answer I have for myself personally; maybe there's a possibility I experience attraction to a woman at some point (maybe I already have???), but I don't really have clarity on that right now, and it doesn't serve me to shape or explain my identity around "maybe"s.

Trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that attracts me to other men, specifically, is also like... not that useful. I used to find myself really attracted to feminine men specifically; not feminine women, not masculine women, not masculine men, not androgynous anyone, but feminine men. Specifically, men who were feminine in a very particular, long-hair-certain-attitude kind of way.

Recently, I have found myself appreciating, more and more, a certain kind of masculine body type and gay masculinity that I was never really interested in before. I find it incredibly hot. A lot of that coincides with things I appreciate about my partner, too, and things I find myself appreciating more about my partner as time goes on- as well as things my partner expresses appreciation for about me!

And I haven't even touched on attraction to nonbinary folks here because, like, it's a massive spectrum. "Nonbinary" means something different for every individual nonbinary person. To my mind, of course there's a possibility I experience attraction to a nonbinary person; how they identity, present, and what attracts me to them are all even more impossible to know for certain than the "maybe"s and the "why"s around my attraction (or lack thereof) to men and women.

My relationship to my own orientation was vastly different pre-testosterone versus post-testosterone, too. I was much more reserved and uncomfortable with relationships and attraction before I started T, and the only dynamic I ever felt was even a little bit tolerable was one where I was the "masculine woman" in a lesbian relationship. I didn't realize until very shortly after starting T that, actually, I like men. A lot. I felt comfortable with my body and my masculinity in a way I never had been before, and I felt comfortable in relationships with men; I no longer felt like I was The Woman By Default in contrast.

And that's all just me! This is my personal, specific, individual relationship to attraction, and how gender- both others' and my own- factors into my relationship with orientation.

I don't think it's necessarily inborn, or completely unchanging for everyone. I also don't think the same factors apply for everyone. I think a lot of different things can be true for different people, all at once, and it's not really useful to try to pinpoint a specific, universal explanation for orientation.

Everyone has a different relationship to orientation and gender; everyone will be influenced differently by cultural factors, by their own ways of processing and understanding the world around them, by the ways different aspects of their culture, identity, personality, and inborn traits and how they all interact with one another, and sure, maybe even by biological factors and tendencies.

Trying to solve this puzzle for the entire world of diverse human beings isn't going to make it any easier to understand yourself. Focus on what this all means for you, personally, and accept that you will never, can never, fully and perfectly understand anyone else's internal world and workings. Things get a lot easier when you can let go of that & just appreciate the diversity of human experiences, y'know?

#advice #sorry if this isn't the answer you wanted anon #and honestly I recommend digging into some academic works around queer and gender studies #try some judith butler if you need a starting point #but like. people have been asking this question for some time & you will find so much more value in the answers of people whose whole lives #are dedicated to exploring the possibilities and diversity of experiences #and putting that in larger contexts with help and collaboration from a whole world of people doing similar work

[emchovy]

Learned about the release of this book real late, (as in, this February, when I decided that I wanted to show my roommate Epithet for the first time) but thankfully that was just in time to preorder a copy of the hardcover release, which finally came.

Or well, it came yesterday, and I'm finished reading it now. It was AMAZING.

The writing style is pretty different from the stuff I normally read, but once I got in the groove, I felt like I didn't need the audiobook (which I'm definitely gonna get eventually) because I could basically hear all the characters in my head. Also, spoilers for the rest of my review. Pick up a copy. You won't regret it.

I say review. This is disconnected rambling. Also, seriously, spoilers for the whole book delivered in a random out-of-context way.

This book is definitely Molly's story more than anything, and beyond that it's a story between Molly and her sister Lorelei. Two kids with epithets, and opposite personalities. There's a really masterful job here of balancing realistic family drama with the fun, villain vs. hero hijinks.

I love a pathetic loser, and so I was immediately taken by Rick Shades, and his quest for friends, to the point I was getting bummed out when he kept getting rebuffed lololol. However, it was all earned in the end. The scene with him and Molly was <3. Also, I am glad he's gonna get a job. Of some sort.

Naven meeting Molly in the street and just agreeing to give her speech training is an incredibly cute concept.

I liked the Neo Trio a lot, but they're surprisingly not the new faves I expected them to be, though I did laugh pretty much every time at the running joke with Feenie and money.

Actually, my favorite new character was probably Lorelei. We love a girl who's making every wrong decision and also just doesn't leave the house anymore and wonders what's wrong. Also, the Martin + Lorelei relationship was also pretty intriguing. He's more supportive of Lorelei, she's got more of his traits, but Lorelei needs someone who'll help her manage better. Martin's vague support of her 'playing', as Molly puts it, is doing more harm than good. I wasn't exactly sure how to take the fact that Martin constructs Lorelei's ideas in the real world, also. Is he plagiarizing? I wouldn't read it that way, but he's also not collaborating with Lorelei, so they could build something together. A relationship that could go either collaborative or parasitic, depending.

Also, I want Lorelei to get better (and I fully believe she will) but I really liked the end. She needs some time in the real world right now, to grapple with her actions. Neven's gentle support was good. Her and Molly need time apart, so that they can be able to be together again.

Gio and Molly remain duo of all time. Every interaction they have is cute and/or funny. Two characters I could probably enjoy watching/reading about doing basically any boring task you can think of and enjoy. Painting a fence, doing laundry, vacuuming, whatever.

Giovanni's complete blindness to romance was so fuckin' funny in this book. Him and Lorelei and him and Crusher were also distinctly different levels of complete obliviousness.

Also, Crusher and Molly, right at the end <3!! Pulling out the stool for her, her getting reassured by the fact she was nervous. Augh. So sweet. I've reread that scene like 4 times. I do hope we get Molly hanging out with more of The Boys. Crusher's coming across like a pretty gentle sweetie, but I'm very curious about how she'll integrate into the larger group.

All of that to say! Good book!! Would recommend! I'm extremely excited for Sweet Escape.

#em reads #epithet erased #GOOD STUFF!

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/karmic-tools-weekly-forecast-july-7-13-2019/

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: July 7 – 13, 2019

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: July 7 – 13, 2019

By Kelly M. Beard

The video version of this forecast, as read by Kelly, is available here.

The Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast covers the current planetary transits which affect people in different ways and to various degrees of intensity. Take notice when it is a Personal planet (Sun / Moon / Mercury / Venus / Mars) interacting with a Social (Jupiter/Saturn) or Collective planet (Uranus / Neptune/Pluto). And pay extremely close attention when it is a Social planet interacting with a Collective planet because that means something *big* is brewing that will move large groups of people along their evolutionary paths. Tuning in to the energy and rhythm of the planets can serve as a useful *guide* as you move along your Individual Path. It also helps to understand your place within the context of the larger Social & Collective Story. Below, you will find out how these energies tend to manifest, as well as guidance and direction. 

*NOTE*  There are some days when there are NO CONTACTS (besides the Moon), please note that there are no missing entries, we just list the actual Activations of each week + the day they happen.

Weekly Forecast: July 7 – 13, 2019

7/7 ~ Mercury Retrograde in LEO Mercury is going to go backwards in Leo, asking us to review our creative projects and reconnect with the Heart. This is a chance to rewire your magnetics in a way that is deeply supported by it spending more time reviewing late Cancer. We are being asked to release childhood traumas & dramas, stop letting them color the present and start taking responsibility for our words, thoughts & deeds. This energy reminds us we cannot be superficial with no substance, beauty with no heart, love with no trust. This is also one of three times a year that we get to give our Mental Body a much-needed break. Yes, mechanical breakdowns & miscommunications abound, but conversing with your Soul Self, communing with your Invisible Team (Angels, Ancestors & Animal Spirit Guides) and more right-brain activities are much more supported, and often magical, with Mercury Retrograde. This feeds into all the Solstice/Eclipse advice I have already given to dedicate some time to self-care. The initial stop in Leo tells us that the Heart is involved and if it doesn’t “feel” right, it is best to hold off until it does. Obviously, you cannot stop the world for any retrograde, so the caveat with this one is to check, re-check, triple check the details and the bottom lines; thoroughly read through any contracts and don’t be shy about asking folks to clarify if you are still not clear. Usually, the attention to detail (and following your own instincts & intuition, which is also better supported at this time) will help you catch any mistakes before it is too late to correct them. That said, retrogrades, especially Mercury, are actually great for finishing projects (not necessarily starting them) and fixing or finally addressing something that has been on the back-burner. Finally, it is also recommended to take as many personal time-outs for some “me-time” as you possibly can throughout the Summer of 2019 because the Summer of 2020 is going to be something else entirely.

7/8 ~ Chiron Retrograde in ARIES Last year, Chiron took its last dip into Pisces for 50-years so for those of you born 1960-1968, you have now completed a very deep healing process, while those born 1968-1977 are being initiated. This retrograde is his first full retrograde in Aries and so we have all been put on notice, especially those with this placement. We can all consciously honor the healing, education & personal transformation that Chiron facilitates. Pisces taught us about sensitivity & boundary issues, being a spirit in human form. Now, in Aries, we are opening up to the new directive of self-healing, self-assembling & self-mastery going forward. Chiron is best known as the Wounded Healer, the aspect of Self that came in with a wound to address this lifetime and in your chart, it represents your *Healing & Educational Path* – it is all that you learn on the journey to wholeness & integration and the healing & education that results from that journey. This 5-month period is going to reveal where you’re at in your own process. This time is deeply supported for a personal inventory or inner review. You have to be willing to face the fears & hurts, accept the losses & defeats, and then get up, dust yourself off & try again. Chiron can help guide this process. It’s time to be brave & pioneering (clearly, the old ways no longer work), it’s time to follow our instincts (though first we may have to connect to them properly), it’s time to face challenges head-on, and remember that though we have to do for Self (be self-sufficient & self-contained), we do not have to do it alone. So this time is really going to support the evolution of the individual within the context of the community or their relationships. It is all connected, if one evolves (Self), the other (Relationship) has to evolve too (or dissolve & go away).

7/8 ~ Venus (relationships, love & money) ~sextile~ Uranus (clarity & inspiration): This energy, thanks to Uranus, activates a certain spark of electricity in the air. New relationships will have an unusual aspect to them and old ones can break-to-realign in a positive, even fun way with this energy. No monotonous routine, humdrum people or boring collaborations with this one. Use it to access your own unique genius and deep well of creativity and then share if you can, with other like-hearted Souls. Take advantage of this energy to tap into areas you may not have realized were available to you before now. Keep it light and upbeat; socialize and enjoy the experience of different people or new activities. Keep in mind, however, any relationships begun this week may not be based on qualities needed for long term survival. It is more of a time to enjoy the people and experiences that pass through and accept it as a gift!

7/8 ~ Mercury Rx (thoughts) ~conjunct~ Mars (energy): I have to preface this with two things: (1) is when Mercury is involved, it is a relatively fast-moving energy. (2) is when Mars is involved, being the lower version of power (Pluto being the Higher version), it reminds us that with power, also comes responsibility. Now, that all said, the positive expression of this energy is that you can control your mind and direct it with passion, getting tangible results. This heightens your intellectual ability and mental capacity (for better or worse). You will be able to clearly articulate your thoughts and you should have quick, effective responses. If you maintain your integrity, this is an excellent time to ‘fuel’ major creative expression. If this energy manifests its negative side, it can make you petty & combative, arguing over nonsense and wasting precious time & energy in ego control-dramas. And if it is not coming FROM you, it is just as possible to be coming AT you (from others). This is the best time to put your energy (Mars) behind your thoughts, ideas and words (Mercury) and get creative. The power of this pairing is that they are occupying the same space, essentially energizing each other and initiating a new 2-year cycle.

7/9 ~ Sun (core essential Self) ~oppose~ Saturn (physical limits & definition of reality): This is an annual process of development. The Sun makes it personal and about you the individual. Saturn helps move your timeline along and build the literal aspects of life, the basics of providing for yourself (food, shelter etc) and your own personal limitations. What renewed aspect of Self got activated about 6-months ago and how do you want that to fully develop over the next 6-months? This is a potent midpoint, the most powerful course-correcting time in any cycle, this one being an annual meeting between Sun & Saturn, a check-point between you and your responsibilities. Each year, you evolve, some years more consciously than others so this is a good time to check in with your own personal definitions of what you are or are no longer responsible for. Often, this energy activates a push-pull between who you are and who you want to be; between what you want to do and what you have to do. My age-old advice is to: do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do. And while it may not be the easiest path, it’s usually worth it for the peace of mind that it brings. You may swing between extremes of fulfilling all your obligations to the neglect of your own Truth & Purpose -or- neglecting your obligations and doing whatever you choose, which only means those obligations will be there when you get to them and they will have most likely increased by the time you do. Balance is the key! Practice, there is no perfection and it’s time to practice handling business before pleasure.

7/10 ~ Sun (authentic Self) ~trine~ Neptune (intuition): This energy triggers your idealistic, altruistic inclinations, but remember that help has to be invited. But if you have the energy to share & to spare, then dedicate your Self to something greater than you. Choose a cause to support or help those less fortunate for the sheer pleasure of giving. If your energy is low at this time, it may be better directed inward. If you can, take some extra time in intentional solitude, praying, meditating and connecting to Spirit this week, you will be rewarded with deep revelations & mystical discoveries within you. It’s a great time to do divinations, ritual or ceremony if you’re into that. Your intuition is heightened also, so pay attention to any ‘messages’ that come through or to you. Try to use this energy to reflect on where you are and dream a little about where you want to be, mentally, spiritually and physically in 6-months to a year from now.

7/11 ~ Mars (action) ~square~ Uranus (freedom): This is the “Rebel” energy – what’s your “cause”? If you are clear about your own authentic Truth & Purpose, then this energy is refreshing and uplifting. You acknowledge that change is necessary (and inevitable) and you co-create with this energy to transform your current life. This is a rebirth energy too and being “reborn” is never easy. Worth it – but not easy. However, if you are NOT clear about who you are and what you’re capable of, this energy shines a light on that aspect of your life which you instinctively already know needs an overhaul but for whatever reason you are still holding on to the old habits/patterns. Unwilling or unable to embrace change at this time, you only increase the feeling of being restricted by external energies. Your life is a direct reflection of what’s going on inside you. How’s it lookin’? Check your ego, recommit to your Truth and remember that change is GOOD! And if you don’t go voluntarily (read: consciously), then you’ll get dragged to the new level, kicking and screaming and you’ll be so exhausted when you get there that you may miss the beauty in evolving to that next level. (This IS what you’ve been working toward, correct?) Remember, conscious, effective action creates freedom.

