Guys: Friend Zone Yourselves

Ah the "friend zone". I have to be honest: I've had a lot of thoughts on everything I want to write after this intro paragraph, but I've struggled to start this piece off. I think at its core, there's an obvious message: kindness is a gift, not a debt transaction. If you're kind only because you expect something in return, you're not kind. At all. And that's not to say that people shouldn't want to try and impress or woo someone they're interested in, but if that's all you want, then there needs to be explicit communication. If you don't want to be "friend zoned", ask someone out on a date. Explicitly. A real invite with communicated intent. It's a simple concept, but one that is all too often ignored in a world full of male entitlement that commoditizes kindness for a relationship (or in many cases, just sex). But it's not exactly what I want to get at. I want to use the term to sort of re-contextualize what motives, goals, and desires could (should?) be.

Imagine an approach where you pre-friend zone your self going into a relationship (used to communicate an ongoing interaction, not a romantic relationship). It could be for any number of reasons: life circumstances, distance, age, being a coworker, incompatible goals, whatever. So what does pre-friend zoning yourself look like? Well, you've set boundaries for yourself: you're just going to be friends. That's the goal. And what is the appropriate way to act? Well, like you would with someone you aim to show someone that they're special to you. That they're worth extra attention and that your aim is to see them smile and feel valued. Now, I think it's desirable to have all our friends feel that way, but we know that a significant other does bring out a little extra degree of motivation. Do this all, and do this all not only without any expectation of something in return, but not wanting anything in return.

I happen to really like the idea of platonic love being more popular in today's society. Once a friend asked me if I have ever been just a little in love with a friend, to which I replied "I'd like to hope I am just a little in love with all my friends". And maybe there is some blurry area between platonic and romantic love, either in whole or in part. I know I have started to develop stronger feelings for people I know I can't or won't ever be anything more than friends with. Maybe this is where friend zoning yourself should take you, to that grey area. I'll admit, it might not be the easiest place to sit with your emotions sometimes, but overall, I feel like it should be an aspiration to place yourself in this state and master the emotions you feel. Forging a friendship where you become just a bit more invested in someone's happiness, success, and fulfillment, maybe having a few butterflies every time you speak with them, maintaining an excitement level when socializing or doing activities together, it's not a bad state to be in. Imagine a world in which you can make another person feel great for being the person they are, nothing more. Why shouldn't that be a goal?

When you enter a romantic relationship with someone, you never have any clue if it's going to work out. And here is where I think people miss the mark with dating, romance, and relationships: so many people go into relationships with a goal of it lasting forever. It's not the case all the time, but certainly as people age, there's more of a desire to have something long term to permanent, particularly in the case where a person is monogamous. I never date with the intention of "I hope this only lasts a few months", but my goal is to be the best boyfriend that I can be, and that if the relationship doesn't work out, that my partner values herself, knows her worth, and will never allow anyone henceforth to treat her with anything less than she deserves. And if being that best boyfriend I can possibly be leads to a lifetime partner, which I would consider an ideal outcome, then that's fantastic. I think there's a subtle nuance between a relationship lasting forever being a goal or an outcome. As a goal, it's a vague endpoint without a plan and many ways to get there. In contrast, it being an outcome means you're focused on something else, something more concrete and actionable. If the relationship doesn't last, for one person the goal failed, and for the other person, you set out doing the things you wanted to do and perhaps that ideal state outcome didn't surface, but that feels a lot better. To use an analogy, it's sort of like saying "I want to get an A" instead of "I want to learn a lot in this class". If you learn a lot in the class, you're really focused on doing the right things to end up getting an A. If your only goal is to get an A, you haven't stated anything you're actually acting on. And there are honest and dishonest ways to get an A...just like there are good and really awful, toxic ways to make relationships last longer.

