Gina Harris's Blog, page 165

Band Review: Against All Hope

I believe I am reviewing a Metalcore band from Fredericksburg, Virginia that has relocated to Everett, Washington, but it has been a confusing path.
It started with being followed by a band that seemed to be named With Separation. That the Twitter handle was @UTLfxbgband, which does not correlate to With Separation in any way that I can see, was unusual, but the link gong to a page for a band called Against All Hope was even odder. I can see that the Twitter handle @againstallhope is taken (by a Deathcore band in the Canary Islands) so that could be a factor.
That did make me a little nervous about reviewing - like, if I go where this link takes me, am I overlooking a band actually named With Separation? That was not my only concern, though, because there was also only one song. I punted, bumping them down to the bottom of the spreadsheet, and now they are up at the top again, so I am just going for it.
There is one song, available through Bandcamp. It is called "Ecclesiastes". It is not bad. I am not a huge fan of 'core in general, but there is good energy with the guitars. They add a more melodic vocal counterpoint in the chorus that provides some conflict with the shouting and creates a sense of struggle. Coming in at a little under six minutes, it breaks with its punk roots to nod at the metal ancestry as well.
That is all that I know to say.
https://www.facebook.com/Against-All-...
http://againstallhopeofficial.bandcam...
https://twitter.com/UTLfxbgband

Being beautiful

I said yesterday that when my friend told me I wasn't ugly, I didn't believe her. I run into this same issue with my girls all the time.
It doesn't matter how often you tell them that they are beautiful, they just know they aren't.
Some of you may be wondering about objective beauty standards here, and yes, a lot of them are unequivocally pretty. Some of them might be using "ugly" as code for "fat", because "fat" hurts too much to say (I have done that), but then a lot of them say "fat" also. The fact that they have doctors and nurses telling them that they are not fat and that it would be dangerous for them to lose weight does not matter.
(Actually, I think they do know on one level that the doctor is right, but there are all of the other levels interfering.)
This is assuming I know what they look like. Many of the accounts are secret accounts for venting, so the profile picture is not theirs. Actually, a big step forward for one girl after treatment was changing her profile picture to her, and I knew it was a big step when it happened. That was great.
With the others, sometimes they will post a picture of clothing, and so you won't see the face but you get an idea of the body. Sometimes they will leave a selfie up for ten minutes and then delete. This desire to be known and connect, with the fear of being known and identified, has its own issues and workarounds. When I do get to see them, they usually look good.
This is important, because I only pay honest compliments. I don't always know what I'm doing, but the big rule I have, and I feel strongly about it, is that I don't lie. I assume that even well-intentioned lies will get figured out, and trust is really hard to come by, so I can't afford to lie. I know there have been times when that mattered.
Here is one honest compliment that I can usually give. Most of them are really kind and supportive. They will do a lot to encourage and comfort and build up everyone else. They believe everyone else deserves it. They don't believe it about themselves.
One thing that I realized fairly early on is that I want to tell them that they can have good futures. If they want love or good careers or happiness - probably all of the above - I want to tell them that's possible. It can be hard to tell them they will find love when I never found it. I can see now where I didn't let myself find it, but they could do the same thing. I don't want to reinforce that.
So this is where we get to the incoherent part. They also tell me that I am beautiful, while not believing they are also beautiful.
Okay, beauty is subjective, they like me as a person which can color it, but then if I am saying that I am not beautiful, contradicting them, but also asking them to believe that they are beautiful, and they should listen to me because... I just end up sputtering.
Worse than that, I have had some tell me that I am not fat. I do have real pictures up, and I am objectively fat. I get how that happens too. They have it that "fat" is a bad word, and you wouldn't use it on anyone good. I appreciate that they appreciate my goodness, but words mean things! If we change what words mean, communication becomes very difficult, so I would be against that in general. If the way we change the words services a worldview where everyone thinks you are wonderful except for bullies and yourself, no, that's just not good.
The change I wish to see in the world is people being able to enjoy their identities. I have to be able to do that for myself. I have to be able to accept compliments, and believe them, and be aware of the connotations of words but also without forgetting the denotations.
The most radical thing I do is like myself. See how true that becomes?