*****

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[jaymes-ip]

8/30 - Theme/Topic Brainstorm

Theme/Topic Brainstorm

Masks 

Keep this as un-covid related as possible

As a barrier we put up

Metaphorically 

A fear of being seen and understood by others

Masking as a thing that autistic and other neurodivergent people do 

A fear of rejection 

Horror 

How it relates to being marginalized

Specifically for me in being queer

As a form of camp even

As part of our history

The ways in which people see us

Subversion 

Things that are scary are actually good and vice versa 

Taking power back

Maybe being a bit erotic

Monsters

A symbol of power, of fear

Taking back power but also being afraid of hurting the ones you love

Classical Greek

Minotaur 

Horror movie/literature 

Slashers 

Frankenstein 

Werewolves 

Vampires

The idea of being predatory comes up here

Divine

This is one I have to consider borrowing from since I don’t have any real connection to religion

Transformation of the body

What it takes for a body to be grotesque

Transformation

Of the body 

Of my own body specifically 

For transgender reasons 

As a representation of change 

Both positively and negatively 

Something that is always on my mind 

As a way to gain power back 

Get out of my own body and into something that can kill, something that has real power

Gender 

A huge part of my life as I am trans

And everyone’s life in general

Something I have a huge interest in anthropologically 

Body 

As a place for transformation

The self and the place that holds the self

Act of making

I want to do work that reflects the medium it’s in

That explores that medium 

That speaks to the act of making and about process 

Sex 

Eroticism especially

Even if this is a scary topic to cover for myself I’m always intrigued

Queerness

A huge and beautiful part of my life 

Being trans is a huge part of who I am and my experience 

Both with the world and my own body 

Being bi in the same way 

Both change the way I see other people and the way I see gender itself

Ursula K Leguin’s writing 

Her sci fi work is incredibly influential on me 

The way she writes the intersections between people and the way she writes the relationships between men and women is with and indescribable wholeness

Love 

Connection to other people 

How we connect 

What makes us disconnect

Abuse 

Trauma 

Extremely common

Abuse as it relates to love

Not mutually exclusive 

Something that makes loving harder

Something that a lot of us deal with 

How wonderful it is to love and be loved 

The feeling of serving other people 

Love not being transactional

Self 

It’s a core to all of my work, I don’t feel shy about my work being autobiographical, I feel it kind of has to be

Topics Derived From These Themes

The thing about deriving a topic is right now I don’t have a lot of wide reaching themes, or at least the ones I do either don’t have social implications, or if they do I have a lot of baggage with them because there is work I want to do that I’m getting caught up in. I’m starting from the point of what would be visually interesting as opposed to what the actual project is about. I think I need to start with what I’m interested in more broadly, I can pull from project ideas later, I won’t exhaust these topics any time soon. So let’s look through the list; what do I care about?

I care about the way that men and women are socialized to interact with each other

About how gender can be both an axis to understand each other, but often stands in the way of relating due to gendered socialization

Contexts: Western society, specifically America

I care about the ways that horror both demonizes and empowers the marginalized

Through a long and storied history

My focus would be on queer people

I care about what a gender anthropology can tell us about ourselves and others

Currently and in the past 

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen

Through a lens of transformation

And through a lens of mutilation and destruction

Killing the original owner

Most specifically trans men/trans masculine people

How we’re removed from our own bodies; our own pallbearer

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen under a variety of lenses and the dehumanizing and empowering effects it can have. 

Goals of exploring self, transformation, the act of making, and the mixture of many different mediums.

What do I want out of this project?

To do something physically large

Maybe imposing 

To combine a lot of the skills I have and mediums I enjoy

Printmaking 

Ceramics 

Illustration 

Comics and story telling

To do something personal

Honestly? To impress other people 

To have something actually finished instead of simply conceptual

Though I do want to explore medium and material as well

I want it to be understood

I want to be understood

Mediums list

Proficient 

Printmaking 

Relief: lino, woodblock

Drypoint 

Screenprinting

On paper and fabric

Drawing 

Digital

This is something I keep shying away from as a finished product but I’m exceptional at digital illustration, I should use that skill 

Charcoal 

Acrylics

Watercolor 

Ceramics

Mold making

Hand crafting

Writing

Comic making 

Explore 

Ceramics

Glazes 

Larger molds

Fabrics

Sewing 

Weaving 

Knitting/crocheting

Painting/drawing 

Pastels

Oil + chalk

Colored pencil 

Watercolor 

Fifteen Projects

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen under a variety of lenses and the dehumanizing and empowering effects it can have. 

Goals of exploring self, transformation, the act of making, and the mixture of many different mediums.

Becoming, Busan Biennale 2010. Yishay Garbasz

Photos, steel, makrolon, motor, light, wood, foil, cloth, 300cm width. 230cm high (Zoetrope)

http://yishay.com/index.php/2019/08/10/becoming/

Motive + Method: It’s about the ways in which trans bodies are portrayed and talked about, but also incorporates a multitude of processes and materials in a way I am interested

Becoming an Image, 2012-Present and The Resilience of the 20%: Monument Project, by Cassils

https://www.cassils.net/#projects 

Photos, 2000lb clay, performance, bronze casting

Motive + Method: their work is always highly charged and speaks to the perceived violence of trans people along with the ways in which they are seen. Their work is also extremely iterative and multimedia.

Both by Zackary DruckerThis Is What It Looks Like (To Go From One Thing to Everything)

Collaboration with Luke Gilford

Digital C-prints, dimensions variable

2013

Don’t Look at Me Like That

Collaboration with Manuel Vason

Duratrans on LED Lightbox

2010

https://www.zackarydrucker.com/photos 

Motive; the former lends itself to the surgical angle in which trans people are seen, the later to the hatred of being seen against your will

Andy Warhol's 1975 "Ladies & Gentlemen" series

Screen print and paint on canvas, size variable (~2x3’) https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/warhol-exhibit-explores-roles-gender-sexuality-his-life-art-n1236516

Motive + Method + Media; an outsider’s perspective (or at least a non-out trans person's perspective) on the trans body as well as Warhol as an artist who popularized a lot of printmaking and mixed media printmaking techniques. 

Gender Portraits, by Drew Riley, 2013-Present

Paint on canvas, size varies

https://www.genderportraits.com/paintings

Motive + Media; These are a twist on the traditional portraiture style and have a fun, bold way of portraying the subjects.

Eli Clare, by RIVA LEHRER

1997, acrylic on panel, 18" x 24"

Motive; Riva is an artist whose work focuses on the many different bodies that art stigmatized (often to the point of seeming monstrous).

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Peter Hujar), 1989.

Courtesy the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York

https://elephant.art/how-david-wojnarowiczs-photographs-helped-me-overcome-my-grief-17052021/

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day This Kid...)

1990

https://whitney.org/collection/works/16431

Motive + Method; unique ways in which queer bodies are portrayed, especially around violence and death as well as the combination of words and visuals.

FRANCIS BACON, 1909 - 1992. STUDY FOR PORTRAIT OF JOHN EDWARDS

signed, titled and dated 1986 on the reverse

oil, pastel and aerosol paint on canvas

198 by 147.5 cm. 78 by 58 in.

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/evening-sale-london/francis-bacon-study-for-portrait-of-john-edwards

Motive + Media; the way the body is portrayed in such an odd and uncomfortable way as well as the way the paint has been layered and manipulated.

Lorenza Böttner, “Untitled” (1982), black and white photography, size variable

https://hyperallergic.com/494092/lorenza-bottner-requiem-for-the-norm/

Motive; portrayals of otherized bodies

Lorenza Böttner, “Untitled” (1986), pastel crayon on paper

Motive + Material; contrast with the other piece

Juliana Huxtable, Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm)

Date 2015

Medium Inkjet print

Dimensions 40 x 30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/juliana-huxtable

https://www.hungertv.com/editorial/the-future-juliana-huxtable/ 

Motive + Method; This is one example of a long series of portraits along a similar theme. Her work is very iterative

Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Pervert, chromogenic print, 1994.Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Nursing, chromogenic print, 31 inches, 2004

https://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/queer-art-1960s-to-the-present/

https://art21.org/artist/catherine-opie/

Miss D'vine I, 2007, Zanele Muholi South African, b. 1972

Chromogenic print

30 1/10 × 30 1/10 in

76.5 × 76.5 cm

Edition ⅗

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zanele-muholi-miss-dvine-i

Motive; an intersection between identities. A uniquely Black African look at queerness.

Ndlunkulu, 2021

Beads glued on plywood Work

30 3/10 × 23 2/5 in

77 × 59.5 cm

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zanele-muholi-ndlunkulu

Motive + Method; taking photos and turning into a beaded piece

    Re-branding My Love, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

2011

Charcoal, acrylic, collage and Xerox transfers on paper

5.5 ft.× 4.5 ft.

http://www.njidekaakunyilicrosby.com/work/re-branding-my-love

Material + Method; multimedia collage and layered printmaking work revolving around the body

Roberto LugoWhitney Houston / Shirley Chisholm Urn, 2017

Method + Material; his work is intensely narrative even within single pieces and combines printmaking and ceramic techniques

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-artists-shaping-future-ceramics

Yun Hee LeeThe Castle Of The Spider's Web, 2017

ATELIER AKI

Method + Material; narrative ceramic piece that are non-sequential

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-artists-shaping-future-ceramics

Title: OriginsArtist: David Spriggs

Location: Collection Pierre Miron, Montreal

Date: 2018

Size: Each artwork 53 x 186 x 28 cm / 21 x 73 x 11 inches

https://davidspriggs.art/portfolio/origins/ 

Materials: Painted layered transparencies in display case

Method + Material; layering is a method I’m interested in using to create both depth and a sense of time

Nick Cave, 2012 Soundsuit

made from buttons, wire, bugle beads, wood and upholstery, ~6’

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/15/t-magazine/nick-cave-artist.html

Motive + Method; transformations of the body + collage

Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 1940

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78333

Motive

Critical Question

Material:

How can I combine illustration, printmaking, and ceramics in a way that represents the diversity of the queer experience?

How can the materiality of the peice reflect the subject of the piece itself?

Method:

How can narrative and iteration be used as a reflection of the self?

How can layering be used to show the multiple ways in which trans people are seen?

Motive:

How can I combine both positive and negative depictions of trans people in a way that is empowering to queer viewers?

Finalized

How can layering and narrative be used to combine both positive and negative depictions of trans people in a way that is empowering to queer viewers?

Three Projects Brainstorm

Brainstorm

Aging

Me and/or other trans people as we age

Transformation comic 

Huge multi media piece that uses layering to show the monstrous and the divine

Follows a narrative 

Possibly a linear progression of time

Me growing up

Someone growing up

A transition

Has words

Either in the piece or at least following a written poem

Potentially the name and subtitle of piece could be this poem

Rot to growth

Progression of someone rotting and dying in their original form only to flourish

Plant symbolism

Reverse surgical portraits

Turning the idea of mutilation around

Unwanted body parts are portrayed as rotting flesh, removing them is freeing

Porcelain dolls

An idyllic ceramic doll of a female child cracks/is degraded in a series to reveal a grow man trapped inside

I would want this to be a progression from less to more from fake to real

Lovers

A trans man and a trans woman

Potentially a variety of t4t couples

A series of prints/illustrations of couples

Potentially based on some of the imagery from Running Up That Hill

Dissolving 

Becoming real

Becoming abstract 

Accompanying the images 2 large nesting dolls

Equal amount of pink and blue parts

The same shapes

Best case is they fit together like lovers 

The outside could be a different/more distinctly human shape

The inner layers could be lighter and lighter in color

Viewers are encouraged to move them around together, mixing the different colored pieces

Whether this is a top and bottom pieces or just one larger body-shaped piece

Bestial

Series of trans people as any animal/mythical creature/monster of their choosing

Half man half beast would be best 

Great time to practice character design

These could be in a variety of forms and styles

Depending on what people are looking for and how they see themselves

Main purpose is to show the dichotomy between how other see us and how we see ourselves

And the power we can take back through monstrosity

Project 1

Transformation: Large scale multimedia comic (combining multiple forms of printmaking, photography, illustration, and potentially ceramics) following a narrative growing up/transition with layered transparencies representing the different ways trans people are perceived.

Project 2

Rot and Growth: A multimedia portrait series that begins with interviewing the subjects of each portrait. Each portrait comes in two parts: the first before transition/surgery and after. The before portrait represents unwanted body parts as rotting and grotesque, reminiscent of the “mutilation” language used against us; the after shows what transition is actually like: joyous, life bringing. Transition does not have to be a physical thing in this case, but a realization and acceptance of the body.

Project 3

Bestial: Starting with interviews, this multimedia portrait series reflects the way trans people are demonized and allows for the subjects to take back their power by embodying the monsters they are seen as. Each subject picks an animal/mythical creature/monster to be combined with and the interview guides the medium the portrait is created in. 

#8/30 #brainstorm #writing #journal

[winklix]

Latest 12 Ultra Modern UI/UX Design Trends to Influence in 2021

Users use the website every day in their normal life, and show additional creativity to get their attention to businesses. Entrepreneurs focus on visual appeal and usability of their web solutions so that users stay there.

In addition, they monitor the latest UI trends to stay in the game. Let us now explore in detail the leading UI / UX design trends of 2021 and see how popular brands implement them successfully.

1. Skeuomorphism

Skeuomorphism UI stands proudly amid the latest UI trends and is not going to lose ground. Everyday people come in various advertisements. They watch discount advertisements and receive constant notifications. In addition, consumers interact with various interfaces that are overwhelmed with information. To avoid such overload, Mobile App Designers are always finding new ways to simplify graphic elements which keep limiting the number of colors and make different proportions and composition.

Nowadays, the functionality of the elements plays a paramount role. It is important to properly highlight the best qualities of a product and use it to convey the right feelings to customers. Components that designers use for decorative purposes are only used irrelevantly.

2. Go Bright & Bold, Colorful Background

The trend with various styles of using gradients was popular in the past and remains a relevant UI trend to date. Now the gradients are getting lighter, but at the same time, they look a lot more complex. The thing is that earlier, designers used about 2-3 colors in linear colors. Now the number of colors can be increased to 10. In addition, an overlay can be used.

Such gradients cause a temperamental outbreak because they are so colorful. This is why designers of many well-known companies like Stripe or MyMind enjoy using them.

3. Uninterrupted UX

You should not complicate interfaces in 2021 and force users to take additional action. Try to reduce the number of elements and areas that customers should fill. Uninterrupted registration and signing became one of the latest UX trends. For example, when entering their market account, users can enter their phone number. They no longer need to remember another password.

Thus, Apple followed this recent UX trend and created a custom button that helps avoid additional registration steps. By clicking the button, you choose whether or not you want a website to see your email. One moment and you are already logged in.

4. Especial & Incoherent Illustration Animation

Illustration user interfaces remain at the top of the trend like they did last year. However, they are less common than before. Earlier, web designers followed minimalism when pictures arrived. In this way, they tried to make web pages less overloaded and more sensible for users.

Nowadays designers mostly experiment with unusual angles, proportions and story. They are using muted pastel colors, bright or vice versa. The parables are getting bigotry and creating a bigger commotion than ever before. We suggest that SVG format should be used for pictures. The quality of images in PNG, GIF and JPEG formats is deteriorating as screen resolution increases. This is not a problem with SVG because the vector format can be extended and there is no loss in quality

5. Crayon Color

Since today is the day of minimalism and simple web design, designers use crayon colors in their works. In this way, they highlight the lightness and humility of the design. Such colors fit very well into various concepts. They set the right tone and environment for various websites, for example, e-commerce platforms etc.

6. Voice User Interface (VUI)

The widespread adoption of UX / UI design in conjunction with the voice user interface has again resulted in one of the UX trends. It has been clear for a long time that design does not have to be visual to work properly. The voice interface is an internal interface. It is more with context and data synthesis than with actual design. Nevertheless, designers are trying to keep pace with the latest user experience trends and provide users with more and more frequent voice interfaces.