So to lean back into the friend zone aspect of this, instead of giving a partner an expectation of kindness, positive interactions, feelings of worth and happiness, and all for no other reason than for being who they are, give that to a friend. I never set out in any of my interactions with people with this concept of friend zoning myself in mind, per se. Quite honestly, I think my codependent tendencies make this sort of my natural behavior. I primarily feel good when I am making other people feel good, and quite often I want to go the extra mile to make friends and coworkers feel cared about. And while I am not saying codependence is a good thing, or that I act purely out of codependence in my actions, I think there are probably some behaviors that I am taking and utilizing in this concept of "friend zoning yourself". It pains me to see friends end up with partners that don't treat them well. And if they happen to be of the opposite sex, it's never from a place of "I would treat her so much better", but of "she deserves so much better". Look at the differences in those sentences (pro tip: watch out for how other people communicate. If someone speaks like the former and not the latter, watch out!) It should be a goal for all of us to be such good friends to others (in my case as a heterosexual man, to women) that they will end up with a great partner and don't settle for less. If more and more men adopt this mentality, then the overall quality of the populace improves! Seems like a good outcome to me. Even if you're self-centered and wonder what's in it for you, well, here's what's in it for you. You are conditioning yourself to be a better person. Now, if that isn't enough of a reward in and of itself, then realize that, in general, being a better person, learning about interacting with people, learning about yourself, just becoming more emotionally aware, that's all going to help lead to better relationships in the future. Chances are your friendships will also be more fulfilling, too.

So there you have it; let's take this term that's endemic amongst entitled males and turn it into something that we can drive positive intentions and behaviors out of.

Love and celebrity crushes: a personal history

From a young age, I've had tunnel vision with respect to the person I've been interested in. I never understood being attracted to anyone else if I was in love with someone. I'm not just saying that; I've had numerous other friends and girlfriends even remark about it. I've gotten the "where were you on that!?" line from a (married) co-worker when an attractive woman walked by our booth at dinner, and another co-worker replied "Anthony doesn't pay attention to women like that." I've gotten from one ex-girlfriend, "you really don't show a lot of interest in other women at all, do you?" and from another, before I was even dating her but after I was already enamored with her, she would always exclaim when she'd point out a nice butt, and I'd never know what she was talking about or who she was even looking at. I've always just been so in love and perfectly content with the person I'm with and never quite understood celebrity crushes.

Well, fast forward to my 30s. The dating pool is smaller, I'm not exactly optimistic about my relationship prospects, intellectually I conceptually don't think monogamy makes sense (though emotionally it is still what I desire), and I have been critical of my previous tunnel vision anyhow. It doesn't seem as though this sort of complete disinterest in any sort of attraction is either healthy or unhealthy. People routinely have celebrity crushes and don't seem any worse for the wear from it in relationships (anecdotally). For the first time in my life, I'm dating. Before I sort of just ended up in relationships. There wasn't much intentional about it. Despite being highly analytical and passionate about data, my emotions for the first 30 years of my life tended to win out when it came to romantic interests. I'd even say that two of my relationships were explicitly not logical to me from the beginning, but when you can't get someone out of your head, you feel like it's probably better to just give in and hope for the best than to endure the torture of someone permeating your thoughts constantly and not doing anything about it.

Dating is VERY different. If you're intentionally dating, it's not organic. It's purpose driven. I'd even argue it's not really fun, at least for me. What happened, though, for the first time in my life I am in a period where it actually seems okay to indulge in a celebrity crush. Now, I use the term "celebrity" lightly because I'm so far removed from pop culture that I don't know who people reference whenever they talk about actors and actresses. A celebrity for me is an obscure musician nine times out of ten. Now, there's actually some other underlying issue with celebrity crushes and me. A celebrity crush is easy; it's highly unrealistic. It's so far outside of the realm of normal possibility that it's safe. There's no emotional attachment (at least in theory). You're not putting yourself out there. There's no rejection, nothing that can hurt you. It's a low risk and fun exercise, even sharing across sexes. When going to Wacken Winter Nights, I encouraged our group to each have a list of three crushes in the bands. As a man and with women being scarce among the bands playing, my options were more limited, so I was more doing it to egg on my female friends, but I made mine as well.

But here is the funny thing: most of these things are usually done on a superficial level, right? I'm sure that there are people who like Angelina Jolie (sorry I legitimately don't know who the current hot actress is) or Jason Momoa for their personalities, but if we're honest with ourselves, we know the majority of the people attracted to them source that attraction from their physical appearance. Now I would say that all of my three were physically attractive, but they weren't really the hottest women there. No, my crushes were because of following them or their path to music and knowing some of their backstory. The blind singer and woodwind player with a voice of an angel who posts her favorite places to go for serenity, the hurdy gurdy player who got added into a band she did song covers of when learning to play the instrument. The woman who I deemed straight out of a Danish fairy tale with an alluring voice and an enchanting energy. If the point of a celebrity crush is to have it be purely superficial without any sort of other form of attachment, I was failing.