Things I let go

Tomorrow's post may be kind of incoherent, but the conversations that led to it generally started with someone tweeting that she is fat or ugly or both.
One of my vivid memories of summer camp is a slightly older girl complaining about people fishing for compliments. If they wanted a compliment they should just ask for it. I guess it was a pet peeve of hers.
It made a strong impression on me that this is bad behavior, and I have to give some credit for advanced awareness to the older girl. I would not have analyzed the issue that way.
I still can't look down on it. There are so many messages in society that you have to look good, and that necessitates being thin. It is natural to want to be pleasing to those around you, and it's hard to believe that you can if you don't conform to beauty standards, especially if you're a girl.
At the same time, any expression of pleasure in something that you are or do is likely to be stamped down as arrogance, which is also not allowed. In addition, looking for approval or affirmation from anyone else is likely to get you labeled an attention seeker, though people get labeled that for things they do in secret too. It would appear that the end goal is not just poor self-esteem but also neurosis.
There may be some desire to hear someone contradict you when you self-deprecate, but I also can see sincere belief that there are things wrong with you, and aching desire for that not be true, grappling with the training that you are not allowed to see good things about yourself so any affirmation needs to come from outside.
I grew up before social media when it became common to instantly broadcast thoughts, and I still remember doing it at least once. I said to one of my friends, "I am an ugly little toadie", and she did contradict it, so I guess that worked, except the reason I said it is that was the exact phrase that came into my head, stuck there since I had caught an unfortunate glimpse of myself in the mirror. Also, despite her saying I wasn't, I still believed that I was. I thought she was just being nice, because you have to say that.
That's where we're going tomorrow.
Anyway, if people do not always appropriately mask their pain in a mature and dignified fashion, I'm not going to pile on that. I will give a compliment, but it will only be something I can accurately say, and if we need to look at actual flaws and things to change, I will do that too.

Native American Heritage Month 2014

It hasn't been quite a full year yet, but for getting close to a year now I have been concentrating on writing enough that it has seriously slowed my reading.
After last year I had picked out the books that I wanted to read for this year, but I wasn't sure when I was going to get to them. In addition, I kept finding all of this video material that I wanted to examine, and there was definitely no time for that. So, the plan was adjusted. My Native American Heritage focus has always been more multi-media than some of my other pursuits.
I hope that in November or so, I will be able to get back to those four books for 2015. (Bumping them for a year does not seem as dire when running this far behind.) For the 2014 learning period, it focused on these three web pages:
http://hyperallergic.com/214618/the-freedmen-fight-for-tribal-citizenship-in-a-new-documentary/
http://news.nationalpost.com/silent-no-more
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/04/10/10-fascinating-documentaries-about-native-americans-you-can-watch-right-now-159964
For the Cherokee Freedmen documentary, the article was not lengthy. It had just gotten put with the others because I was hoping that there might be an opportunity to actually watch the documentary, By Blood. I still hope for that, but the article itself is pretty informative and the trailer gives you a sense of the feeling.
Silent No More does something very important in encouraging young native women to speak and to document their lives. I think the article itself hit a couple of wrong notes, but there is still something valuable going on there. I found it very moving and very sad, even though it is also hopeful. It is interesting seeing the similarities and differences for Canada.
Of course the big thing was the page with 10 Fascinating Documentaries. Some were more fascinating than others. I kind of hated one, but we'll get to that. I am just going to review them in the same order in which they are listed on the page.
Totem Culture (2012) 17:42 minutes
A Canadian school in Hong Kong brings a Tsimshian artist from BC to carve two totem poles.
This focuses on the people, and there is a lot of fondness among them, with teachers for the artist and everyone for the former principal who had the original idea. That makes it not particularly deep, but it is sweet, and interesting to hear them discuss the incorporation of the two traditions, like deciding the placement of the poles by feng shui.
Dakota 38 (2012) 1:18:12
This was the most emotionally moving for me. One man's dream (literally) leads to a ride to the site of a hanging of 38 Sioux elders, arriving on the anniversary. Initially starting with a feeling that this is about connecting with the past, as they go they speak in their stopping places, and connect with Natives and non-Natives alike, it is clearly also for the present and future. It becomes very emotional, and hopeful. The hardest part then is seeing over the credits memorials for three of the original riders who have since died, including one who was too young.
Wacipi Powwow (1995) 57:03
This is a look at Powwow culture, showing many of the dances and talking with the dancers. It's a good look at how it builds community and preserves ties.
Trudell (2005) 1:18:23
This is a documentary about Native American poet and activist John Trudell. I was not previously familiar with him. I have read about some of the actions that he participated in, but did not remember his name from them. Initially there are a lot of famous white people talking about how much he moved them, which made me a little leery. Frankly, the documentary would have been fine without them, but it probably works as a way of making people feel they should pay attention.
There was this foreshadowing at one point that something terrible was going to happen, but I wasn't expecting what it was, with his wife and children (along with his mother-in-law) dying in a house fire that was arson, though it was never resolved who set it. That he had to survive that is hard, but he says it came through words that his wife gave to him. He was already an activist, but that may have been his true birth as a poet. I do want to read more by him.
American Red and Black: Stories of Afro-Native Identity (2006) 37:13
This talks to many natives with African blood, going over the identity issues. I was already somewhat familiar due to Black Indian: An American Story, which was actually from my 2014 Black History reading, but that's okay - sometimes there is overlap, and this is an important story. This film has some great footage.
Allan Houser: Apache Legacy (2014) 12:15
This was a nice surprise, because once they started talking about Houser and showing his work, I realized I had seen an exhibit of his sculptures at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian when I was in DC. I remembered the work, but not the name, so this was nice to see and to learn a little more about him.
Russell Means: Welcome to the Reservation (2011) 1:35:59
I watched this last, procrastinating not just because it was the longest, but also because Means is not always wrong, but he is wrong often enough.
I still have some affection for him so this made me sad because he comes off as the grumpy old man rambling on about the government and yelling at the kids on his lawn. At the same time, I was thinking how some on the right could really welcome him. Therefore, seeing that this is associated with Alex Jones wasn't too surprising. I don't think the questions they asked or the way they strung them together did Means any favors. I don't think they misrepresented him, either, but they didn't do him any favors. It's just sad. It's not that he never says anything meaningful either, but you have to wade through a lot.
Indian Warriors: The Untold Story of the Civil War (2006) 44:38
This is probably the best historically, based on covering interesting information well, and being really well made. There were people I had never heard of, but there were also some familiar stories given new context. Highly recommended.
Code of Honor: Comanche Code Talkers of World War II (2013) 28:30
This combined two components, both of which were valuable, but perhaps did not blend as well as they could. One part is reading excerpts from the diaries of the Code Talkers. These passages do not mention their mission, which they would not have been able to record based on its highly confidential nature. You get a feeling from that, but it would be similar to other soldiers.
There is also dialog for the actual battle exchanges, with translations, showing you the kind of information that would be exchanged, which then makes it clear how important not being understood by the enemy is. There was probably room for two good documentaries here.
Montana Mosaic: Indian Boarding Schools (2006) 15:10
It is good that this one was short, because the stories of the boarding schools are always so terrible that it can be overpowering to spend a lot of time on it. I guess in that way it was not so much new information, but there was one thing that had never connected for me before. Cutting hair was something that was done for mourning, and the closer the relative the more hair you cut. So when children who did not speak English were taken away from their family and had their braids cut off, without being able to understand yet, their conclusions would have to have been terrible. I mean, they were trying to destroy the identities anyway, so maybe if the people in charge had understood that would have only reinforced their behavior, but it's a lot of cruelty.