For example, today we can see dozens of apps where you can translate a word or sentence into another language. It works in the following way. You click a button, then the device will start recording your voice and will start translating your speech into the language you want. In this way, you can communicate easily with people who do not know your language.

7 .Glass Morphism

According to research last year neomorphism was widely used in web design practices. It represents a combination of two general approaches to building user-interfaces. They are called skeuomorphism and flat design. These UI trends are quite different from each other and are often considered to be the exact opposite.

In 2021, web designers got a new passion, called glass morphism. This trend comes from the blur effect or the so-called blurred background. When people see such an element, it is as if they are looking through the glass.

8 .Enlightenment

Enlightenment is a brief introduction to the product that helps you find information in an application. Also, its key functions make it easy to understand. Whatever it is, onboarding became a major UX trend that should not be overlooked. An opinion exists that onboarding is a sign of poor design. They say that if you need to explain how a product works, then there is something serious with its design or description. Furthermore, you can see your users through these screens and force them to take unnecessary action.

In fact, modern onboarding comprises the most important screens of mobile applications. Due to them, users get better information about this app. We recommend that you keep it simple. Pay attention to the text, make it short and easy to read. Use beautiful high-resolution images and photos. You need to use all this information to explain the value of your product and to create interesting content.

9 .Symbols

Symbols make the job easier as an efficient tool for visual communication of customers. The simple minimalist icon is considered a powerful UX trend. It is about their ability to convey meaning in less space than all words. For this reason, many businesses place special emphasis on icons. For example, in 2020, big companies such as Apple and Sketch have complied with the latest user experience trends and thought to redesign all their system symbols. We recommend choosing icons from the same family. Their size and dimensions should be the same. This type of consistency will show your level of skill and emphasize the integrity of your website

10 . Mobile First Perspective

Today, about half of search queries come from mobile devices. People use their smartphones to find cafes for dinner or to book movie tickets, browse travel marketplaces to book holiday trips, and so on. These days, web designers are trying to make the design of your website or the desktop version of the app look good. For this reason, the mobile-first approach became an important UX trend. Web designers see this as a great way to improve customer interaction.

At Winklix, we develop a PWA application for each project. We convert websites into convenient cross-platform applications. Users can download them right from the website page on their device's home screen. Find a minute to learn more about PWA for insurance startups that have recently been added to our case studies.

11. Huge Typography

Every designer considers it necessary to choose the right font for the website, product or application. Customers often associate a particular font with a larger brand. Nobody would have used Roboto if it hadn't been for Google. Internet giants had taken the responsibility of creating this front and tried to show it to the whole world. People prefer scanning more than reading on the Internet. In such a situation, they get information that is important to them. For this reason, experimentation with fonts became one of the notable UI design trends. Today web designers use complex typography. They try to uncover the most important information and convey it to the customers.

These days we can often see websites that are completely built on typography. They look very fresh and entertaining. Speaking of fonts in general, their combination is an important part of design for any web solution. Understand the UI guidelines created for the online collaboration marketplace by the Winklix team of Mobile App Designing Company.

12. Virtual Reality

The world is not standing still. The 3D design field is evolving rapidly. However, the main drawbacks of this technique went nowhere. The more complex the 3D graphic, the more weight it puts on users' computers.

In 2021, 3D elements will become even more popular due to the high demand for AR and VR technologies. For example, in a new update from Apple, MacOS Big Sur, many icons were changed. The designers added elements of three-dimensional graphics to some of them.

Wrap up

In 2021, design trends are a mix of Skeuomorphism, Uninterrupted UX, Crayon Colors, Huge Typography, and Virtual Reality. To be successful in creating a unique and attractive user interface, try to select and combine multiple trends. If you are looking for a UI / UX design agency to implement all your needs and requirements, then hire UI designers from Winklix. Our team will be happy to create a custom software product for your business according to best industry practices.

At Winklix, we strongly believe that the main goal of UI / UX design is to help users achieve their goals. For this purpose, we track the latest UI and UX trends when building our products, be it a multi-vendor vehicle marketplace or a housing search website.

If you are looking for a UI / UX design agency to implement all your needs and requirements, then hire Mobile App UI / UX Designer from Winklix. Our team will be happy to create a custom software product for your business according to best industry practices. Contact us to get a free quote and turn your idea into a reality. In addition, you can check out our web application portfolio where we share our expertise in programming and design.

#mobileappdesigner #mobileappdeveloper #appdeveloper #appdesigner

[markwhitwell]

How Can Yoga Help Change the World? Mark Whitwell on Yoga and Social Change

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

Is Yoga Activism?

Our work is to bring authentic Yoga practice into the world as a powerful and efficient means of social change. Authentic Yoga is intended as a redemptive survival toolkit full of equipment that you can put to use immediately and share with your precious collaborators. It is not a new belief system or a religion or cultic sect, but an invitation to add embodied practice to our shared mission to eliminate sectarian belief systems as a basis of culture and life altogether. Yoga exists to be fitted to your life and relationships, to your cultural background and unique directions, not the other way around. It is about unwarping yourself from all social contortions, not adding more.

We hold firm to the classic definition of Yoga from our teachers, who defined it as to go in our direction of choice with continuity, a positive step towards something, rather than an act of asceticism or restraint. Yoga was never intended as an escape from the world, as it has been popularised by misogynistic renunciate cults. Nor was it intended as mere exercise: what my teacher Desikachar described as “mediocre gymnastics.”

Rather, Yoga is the embrace of body, breath, and relationship. By empowering our intrinsic drive to contribute our life to life, to be in relationship, we break the imagined wall between individual and social change. Our daily practice illuminates the connection between the depth of intimacy we can feel with ourselves and the depth of intimacy we can enjoy with others. When we are happy and blooming in life we naturally turn outwards towards connection with others. By contrast, when we feel separate from ourselves we tend to withdraw from relationship:

“Our sensory disengagement with others, the environment, and ourselves prevents us from really participating in our own lives with a profound depth of feeling. When we are not participating fully in Life — body, breath, and sex — we are less than fully human…As we keep closing down, we lose sight of our absolute birthright: to give the truth of ourselves and be receptive of the caring wisdom of others and all that surrounds us.” — The Promise (74).

Body, Breath, and Relationship

This is why we emphasise that the first act of social change is to be intimate with our own embodiment: the power of this universe that is arising as the whole body. Every body is a location of radical autonomous intelligence. Consider how wonderful our ‘ordinary’ bodies really are: from the soft feeling capacity of the frontal line from crown to base, the highly evolved nervous system and spine and its culmination in the sublime mystery of the brain core, to our ability to enjoy creative pleasures of all kinds including self-expression, art, music, logic, feeling, and the refined movement of energy between intimates in Sex. Our Yoga does not put us in touch with anything more extraordinary than what is already embodied as us, sitting here right now.

We practice Yoga to feel in Howard Thurman’s words, key mentor to Martin Luther King, what we know to be true: that we are “part of a continuing, breathing, living existence… alive in a living world.” Our practice reveals to the mind that our individual lives are nothing less than Life itself — literally. That we are an individual expression, utterly unique and unprecedented, of a larger unified process called Life that is every person and every thing.

We are autonomous, vulnerable, peaceful, and powerful individuals who are committed to relationship. We step into our full and deeply intuited capacity for love, compassion, courage and service and we do so as a collective. And we place all our bets the power of intimacy and love to sweep away the restrictions of these dark times.

“Meaningful experiences of integration between people,” Thurman continues, “are more compelling than the fears, the inhibitions, the dogmas, or the prejudices that divide. If such unifying experiences can be multiplied over an extended time, they will be able to restructure the fabric of the social context.”

The capacity for the intimate human connection and integration that Thurman speaks of can only begin in individual bodies, in the embrace of our natural embodied state of strength that is utterly receptive.

We are Nature

As our sensitivity to Life in the form of our own embodiment deepens, we feel and enjoy our place within the entire web of Nature. We can see clearly now that humanity is not participating in the ecologies of Mother Nature, and for humanity to survive we must function in our natural relationships. Patriarchal culture has deluded humanity into thinking we are separate and superior to the Earth’s ecosystems that we are made of, creating cultures of numbness, abuse and exploitation. Yoga is to reverse this perspective, to embrace our intrinsic connection. We are empowered to speak with utter certainty of our embodied knowledge that all life is sacred, and that any system which does not recognise this truth must be dismantled.

The recognition that we are nature allows us to release the widespread sense of guilt many change-makers feel when they consider their own needs for rest and regeneration. We cannot burn-out one piece of Mother Nature in attempt to save another from burning. This is why we say that Yoga is the first act of ecology, learning how to care for rather than control Mother Nature, starting in our own body. It is our practical method to process and release our grief for the hardness we perceive all around us, and it is our direct participation in the intelligence and nurturing function of nature — the body’s intrinsic movement towards harmony and health, the digestion of experience and emotion, the recovery of self-regulation, the releasing of what is no longer needed, and the receiving of what is. If you feel stressed or burnt out, please make use of these remedial practices to rest and restore.

I know so many sincere people who care deeply and so who innocently fall into practicing their efforts for change in ways that reproduce what has been called ‘grind culture.’ Who went out to work for social change with the same instrumentalization of the body, the same drive towards burnout, that capitalist economics trained us for. As the Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey beautifully writes,

“Grind culture has a fetish for seeing human beings move at the pace of a machine. It enjoys weary bodies and limited imagination […] Everything in nature needs to rest. The Earth can no exist without deep pauses….Our bodies deserve nothing less.”

As a result, many people find themselves in their adult life feeling that they are not allowed to rest at all, or that to take any amount of time away from work (or activism as work) is a waste of energy, a luxury, something for the lazy or uncommitted. Everywhere, human beings are burning out as these internal psychologies of endless grind destroy the ecosystems of body and mind. We are not robots, and we cannot treat our bodies like machines in this way.

To conclude this article I want to thank you for your commitment to serving humanity and the more-than-human sphere. The very fact you feel interested to read this article means you are a person who feels deeply and cares. Thank you for being a serious person who perceives clearly the utter chaos of human cruelty and suffering we exist in in these times. Thank you for bringing your love of life to bear on whatever the area of life is that you have felt compelled to attend to. I honour the stand you have taken.

Whatever your cultural background, whatever has inspired you to dedicate yourself to serving the world, whatever your tactics and strategies, we offer you these simple practices as a means of empowering your chosen directions and nurturing your “soft animal body,” to use Mary Oliver’s phrase. Please put them to your own creative use.

Let’s get the job done together and put love into action, within and without, in the vision of a society where life is nurtured not pillaged. Where we are all free to rest and relate in this beautiful garden of a world and enjoy the pleasures of a free-born life.

If this speaks to you, look into the yogas brought forth by Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and his wife Srimati Namagiriamma, their son T.K.V. Desikachar, the yogi U.G. Krishnamurti, and their friends and students around the world. Desikachar’s book ‘The Heart of Yoga,’ is an excellent place to start, and we have made a course of learning in the basic principles of practice that is available by donation on our website.

From my heart to yours.

Mark Whitwell

About:

Mark Whitwell has taught yoga for over three decades across the globe, and is the founder of the Heart of Yoga foundation, and the Heart of Yoga Peace Project. Mark Whitwell is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) and his son TKV Desikachar (1938-2016), with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years. Mark Whitwell is the author of four books: ‘Yoga of Heart,’ ‘The Promise,’ ‘The Hridayasutra,’ and, ‘God and Sex: now we get both.’ He also edited and contributed to his TKV Desikachar’s classic yoga text, ‘The Heart of Yoga.’ Mark Whitwell is a father of three and a grandfather. He now resides between New Zealand and Fiji and continues to write, teach, and speak.

#markwhitwell #yoga #heartofyoga #yogalife

[architectnews]

I started my fashion brand to do architecture says Virgil Abloh

Fashion designer Virgil Abloh doesn't "believe in disciplines" and instead thinks architecture should be used to explore many things. In this interview, he explains how his architectural training helped create his brand Off-White.

Abloh told Dezeen that after receiving a master's degree in architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology, he chose to build a fashion brand rather than take the traditional architectural route to continue his career.

"I don't believe in disciplines," Abloh told Dezeen. "We can use our architecture brain and do many things, not just what we're supposed to do."

"I started a career to make a brand to do architecture rather than just work at SOM, or wherever I would have naturally gone starting my architecture career," he added. "I made a brand to sort of investigate architecture in a way."

AMO and OMA "leaping point for my fashion career"

Abloh, who established Off-White in Milan in 2012, spoke to Dezeen earlier this year ahead of the opening of the brand's flagship store in Miami's Design District.

To design the store, Off-White collaborated with AMO, the research arm of firm OMA founded by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Abloh said the firms' practice underpins the concept of new architectural thinking among the next generation of architects.

"The contemporary research of AMO and OMA has been the leaping point for my fashion career," he said. "Most specifically AMO is almost the most important nucleus within this modern approach to sort of a cultural understanding of what architecture it actually is."

Abloh said the project is an example of how to challenge archetypes. Working closely with AMO director Samir Bantal, he created a flagship to rethink the typical retail store by creating a store to function as both a fulfilment centre and events space.

"What does architecture mean today?"

"Instead of us having dinner conversations at lobbies at restaurants, I said, hey, let's put something on paper, let's put some skin in the game to say, what does the retail look like and let's start challenging it," he said. "What does architecture mean today?"

The store is the most recent collaboration between AMO and Off-White, which also collaborated to design Figures of Speech – a retrospective exhibition of Abloh's career at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

It is also one of a number of projects Abloh has completed this past year – including expanding Off-White's offering to the HOME collection featuring umbrellas, dressing gowns and doorstops.

He also designed a brutalist fashion collection and a race-car version of Mercedes‑Benz G‑Class.

Read on for an edited transcript of our interview with Abloh and Bantal:

Eleanor Gibson: Virgil could you tell me about the collaboration between Off-White and AMO?

Virgil Abloh: Yeah, you know, to me, that's almost the most important part, you know, philosophically is, obviously, the history of architecture has had, you know,

We're inserting ourselves in the larger history of architecture, and, and most specifically AMO is sort of like a research thinking arm to me is, you know, almost the most important nucleus within this modern approach to sort of a cultural understanding of what architecture it actually is.

For me, the contemporary research of AMO and OMA has the leaping point from my fashion career.

In an ironic twist, obviously, I don't believe in disciplines. I only believe in theory and in sort of research and so I started a career almost to make a brand to do architecture rather than just like work at SOM, or you know, wherever I would have naturally gone, starting my architecture career. So it's like, I made a brand to sort of investigate architecture in a way.

When I met Samir, the important thing to note is that we're both a sort of like age, generation like demographic under the sort of like, contemporary layer, that's the foundation.

We have a diverse background, and we have our own sort of career and we bring that to whatever institutions we work at, you know, and so, I was like, not only is this a client, this is a conversation. And it's also the young generation, you know, I'm 30 in my late 30s. And it's like, What does architecture mean today? You know, instead of like us having dinner conversations at lobbies at restaurants, I said, hey, let's, let's put something on paper, let's, let's say, like, let's put some skin in the game to say, what's the retail look like, from those who sort of studied under, you know, spent years in normal sort of practices and let's start challenging it.