Enter my latest "celebrity" crush. And this crush was what prompted this entire post because it's an amalgamation of my old and new interests and values. It all flooded my thoughts last night (several nights ago when I actually wrote this). I didn't feel strongly until I did, and that was when all these separate pieces collided into each other like the people in the mosh pit at the show I was at. The crush? Marion from Aephanemer. I'm not quite sure the best way to present all the colliding thoughts, so I'm just going to throw it all out there and hope it seems cogent. When I was younger, all I ever wanted was a family. Today I'm not sure if that's true. I'm not sure if I have any interest in kids now that I've progressed to this stage in my life and am not remotely close to having a life partner. Putting aside the "monogamy doesn't seem logical" part of my brain, I'm not close to having a significant other either. But that younger desire was still there. And while I know most men dream of having a son, I definitely wanted daddy's little girl. That led me to the revelation I had: if I had a daughter who would I want her to look up to? Who would I be beaming with pride if she grew up to be (and I'd be proud of the person she became from her own experiences and decisions and being her own person, of course)? I don't know Marion personally at all, but from a surface level, she checked that box in addition to possessing the qualities that I find very attractive.

Marion does vocals and rhythm guitars for Aephanemer in addition to being the writer behind the lyrics. Women are becoming more prevalent in the metal scene and very slowly becoming more populous as being recording artists. When present in a band, they do tend to be vocalists more often than not. In folk metal, you do see a number playing traditional folk instruments, and there are plenty of women who are the sole mastermind behind an entire band and do all the writing and recording. But in general, the Tarjas and the Floors and the Simones and the Nooras of the world outnumber the Amelie Bruuns (Myrkur) and the Chelsea Wolfes of the world. All that to say, it's uncommon to see a woman guitarist, particularly in a genre like melodic death metal compared to something more folky or atmospheric. So you have her, a prominent member front and center, unleashing piercing screams and gutteral growls while playing away on guitar, singing about stoicism. Further, she seems comfortable in her own skin, which is incredibly attractive. I would never criticize any woman for her choice in clothing, makeup, hair color, etc. Women dressed to the nines certainly do target a certain audience, but I always tell people they should shut the hell up until they try singing opera in a corset. Nevertheless, Marion comes on stage like the metalhead you'd meet at a bar: jeans, t-shirt, wristbands. She has long beautiful hair that is only just beginning to grey, and she lacks visible tattoos. On every point above, I admire her. She is a phenomenal musician, wears what she wants, looks how she likes, and doesn't cave into any of the pressure or expectations pushed upon women by society. I can certainly find appeal in women with a ton of tattoos, but I don't have any myself right now, and in my younger years, I sort of saw it as the body in it's purest, unadulterated form. The lack of need or desire to outwardly want that expression of art to show anyone, or even yourself, could be seen as total self assuredness and taking meaning from within. The horrible double standard of grey hair on women being undesirable and sexy on men should fuck right off. But that aside, I've told several exes that I loved the idea of my partner having grey hair and not dying it. When you love someone so fully and you share life with them, every grey hair represents an experience, a shared moment, a sign of the impermanence of life but a reminder that we're still here. I've seen absolutely stunning women and stunning hair once it's partially or fully greyed or silvered. And sure, being the age I am now, I'm probably not going to see my partner's hair go silver from the beginning, so they're not ALL shared experiences, but I think it's a reminder that we all have our stories, and I'd love to share those stories and memories and lessons learned. So the fact that she has hair that has begun to grey (and she may very well dye it, I can't know for sure, but the fact that it doesn't seem such a heavy priority to her is still relevant, in my estimation) is a huge positive in my interpretation of her beliefs and philosophy. Finally, her smile. The joy she conveys on stage. There's an authenticity in her eyes and her smile when she performs. I think there's a spectrum of smiles from purely for show to one that is fully genuine. Some performers live on the inauthentic end of the spectrum, probably most are somewhere in the middle. I truly got the sense that Marion's smile was 100% authentic. All of her words and actions seemed so genuine; her gratitude for the support and appreciation for the experience she was having was conveyed with such sincerity. Oh, and maybe on a purely superficial level, her accent, annunciation, and word cadence are enough to make me get a stupid grin because I find it really attractive. French accents aren't usually at the top of my list, but hers is 😅

