Gina Harris's Blog, page 179

Band Review: Words & Noises

Time for another Manchester band! Today it is Pop/Rock duo Words & Noises.
The first thing that I noticed on listening is that I had already heard "Forget Me Not", having checked it out when the band released a link to the video. It had been a while, but I instantly recognized the catchy tune.
While "Forget Me Not" is probably their most pop sound, it is not the sound that I most associate with them after listening to the catalog multiple times. There is more of a tendency toward the intellectual and cerebral, like "The Lost Art of Conversation", and even the mournful, like "Love Is A Loaded Gun."
Those ended up leaving strong impressions, while tracks like "Beating Heart" and "Londinium" sped up and left completely different feelings, and "Deceive" brought in some groove. For all of that, the voice came through very clearly. This is a band that thinks about different things and is interested in different things, but still has a strong sense of self.
There are not currently any upcoming shows listed, but there will be a new single released on April 26th, available to press, radio, and Soundcloud.
http://www.wordsandnoises.com/
https://www.facebook.com/WordsAndNoises
https://soundcloud.com/wordsandnoises
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHCFrj3E-ZIIZC01FUKeFxg
https://twitter.com/wordsandnoises

The problem with "Run Warren Run"

The worst thing about being politically and socially aware is that it gets me a lot of e-mail. You write to a senator, sign a petition, or contribute to a cause, and your inbox gets inundated. I realize it's possible to unsubscribe, but that's a hassle, and maybe sometimes I want stay informed, for at least some of them. It's frustrating.
Anyway, I get a lot of email. Often I will hear about the same issue from multiple sources, and a lot of sources are all about getting Elizabeth Warren to run, despite her saying that she will not run. I wasn't paying a lot of attention, but I am doing so more now after seeing a few things.
I guess I already had in mind that the reason people want her so badly is because she seems so radical. Even traditional Democratic candidates end up upholding the existing structure, which is easy to do once you become part of it. I understand the belief that Warren would not give into that, which is nice, but I question how fun it would be for her with the kind of opposition that President Obama has been getting. I think he would like to be at least somewhat more radical than he has been, and it is not completely his fault that he can't.
So that was in mind, and then I read someone (I can't remember whom) tweeting about how presidents go gray, and he was suggesting it was due to the lives they were responsible for. You become president, and you become a killer.
Warren's focus has been on economic issues, and that's what people love her for. The president also has to deal with diplomacy and war and the CIA and many other things. For someone who has a strong focus, it may be easier to pursue that focus in the legislative branch via committees and drafting bills. It is possible that someone who has been working with the system for a while now may have the best idea of where she can be most effective and what will work best for her.
That is where the patronizing tone of some of these boosters becomes so disturbing, and that leads to the other thing I read:
http://www.shakesville.com/2014/10/i-have-problem-with-this.html
I was struck by the irony of a voting bloc that is theoretically pro-choice and pro-gender equality feeling so comfortable planning on coercing a woman into doing something she doesn't want to do. And sure, they can say they think she will change her mind and want to run, but "she only thinks she doesn't want it" is not really an improvement.
It reminds me of what happened when Jessica Williams announced that she didn't want to host "The Daily Show". Sure, she has actually worked in that environment and so would have a reasonable idea of the job description. Yes, the reasoning that she gave made a lot of sense, and seemed to be part of a greater plan for gaining experience in a timely manner that would result in her having the career she wanted rather than the one other people felt she should have, but no, she must lean in!
I'm not saying no one can ever have good advice for anyone else, but a big part of my personal growth has been not just learning to listen to my inner voice but especially learning that my voice matters. I know things about me that you can't.
It does seem that this well-intended "encouragement" is more likely to be aimed at women than at men, and that is annoying. Okay, not everyone gets that women are people yet, but yes, we have minds and we can make decisions for ourselves. Specifically, Jessica Williams and Elizabeth Warren have both done pretty well for themselves. Let's respect their judgment.
If you want a better candidate for president, there's still time to work on that. I know that there isn't anyone who captures the progressive imagination quite as well as Warren right now, but on the plus side, all the purported Republican contenders are horrible. That sounds dangerous, but it works in our favor, so don't despair.