Band Review: Skywalker

Skywalker is a hardcore band from Prague, Czech Republic.
Around since 2011, they have a fairly impressive resume of bands supported, including Pennywise and NOFX. There is one album, two EPs, and a single available through Bandcamp.
While hardcore is not my favorite genre, there are some factors that I appreciate with Skywalker.
First, I have to acknowledge that hardcore works with the themes they explore of alienation, betrayal, corruption working against those who search for unity and integrity. The primal nature of this struggle is well-represented by the strained shouts and growls that they produce.
In addition, they do not limit themselves to this sound. As well as some more melodic tracks, like "Jelly School", many songs have harmonic elements adding texture and depth. "Island" is particularly well-constructed.
Finally there is an intelligence and wit permeating their catalog, providing unexpected pleasures. This includes an appreciation of "Twin Peaks" in "Laura", and a very enjoyable cover of Hall & Oates "Out Of Touch".
All together that makes Skywalker worth checking out.
http://www.skywalkerhc.com/
https://www.facebook.com/skywalkerhc?_rdr=p
http://skywalkerofficial.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/skywalkerofficial
http://skywalkermerch.bigcartel.com/
https://twitter.com/skywalkerband

Band Review: Composer Sean Beeson

Reviewing a composer (for film, television, and games) is a little different than reviewing a rock band.
I did enjoy listening to the music, which is always the key question.
Since it was instrumental I can't respond to lyrics, and since most of these tracks would have been done for specific assignments, I don't get a sense of the personality in the same way that I would with a band or a solo musician. So, these are the points that I think it is helpful to notice.
1. I did enjoy the music.
2. There was a pretty good variety of tone and sound. I appreciate flexibility.
3. Tracks are often listed with not just their title but a description, which makes browsing easier.
I appreciate that he has a yoga mix - that could be good for relaxing. My favorite track was "Frozen Tundra". Beeson lists it as mysterious and ethereal, and yeah, I think that's about right.
http://www.seanbeeson.com/
https://soundcloud.com/sean-beeson
https://www.youtube.com/user/seanbeeson
https://twitter.com/SeanBeeson