But to bring it back around, the sum of all these parts, the musical talent, the intelligence and introspection behind her lyrical topics, her authenticity, standing up in the face of musical and societal norms, her gratitude and humility, when I look at all that combined, then you throw the physical characteristics I find beautiful and my affinity for her accent on top, that's the anatomy of a celebrity crush. She is thriving in an art that present me has such extreme respect and admiration for, she appeals to the sensibilities that past me had that have stuck with me even after all this time. She's someone who seems, on the surface, to be someone that little girls everywhere could look up to. I'd love for her to inspire girls, pre-teens, and teens everywhere, for them to watch a video of her perform and say "I want to growl and play guitar like the pretty lady!" To pick up a guitar and practice and have the determination in the face of a male dominated scene to succeed. To feel comfortable in their own bodies and skins and clothes no matter what anyone else says. To rise above any negativity and show genuine appreciation for those who show their love and support. I can only hope she is already having this impact on young women all over the world. And if you happen to be reading, Marion, I hope this post shows you that you're really a treasure in this world, and that someone who really doesn't know you at all can still have a very deep appreciation for what he has seen in what you've shared with the world.

The Age Conundrum: How Does Age Impact Our Mentalities Towards Relationships?

As an aging individual who is no closer to marriage than the day he came out of the womb, this is something that, as much as I try not to think about it too much, is more and more in my consciousness. I know I have talked about there not being "The One" in the past, but it doesn't change the fact that we are sort of conditioned to think about having a partner, and I am still a hopeless romantic at heart. Aside from this, though, I do have fascination with psychology and behavior, and as I have aged, naturally both my friends and the people I have dated have aged as well (I am definitely not the type to date much younger than I am). I'll tell you what I expected to see: I expected to see relationships lasting longer because, well, we're not getting any younger, and the fear of being alone begins to outweigh the desire to be in the relationship we want. I expected folks to settle, to put up with more and get less in return, to encounter severe problems with resignation and just continue on in a an unfulfilling relationship.

Much to my surprise, I believe I have found the opposite. Relationships seem to fizzle out more quickly. In hindsight, I do feel this does make just as much, if not more, sense than my original hypothesis. I think there are probably three contributing factors. The first I think speaks to "young love". Younger individuals may feel more inclined to stick in a relationship because it's a first love or unfamiliar territory. Without having experienced heartbreak or negative aspects of relationships, it does make it conducive to continuing on for a longer period of time due to lack of experience and wherewithal to identify problem areas or red flags. Younger individuals are also still developing into the people they'll grow up to be; certainly as teenagers we do have aspects of ourselves that are fairly firmly cemented into our makeup that won't change, but there are many other areas in which we will continue to change in. As we age, those aspects are a bit less likely to change, and therefore "we know what we want" and can identify if a relationship will satisfy those desires or not. That increased level of certainty along with the experience to enable identifying positives and negatives in relationships lend to older individuals having shorter relationships.

The second item, and this is perhaps what both makes sense and surprises me at the same time, is the desire to invest effort to making a relationship work. I really and truly believe that all relationships require effort, no matter how "right" people are for each other. A couple really should never be at the point of stagnation; much like we should always strive to grow and better ourselves, our relationships should continue to grow and find new ways to thrive as well. Now, with youth there may come a propensity to not be able to recognize incompatibility or significant issues that will make a relationship unfeasible. When we are younger, however, there is also probably a subconscious reassurance that even if the relationship fails, we're still young, and there is still plenty of time to find love anew. The older we get, the more doubt that resides there will be opportunities later. The longer we continue in a relationship that we have any sort of doubt about, the more time we've "wasted". I truly feel I have witnessed this very thing. And it is logical: the longer we spend in unsuccessful relationships, the more time we spent out of the dating pool, and the more time that others in our age range in the dating pool become unavailable (and at an older age, perhaps it is reasonable to make the assumption that more people exit the dating pool than enter the dating pool, but it certainly is not a one way flow of people). The flip side to this is does it make folks lazy? Does it make people more likely to nitpick items that are easily resolved or that are non-issues as a means to move on? There are a number of ways where this phenomenon results in folks demonstrating an unwillingness to put forth the requisite effort to make a relationship work. As someone is wired to give an immense amount of himself to others, due in part to a difficulty in finding the ability to love himself, this is a harshreality to encounter. In many instances it may be the right thing to cut short a relationship because it wasn't the right one, but in many other instances a relationship that does have a natural fit and legitimate promise may be cut short due to the anxiety of spending too long in a relationship and it not working out at an older age.