Mormon girl

Faith and religion helped me through my hard times. The two can represent different things, and they are intertwined, but they were both important for me.
I want to communicate clearly about this. It's very important to me, and I have been seeing more anti-religious sentiment. I have thought about doing a series of posts on why religion is not the problem, and what the problem actually is, and that probably will happen eventually, but this is just my personal story.
One invaluable thing was the knowledge that there was something bigger than my own problems. My school and my home were tiny parts of a big world in an enormous universe, and that stage of my life was a small part of my existence. There is a limit to how much pain it can take away in the moment, but I maintain that it still helps.
My particular religion being one that abstains from alcohol and drugs was also very helpful. On an intellectual level I have this concept in mind that when people use substances to numb their feelings, it decreases the likelihood that they will productively deal with those feelings. Realistically I know there are still a lot of ways to avoid dealing with those feelings, but it can get you closer.
Also realistically, while the Italian side of my family handles drinking impressively, the other side has some alcoholism going on. I have seen what a strong effect prescription medication has on me, and I have seen how compulsive I can become with stupid things like computer games or food. It is really for the best that I have never been drunk, stoned, or high. Nothing good could come of it.
I have friends who went through some pretty wild times trying to find themselves, or lose themselves, too, depending. They have done things that were dangerous or degrading or that took out some brain cells. With my genetics, I don't like my odds, so that I never went there was good.
I do know other people with the same religious upbringing who did those things that I avoided, some with some pretty serious results. That would have been easy for me to do, because Dad wasn't going anymore, and my older siblings did rebel at times. I never really felt inclined that way.
I had my rebellious moments. I remember staying home one Sunday, because I had decided that I just didn't want to go. It didn't feel right, so I didn't do that again. I guess that's where I make the distinction between religion and faith. I was trained in a specific religion, and that mattered, but I think it mattered more that it got inside of me.
Having faith meant that I built a personal relationship with God. It meant that I was praying and reading the scriptures regularly, and going to church, and that I was building up strength there.
It meant that I was inviting the Holy Ghost into my life, so there could be comfort at times, and inspiration and guidance. Those things were important to me then, and they still are now.
Obviously it's not that it takes all of the trouble away, but it does make enduring easier, and that's worth a lot.
Even now, I feel myself being guided in the things that I am doing. I know the way I am doing Throwback Thursday is not how people normally do it, being overly methodical and all that, but I also see that it is helping me. Beyond that, I see that doing the songs of the day countdown by year prepared me for it by starting this review of my life. I believe "next steps" will continue to come to me as I am ready for them.
So that's something for which I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I was introduced to the gospel young, and I'm grateful that it stuck. Neither of those were guaranteed.

Not a complete loss

The previous posts have probably sounded kind of negative. I am looking at what I need to change and correct, so the focus is on what is wrong.
All of those things are real, but they aren't the complete picture. I was not always sure what to count when calculating my Adverse Childhood Experiences score, but it only came to two, and with the big thing, I was only a year away from 18 when it happened. So really, my childhood and adolescence could have been a lot worse. Most of the people whom I had in mind when I started this have had it much worse.
I want to keep that in perspective. Also, there were some ways in which I became strong through the things that were bad. There were strengths I already had that I didn't lose. There were things that helped me back then, and they weren't even always accidental.
Disassociating from my body was not a good thing to do, but I could do it more comfortably because I had a good mind. I do like that about myself. That is one area where I have always felt confident. Even as the first grader who hadn't been to kindergarten, when I was expected to be slow, I knew that I wouldn't be. I'm not sure how I knew that, but I was able to feel sure of that, and take pleasure in learning things quickly and easily. Even at my lowest points of self-esteem, I wouldn't trade my brains for beauty. I like them too much.
Reading helped for the intellectual development, but the early social rejection may have contributed to me being a reader. I mean, I was pretty into it anyway, but there were periods of my life where I had a lot more time. Reading builds empathy as well, and while pain does not automatically build it, in my case I feel it did. I believe I have more compassion from having been hurt, and I value that. I know I can be unhealthy about putting others first, and I'm working on that, but I don't hate that I am generous and kind.
There were a lot of things that I avoided that I am okay with having avoided. I never did much with clothes or makeup; there had been a general capitulation there a long time ago. I know I am more relaxed about appearance than a lot of women, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, and this won't sound right, that while some people are struggling every day to become attractive (or at least marginally less unattractive) and have their days ruined by the way humidity or lack of sleep or whatever thwarts them, for me it has pretty much been a matter of just staying not attractive, and being at peace with it. Sometimes clothes shopping, especially for a dress-up event, pushes things over the edge to really miserable depths, but it seems that for many of my contemporaries that is more of a constant.
I do not know how to do romantic relationships. I believe this is bad. However, I can see many areas where participating in them would have been dangerous, because I can see where I might have accepted bad treatment and possibly even outright abuse. Maybe it's better that I skipped that until I could get into a better place. That's speculation, but it seems possible.
Somewhere in that combination of having a good mind, and wanting to do things for other people, and not believing that I could rely on anyone, I became pretty competent. I am good at figuring out how to get things done, and making it happen. I enjoy that. I don't know that I would be as resourceful if some of the things that did happen hadn't happened.
That has it's downside, because it also means that I will charge ahead without reading the instructions or fully thinking things through or maybe asking for permission when applicable, but it works out a lot, which doesn't motivate me to change.
Perhaps the real saving grace for me was that in addition to having things I was good at, they were all things that I liked. That made it easier to be me.
Maybe that's the most amazing thing coming out of this. No matter how many messages I heard and believed about what was wrong with me, somehow I still ended up liking me. That's one reason to take better care of this Gina person. She appears to be worth it.