That's where, you know, the crystal starts to sort of shine with, like, why fashion is important. You know, I don't believe that fashion is needed to make fashion. That could have been 50 years before. I think our generation is more like what does fashion mean? What does retail mean? What does ground floor real estate look like in a world post-Google and Amazon.

To round out my sort of feel it's like, the ethos is important the research the logic, but then we're actually putting, you know, studs in, we're putting a material and concrete. So it's just as much theoretical, as it is practical. So Samir and I sort of formed this unit that's like, Hey, we can use our architecture brain and do many things, not just what we're supposed to do.

Eleanor Gibson: Do you think that kind of the traditional modes of architecture in architecture, education is becoming outdated? And do you think that needs shaking up in some way?

Virgil Abloh: Yeah, but I don't think it's somewhat novel. You know, I think every role through art history or architecture history needed the younger generation to sort of like feel a tension with what they were taught, you know, like, that's just humanity.

But I think it's ever more important to look at what year we're in 2020 and look at how far the ideals are from just the generation just above us. And, you know, with a man's relation to the environment, but also man's relationship to each other, we see just in a 10-year generation gap, how far off that we thought it could be.

But architecture is an industry that sort of passes through, like you can kind of be hands-off and be like, "oh, this is a client they just asked for a building" or, "they just wanted another store".

We're both niche entities, I would say AMO, Off-White, Samir and myself, so we're able to sort of wear our heart on our sleeve or brain on our sleeve.

The first slide that Samir sent for the development was like, is shopping relevant? As the brand owner, I have sort of final say but I'm not like, "oh, wait, he doesn't want to do a store". I was more like, yeah, shopping is irrelevant.

We're thought leaders, we're not just like trying to make commerce. I want to see the art of retail advance just the same way. You know, we saw the product store in the epicentres rollout and we saw, you know, just great retail, you know, across the world. So it's like pretty young architects and designers trying to provoke thinking, you know, not just commerce.

Samir Bantal: I think what is interesting, of course, in working with Virgil is that every idea that you think was kind of done or solidified, needs to be broken up again and needs to be dismantled and questioned. Whether it's through fashion, whether it's through art, whether it's through music, I think that is also what connected us that, you know, that's exactly the reason why AMO was also initiated. You can indeed work through a brief develop a design and that's it or you can basically start by dismantling the principle first and placing within a kind of larger context.

Virgil Abloh: Our generation is a little bit like we sort of poked a hole through the curtain. And we're like, "Wait a second". It's like the millennials or the internet that was like, wait, what were we taught in history? You know, hey, wait, let me see that again because there's other information that tells me there's another scenario that never crossed that path.

Off-White, you know, I made it as like this crowbar. I was like actually drawing this logo somewhere that we have to develop. Like AMO, Off-White as an actual crowbar, because that's the relationship, it's like, I made this thing to basically take the fashion industry and just like look under it.

I developed it as this brand that you don't need to wear to be in the tribe. You know, like that's, that's the literal sort of thing. It's like usually when I grew up in fashions, like, you had to sort of wear it to be like, Hey, I'm, this is my brand, you know? And amongst me and my friends and the people that develop it, it's like, no, this is not like a uniform, like you don't want to wear Offf-White. To be in the Off-White logic is just to think outside the box and you don't have to wear Off-White, you're better off wearing your own clothes. You know, the clothes are just representative of like, whatever, you know, it's a different conversation.

So that's where when I started taking the physical manifestation of this thing, it's the relationship between Samir and I that was like, okay, like, how does this manifest itself in an architecture, rather than, you know, and so we, you know, it's a part of like a whole nucleus of physical representation.

Eleanor Gibson: People are calling on the design industries, architecture, fashion, to think more about how they can be proactive in terms of improving social equity and everything. I wondered what your thoughts are on how the industry can do better in that respect?

Virgil Abloh: I have a short answer, and I'll toss it to Samir as well, but it's like it's basically you know, we're both minorities. You know, like that's just like on paper and having minority points of view in sort of mass industry or, you know, we have square footage. Both him and I have authority to sort of put our ideas to the forefront without having to run them through a filter.

I think the short answer is more like diversity is not like a novel or like a kumbaya or something nice to say. It literally means that different ideas will percolate and you'll get a, you know, a better thing. But Samir, what would you say?

Samir Bantal: Especially this strange situation that we're currently in; we not only have a kind of, you know, a global pandemic but there's also a kind of increasing awareness of that cities, the way that we live, the way that we consume, the way that we basically enjoy our lives, in a way is also kind of really scripted. According to you could almost say like a source code.

And the way that I think some time ago there was this discussion about how, you know, the fact that a lot of these tech companies produce products that actually are almost like focused towards a specific demographics, it's almost as if that can also be translated to architecture. Architecture often is, is developed and prescribed according to certain demographics and that is something that we are trying to challenge away as well. This is part of our responsibility, but also part of what we need to do in order to have architecture answer to the answer to these questions, for example, social justice.

The post I started my fashion brand to do architecture says Virgil Abloh appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

[nyfacurrent]

Conversations | Musah Swallah, Rupy C. Tut, and Jason Wyman

"Sharing the impact of personal narratives and challenges on the work being presented and pointing to the smaller narratives that the work is visually and symbolically built on keeps the audience engaged, and offers to share the layered existence of immigrant artists.” – Rupy C. Tut

Visual artist Musah Swallah (IAP Newark ’18) recently collaborated with Rupy C. Tut (IAP Oakland ’19) and Jason Wyman (IAP Oakland Mentor ’18 and ’19) on a virtual studio tour and conversation about his art. The event was a great success, and the trio has much wisdom to impart on showcasing one's artwork in a live, online setting.

NYFA: Tell us about your process of coming together to collaborate on this project.

Musah Swallah: Our participation in the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring program is what brought us together to collaborate on this project. Check-ins from NYFA program organizers such as Judy Cai regarding updates on my artistic career allowed us to stay connected and eventually collaborate on this project.

Jason Wyman: In 2019, I was a Mentor Artist in NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program in Oakland, CA. There, I met artist Rupy C. Tut. At the end of the program, I asked if any mentee would be interested in co-designing some sort of virtual convening of the immigrant artists in NYFA’s programs nationally, and Rupy stepped up.

Over the fall of 2019, Rupy and I—in collaboration with Judy Cai and Felicity Hogan—designed a series of Video Roundtables on topics including values clarification, opportunity identification, and decision making. We began these virtual conversations in February 2020 as COVID-19 started appearing in New York and shelter-in-place orders spread across the country, including the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rupy and I offered to continue convening immigrant artists nationally, centering on the question, “How do we support each other during this pandemic?” Musah attended one of our open sessions, and on the call he mentioned that he wouldn’t be able to showcase the art he created during his residency because COVID-19 made art openings impossible. Rupy and I offered to support Musah in hosting a virtual studio tour and artist talk.  

NYFA: Do you have advice on how to put an online show together? For example, what platforms to use, length of time, ways of organizing, what works to show and the ones you shouldn’t, etc?

JW: My main piece of advice is to ask yourself, “what do I want to get out of showing my work online?” Musah wanted to share the paintings he created during his residency (and some from before his residency) with his community. This helped us focus the online show because we knew what works would be shown and who would be in attendance.

For Musah’s show, we determined that about 60 minutes would be best and a platform like Zoom would be the easiest. Zoom allowed us the opportunity to have both a gallery view of Musah’s whole community, but also a presentation view so we could show his artwork. We showed photographs of work and live views of the physical works. This allowed us to be able to both look at the pieces at a distance and see elements like paint strokes and materials up close.

Rupy C. Tut: I believe that the key to putting on an online artist talk/show is audience engagement and meaningful storytelling. In the context of immigrant artists, sharing the impact of personal narratives and challenges on the work being presented and pointing to the smaller narratives that the work is visually and symbolically built on keeps the audience engaged, and offers to share the layered existence of immigrant artists.

Communication can be a barrier within the art world for immigrant artists, especially when referencing cultures, traditions, and art forms that represent non-Eurocentric parts of the world. To address this barrier, I suggested guiding questions that can allow enough depth to share aspects of the rich cultural roots of the immigrant artist and their artwork, but also allow for a perspective on how their current work relates very crucially to the issues at hand in the larger global community. Guiding prompts can include sharing a unique origin story, purpose for approaching an opportunity or work, the evolution of thought on their journey, challenges and accomplishments, as well as impact on the future of their artistic practice.

NYFA: Rupy and Musah, as immigrant artists, what lessons or experiences can you share that might be useful for our readers to hear about? 

MS: My advice for immigrant artists is to be patient, focus on your craft, and understand that regardless of the challenges you face, you will persevere. It is important that you persevere as an immigrant artist in order to share your story and the stories of those you represent in your art with the world. In order to persevere you need to find a niche—a community of like-minded artists who will offer support and advice when you need it the most. As an immigrant artist you will experience discrimination, but don't let that hold you back. Use it as inspiration. Use your art as a form of activism and bring to light the injustices you and others face as immigrants. Be patient, humble, and keep practicing your craft.

RCT: The most important lesson I have learned as an immigrant artist is the importance of my unique voice in my work and the presentation of my work as authentic to my individual mix of cultures and identities. I think immigrant artists have an individual voice that is also sometimes inclusive of family and community-centric values. The art world sometimes deludes us into diluting our stories to offer a version more “fitted” to the language and positionality of our surrounding art world pockets. I would advise immigrant artists to stay clear of this delusion and to avoid changing the core of their creative narratives to tailor to opportunities that fulfill a false sense of acceptance. Authentic work leads to a more successful life-long creative journey.

- Interview Conducted by Alicia Ehni, Program Officer and Kyle Lopez, REDC Fellow

This post is part of the ConEdison Immigrant Artist Program Newsletter #131. Subscribe to this free monthly e-mail for artist’s features, opportunities, and events. Learn more about NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program.

Image: Musah Swallah, Photo Credit: Fatoumata Magassa; Rupy C. Tut, Photo Credit: Lara Kaur; Jason Wyman, Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist

#iap newsletter #iapnewsletter #conversations #interview #immigrant artist program #immigrantartistprogram #immigrant artist mentoring program #immigrantartistmentoringprogram #alicia ehni #aliciaehni #kyle lopez #kylelopez #jason wyman #jasonwyman #rupy c tut #rupyctut #musahswallah #musah swallah #nyfa learning #nyfalearning #instagram

[oilskirt7-blog]

Behind an all-star Americana collaboration (Mark Erelli interview)

It’s funny to hear Mark Erelli describe himself as “largely unknown,” since I’ve admired his songwriting and singing for years. But I suppose all things are measured on a scale, and weighed against the Taylor Swifts of the world, his assessment is fair. That being said, he’s a frequent sideman for both Josh Ritter and Lori McKenna, and in the smaller world of folk singer-songwriters, he’s well respected for his own music too.

Aiming to make Americana’s first socially-conscious, multi-artist project (like “We Are the World,” only with more acoustic guitar), Mark recently recorded and released a single about the gun violence epidemic. He called in some favors from a number of other notable singers, including Ritter and McKenna, Sheryl Crow, Rosanne Cash, and Anaïs Mitchell — and partnered with Congresswoman Gabby Gifford’s Courage to Fight Gun Violence organization, which receives 100% of the proceeds.

“By Degrees” is a great song — Rosanne Cash called it “the most compassionate, vivid and non-preaching anti-gun violence song I’ve ever heard” — so I wanted to ask Mark Erelli some questions about the writing process, the collaboration, and what it’s like to distribute and promote a song that has such a clear social purpose. My thanks to him for taking the time.

As someone who admires your songwriting, I’m curious — if you can average out such things — how much stuff do you throw away, compared with how much you keep?

I guess it depends what is meant by “throw away” and “keep.” I might have anywhere from 15-30 new songs when I begin making a new record that will ultimately only have 10-11 tracks on it. It might seem that I throw away as much as 2/3 of what I write, but the just because something doesn’t make the record doesn’t mean it’s discarded.

Some songs get used on future recordings or as part of a concert set. Some of those songs have imagery that I love, but it’s not enough to carry that particular song. Oftentimes, the same or similar lines may appear in a completely different context in a newer song, but does that mean I threw the first song away, or was it just a draft that I had to work through to get to the one I “kept?”

How do you know whether it’s time to discard it, set it aside, or move ahead?

If I’m trying to decide what stage a song is at in this process, the guiding principle is always “what am I trying to say?” Does the song communicate an idea clearly, does it evoke a deep emotional response? If it does, I keep it. If it doesn’t, then I know I’m not finished with it yet. This process can take an hour or two or, literally, years.

“By Degrees” has four strong verses, but for me the real punch of the song happens in verses five and six, when we have to consider the children. Maybe that means I’m as numb as anyone to the feeds and headlines and arguments you refer to earlier in the tune, but Jesus, the kids! When you were writing, did you discover those verses later in the process, or did you start with the kids, and reverse engineer the song? 

I don’t always write linearly, but I think in the case of “By Degrees” I did write the earlier verses first before following the river downstream. It’s not religious, but it is a very “moral” song, in the sense that I felt the need to explore why all these little changes and degradations matter. Adults, at least some of them, can think critically and see how we got to where we are. But the thought that this sort of gun violence might be the only sort of world my kids knew was and remains a sobering thought, so bringing it back to the kids felt like a very natural conclusion.

As I write in the song, I really don’t know what to tell my boys (ages 8 and 11), so I have not had any explicit conversations about societal gun violence with my kids. They’ve heard the song many times, of course, but I’m not sure those later verses have sunken in yet.

Why make this song a collaboration?

I grew up in the 80’s with MTV and I still have vivid memories of things like “We Are The World,” where multiple artists banded together behind a common message. Not that my song is on an equivalent scale, but I felt there was a place for a project like this in the Americana scene. It’s a relatively new designation, and though many great artists identify or are identified with the genre, there really hasn’t been a socially-conscious, multi-artist project like this before, that I can remember.

Ultimately, I am not alone in my struggle to comprehend how we got to where we are, and having multiple voices sing the song kind of emphasizes that this is a problem that we all face collectively and will all have to work together to solve.

How does this kind of collaboration work, I guess first in terms of asking the artists and getting permissions, and then actually piecing the vocals together? Lots of Dropbox?

So much Dropbox! I would have loved to get everyone in the same room and run it down, old-school, which would have saved me months of work. But when you’re a largely unknown independent folksinger, you’re calling in too many favors to work that way.

The whole collaboration started with Rosanne Cash, who was aware of the song and had sung it with me before at a Brady campaign fundraiser. I knew I would need help bringing artists on board, but I felt that if Rosanne wasn’t into it, then it was basically a non-starter. Thankfully, she is so generous and supportive, and it only took her an hour or so to respond enthusiastically.

From there, it was just a matter of dreaming up artists to work with and seeing what connections we had with them. The band signed on right away, so I was able to at least build a good basic track and sing a guide vocal, so artists would get a sense of what they were signing up for. Once people did commit, they basically each sang their verses at different studios, Dropboxed us the files, and mix engineer Lorne Entress did a painstakingly brilliant job of making it all sound cohesive and musical.

How did you come to work with Gabby Gifford’s organization?

For some reason, I have never thought of this song as anything other than one that should raise money for some other group that is doing good work in the fight against gun violence. There are so many that are addressing this issue—Moms Demand, Sandy Hook Promise, Everytown —but Rosanne was the one who suggested and put me in touch with Giffords.