Now, one item that I think, at a minimum, facilitates the above, and perhaps is more responsible than either of the two reasons above, is the progression of technology and the ease with which people can find potential partners. This impacts us two ways. One is the actual ability to find more people more quickly than ever before with loads of information available at our fingertips. A second, less obvious outcome is perhaps a byproduct of the availability. Due to the technology, people may have developed a mentality to date around more and not invest as much regardless of if they use the technology to do so. Now, this could very well be an age independent variable as well, but to the extent it adds fuel to the fear of time commitment fire outlined above, it cannot be understated the role that technology and dating services play in how relationship behavior has changed. And, anecdotally, since this was not nearly as prevalent in my younger years, I have a difficult time comparing my younger years to my older years due to an inability to adequately correct for this variable. I do still believe that the other explanations provided are compelling enough to think there's merit to the hypothesis that relationships are shorter the older we get (when removing the relationships that end in marriage, that is).

At the end of the day, we're still individuals with our own tendencies and different inclinations on how to treat relationships. I don't know that my mentality will change that much for any of the reasons I listed above; if anything, I treat each failed relationship as just that: a failure, and it makes me try that much harder next time. It's probably a somewhat destructive mentality, as even now I am left wondering what more I can possibly do, and I fear that I won't be adequate for future potential partners because I will have set expectations of myself that I won't be able to continue to surpass. Being able to frame how others may perceive relationships as they age, though, has been a valuable dedication of my time as it makes me more aware of what I may encounter in the future.

Why Your Employees Don't Like Your Offsite Meetings

Hi-di-ho! Lately I have felt more and more like writing, so perhaps you'll see a few blog posts. It was actually interesting going back and reading some half to nearly complete drafts from a couple of years ago. Not sure if I will finish those as well or just start with fresh writing. In any case, this was a piece that I felt like publishing on Linkedin, but due to obvious ramifications with employers and that it would be perceived quite negatively (despite companies insisting they want honest feedback so they can improve), I figured I would just write it here.

Anyone who has worked in corporate America has been to one: the annual offsite meeting. For those unfamiliar, it is common for companies to host a meeting at a venue, typically a hotel conference room, hire a speaker to come in and talk to the company about something the company leaders find pertinent to, and perhaps lacking for, the company and/or the employees. It's part motivational speech, part educational lecture, sometimes part team building, and rarely very influential. Now, leaders will typically place the blame for the lack of impact squarely on the shoulders of the employees. It is assumed that folks who don't take the meeting seriously are negative influence on the environment, and sometimes there is truth to that. There are feelings that the company is doing something valuable for employees and that they should reward the employer by taking everything to heart, putting whatever the topic of discussion was into practice in the workplace, and that it should yield the desired outcome the employer had in mind when they picked the speaker.

Nothing stated above is really outlandish, and I am sure that managers and non-managers alike can think of the cancerous employees in their workplaces. They are only a small fraction of the problem, though, and I feel there is a much bigger issue that often goes lost on the company leadership. There is a reason that there is widespread disinterest and lack of enthusiasm at such events, and it is not because a cancerous few have permeated the atmosphere of the company and influenced everyone in a negative manner. Employees don't go into these meetings expecting not to get anything out of them. Quite the opposite actually; I believe most employees look forward to seeing a speaker come in to share some insight and value with the organization, and they hope to get something out of the event. The skepticism comes from the fact that the people who need to heed the words are the ones least likely to listen, and those people are the company leaders. To illustrate, I will give a couple of examples.