Not all ideas are good ideas

I needed to do something easy today. This is one I nearly did from the road.
The timing of our trip was based on who could get time off when, and when things were open. It was not completely random that we started on Labor Day weekend, but it wasn't intentional either.
Going to a popular children's and water park on a hot Labor Day weekend had some drawbacks, one being that are hotel was at capacity and everything was very disorganized. With so many people, an ATM that was not only broken but kept getting referrals from the other property, and a web page that said breakfast was included but it wasn't, there would have been some chaos anyway, but there was something adding to it.
First some context. Our driver from the airport needed cash, so the broken ATM led to him taking my sisters to the gas station. This was around 10:30 at night. There was no reason for anything to go wrong - he had seemed very nice - but while I was waiting for them to get back a police car pulled up in front of the hotel.
I had just had the thought of whether he was in fact a dangerous killer a moment ago (though dropping off a witness before making his move would have been very sloppy), but I didn't panic for two reasons. One is that it was probably way too soon for a crime to have happened, been discovered, and next of kin be located and notified. Also, I had heard the girl at the desk talking on the phone.
I could only hear one side of two conversations, but she seemed to be confirming with a guest that their children had dialed 9-1-1, and then with 9-1-1 that is was just a child playing around and not a real emergency.
Still, the officer did come in, because he had to, and was talking with someone - I think a manager, but off duty - about it. It came out that the police had responded to the hotel twenty times since the change.
They did not specify the change, but I was pretty sure I knew:
http://nationswell.com/karis-law-making-easier-dial-911/
I've gotten a lot of prompts to sign this petition. In fact, I believe I have signed this petition. I don't think it's even a law in all states, but some chains are trying to comply anyway. Anyway, it turns out that there are a lot more children goofing around with phones than actual emergencies.
It's not that the situation inspiring the law was not real or serious. That doesn't mean that the law might not be somewhat reactionary. Police responding twenty times to false alarms doesn't make anyone safer. Maybe the solution is to require monitoring from the hotel. Maybe a better solution is to fight toxic masculinity.
My first thought was that maybe phones in hotel rooms need to be raised higher than children can reach, but in this case it was a child legitimately calling for help, and I have read many stories about children calling when their parents have medical emergencies. Children do need to have access and they do need to know how to use it. They also need to know not to goof around with it, but some things are harder to legislate.
My point is that sometimes things aren't well thought out. The heart is in the right place, so that appeals to us, and certainly signing an online petition doesn't take much work, but maybe it needs to be the right petition.
I am trying to read things more carefully now, and to think before I sign.  
For one thing, if what I am sending is a letter to my congresswoman, all that will happen is that I will get a response that she is not on that committee though she is aware of the issue. Even though I appreciate that it is now e-mail instead of paper - especially after that environmental one - I still find it annoying.
As always, I remain staunchly pro-thought.

The vocabulary of the young

The first thing I need to say is Argh! Getting to the points I am trying to hit here can be difficult.
When I first started following and being followed by younger people, there were differences that I noticed. Not all of the differences were bad, though some concerned me.
For example, lots of girls posted about jealousy and possessiveness just being a sign that he cares. Okay, I am sure there were girls of my generation who thought that too, but that is not merely wrong, it's dangerous.
I haven't seen it for a while now, but "Chanel" was used as an adjective a lot. It was meant as a positive, but in a way that often came out negative. Eating wasn't Chanel, because then you would gain weight and not be able to wear nice clothes, I guess.
I wasn't sure what to do with that one. Coco Chanel was a fighter and survivor, becoming independent and successful. Some of her earliest designs allowed women a greater freedom of movement, abandoning the corseted silhouette for something more sporty and casual. Having no energy and passing out, which happens when you starve yourself, would not be very Chanel in that sense. Of course, she may also have been a Nazi sympathizer, so in that case being Chanel could take in some pretty bad things too. I just think that one might require further thought. Like I said, I haven't seen it for a while.
(I never corrected anyone on Chanel; I did comment on a few posts wanting "jealousy".)
The one that will probably be most important to this discussion is the way they would use the word "perfect".
This was especially true of the girls with eating disorders. It seems like they always had a specific number of pounds to lose, and then they would be perfect.
I saw it in other contexts too, but there was overall this apparent belief that you could be perfect. I swear when I was in school we never thought we could be perfect. We would say that nobody is perfect or nothing is perfect. It wasn't an excuse; it was a reminder to appreciate the things that were good in a situation, instead of looking for flaws and complaining.
I don't know how the change happened, but somehow for them perfection became attainable and therefore required, except it wasn't really attainable - just believed to be so - and therefore it became a source of misery.
Maybe it's not that different. We had all managed to be really aware of our flaws, and of the one thing that we wished we could change. Maybe instead of thinking it would make us perfect we just thought it would make us beautiful or popular or some different word that emotionally meant the same thing.
As I become older and more at peace (only the first one happens automatically), a lot of it comes from accepting that perfection is off the table. Even as I am trying to be organized and diligent in healing up some of these old wounds, and getting better at the things that are important to me, perfection doesn't sound like a real thing.
I can use lots of good words. I think of harmony and balance and freedom. Fulfillment seems possible, and happy I can use a lot now. "Perfect" though, that doesn't seem like something that can happen in mortality, and I don't mind that.
For all its problems, there is a lot of beauty in being human.