Band Review: I, Synthesist

I, Synthesist self describes as Alternative, Electronica, and Electro-Pop, but my initial reaction was that it was very arty. Art rock and art pop are generally not my favorite genres. There are digital effects and copious synthesizers, but when you have a nearly 24 minute track of ambient noise called "Womb-a-Tron", I think a case could be made for art pop.
"Womb-a-Tron" is the last track on Somewhere and Everywhere from 2013, and there is a similar (but less womb-like) track, "The Overlook", on Art Of Survival from 2007. I mention those two tracks in particular because they were the ones that drove me from vaguely annoyed to feeling actual hatred.
It's not always that bad. Tracks like "The Lost Parade" from Avalanche (2004) occasionally reminds me of groups like Information Society or The Breakfast Club, and there are songs that are not horrible. Still, it was more common for me to be annoyed, and that is the impression I am carrying away.
If you are into techno, I would start with Avalanche, and if you enjoy that keep going. (If you like experimental art-pop, by all means go straight to "Womb-a-Tron".)
http://isynthesist.tumblr.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ISynthesistMusic?fref=ts
https://www.youtube.com/user/isynthesist
https://soundcloud.com/i-synthesist
https://twitter.com/Isynthesist

Band Review: Continent

Continent is a Downtempo/Deathcore band from Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The music is aggressive, with the lyrics delivered in growling shouts, guitars and drums pounding inexorably in the background.
The greatest weakness of the band is a tendency for there to not be a lot of differentiation between the tracks, a frequent stumbling block for "core" bands.
At the same time, when you do hear something different, there is often a kind of sci-fi vibe to it, which surprised me. That may have been most evident on the title track, "Wasteland", which also seems to have some industrial roots. "Decaying Days" has some interesting bridge work, and "Fake" had a strong intro.
Currently I have only heard the 5-track Wasteland EP. The band does not have their own video channel yet, but a sound-only video has been posted by the label, We Are Triumphant (also home to GutterLIFE).
More information should be available as the band progresses, but all the links I could find are listed below.
https://www.facebook.com/continentofficial
http://continentofficial.bigcartel.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/wearetriumphant/videos
https://twitter.com/continent

*Technical difficulties kept me for posting yesterday, so I will post the review that should have gone up yesterday tomorrow.