Take an insurance company whose profitability has suffered for several years running. The company employs at least a good number of smart, competent people who have not managed to fix the issues causing the lack of profitability, but the reason for that comes from IT resource bottlenecks and dated sophistication relative to the competition. For this offsite meeting, a speaker is brought in who speaks about Progressive Insurance and their innovation in motorcycle pricing segmentation. The speaker goes on about how they created a positive risk selection mechanism for their company and forced their competitors into an adverse selection downward spiral. The speech is very well articulated and insightful. The leaders of the company picked someone who addressed the issues at hand quite well, and the problem is not that the employees did not hear or understand the message. The management did not live into the lessons and takeaways. What message does it send to your employees when you have someone lecture on segmentation when you then turn around and tell them they can only take a flat base rate increase (in laymen's terms, the most unsophisticated, broad, across the board change you can make that only serves to throw a company further into the aforementioned adverse selection downward spiral)? What does it communicate to the pricing actuaries who developed a by-peril rating algorithm years earlier and were not allowed to implement it? The end result is you have a group of employees that feel like management not only does not trust their talents enough to solve issues by bringing in someone to highlight issues they are already aware of and have not been enabled to try to fix, but that the message that is being preached falls on deaf ears.

Further, let's look at another example. A company brings in a speaker to discuss workplace behaviors and leadership styles and meshes it with the company culture and goals. The exercise is engaging, encourages participation and contemplation. It is designed to make people fit in and make the company seem like a very employee environment-centric company. The speaker talks about how companies that succeed tend to employee a workforce whose styles and attributes align with the types of goals the company sets, and proceeds to unveil his view of the company's artifacts, that is, the explicitly communicated objectives from the company's website or other materials highlighting what the company strives to be. What does the exercise show? Well, that the work force does not align at all with their communicated objectives. Instead of learning from this and either changing the goals and external messages, or working to emphasize shifting the environment to better suit the established objectives, they continue down the path of executing on a strategy that runs contrary to the values set forth in their messaging, persist with the clash in what is asked and what is expected, and seemingly ignore everything that the speaker highlighted in his presentation. Again, what does this communicate to the employees?

At the end of the day, there is responsibility held by each individual to put in the effort to learn from and incorporate the knowledge acquired into his/her work. That much should not be disputed. To what extent an employee can do that, however, is largely dictated by factors outside of his/her control, and that is where the leadership of a company is so important. All too often, when middle and upper management demonstrate time and time again that they are blind to the damage they do to employee morale by hosting offsite meetings and not living into the message communicated. At best, it is disappointing to employees, at worst, it is patronizing. One thing is for certain, though, in order to truly get the utility desired from such meetings, companies need to have buy in at all levels of the company, and that means the leaders at the company most of all.

Rape Culture

First post in quite some time. This post may or may not be a return to somewhat more regular writing. I have need for catharsis and lack of motivation playing tug of war right now, so it's anyone's guess which of those two will win on any given day.

This next topic is a sensitive one, one that I think really creates an adversarial response between individuals. In this day and age, it's easier and easier to lack empathy when so many communications are not done in person. The lack of interpersonal body language, the lack of any real consequences from our communications when we are speaking over a screen, and the ever increasing selfish mentality of your average 21st century individual all contribute to topics becoming verbal war zones instead of mediums for progress. As such, it's easy to avoid these discussions entirely for many people; it feels like a fruitless effort that will only result verbal tirades and harassment, because, you know, God forbid anyone have an opinion. Well, I am jumping into the fray, albeit in a manner where the reach will be virtually nonexistent. Still, I feel the need to get some things off my chest; this post is going to be a blend of reason and emotion, so bear with me.

By coincidence, I seem to have really been in a heightened number of situations where some of the typical gender roles, stereotypes, or judgments have come into play of late, and while I suppose nothing is new or unique about any of these occurrences, the fact that they've come in a compressed timeline is what has elicited an even stronger response than normal from me. One has been the nice guy/safe guy role. This is upsetting to me, not because I feel that it negatively impacts the quality of my life being such or being labeled as such, but because of the broader implications of it. Many will say I don't give myself credit for things, but my counter is that it's not a reflection of me, it's just that our culture has set the bar so low that it's unfair to feel any sort of validation for the praise. Here's the thing: maybe in some ways I am a more compassionate person than the average individual on the street. I don't know, I cannot be the judge of that, but that doesn't negate the fact that there are some things that all human beings should think or behave like by default, and they don't. The mere implication that there is such a term as "safe friend" is really all that needs to be said. How utterly disappointing is it that people are so generally untrustworthy, selfish, or both, that there are designated people to fit this role in another's life? Shouldn't not taking advantage of a situation be it physically or emotionally be a display of basic human decency, not something to be lauded (or even in some instances used as a derogatory term)? I'm not going to sit here and pat myself on the back for doing things such as not actively taking advantage of an intoxicated or distressed person who is not thinking clearly or passively taking advantage of a situation either (she kissed me is NOT an excuse). Whether you're the person that a same sex friend trusts his/her significant other with knowing you're not going to do anything to betray him/her, or whether an opposite sex friend feels comfortable putting him/herself in maybe more of a compromising situation knowing you're going to look out for him/her, not exploit him/her, you're really only being asked to not do anything morally reprehensible. This, to me, is a clear indicator of "rape culture".