The most hated photo

In May I wrote the "No more good pictures" post.
I already knew that I wouldn't like any of the pictures going forward. There have been other things that I have noticed since then, including that I stopped looking at the camera. In the pictures I posted through August, my eyes are always off to the side, apparently looking for a way to escape the lens.
The pictures from these last few weeks constitute kind of a turning point. When we went to Australia and New Zealand in 2008, I took hundreds of pictures. Only three include me. One is the picture that they take automatically when you hold the koala (and I wanted to hold a koala). The other two are when I took pictures from a vehicle and caught myself in the mirror.

I realized at the time that wasn't good, and that I should try and not avoid cameras so much. In fact, I started something where I took one picture of myself each month in 2009, to try and get better. I didn't start liking the way I looked, but it got me used to pictures enough to stop flinching.
That may make it ironic that the picture I hate the most happened in 2009. It was only early 2009.
There are a lot of things I hate about this picture. The main thing is that I look huge. I look huge in other pictures too, of course - that is why I started having my picture taken in the first place.
This one is worse because I am at a weird angle due to sitting on a stool, but the way my coat falls back hides that angle, making it look like all of that is me. Most of it is me, but not all of it.
 Part of my hatred for this picture is context. It was posted on Facebook (not by me), and another person who was there commented on it saying how friendly or welcoming I looked. Based on how I looked, that should have been sarcasm, but it was actually a dig at my sisters. This is from the time between when I still thought said person was nice but dim, and she still thought she could come between my sisters and I. The manipulation was not nice of course, but it also showed she was even dumber than I had realized.
That made me hate the picture more, because of the association with someone who was much worse than she initially appeared, and knowing that even a friendly gathering still has people playing mind games. I may have viewed it more negatively than it actually was, because that was a very hard time in my life.
I came back from Australia to no job, after having been jerked around pretty badly by my former employer. The economic collapse from September made job hunting much worse than it had ever been before. I applied for so many jobs with no response; I ended up having to track applications in a spreadsheet so I wasn't duplicating my efforts. I had always been able to get the job that I wanted before. I was never rich, but I was able to be generous and help people. That seemed to be at an end. This is about when I realized that the tax training I had devoted weeks to wasn't going to pan out either.
There was plenty of reason to be miserable, which may have made it the wrong year to try and learn to be okay with how I look. You can only manage so much at once.
Six and a half years later, I'm at it again. I still hate having my picture taken. I still force myself to do it. I usually manage to look at the camera.
Mainly, being completely honest with myself, my real hope was always that I would get smaller, so I would actually look better, and then I could be okay with that. I never actually wanted to reconcile myself to being fat. That seems to be what is necessary now.
Anyway, that's what we're looking at this week.

Band Review: It All Starts Here

It All Starts Here is prototypical pop punk.
When I say that I mean that it feels exactly how pop punk is supposed to feel. Instruments are played hard, but the sense of fun keeps things from getting too aggressive (the band also refers to itself as easycore), and yet there is consciousness enough to keep things from going inane. Altogether it makes for satisfying listening.
Their 2014 EP, Everything Will Come to an End, displays a good balance. Starting with an instrumental track and closing on their most downbeat song, "Gilded Smiles", it peaks in the middle with the pounding drums and groove of "Karma's a Bitch".
Filling in around that are more traditional songs. Even with that, check out the intro to "The Only B Word". It feels unique. On the other hand, "Hilltops" uses many familiar elements, but is probably my favorite, and is one I could listen to over and over again.
Everything Will Come to an End is a strong offering from this San Diego band. I hope they keep at it.
https://www.facebook.com/itallstartsheremusic
http://itallstartshere.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/it-all-starts-here
http://itallstartshere.bigcartel.com/
https://twitter.com/IASHSD