How has the promotion for this song differed from your past releases? Like, I noticed the song has its own website.

I’ve never released a standalone single song before, but it turns out that if you want to do a good job getting it heard than you basically have to do everything to promote and publicize it that you would a full-length record.

The biggest difference was timing: I didn’t get the final verse vocal til just after Labor Day, but the Giffords folks really wanted the song to help amplify their efforts leading up to the midterms. So we basically had to rush to assemble a promotional team on very short notice. I got a few “we don’t have time for this” sort of responses, which I could sympathize with because between my own records and sideman work, I didn’t really have enough time to work on this!

But it was something I felt compelled to do that just happened to have a well-defined political, non-musical timeline, and I just had to find champions who felt similarly compelled to get involved. Fortunately, Signature Sounds, Brad Paul Media and Songlines all came on board, donated their services and gave it their all on very short notice. I am extremely grateful for their efforts.

When a song has such a clear purpose, does it free you up from some of the usual ego things that songwriters deal with when sharing or promoting their music?

Completely. I find it very difficult to talk about the worth of my own material, though I obviously wouldn’t devote my life to something I didn’t fully believe in. But if there’s a bigger purpose other than “look at me!” it makes it a lot easier to push for people to listen to it.

For example, with the Milltowns record, I really wanted to shine a light on the legacy of Bill Morrissey, so it was a lot easier to advocate for it. “By Degrees” was the same way—I don’t make a cent from this. It’s not enriching me personally in any way or selling out concerts for me. It’s just something I’m doing because I know what doing nothing looks like and I can’t just stand by anymore.

I don’t really know how to do political organizing and push for legislation; all I know how to do is write and sing songs that hopefully support the ones directly engaged in those efforts. It feels very good to put myself in service to the music and an idea larger than my own gain.

You’re a professional songwriter and performer, but I’m curious about your day-to-day work that happens away from the guitar or stage. How much of your life is emails, booking, promoting, packing lunches?

Next year will mark my 20th year as a professional musician, and it’s a bit dizzying to think of how my day-to-day routine has changed over that time. The biggest change was becoming a parent, and since I’m home a lot of the weekdays most of my work happens during the school day, between 8 am and 2 pm. I can be pretty productive in that time, but I have to be ruthlessly efficient and come up with a plan for every day.

My average non-gig work day is as scheduled and planned out as anyone who works in an office, and it has to be if anything is ever going to be accomplished. I’m up between 5-6 am everyday, making lunches, doing the morning routines with the boys. After drop off, I head straight to the gym for swimming or lifting. It’s about 9 am after that, so the next 5 hours can go any number of ways, though several loads of laundry are nearly always involved.

If I’m taking a day to do office work, I can spend that entire time keeping up with emails, social media, and advancing gigs. More often than not, I spend those 5 hours rehearsing for whatever I have coming up next. Could be shedding Josh Ritter or Lori McKenna tunes, reminding myself how to play bluegrass, working out and rehearsing set lists for solo shows, and more. I like to say that I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I haven’t been bored since 1998.

And what’s the revenue picture like for you? Are you earning a living mainly from your own touring? CDs and vinyl sales? Sideman gigs? A little bit of each?

It’s a bit of a mystery to me how it all works out, because I get income from several different streams, and they seem to tag team at random to for the distinction of being the most lucrative.

Sometimes I’m doing lots of solo gigs and that’s where the money comes from, other times it’s a lot of sideman work, which is great because it’s all income and no expenses. I’ll occasionally get a recording session or something like that, and then there are modest checks from Soundexchange, CD Baby for digital online sales, and ASCAP royalties.

Every once in awhile, an extra zero will really surprise me at the end of the payout, which is lovely but completely random and can’t be depended upon. For example, my ASCAP check just tripled for one month and as best I can tell, it’s due to recent airplay of a song from a 16-year old record…in Belgium. I’ve never performed in or even been to Belgium, so that about sums up how unpredictable and capricious making a living as a musician can be. I basically look up at the end of every month and think “holy sh&t, I did it again!”

What’s up next?

I’m working on my 12th full-length album of originals, and it’ll hopefully be released in fall of 2019.

Check out Mark Erelli’s website for concert dates, music, and more.

[Photo by Lara Kimmerer.]

Source: https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/musician-tips/behind-an-all-star-americana-collaboration-mark-erelli-interview/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

[biandlesbianliterature]

[image description: a graphic with a collage of the book covers listed below. The text reads “Lesbian & Bi Books: New In May!”]

Riptide Summer by Lisa Freeman (YA)

The year is 1973, and Nani is firmly established as one of the top girls in the State Beach lineup. She’s looking forward to a long, relaxing summer of days spent in the sun with her surfer boyfriend, and to secret nights with Rox, the lineup’s queen supreme. But when surf god Nigel breaks her heart, and Rox reveals a secret that tears their friendship—and the lineup—apart, Nani is left to pick up the pieces. If she can’t recruit new Honey Girls to the lineup, the friends will lose their reputation as the beach’s top babes. With the summer spiraling out of control, Nani starts to question everything she’s always believed about how to rule the beach. Maybe it’s time to leave the rules behind, starting with the most important one: Girls don’t surf. 

What the Mouth Wants: A Memoir of Food, Love and Belonging by Monica Meneghetti (Memoir)

The redefinition of family values as seen from the eyes of a polyamorous, queer Italian Canadian obsessed with food. This mouthwatering, intimate, and sensual memoir traces Monica Meneghetti's unique life journey through her relationship with food, family and love. As the youngest child of a traditional Italian-Catholic immigrant family, Monica learns the intimacy of the dinner table and the ritual of meals, along with the requirements of conformity both at the table and in life. Monica is thirteen when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoes a mastectomy. When her mother dies three years later, Monica considers the existence of her own breasts and her emerging sexuality in the context of grief and the disintegration of her sense of family. As Monica becomes an adult, she discovers a part of her self that rebels against the rigours of her traditional upbringing. And as the layers of her sexuality are revealed she begins to understand that like herbs infusing a sauce with flavour; her differences add a delicious complexity to her life. But in coming to terms with her place in the margins of the margins, Monica must also face the challenge of coming out while living in a small town, years before same-sex marriage and amendments to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms created safer spaces for queers. Through risk, courage and heartbreak, she ultimately redefines and recreates family and identity according to her own alternative vision.

The Gift by Barbara Browning (Literary Fiction)

In the midst of Occupy, Barbara Andersen begins spamming people indiscriminately with ukulele covers of sentimental songs. A series of inappropriate intimacies ensues, including an erotically charged correspondence and then collaboration with an extraordinarily gifted and troubled musician living in Germany.

Large Animals: Stories by Jess Arndt (Short Stories)

JESS ARNDT’s striking debut collection confronts what it means to have a body. Boldly straddling the line between the imagined and the real, the masculine and the feminine, the knowable and the impossible, these twelve stories are an exhilarating and profoundly original expression of voice. In “Jeff,” Lily Tomlin confuses Jess for Jeff, instigating a dark and hilarious identity crisis. In “Together,” a couple battles a mysterious STD that slowly undoes their relationship, while outside a ferocious weed colonizes their urban garden. And in “Contrails,” a character on the precipice of a seismic change goes on a tour of past lovers, confronting their own reluctance to move on. Arndt’s subjects are canny observers even while they remain dangerously blind to their own truest impulses. Often unnamed, these narrators challenge the limits of language―collectively, their voices create a transgressive new formal space that makes room for the queer, the nonconforming, the undefined. And yet, while they crave connection, love, and understanding, they are constantly at risk of destroying themselves. Large Animals pitches toward the heart, pushing at all our most tender parts―our sex organs, our geography, our words, and the tendons and nerves of our culture.

Tremontaine (Tremontaine Season One) created by Ellen Kushner (Fantasy)

Welcome to Tremontaine, the prequel to Ellen Kushner’s beloved Riverside series that began with Swordspoint! A Duchess whose beauty is matched only by her cunning; her husband’s dangerous affair with a handsome scholar; a foreigner in a playground of swordplay and secrets; and a mathematical genius on the brink of revolution—when long-buried lies threaten to come to light, betrayal and treachery know no bounds with stakes this high. Mind your manners and enjoy the chocolate in a dance of sparkling wit and political intrigue. Originally presented serially in 13 episodes by Serial Box, this omnibus collects all installments of Tremontaine Season One into one edition.

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country: And Other Stories by Chavisa Woods (Short Stories)

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country paints a vivid image of the bizarre characters that live on the fringes in America’s heartland. They don't do what you expect them to do. These aren't typical stories of triumph over adversity, but something completely other. It's "Murakami meets the meth heads" says National Book Foundation award winner Samantha Hunt. "Reader, you have never before seen anything like this." The eight stories in this literary collection present a brilliantly surreal and sardonic landscape and language, and offer a periscope into the heart of the rural poor. Among the singular characters, you'll meet: a “zombie” who secretly resides in a local cemetery; a queer teen goth who is facing ostracism from her small town evangelical church; a woman who leaves New York City once a year to visit her little brothers in the backwoods Midwest, only to discover they’ve been having trouble with some meth dealers and UFOs that trouble the area. In the backdrop of all the stories are the endless American wars and occupations, overshadowed, for these characters, by the many early deaths of their friends and family, that occur regularly for a whole host of reasons.

Pride & Joy: LGBTQ Artists, Icons and Everyday Heroes by Kathleen Archambeau

Stories of success, happiness and hope from the LGBT community Stories that comprise the best of LGBT history ─ Pride and Joy: LGBTQ Artists, Icons and Everyday Heroes tells the stories of queer citizens of the world living OUT and proud happy, fulfilling, successful lives. Diverse and global. Famous and unsung. There is a story here for everyone in the LGBT community who has ever questioned their sexual orientation or gender identity, or discovered it.

Award-winning writer and longtime LGBTQ activist Kathleen Archambeau tells the untold stories from diverse LGBT community voices around the corner or around the world. Not like the depressing, sinister, shadowy stories of the past, this book highlights queer people living open, happy, fulfilling and successful lives.

The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julie Ember (Fantasy YA)

Having long wondered what lives beyond the ice shelf, nineteen-year-old mermaid Ersel learns of the life she wants when she rescues and befriends Ragna, a shield-maiden stranded on the merfolk's fortress. But when Ersel's childhood friend and suitor catches them together, he gives Ersel a choice: Say goodbye to Ragna or face justice at the hands of the glacier's brutal king.

Determined to forge a different fate, Ersel seeks help from the divine Loki. But such deals are never straightforward, and the outcome sees her exiled from the only home and protection she's known. To save herself from perishing in the barren, underwater wasteland and be reunited with the human she's come to love, Ersel must try to outsmart the God of Lies.

[Warning for Seafarer’s Kiss: the villain (the God of Lies) is nonbinary and is the only nonbinary representation in the book.]

How To Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake (YA)

    Grace, tough and wise, has nearly given up on wishes, thanks to a childhood spent with her unpredictable, larger-than-life mother. But this summer, Grace meets Eva, a girl who believes in dreams, despite her own difficult circumstances.      One fateful evening, Eva climbs through a window in Grace’s room, setting off a chain of stolen nights on the beach. When Eva tells Grace that she likes girls, Grace’s world opens up and she begins to believe in happiness again.      How to Make a Wish is an emotionally charged portrait of a mother and daughter’s relationship and a heartfelt story about two girls who find each other at the exact right time.

Nico & Tucker by Rachel Gold (Fiction, NA)

The decision can’t be put off any longer. A medical crisis turns Nico’s body into a battleground, crushing Nico under conflicting family pressures. Having lived genderqueer for years, Nico is used to getting strong reactions (and uninvited opinions!) from everyone, but it is Tucker’s reaction that hurts the most. Jess Tucker didn’t mean to hurt Nico, but she panicked. And after the worst year of her life, she’s hanging on by a thread. Forget recovery time and therapy, she needs to put the past behind her and be normal again. But when her relationship with Nico becomes more than she can handle, she cuts and runs. In this riveting sequel to Just Girls, comes a love story about bodies, healing, and knowing who you really are.

Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms: Erotic Lesbian Fairy Tales edited by Sacchi Green (Erotica)

In this sexy anthology of fantastical short stories, women are no longer just damsels in distress. Instead, strong, passionate females race to the rescue of their female lovers in this new collection of erotic fantasy.

The stories within Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms are masterfully crafted to lead your mind down unexpected paths to your favorite fantasy adventure, from the classic fairy-tales of Little Red Riding Hood to Rapunzel to the modern marvel of Game of Thrones. They will wash over you in an epic sea of words meant to entice and embolden your inner princess, heroine, or both.

Enter a time where you may be abducted by bandits or seduced by witches one second and find your heart spellbound by a dryad the next. But be warned, gentle traveler! With this new, provocative collection edited by Sacchi Green, the stories may begin with “Once upon a time”, but they will leave you coming back, time and time again.

Rough Patch by Nicole Markotic (YA)

When fifteen-year-old Keira starts high school, she almost wishes she could write "Hi, my name is Keira, and I'm bisexual!" on her nametag. Needless to say, she's actually terrified to announce—let alone fully explore—her sexuality. Quirky but shy, loyal yet a bit zany, Keira navigates her growing interest in kissing both girls and boys while not alienating her BFF, boy-crazy Sita. As the two acclimate to their new high school, they manage to find lunch tablemates and make lists of the school's cutest boys. But Keira is caught "in between"—unable to fully participate, yet too scared to come clean.

She's also feeling the pressure of family: parents who married too young and have differing parenting styles; a younger sister in a wheelchair from whom adults expect either too little or too much; and her popular older brother who takes pleasure in taunting Keira. She finds solace in preparing for the regional finals of figure skating, a hobby she knows is geeky and "het girl" yet instills her with confidence. But when she meets a girl named Jayne who seems perfect for her, she isn't so confident she can pull off her charade any longer.

Rough Patch is an honest, heart-wrenching novel about finding your place in the world, and about how to pick yourself up after taking a spill.

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin (Fiction)

Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure. Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend. Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

Birdy Flynn by Helen Donohoe (YA)

Birdy Flynn carries secrets. There is the secret of Birdy’s dead grandmother’s cat. How the boys tortured it and Birdy had to drown it in the river to stop it from suffer-ing. There’s the secret of Mrs. Cope, the teacher who touched Birdy. The secret of the gypsy girl at school who Birdy likes. But she can’t tell anyone about any of these secrets. Because Birdy’s other secret is that while she fights as good as the boys, she is a girl, and she doesn’t always feel like a girl is supposed to. So Birdy holds on to her secrets and tries to become what others want, even it if means losing herself. BIRDY FLYNN is a beautifully nuanced and deeply felt portrayal of a girl growing up amid an imperfect family, and an imperfect world, to become the person she was meant to be.

Not One Day by Anne Garréta (Fiction)

Not One Day begins with a maxim: “Not one day without a woman.” What follows is an intimate, erotic, and sometimes bitter recounting of loves and lovers past, breathtakingly written, exploring the interplay between memory, fantasy, and desire.

“For life is too short to submit to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women one does not love.”

Anne Garréta, author of the groundbreaking novel Sphinx (Deep Vellum, 2015), is a member of the renowned Oulipo literary group. Not One Day won the Prix Médicis in 2002, recognizing Garréta as an author “whose fame does not yet match their talent.”