Now, to clarify something, I don't necessarily agree with all elements of how some people portray this term. Like any movement, things will be dramatized or just looked at through too narrow of a lens to appropriately assess some of the other elements applicable to the situation. I completely agree with the sentiment that we need to educate people not to rape. There needs to be more discussion about consent, behavior, accountability, etc. I don't, however, agree that we as a society "don't teach people not to rape, we teach how not to get raped" in the strictest sense of that remark. Growing up, no one teaches you it's okay to rape someone. You do get taught that you cannot and should not rape someone, that it is illegal, a heinous act, etc. Is it to the degree that is appropriate or necessary? No, but to suggest that we neglect to teach not to rape and put the sole responsibility on people not to get raped I think is not quite correct. Along the same lines, I completely agree what a horrible and insensitive question "well what were you doing there that time of night anyway?" is. I don't, however, think that this is something exclusive to rape cases or part of an active way to single rape women out in a sort of "war on women". I think this is a response common to any sort of action where someone is located in an unsafe area at an unsafe time. If I was walking through a high crime area wearing an expensive watch late at night and got mugged and had my watch stolen, I guarantee I would be questioned why I was walking there at that time in the first place. It's very insensitive, and I think being raped is a more traumatic experience than being mugged (speculation on my part, and of course is subjective) which would sort of amplify the insensitivity that much more. To say that it is a specifically targeted statement is not something I agree with, though. Also, just as a brief tangent, I think psychologically there is a component here that while the person asking this question (and it's not just people commenting on a situation who had nothing to do with it, this applies to friends and family who may also ask the same insensitive question, possibly for the reason I am suggesting) does not feel that the victim is the primary culprit or driver of the event, these sorts of situations occur without the aggressor present. Specifically from the friend/relative perspective, emotions such as anger will accompany ones of sadness or concern because there should be some anger when a crime is committed against a loved one. Because the criminal is absent, though, that frustration can be expressed and misdirected in an inappropriate manner unintentionally in the form of a "why didn't you do more to prevent this?" sort of question. Does it excuse it? No, but I think differentiating between the action being active or passive helps determine how to best address that sort of response. After all, there is not one solution that would best address both apathy and ignorance.

The problem is, though, that oftentimes the focus gets shifted to a battle of semantics, extremes, and personal attacks, and we don't focus on what is important: the issue itself. Seriously, why is every little detail more important than the overall problem to many people? And look, I'm the first one to say that there are bad people in the world, there always have been, and there always will be. People have been raping, murdering, and stealing since the beginning of time. Nothing is going to change that. But that, like arguing semantics, is not a reason to not try to do better.

It is bad that people see me as an exception, not a rule, when it comes to being a "safe friend".

It is bad that I have had to pretend to be a boyfriend at a bar or club because of the actions of other men there.

It is bad that I have had to accompany a girlfriend walking back from a store through a parking lot because of the catcalls and aggressive behavior towards her.

It is bad that men back off drastically more often only when a man is also present with a woman, and it's also bad the mentality that men have to defend this. The best way I can describe it is this: if your response to women getting catcalled or harassed is along the lines of it just being innocent flirting or what not, what would be your response to the same thing happening when you are walking down the street holding hands with your girlfriend? If your retort is along the lines of "that's different because I am there with her", you are the problem.