Summing up

I feel like the minute I post this I will realize something that I forgot to mention that was important. Still, if that's what it takes to realize an important piece, then that's probably reason enough to do it. Besides, the way I spread things out over multiple posts may not be ideal for anyone trying to follow along.
I am messed up - highly functional, but messed up nonetheless. I undertook a reading program partly to help other messed up people, but I knew it would be for me too. One of the big realizations during the course of that was how disconnected from my body I have been. There are physical repercussions to that, but it does not operate in a vacuum from my emotions. I had gotten back in touch with some of the emotions that led to the disconnection already, which may lead to a focus more on the physical now, but it seems to go back and forth.
There were three key events that formed my self-image. I had identified two of them earlier, but only recently realized the impact of the third.
6 years old - I was sitting by myself on the playground, and a group of girls came and started talking about how fat I was. From then on I saw myself as fat, even though I was not at that time.
14 years old - While eating lunch in the cafeteria one boy asked me to go steady with him as a joke, but then his friend started asking and wouldn't stop, following me to my next class. It was then that I knew that no boy could ever like me.
17 years old - I was learning to drive, but did not want to learn with my father. I was scared to get in the car with him. Initially he didn't force the issue, but three days before my 17th birthday he told me to get in the car, and I did. I hit a car, would not get back in the car when he insisted, and walked home. I avoided him for the rest of the day, but the next morning he told me how stupid I was, and that he was ashamed of me. He didn't speak to me again for two and a half years. This is the one where I had not realized it affected me, but I think a lot of my trust and self-worth issues come from here. I still feel very ashamed of not driving, and very scared when I think about trying to drive.
There were other factors at play. Early experiences that taught me that no one wants to see you cry or talk about why you're sad and a general inability to ever satisfy my father played parts. I am sure my father's lack of respect for my mother and his cheating played a part. Being rejected by a boy because he found out I liked him was a key experience, especially because no longer being friends with him was probably why I was alone on the playground that day.
There are other things that played smaller parts. For example, in high school my bike was stolen. At the time Aloha was getting really bad for bike theft. It was an Italvega that I loved and rode everywhere. I bought a replacement from K-Mart, where I was working at the time, but it didn't feel as good, and then I could no longer leave my bike in an easy to access place, and I started riding less.
The roads had started getting more dangerous anyway, and that was long before they started putting in bike paths. Timing didn't help, but ultimately there is a lot in the suburbs to discourage physical activity, so you have to be actively aware and fighting for it.
My big takeaway from my formative years was that I was not worth fighting for. Ultimately, there is a lot in society that will tell you that, especially if you are female, especially if you are fat, and boy howdy, especially if you are both fat and female.
Now I am trying to sort all that out. I can see now that the people who hurt me were wrong on an intellectual level. They were not being kind or accurate or anything where I should have let them form my ideas about my place in the world. Since I believed them then, and carried those beliefs with me over years, on an emotional level shaking it off is hard.
There are still plenty of messages out there about how worthless I am. On a good day, I know they're wrong. On a bad day I have doubts, and really wonder why there are still so many negative messages out there.

Becoming me

Looking up the old posts from 2010, it occurred to me that maybe my problem with drama was that it didn't keep me busy enough. For someone who did as many things as I ended up doing, there is a certain logic to that. In addition, my previous explanation to myself had been unsatisfactory.
Back then I told myself that I was never going to be a lead because I wasn't attractive and I couldn't sing, and so there was no point in it. I have never liked that explanation because it sounds like a narcissistic hissy fit.
It was also untrue. People of various sizes and vocal ranges got some very interesting roles. I probably could have as well. I may not have been into acting enough, which is fine. I did still take one more drama class the next year, and I think it illustrates something.
We had a lot of opportunities to write our own sketches. When I helped other people with theirs, they were usually more comic. Most of the parts that I remember enjoying other people doing were comic. I always wanted to do dramatic, relationship-based things, even if they were overwrought and not very fun. I saw myself doing it, but I didn't know why I couldn't let it go.
In retrospect, I think what the loss of feeling that I could be loved as myself meant to me was that I couldn't be a star, even in my own life. If love is the main storyline - and yes, this probably was worse because I was a girl and societal expectations and all - then ineligibility for love meant permanent supporting cast. I struggled with that.
That's when I went around trying everything and looking for something new.
Okay, I was not good at guitar, but I was a valued member of the yearbook staff in ninth grade, and in the process I learned how to process and develop film. I had access to the darkroom. I also got great grades that year and cleaned up at the end of the year assembly. Teachers voted me outstanding French student, English student, Social Studies student, and then I got Most Academic too, by student vote. However, I remember that even though I wanted to get Most Academic because I could get it, when the ballots were going around I wished I could get the award for Nicest Eyes or something like that.
So even though I tried a lot more things the next year in high school, the one that really stuck was sports management, where I was supporting cast. I had rebelled against it, but without understanding what I was doing or why, perhaps it was inevitable that the place where I landed up was one where I was serving others, and not a star.
I feel like I'm being disloyal to the teams saying that. I really loved them, and the guys were nice to me for the most part, and after my father stopped speaking to me just having the coaches in my life was huge, but I probably should have been doing something for me, and for building the life that I wanted.
The problem was that I was quickly losing the ability to believe that I could have good or interesting things for me, so there was nothing to try for. I became "the friend" with guys. In some ways that was what I had been doing all along. I was prone to shame before, and people-pleasing and over-functioning, but it got cemented here, between 14 and 17.
On one level I was just putting everything off to the future. Someday I would lose weight, and then someone would love me, but I think on another level I didn't really believe it would ever happen.
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2010/08/girl-on-run.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2010/08/club-sandwich.html

Is that what was happening?