Knit One, Girl Two by Shira Glassman (Romance) (only $1.99!)

Small-batch independent yarn dyer Clara Ziegler is eager to brainstorm new color combinations--if only she could come up with ideas she likes as much as last time! When she sees Danielle Solomon's paintings of Florida wildlife by chance at a neighborhood gallery, she finds her source of inspiration. Outspoken, passionate, and complicated, Danielle herself soon proves even more captivating than her artwork... Fluffy Jewish f/f contemporary set in the author's childhood home of South Florida.

Queer Women Books Out This Month!

See more lesbian and bi women new releases at Women in Words, or more queer new releases at Lambda Literary.

If you liked this post, consider supporting FYLL and the Lesbrary on Patreon at $2 or more a month to be entered to win a lesbian/queer women book every month, as well as getting exclusive Lesbian Literature 101 updates! 

Or buy us a coffee on ko-fi as a one-time donation!

#queer books #lesbian books #long post

[wolfliving]

The State of the Responsible Internet of Things

*Be there, or be irresponsible.  Because, when it comes to the IoT, feral exploitation is where the big money is.

https://medium.com/the-state-of-responsible-internet-of-things-iot/preface-f0a389130eb0

The ThingsCon report The State of Responsible IoT is a collection of essays by experts from the inter-disciplinary ThingsCon community of IoT practitioners. It explores the challenges, opportunities and questions surrounding the creation of a responsible & human-centric Internet of Things (IoT). For your convenience you can read it on Medium or download a PDF.

It’s a critical time in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). We believe the ThingsCon community has a valuable contribution to make to ensure a future where IoT works for everyone: A responsible & human-centric IoT.

As part of our advocacy this key issue we gathered contributors from across the ThingsCon community and put together a report on the state of responsible IoT.

This report is a collection of essays and articles by experts from a wide range of disciplines covering a wide range of topics, issues and questions around responsible & human-centric IoT.

We find it important to cover a wide range of issues and perspectives — disciplinary, regional, cultural — and so asked authors to take a high degree of freedom. The collection encompasses very different voices: Essays range from bird’s eye perspective to hands-on advice; some stem from an academic context, others are grounded in practice.

We see this is a first step on a longer journey — a kickoff if you will. We will keep adding to this collection: As the questions surrounding responsible IoT change, so will this project. We will continue to do this as much in the open as possible (see the section “Keep it open!” below).

Content overview

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino: The Whole Internet of Things In IoT, the issues and challenges aren’t the same for everyone. To strengthen the whole industry we need to build bridges between communities of practitioners.

Prof. Andrea Krajewski: User Centred IoT-Design Designing IoT for user needs and user empowerment is the responsibility of designers.

Christian Villum: Designing the Digital Futures We Want We can design better futures by putting people first.

Dietrich Ayala: Trust, Lies and Fitness Wearables When designing wearables, especially fitness wearables, focus on your users’ goals — and trust them.

Dries de Roeck: On IoT Design Processes The key to developing an IoT design process — and a successful IoT product — is to focus on user research.

Dr. Gaia Scagnetti: The here and now of dystopian scenarios IoT mediates our relationship with the world. What if the difference between a traditional object and a smart one is that one talks to you while the other talks about you?

Holly Robbins: The Path for Transparency for IoT Technologies As connected technologies have an ever-larger impact on society they need to be transparent and legible.

Iskander Smit: Touch base dialogues with things: Responsible IoT & tangible interfaces As we develop a closer relationship with wearable technologies, the UX of touch interfaces becomes a focal point of responsible IoT design.

Jorge Appiah: IoT in Africa: Are we waiting to consume for sustainable development? How can IoT and its production be shaped to truly and sustainably benefit Africa?

Max Krüger: Expanding the boundaries for caring Can connected technology also help us improve connection between one another?

Michelle Thorne: Internet Health and IoT The internet is a public resource and IoT emerges as the next front in the battle for a healthy internet.

Peter Bihr: We need more a more transparent Internet of Things In order to deserve consumers’ trust, IoT needs to become more transparent and legible. Consumer trust marks offer a promising path forward.

Rob van Kranenburg: How to run a country (I know where that door is) A personal journey of discovery, and a heureka moment about the Internet of Things.

Rosie Burbidge: Design and branding: what rights do you own and what pitfalls should you watch out for? IP protection in the Internet of Things is unusual in that it engages all intellectual property rights in more or less equal measure.

Simon Höher: Controlling Machines — AI, intentions, and games and in the IoT Does our technology have intentions, and how can we be deliberate about using, engaging with, or hacking the technologies in our lives?

Usman Haque: How Might We Grow Diverse Internets of Things? Learning from Project Xanadu & the WWW How could we design IoT to be different — to be truly radically and legitimately collaborative? Ted Nelson’s vision of Project Xanadu offers some inspiration.

Keep it open!

We believe there is an inherent value in openness, and in working in public.

License: All contributors kindly agreed to publish their pieces under a Creative Commons license (CC by-nc-sa), so you can share the content without asking permission. (Please reference the author.)

Available online for free: For comfortable reading, we publish this as a publication on Medium. It’s a great platform for authors. If you prefer, you can also download a PDF.

Powered by Github: We also keep all content in a Github repository (in Markdown) to make updating extra easy, and to allow for extra-easy future contributions and collaborative editing.

Contributors

We thank our initial contributors (in alphabetical order):

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Andrea Krajewski, Chris Villum, Dietrich Ayala, Dries de Roeck, Gaia Scagnetti, Holly Robbins, Iskander Smit, Jorge Appiah, Max Krüger, Michelle Thorne, Peter Bihr, Rob van Kranenburg, Rosie Burbidge, Simon Höher, and Usman Haque.

May there be many more in the coming months!

About this report

This report is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC by-nc-sa) license. Please reference the author by name.

ThingsCon is a global community of IoT practitioners dedicated to fostering the creation of a human-centric & responsible Internet of Things. Learn more on ThingsCon.com, join an event near you, and follow us on Twitter.

To link to this page, you can also use the shortlink bit.ly/riot-report.

Get in touch

We love to hear back from you, be it with feedback or because you have a contribution to make.

If you would like to reproduce individual pieces, please get in touch with the author directly; all rights are in their hands.

If you’d like to contribute a piece to this essay collection, please get in touch (info at thingscon.com).

For any other question, please also get in touch on any channel (@thingscon on Twitter or by email, info at thingscon.com).

#Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino #Andrea Krajewski #Chris Villum #Dietrich Ayala #Dries de Roeck #Gaia Scagnetti #Holly Robbins #Iskander Smit #Jorge Appiah #Max Krüger #Michelle Thorne #Peter Bihr #Rob van Kranenburg #Rosie Burbidge #Simon Höher #Usman Haque

[mutualhighmaintenancemachin-blog]

I need a fix cus I'm going down

Made the mistake of appraising myself sufficiently healthy to attend a bonfire with normal decent tax-payer type folks. Stood up too fast in my chair and blacked out completely, hit my head on concrete. When I came to i had no earthly fucking memory of having driven to the bonfire, nor could i really recall the names of the three concerned hipsters perched over my limp doughy abscessed jaundiced shit heap of a body. Told them it was a problem with blood sugar, i had forgotten to imbibe my afternoon orange juice! Translation-haven’t slept in four days, taking in roughly two hundred calories a day all in ginger ale. Meth heads opt to sustain themselves on a diet of paranoid resentment in lieu of proteins and grains. The cook gets super spun and lectures us like we’re babes about the dark leftist forces presently waging war on the masculinity of the white man-for one thing, he's convinced that jews run the porn industry and that fucking pornhub is riddled with overtures both overt and subliminal intended to brainwash white guys into identifying as weak and feminine and to associate men of color with heroism and strength. He also believes that soy causes gender dysphoria. All of these batshit crazy delusions act like stars in the broad constellation of the cooks worst dystopian fears-a workforce with no room left for traditionally male-centered leadership characteristics dominated from top-down by a host of future ladies who make their trade in creative collaboration, rather than fear and theft of other peoples ideas. Without a need for a provider, our nazi-bespectacled methamphetamine cook envisions a new sexual economy in which women will jettison their attachments to the family structure in favor of like, industrialism, i guess, and men will have no other resort but a desperate turn to cross-dressing and dick-taking and i guess maybe stitching scarves. It was at this point that i was really tempted to tell the cook something he needs to hear-if you really believe that large shadow societies are orchestrating history just cus they want to make you some dudes boyfriend, its probably cus part of you wants to be. I get that, sucking dick is a blast. if you’re terrified that you can’t compete in a post-modern job market, it might just be because you aren’t. There’s no place left for cowboys or outlaws or methcooks cus those professions only make sense in the context of an insanely violent frontier. You feel obsolete and useless because you are, but make no mistake, that hurt has nothing to do with the world everything to do with your soul being severely malnourished. I know cus mine is too! Real moral christian courage is showing up to your crucifixion with a smile on your face ready to graciously thank the romans for every nail they put through your wrist. You feel empty because your a paranoid fascist meth cook, i feel bad cus I'm a junkie. We are bad. The nazi pilots who blitzed france in two sleepless, speed-fueled nights probably felt fucking fantastic, as if they were aloft on the trade winds of history itself and their momentum across europe must have seemed like proof enough of the moral righteousness of the german cause. But then the morning comes and the meth wears off and your skin smells like piss and your back aches and you can’t stop grinding your jaw and the first wave of survivors begin to trickle out from the camps and presumably in that moment a few nazis had the epiphany-that the very same starved beaten traumatized jewish women and men and children they had aspired to extinguish from human memory were now going to tell the story of what had happened. Power loses, grace is its own kingdom, etc etc. Furthermore those german officers who managed to transition back to civilian life and start families must have experienced a very strange new parental dynamic-can you imagine a family at a dinner table and the proud head of household instructs his small son to finish his vegetables and after pausing to mull it over for a few moments his son turns to him and says Father having thought about it a great deal i don’t think ill be following your instructions-after all you were only following instructions yourself when you helped to engineer the greatest cruelty in human history! To which ostensibly the father mumbles to clear his throat and asks his wife to pass the potato salad. Not even to invoke the possibility that the Fuhrer himself Mr. Adolph Hitler probably died surrounded by a swarm of shadow people, fucking hilarious just the thought, him yelling in that distinctive manic patois of his that he’s the leader and the abeyance of his will is sacrosanct blah blah blah while the little invisible mites under his pale skin shift and swell and scratch and the shadow people dancing around his peripheral vision taunting and cajoling and ridiculing him and the absurdity of his final solution and because he didn’t know speed the way we now know speed he probably didn’t know anything about the shadow people at all from his perspective they might just as well have been the ghosts of his victims come to taunt and ridicule him in his lowest hour pointing and laughing and daring him to pull the trigger!   

The same entitlement motivates the mass shooter who imagines a world full of seven billion perfect strangers as an attack on his rightful pursuit of happiness. No one will sleep with him and he can’t make sense of his place in a world built on fucking so he begins to indulge in fantasies of coercion, revenging himself on the very public space he so craved Now if our hypothetical douchebag had any pretense of self-awareness he might have looked into the possibility of adopting several dogs, and in turn coming to see his life as a story about caring unconditionally for animals. That’s a helluva life-Saint Francis got into the catholic hall of fame for doing not a whole lot more. Or perhaps he could adjust his expectations of intimacy in consideration of the countless plain-to middling-to ugly folks who are forced to come to terms with the truth early on that all of our bodies are grotesque and hideously deformed billboard advertisements for our big beautiful impossibly dense souls-come see a kernel of divine inspiration made self-aware, shimmering in the glory of creation,  just two exits past the tits and chin and ankles and all the rest of our faulty parts. 

Now a discerning reader(however unlikely you’d be to find one in an audience consisting of absolutely fucking nobody lol) might have already begun to detect a certain heady strain of hypocrisy in this authors conclusion. Because while I'm not much of anything the one thing i certainly am is a self-destructive drug addict. So maybe its one thing for me to make fun of the cook for his wrath-filled flu-stricken infants tantrum of a way of viewing the world, assigning to his solipsism a generation-hopping solidarity with his nazi forefathers who came before and identifying in his politics the germinal seed of fascisms future, a politics so personal and self-contained that every divorce will be debated as if it were a stand in for larger cultural decay, every morning hangover a portent of spiritual decline, the vitals of the stock market remeasured and reassessed each time someone finds on the sidewalk a loose dollar bill. Political assemblies with real largesse exclusively devoted to trolling the instagram of a nebraskan man named doug’s now ex-wife  for pictures of her maui vacation with husband number two drinking mojitos on a beach with sand bleached white as bone and both of them grinning with surgical precision an opulent almost confrontational kind of public grinning Doug couldn't recall that bitch ever having felt for him and the kids off playing in the surf and well how could any concerned and conscientious citizen fail to see the basic threat to democracy that whole scene represents? Donald Trump is probably the loneliest man in the world. He’s never met another person. He spends his time wandering the halls of his head checking for reoccurrences of his own reflection, a lifetime spent pathologically re-telling the same story about how he came to be the most powerful person in the world, so that by the time he really became who he had always pretended to be, the most influential figure in the free world, he had long-since bought into his own fraud to such a great extent that even the real thing couldn’t compare. Only a selfishness and self-centeredness as grandiloquent as his could explain the mindset of the modern mass shooter and the micro-politics informing him. He confuses his head for the world and then becomes enraged when it won’t do as he wishes, cursing the rain for its cold lash against his shoulder where he’d rather there have rested warm summer glow, furious at the thought of all the people he would never meet in far-off places he would never see who never paid him any attention whatsoever. Playing peek-a-boo a little bit of cheating peer through chubby fingers arrayed like a geisha’s fan and for the first time see that objects don’t disappear without our gaze to ontologically anchor them to earth. What a hurt. Now it might be technically correct that my addiction does to my loving family what the selfishness of the mass shooter does to public space. It intrudes like an alien thing and turns the air chilly in our childhood home and it transforms the medicine cabinet into a contested territory in need of defensive fortification and now that Cassies marriage has crashed on the rocks of addiction nobody could blame her if she never allowed another addict to darken her doorstep again and there was the sight of Jan opening my trucks passenger side door and a few rigs fell out onto the floor and all the spoons in the house have one side burnt-and-bruised like a black-eye you say you got from falling down a flight of stairs despite body language that says something entirely else why is it we don’t have a single spoon in the house what ghost spends all night punching the walls full of holes 

recently went to an Alanon meeting to sneak a glimpse of how the other half lives...this lady said my addiction is to loving my addict. Bawled rivers out from red raw-rubbed rubber eyes and said my addiction is to my addict Not her person or qualifier or partner but her addict. Syntax almost seeming to suggest that something about the existential plight of the addict gets her intoxicated dizzy on pain. It’s quaint though cus that sort of sentiment is for fucking rookies-guarantee you no ones crying over me like a romantic. Not anymore. My thing these days is of a distinctly more shakespearian strand of tragedy, with wittgenstein and derrida’s influences also undeniable. I’m sick now in a way where people stop crying and praying you’ll find God and change and decide instead it’d be easier to just cross the street. Schizophrenics lost in a chorus meant only just for them, apocalyptic street preachers who stand on soap boxes while reeking of shit and give voice to visions of an America not our own, an alternate dimension where european arrival at the shores of the new world stalled out somewhere halfway across the pacific ocean on a wave so tall it scraped the heavens and America grew up a nation of nomads who set their watches to the rumbling migration of herds of buffalo and not even the highest priest could dream of a more beautiful idea than that of motion, movement without cease, the only acceptable fixed still frozen property being the burial mounds where the dead went after all their motion had gone-if they could view us on the other side of the looking glass stolen away in our own personal homes they would almost certainly come to the conclusion that this place where we live is just the land of the dead, a negative photograph of everything vital and good. Who would i be to disagree though, right? 

The point is anyway that some alchemical reaction of A. Mental illness and B. Amphetamine abuse has more or less stranded me in words. Verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs in place of sky and grass. What Fredric Jameson called the prison house of language. Where derrida’s difference goes to play for eternity, never quite meaning what it had meant to say. What shook wittgenstein speechless. The president’s rhetoric so hollow that you can almost see him suffering a kind of dementia or spiritual torpor that results from the badness of his faith. Chewing and chomping consonants and sounds till they all are made to mush and shearing syllable after syllable off the network of signification until all that’s left is one satellite pinging a distress call hello is anyone there off of its own side. It’s own side like Adam plucked Eve from his rib and said put on this dress-after they ate the fruit and God cast him/her out to walk the world alone reportedly God said have fun all alone you worthless slut. Imagine trumps final state of the union-i am very sick, i have been alone for as long as I can remember, i wish i hadn’t lied so often, i wish i had occasionally told the truth, i would trade all of it to have known just one person. 

Anyways, barring that miracle of political theater, the body gets sick and dissolves while the spirit is lost in words. I’d like to die in a bathroom stall in haughville with a rig stuck in my arm and the words I'm sorry stuck at the tip of my tongue and God decides to show some compassion and makes me a deal says you were never much good to people didn’t believe in a thing but you sure could do some impressive vomiting up of nonsense words and so what ill do is your soul will dissolve and turn into ink and for the rest of eternity you’ll be a naughty joke or a half-scribbled doggerel scrawled on the wall of a piss-soaked bathroom stall in the ghetto or you could say call this number here for a good time and don’t forget to ask for large marge and nobody’d ever suspect you were trapped in there or maybe a joke like this favorite of mine about my son it goes something like Jesus Christ was a God-awful carpenter, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Christ was a God-awful, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Couldn't pull a nail. Christ was God-awful. Couldn’t nail his own couldn’t save a carpenter terrible couldn’t pull god-awful a terrible carpenter he couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. I can’t pull this nail to save my own life. It’s right there sticking out of my wrist, but for whatever reason I just can’t find the right words to pull it out he was a carpenter who couldn’t pull a nail even if his life depended on it couldn't save his own life he couldn't-

For a good time call this number 1-555-555-5555 and don’t forget to ask for-

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/karmic-tools-weekly-forecast-october-13-19-2019/

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: October 13 – 19, 2019

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: October 13 – 19, 2019

By Kelly M. Beard

The video version of this forecast, as read by Kelly, is available here.

The Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast covers the current planetary transits which affect people in different ways and to various degrees of intensity. Take notice when it is a Personal planet (Sun / Moon / Mercury / Venus / Mars) interacting with a Social (Jupiter/Saturn) or Collective planet (Uranus / Neptune/Pluto). And pay extremely close attention when it is a Social planet interacting with a Collective planet because that means something *big* is brewing that will move large groups of people along their evolutionary paths. Tuning in to the energy and rhythm of the planets can serve as a useful *guide* as you move along your Individual Path. It also helps to understand your place within the context of the larger Social & Collective Story. Below, you will find out how these energies tend to manifest, as well as guidance and direction. 

*NOTE*  There are some days when there are NO CONTACTS (besides the Moon), please note that there are no missing entries, we just list the actual Activations of each week + the day they happen.

Weekly Forecast: October 13 – 19, 2019

Note from Kelly:

Last week, I mentioned Mars moving through Libra, activating a new cycle in relationships, collaborations & partnerships of all kinds. We are calling in our Tribe, our community, our friends, our teammates, our co-creators and tuning into our own individual magnetics to ensure that we are magnetizing into our lives – those people & resources that we truly need, desire & deserve. The Libra New Moon also allows us to plant seeds for new relating of all kinds and so you should be totally ready for this week’s Aries Full Moon clearing & release work. Essentially, now you get to release anything blocking you from having the relationship experiences that you’ve always wanted. You get to release that which is no longer part of your identity or purpose. Who you are has evolved and what you want has changed – both on fundamental levels in recent years and now you are starting with a certain amount of *clean slate* energy. So remember: when you change, everyone around you changes or goes away, naturally and effortlessly. So let’s dive in …

10/13 ~ ARIES Full Moon:

Aries Full Moon affords an incredible opportunity for a clean slate/deep release of that which is no longer part of your identity or purpose. It’s also a good time to release anything that creates imbalance within you or blocks your true independence in the world. This Full Moon kicks off another year of *Release Work*, which also means that you just completed a whole year of it too, so give your Self credit where it is due. As you go forward, rather than feeling like things are overwhelming and moving too fast to process, let alone integrate, you should be able to see where you have done so much inner soul work that you can now move through your own personal processes much faster. Now of course, this won’t be the case for everyone, in which case, the Aries Full Moon is going to shine that bright light on exactly what aspects of Self have put you in this position and make you feel it until you are so uncomfortable that you finally own it. Once you own it, you can deal with it, change it and/or release it. Just keep in mind this is ALL rhythm & patterns which means if you pay attention, you can consciously co-create with more ease & grace and much less frustration.

That is the “general vibe” of any Aries Full Moon but this one is special because it’s plugging into larger cycles and making it personal for us as individuals. The Sun in Libra is opposite the Moon in Aries and at the exact degree of Pluto in Capricorn, so the Cancer leg is the part we have to do consciously, in order to get the benefit of any tension in these departments. It is *Personal Transformation* this Full Moon and know that the luminaries are lighting you up in a way that is (1) purifying you on the deepest levels and (2) facilitating permanent change and transformation so anything you are truly willing & ready to release, this is the moon to work with! For you to experience the level of relationship that you desire, what do you have to change or redefine about your Self so that you can magnetize that vibrational match? Keep in mind that that applies to both personal and professional relationships. And any Aries Moon is all about YOU! so do some mirror work or dig into your journals looking for patterns you are finally truly OVER and trust that this cleansing is preparing you to be able to engage with others on a much higher level of integrity going forward.

10/13 ~ Sun (core Self) ~sextile~ Jupiter (optimism):

This energy is sometimes considered “lucky” but the success you achieve under this influence, is more likely due to a positive outlook and clear vision of who you are and what you want. Your life is expanding, your self-understanding is deepening and it will be easier to be around other people of higher consciousness, improving things and creating opportunities that benefit a larger number of people. There is a healthy dose of optimism around some grand plan, and things are moving, but make sure to do the foundation work to support this larger vision as it manifests in reality. If you are a teacher/guide/leader of any sort, this energy supports your group efforts, so giving workshops, seminars or new classes is totally supported and will benefit you, while serving others.

10/14 ~ Mercury (communication) ~sextile~ Saturn (responsibility):

This energy is really good for being able to objectively see what needs to be changed, fixed or stabilized in your life or environment. One expression of this energy is a tendency toward depression or apathy, but a better expression would be facing what needs to be done and following through on what you have begun. You may feel the need to organize things at home or work, or perhaps take a class or workshop of some sort that will help you attain your current goals. Either way, be focused but not too serious – balance in all things. It’s when you focus on the lack and limitation that you feel overwhelmed and sometimes helpless. That’s not the point of this energy. It’s just time to do some serious thinking, tend to the details, take stock and make changes accordingly.

10/14 ~ Sun (illumination) ~square~ Pluto (transformation):

This is a challenge to grow out of your comfort zone and into new territory. That said, with Pluto in Capricorn (2008-2024), twice a year for these 16-years, when the Sun is in Aries (Spring) and Libra (Fall), we get an opportunity to grow & change in fundamental departments of life: self vs other and home vs work. In this case, and during these years, we are literally changing how we do ALL of this. Each year builds on the previous and we are now almost 12-years into the 16-year process of transformation – an incredibly potent point in time & space. It is here that you have the most information to consciously work with as you prepare for the remaining 4-5 years, and ultimately, what you would like to get out of your conscious efforts and dedication. Sun helps us clarify and when working with Pluto, it is usually what is NOT working, what has run its course and is ready to be composted into new Life, new growth and a new direction (for Self). Pluto is the Purifyer, distilling things back to their true and original essence, fight that and it can be painful, work with it consciously and it can be transformative and will heal at the deepest root of any challenge. You can use this activation to honor that which has become obvious, or is highlighted in the here & now and purge or purify this energy. You are deeply supported for releasing old patterns and setting new conscious practices into action. Tie up loose ends, close multiple chapters, mourn (if you must) & move on. As you do that, you will feel lighter & brighter and more grounded in your true Self, your evolved Self, your Emergent Self.

*****

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[keanuital]

For fans of the cult action movie John Wick, John Wick: Chapter 2 was everything we hoped and dreamed. The fight scenes were slick, the new worldbuilding was satisfyingly weird, and it expanded upon the eye-catching production design of the first movie.

John Wick is often singled out for its visual storytelling, with critics praising its fluid action choreography and urban fantasy aesthetic. Speaking to costume designer Luca Mosca, we learned more about how costumes helped to create that visual universe, including the contrast between John Wick and his new enemy Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), and why clothes were especially important for the mute assassin Ares (Ruby Rose). Plus, we discovered how Mosca's John Wick: Chapter 2 cameo unexpectedly changed his life.

John Wick’s suits are really plain and minimalist, yet distinctive in the context of the film. Can you tell me about the design process for Keanu Reeves’ costumes?

We should start with saying that with the elegant and regal posture of Keanu Reeves, shaping a beautifully tailored suit on him is an easy task. We wanted a clean line, we wanted it close to the body and we obviously had to give it functionality. He needed a lot of movement in order to perform all these stunts.

It was about the choice of color first, which is a colorless choice. John Wick’s costumes can basically been seen in a color film or in a black and white film. And we spent countless fittings trying to perfect those shoulders and the proportion of the pants, slimming them by millimeters at a time.

In John Wick 2, we enhanced these regal aspects of Keanu Reeves, we increased the proportion of the collars in the shirts, almost like a Napoleonic reference, so that the face is framed and the posture is almost forced to be more elevated and more erect.

What were the practical aspects of costuming such a stunt-heavy movie?

We have an enormous amount of what we call multiples. Even if you see the actor start the scene in a clean suit and get a little stain here or a little tear there, or a little gunshot, that meant that we had dozens and dozens of suits ready. Some suits in the actor’s size and some in a slightly larger size to accommodate for knee pads and elbow pads, or even for little gussets—additional fabrics in the armpit or the crotch of the pants in order to allow for more movement. Then we had stunt doubles, so we had an endless number of suits for them. Because these suits were used and thrown into the mud or torn apart.

Chapter 2 expands the cast with new characters like Gianna the Italian crime boss, and Laurence Fishburne in robes as a kind of king of the homeless people in New York. Did you have any particular favorites when designing the looks of the new characters?

No, I loved them all! They were all such fine and incredible actors. Laurence Fishburne, with whom I’d already worked on a different movie, is such an incredible gentleman and such a treat to work with, and all of a sudden having to dress him as the lord of the underworld, as sort of Pluto or Hades kind of person, who rules this army of homeless people—that was such a fascinating undertaking, I really liked the costume that we finally put together for him.

We have the Italian contingency, Riccardo Scamarcio, who was a gift. An Italian mobster, dressed completely different from Keanu, in a more ornate way with different ties and fabrics and colors, it was almost like a clash of fabrics and patterns together.

When I look back at all of these characters, for each one we have built a different story. Stories that all fit in within the movie harmoniously, but each of these characters had a world of its own, and a wardrobe and a look of its own.

I’m curious about that, because fans of John Wick comment a lot on the visual storytelling of the film. Could you highlight some of the details that you put in as background for these characters who maybe don’t get much dialogue, but they have this whole story going on in their fighting style and their costumes?

Talking about not having much dialogue, it’s very interesting to talk about Ruby Rose, for example. Ruby Rose was mute in the movie, so she could only use sign language. So her acting didn’t get the support of the spoken word, she had to act with her body. It was very important that we would be able to see every single movement, every single twitch. And so in the case of Ruby Rose—but I should say in the case of every one of my characters—when I design costumes I tend to create a formula and then to simplify it, almost as if these were a comic book character.

Many people ask us, does John Wick come from someplace, some comic reference? No. We built this look and this character from scratch. So in the case of Keanu it is a dark silhouette. Very elegant, almost sinewy, taking advantage of his height, posture, stature, demeanour.

Ruby Rose was super clean, super fitted, tailored blazers and pants, little boots. That’s it, ready to go. Riccardo Scamarcio and his gang are mixing up this cacophonia of plaids and stripes and flannels and patterned ties, something that I would never ever put on Keanu. By creating an apparent clash of elements, creating harmony at the same time.

John Wick: Chapter 2 takes place in this very stylized world. What was the collaborative process between you and the production designers and the director, to kind of create the look for that world?

I think the reason why these movies came together so well, and aesthetically they are so beautiful to look at, is because all the departments came together and we really had free access at each other’s work. We knew the color, the concepts of the production designer, you know, the set design. We created this this dream of a perfect world of elegance, of rich people. It’s almost like a fantasy world that doesn’t exist in real life, where everybody’s beautiful, everybody is so well dressed.

Could you tell me about your little cameo as the tailor character?

That was the highlight of the movie, at least for myself! It was unexpected. I knew the director well from having done an entire movie with him, and when he came to me and told me that I have been cast to be the tailor, my first reaction was of being a little reluctant: “Goodness, am I going to be able to do this?”

I learned my lines, I practiced them with Keanu, and there you go! It was a very intimidating experience, but very beautiful nonetheless. Thanks to the suit that I make him in real life, and in fiction both, I keep him alive. Because of that incredible new high technology lining that I give a demonstration of, he can take all the bullets that rain on him without killing him!

So yeah, it was an incredible experience and now I just want to do more. This is what I’m doing now, I’ve been acting. I have been in a Tennessee Williams play here in New York, and I’m looking for more. I have been studying drama for a year, since we wrapped the movie. I have the bug!

This interview has been edited for length.

#keanu reeves #john wick 2 #costume design #luca mosca

[theseventhhex]

William Tyler Interview

William Tyler

‘Modern Country’ is the fourth full-length album by guitarist and composer William Tyler and his first recorded outside of his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. While there is never a comfort zone in instrumental music, Tyler attempts to leave any perceived one behind with his latest work. ‘Modern Country’ is a collection of songs about the vanishing America that still exists on back roads, in small towns, on AM radio stations, Tyler explores more focused melodic themes rather than ethereal wanderings. With an election gone by when so many certainties and assurances have vanished, Tyler doesn’t offer optimism or pessimism but rather a calm and measured commentary in our age of anxiety… We talk to William about civil war photography, the internet and travelling…

TSH: Was your approach for ‘Modern Country’ partly defined by the contrast in your surroundings?