I guess it's time to get back to disconnecting  and reconnecting with my body.
Some of the things I will be writing about this week are things I have written about before, though it's been longer than I realized. I was looking for a couple of posts and they were from August 2010.
There were things that I pegged accurately then, but there were things that I missed completely, and have only started to see recently.
That includes that I was disconnected from my body. I did kind of know that I was missing weight gain. I was deliberately trying to ignore it, though it should not have been so possible, but I knew a while ago that I had blocked out that. I had no comprehension of how good I had gotten at blocking out pain and discomfort and all of these other things that I should have been able to notice and understand.
That's the big focus here, except that the reasons for the disconnect and the results and the methods all relate to the mind and spirit too, and there's not going to be any healing of the body without healing the rest. I have to be an integrated soul.
Here are the other things that I missed.
I knew that I got frustrated with everything in 9th grade, and I changed both my classes and my after-school activities for that. I thought that I had just gotten sick of theater; I did not connect it to the incident of harassment. I suppose I couldn't, since I was trying to pretend that it never happened. Now, yes, I think the incident that spawned the deep-rooted conviction that boys being attracted to me could only ever be a joke, and the unhappiness associated with that, may have contributed to my trying to make my life completely different.
There are things specific about giving up drama and going into sports management that are going to get their own post tomorrow. For now, there was something else that I hadn't grasped.
I knew that it was hard on me when Dad disowned me. At 17 I told myself that it wasn't that bad. At ages older than that, I had to admit that it was pretty bad, but I still didn't think that it changed me. Many of the things that I did after he stopped talking to me were things that I had been doing before, and so I could kind of convince myself that I was already developed enough that it didn't make much difference, but I think it did. I think it was kind of a final severance there, that I was on my own, and I could not count on anyone.
Coincidentally, I recently came across the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, and the concept of an ACE score. It focuses on the things that happen before you turn 18.
I don't know that I would have chosen that cutoff. My theory previously was that what happens in your first twenty years determines the way that you are broken, and then from 20 on it's all about starting to fix it. All of my breakage happened before 18, so point taken.
Maybe if that conflict had waited a year, I would only think it was my father who couldn't be depended on, and not the world. Maybe that's what the difference is. And maybe I would have learned to drive some other way, and be doing that now.
Where I started to see that more was when I had the guitar dream. It connected my beginning guitar class and my father in a way that I hadn't before, like there was an arc that started at 14 and completed at 17, and that's who I became. I don't think I have to undo everything about it, but I have to undo the false beliefs, and my method for that seems to be unraveling it all in painstaking detail.
For now, even though I don't play the guitar much, I'm still glad I have her. That feels like one of the few things that went right.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-dream-guitar-story-in-three-parts.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/04/it-was-not-just-guitar.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/04/but-it-was-guitar-too.html

Band Review: Just Like Giants

As I started assembling the links for this review, the Twitter and Facebook links were broken. Although music has been added to the other pages as recently as May 2014 - so less than a year ago - it appears that Just Like Giants has broken up.
I feel bad about this; they had a pretty good sound. Also, when I have been listening to a band for a week and then discover that I was missing key information I feel irresponsible, like I should have figured it out sooner. However, I still would have felt the need to review them. I knew Atlantic Aftermath was broken up, and I knew that Nina Simone was dead, but doing those reviews still felt necessary.
And, once music is captured on the internet it is there forever. The individual members may do other things, but for now you six songs spread across two EPs, with earnest, angst-y pop punk. My favorite track is "Take It Back" off of the EP of the same name. I think Take It Back is the stronger effort, but I found both EPs to be good listening.
It generally takes a few tries to get the right band composition. I hope things work out for the various Just Like Giants members.
http://justlikegiants.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/justlike_giants
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIqv-urvjk-PiN8ttyzKfQ