William: Yeah, the biggest contrast was that I’d not done an album outside of Nashville before. Just being in a different part of the country especially during winter was an interesting recontextualisation, it definitely made me want to work more outside of my hometown. Being outside of the realm of big cities was refreshing to me. We recorded in the middle of nowhere, ten miles from the closest city.

TSH: The record is also linked to where the US is today and what the country’s lost to a certain extent, as well as being an ode to and a nod to roadside attractions and abandoned industrial towns…

William: Yeah, and I think that’s basically because the record is historical. I’m very interested in history and geography. I guess this album, for me, is kind of like a eulogy for a dying rural America. I would say that the quiet and the beautiful evocations that come with being in places that are more sparsely populated or kind of left behind like abandoned buildings intrigue me very much. I don’t just look at these features as a sort of a disaster-chique - I look at these places to inspire stories and melody, and I simply do not get this from the modern world. I’m not particularly inspired by contemporary music, television, fashion or the internet - I’m way more attracted to things of an older time. As for the state of the country, it’s ironic about the election; this is what I call the revenge of rural America. Trump didn’t win a single major city, but he won the entire rural countryside with a few exceptions.

TSH: Has your perspective of this record shifted to representing something different to you now?

William: I think this record would have even more of an impact in an immediate sense if it came out this year, as opposed to last year. People are upset and angry in a political sense, but I think people are also searching for contemplative things and my music is contemplative - it doesn’t have immediate gratification. There are no lyrics, it’s quiet and expansive. Overall, I’m really encouraged by the response that I’ve got to date.

TSH: Are you continuously looking to have an engaging swing with regards to instrumentation?

William: Yeah, I mean I primarily think of myself as a composer who plays guitar, rather than a guitar player who writes instrumental music. I would like to ultimately move my music kind of into a bigger realm where people are thinking about it a little differently. On this record the guitar parts largely carry the melody, but, for sure, I’m really interested in reimagining my music for other instruments. I don’t have a set vocabulary necessarily.

TSH: Were you content that a song like ‘Sunken Garden’ evolved more so with the band getting involved, as it went from a rambling acoustic number to a French film type of feel…

William: You know, for this song I had the least amount of certainty about how to arrange it for other musicians, it just kind of fell into place. When I wrote it, I was definitely thinking of a piano piece in the realm of Debussy or Satie so the French thing kind of held throughout *laughs*... The song is a good example of how in my mind it’s a piano piece, but I wrote it on guitar. Also, I like how it’s a completely different piece of music with an ensemble. When I play it solo it gets a totally different response.

TSH: Was ‘The Great Unwind’ always going to be the album closer?

William: Yeah, I think so. It’s sort of a twilight song. It’s about the decline of the American empire and it fades real slowly, which is supposed to be like a sunset, whereas ‘Highway Anxiety’ is kind of like the beginning of the morning. As soon as we recorded and mixed it, I knew it was going to be the last song.

TSH: What do you find so remarkable about photography from the civil war?

William: Civil war photography has always been so interesting to me, especially growing up in the South. Around there, if you’re interested in that type of stuff, there’s a lot of immediate gratification. The most fascinating thing to me about photography from that era is that the medium was so new. I mean the exposure time rendered most of the photographs almost like paintings. You never saw people smiling or gesturing because they had to sit for so long. Photography was so new back then and only rich people had paintings or pictures done. However, soon photography became like the personal computer, suddenly everybody was allowed to have their picture taken. During the civil war photographers followed the army around and there were so many haunting photos of young men who probably only had one picture taken in their whole lives - a lot of them died. To me, it’s just fascinating that we can remember them with such exceptional photography.

TSH: Do you still find yourself constantly wrestling with the idea of spirituality?

William: I’m still searching. Spiritualty is an essential part of life I feel. I don’t think a human being can lead a full life without some version of spirituality, even if that means worshiping and believing in nature for example. I just think the honouring of something bigger than one’s individual self and the realisation that the self is just part of the whole of all living things is important. I struggle with where I put my faith but it’s certainly something I’m interested in pursuing. I haven’t given up on it. I’m still searching.

TSH: Is the internet and social media information overload for you?

William: It’s totally overwhelming and I think very few of us are able to not participate in it. Donald Trump would not be president if it wasn’t for reality TV and social media; he was really created by both things. I think the internet is incredible, but it’s just that so many of us use it way too much and for silly reasons. I mean it’s changed the way we consume everything from an information standpoint. Music wise, things are not allowed to grow the way they used to, but at least we haven’t gone too far backwards with the internet, even though it’s impossible to control. I feel it’s more about evolving, adapting and surviving. We just need to learn how to navigate the internet better and the main thing is to unplug from it every now and then for the sake of one’s sanity.

TSH: How imperative is travel to you?

William: Travelling is so important to me that it’s almost impossible for me prioritise which is more important: music or travel. As I get older, I’m going to try to figure out how to travel more for leisure and research, as opposed to just having a tour all the time. You get to pick up and take in a lot on the road and I’ve been lucky to tour alone and experience various places. I recently got to play in front of the largest audience I’ve ever played to doing solo music in Europe, which was so rewarding.

TSH: What’s downtime like for you?

William: When I’m back in Tennessee I spend a lot of time taking drives into the countryside. Also, I read a lot, practise guitar every day, and I try to write a little every day. I’m pretty isolated. If anything, I need some stimulation of being in a larger space for a little while, I’ve realised I’ve been kind of missing that. I feel that every artist needs a combination of isolation and stimulation to create. It’s nice to visit museums, art galleries and to get lost in film, but I feel like I need the opposite too - I need to go out where there are no bookstores, coffee houses and no traffic because clear thinking helps me write songs. The balance between both is essential.

TSH: Is the incentive of continuously changing the conversation each time a crucial requirement with your music?

William: For me, I just want to keep getting the chance to make music. For better or worse, this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, I just know it. It’s liberating and can be terrifying to be a musician, but I do think changing the conversation each time is important. I think with albums and projects there is a lot of room to collaborate too, that’s something I want to do. I’d like to work with film, dance and art as well. You know, I really want to try to engage people with instrumental music outside of an academic or repertory context, so I’m trying to do it in between the contexts of the alternative rock world and high art classical world, which is challenging. However, I’ll always look to mix things up in the best way possible.

William Tyler - “Highway Anxiety”

Modern Country

#Interview #William Tyler #Donald Trump

[donald-clemons]

Top Lessons Businesses Must Learn from COVID-19 to Grow in the New Post-pandemic Reality

None of us imagined a year ago what we would have to face in just a few months (maybe just Bill Gates). None of us imagined our everyday work to be done mostly or completely online, from home. None of us imagined that we would exclusively have online meetings, online calls, online events, online trainings, online campaigns and so on. None of us imagined we could do business without traveling.

Even so, we’ve learned we have to adapt.

The adjustments any online and brick-and-mortar business had to make to this pandemic have been rough, but ultimately all of them help optimize our work flows and help businesses be more human-centric in their market approach: be more efficient, know your customers better, care more for your customers, always listen to their needs, deal with a crisis. For some of us, this may be the first crisis we’ve faced—and every business had to confront it. The impact was immediate for some companies, slower for others, but none of us can say that COVID-19 did not have an impact at all.

Let’s do a rundown of what businesses have learned from the recent pandemic.

  See the situation for what it is. Be flexible and act fast.

Let’s turn back in time to somewhere around January or February. A new coronavirus hit China and the country decided to lock down the Wuhan region. It seemed like a faraway, isolated situation. In just a few months, however, the virus spread all over the world. Europe and the U.S. were down on their knees by the start of the next quarter.

Businesses from various areas were terribly damaged. Like after a hurricane. The lockdowns shut down the entire hospitality industry. Traveling outside the country was forbidden. Airports were empty. Everything happened almost overnight. A large part of every economy stopped.

Given all these factors, most companies had to make decisions quickly: employee safety was first on the list, so most of them had to act fast regarding remote working programs. Software companies and those selling digital goods were among the luckiest ones. Most of them already had programs for remote work, but had to quickly extend them to all their employees for a longer period of time.

Secondly, the business should go on. Companies needed to assure themselves that revenues wouldn’t plummet. So, they had to assess their strengths and weaknesses in this totally new situation, change procedures, processes, create new products or even reinvent themselves—and do all of this as fast as possible.

As 2Checkout found out, in our most recent survey, only a small number of merchants (12%) expect to benefit from the current situation. 28% of companies are expecting the worst, while about a third of merchants (32%) expect the current pandemic to have a significant negative impact on their business but hope to mitigate it with a well-executed crisis response plan.

    In a post-COVID world, companies have therefore learned that it always helps to be prepared for the unexpected. If not all of us were working with contingency or crisis plans prior to 2020, businesses now understand they have to have these flows ready, for when situations of force majeure occur.

At 2Checkout, for example, the pandemic forced us to promptly digitize all aspects that were still taking place on premise. In just under two weeks, we succeeded in moving all our hiring and onboarding processes online, in a whole team show of skills. Like other companies, we had not foreseen that a pandemic of this magnitude could occur but, when the worst unfolded, it was our fast reaction and overall flexibility that allowed us to overcome market hardships and further innovate in the field.

  Focus on top priorities.

First priority is to ensure employees’ and customers’ safety. This is fairly easy to manage if you follow relevant sanitation guidelines, and online businesses can consider themselves lucky.  But, even so, all the measures you have to take can put some pressure on your company’s financials. Finding a way to get most of your employees to work from home, in a safe way, might mean that you have to instantly spend thousands of dollars on acquiring laptops, webcams and headphones, or pay a larger subscription to a good videoconferencing solution.

    The second priority, during such a crisis, is survival of the business. As most businesses were impacted by the new coronavirus crisis, they had to quickly readjust and find out what products or services are more profitable, what channels get more customers, what campaigns are able to get more leads and so on. The activity, product or service that delivers less profit should be put on hold for the moment.

The priority is to get your business in a better shape day by day. Make a quick assessment of development plans, too. Focus on those that can offer your company a quick advantage over your competitors. Now, more than ever, businesses understand that not all directions they’re pursuing are priorities, and many are deciding to shift focus and resources to those areas with the most resilience and revenue potential.

  Reinvent yourself. Be creative!

Lot of companies have had to reinvent themselves in various ways: find new channels to interact with the customers, find new market opportunities, create new products to address new needs, modify their manufacturing facilities, find new selling channels or imagine new campaigns and promotions to cope with declining sales. The pandemic was the trigger that got entrepreneurs understanding that they have to employ creativity and differentiation in everything they do, forcing businesses to get out of their comfort zone.

If you are a company selling cleaning services, let’s say, logically no property management company needs you until the people are getting back to their offices. Worse, people may not accept you in their homes anymore until this pandemic is over. So, you have to reinvent your entire business. One option is to turn from cleaning to sanitizing and try to find clients in retail and healthcare.

    If you produce cosmetics, you can produce hand sanitizers. If you are in the fashion business, maybe you should focus on manufacturing facemasks with style and sell them online. There are many ways for businesses to reinvent themselves.

A good example of reinventing oneself comes from the event industry.

Live entertainment took a hit like few other industries when the pandemic started, social distancing forcing organizers to cancel upcoming concerts, theatre shows, on-premise workshops, weddings, networking sessions, you name it. Some players in this industry, however, were quicker to jump out of their comfort zone. By adapting their portfolios and focusing on building online experiences and events, they were able to retain parts of their markets. Instead of inviting audiences to an indoor or outdoor venue, they started working with online conference rooms or digital hangouts. These companies understood that the market context offered the opportunity to address new needs so they reinvented themselves to stay relevant to their audiences.

  If you haven’t yet, make digital transformation a priority.

The COVID-19 crisis not only impacted specific industries, we could say it brought permanent changes to how all of us do business nowadays. For example, think back to how a B2B sales process would occur in the past. Now consider today’s context – are those flows still applicable? The pandemic arrived and re-shaped the selling process in all industries and markets. Physical touchpoints had to be adapted and automated, and entrepreneurs large and small had to digitize and optimize their selling flows.

So, a crisis lesson many us had to learn the hard way is that an online presence and point of sale are mandatory for any commerce provider today.

    Customers are online nearly 100% of the time now, even in emerging markets. If you are in the services business and you used to interact with your customers mostly on-premises, at your office or at your branch, rethink your strategy and open your online channels. More channels opened means that more clients hear your voice. Offer your customers an integrated experience, be accessible and listen. Your customers need you to be by their side now more than ever before.

And again, be creative in marketing your products and services. Consider offering an extended free trial of any software you offer that could be useful for working from home. For example, several collaboration or workflow management software companies have offered their products for free.

Keep in mind that whatever you do now will define the future of your business. Don’t wait for things to get better. Act proactively.

  Look for more value from modern technological solutions

The onset of the pandemic also made businesses reconsider how efficient they were in utilizing tech solutions. As more and more of our interactions started depending on the tools employed – from peer interactions, to touchpoints with prospects, to hiring and training flows – companies started paying more attention to their technological stack. A Cisco study found that as many as 58% of companies interviewed started using technology that had been previously available to them but was ignored in the past, while almost 70% accelerated their adoption of cloud based tools since spring.

    Your company may be digitized, but are you making the most of the tech solutions available? In today’s new market rules, your choice and usage of technological platforms and programs are good predictors of whether your business will be successful or whether it will just stay afloat. The current context offers the right nudge to re-evaluate and audit your tech stack and see where your company could be improving.  From hosting solution to payment provider to collaborative tools – find the areas where you’re programs could be getting you more, and optimize or change them accordingly.

  The future is here and the past will never be back. Find allies!

During rough times, uniting forces can be a good idea. And many companies have learnt in these months that cooperation goes a long way in keeping a business afloat. If you are an independent software business, try to team up with a partner that can share the costs for human resources, for example. Collaboration and creativity are preferable to reducing a workforce that you took the time to hire and will probably need again after these harsh times pass.

You can also look to join an industry association where businesses in your domain can benefit from various synergies.

  Communication and cooperation are key.

If your customers haven’t heard from you in a while, then you should fix that. Call your most important customers, email others and bring them all some news about your business. Make proposals, ask your clients what they need and how you can help.

    Be proactive. Even though your customers may not buy something from you right now, prove that you are available for them anytime.

Constantly communicate news about your company, update your website, update your social media pages, create content and show that your business is safe and sound.

    If you are aware of all these tactics, if you are open to following advice and ask for help from various specialists, if you are open to making a change, then your business has a great chance to smoothly pass through this COVID-19 crisis, with less damages than other competitors.

Many industries have even managed to thrive and bank in this period so not all the possible outcomes have to be gloomy. In pandemic times, achieving growth is most often a matter of seeing how your products could best be adapted or marketed to address today’s needs. Multimedia software producers, entertainment providers, middleware companies and others have witnessed growth by being timely and relevant with their products and how they frame their offering. Success for these has been attainable with more focus added to their priorities.

What could your business do to generate revenue uplift?

Are you maximizing your usage of promotions to tackle slowdown in sales?

Are you expanding to new markets to find new business more efficiently?

As long as your company is aware of its capabilities and you follow common sense advice like the directions recommended here, adapting to new scenarios is within your reach.

  How is your company navigating these times? Any other lessons that the pandemic has taught you? Share it with us in the comments.

  The post Top Lessons Businesses Must Learn from COVID-19 to Grow in the New Post-pandemic Reality appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog| Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.

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