And you know what? I understand where some of the feminism blow back comes from, but men, you have to get over it. Yes men can get raped. Yes, men suffer from domestic violence. Yes, men get objectified. At the end of the day, the average man is 5'8" and the average woman is 5'3". Average weights are a bit harder to come by, but the average man probably weighs somewhere between 170 and 190 pounds, and the average female weight varies much more by age, where younger women average between 120 and 140 pounds, and older women between 130 and 160 pounds. The average man has 30-40% more muscle mass than the average female. The fact of the matter is yes, victims come in all packages, but from a sheer biological perspective, which sex has more to fear? I've heard the argument that if a woman hits a man, it's a bad double standard to say that the man cannot hit her back and using the term "equality" to justify it. I'm not saying that a man is supposed to just stand there and be assaulted, but a man hitting a woman is not equal to a woman hitting a man. You have more muscle driving the punch and longer arms that will generate more angular momentum. Unless that woman is a well trained martial artist or boxer, there's nothing equal about a punch for a punch in that scenario.

One of the things that a band that I like and respect very much, The Courtesans, said in an interview that they consider themselves "humanists", not feminists. They said they often get told that the terms mean the same thing, but their reply is and that the word feminist is a "sexist expression in itself", and their sentiment is that the focus needs to be on equality, not on females. They focus more on the connotation that comes along with the terminology, and by focusing on the issue of equality, and perhaps distancing themselves from what negative criticism goes against sort of the very extreme "feminists", that it is a more constructive and positive way to make progress. I already loved them prior to seeing that interview, but afterwards, I admired them that much more because they get it. In fighting against sexism that is culturally systemic, a lot of the responsibility falls on males. Make no mistake about it: preconceived notions about gender roles hurts men, too, and men need to realize this and help change it. The more we combat sexism and help women obtain the equality that they deserve, the more it also liberates males from having to be judged as well. The double standards in what is expected between the different sexes are terribly unfair, more so to women, but also to men. Women are looked at in a negative manner in many circles for being more sexually open, and conversely, men are seen as less masculine if they aren't going around trying to sleep with as many women as possible. Women should not have to hide their sexuality in order to avoid shaming, and men shouldn't have to give into this sort of "conquest" mentality to avoid being shamed.

As someone who falls into the latter category, I can empathize with the situation females probably have to deal with far more frequently than many males do. Any sort of "flattery" a person is supposed to feel from being physically desired doesn't make up for the frustration or disappointment in knowing that there are people that desire that alone when it's not something you're interested in. You also end up running into situations where women are innately distrustful (and who can blame them?), which ends up hurting the nice guys who truly are doing things out of genuine altruism and not with any ulterior motives. It's sad to see friendships or relationships fail to form or stall out simply because a guy is "too nice". A problem I know that I have, too, is that the combination of really just liking to give to others, being comfortable enough financially to do so, and at times having the tendency to want to help others more and more the worse and worse I mentally feel as a flight mechanism of dealing with my own problems (others' issues are always easier to fix than your own) all converging, making me particularly vulnerable to this. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to compare my experiences to those of the average female, but the point is that failing to recognize our inherent gender biases, roles, and stereotypes hurts everyone, and even if your problems are worse than someone else's, it doesn't invalidate the other person's feelings. No one's suffering is good regardless of how severe or minor it is.

If I can have people take something away from reading this, it's to be empathetic and have courage. Guys, put yourselves in a woman's shoes. Think about what it's like to have a bunch of creeps pursuing you with dishonest intentions. Before you go thinking about how unfair it is for females to criticize men or to discredit their opinions or emotions, stop and think what it must feel like, what experiences they've had to make them feel that way. Think as though every woman is a woman you care about who you'd be extremely upset if another man was inappropriate in his interactions. Don't let other guys get away with being crass and disrespectful in the way the speak to or about women. In these sorts of scenarios, there are many times where a lot of people are afraid to speak up, but once someone does, either others chime in, or people say after the fact "I was thinking the same thing, I am glad you spoke up". Being willing to do this can inspire others to do the same. Even if you're not part of the problem, per se, be part of the solution. Ladies, guys don't have it as tough as you do, no, but it doesn't mean they are free from issues or that they somehow don't get hurt over things too. Focusing on how men being part of the solution is a far more constructive and less confrontational approach that focusing on them being problem. Operating under the premise that guys cannot be sensitive or that their emotions are invalid just plays into the same gender role issue that we're trying to escape. There's too much work to be done, progress to be made, to have a divided, adversarial front, and both sides need to work together. We don't seem to like to do that on most fronts here, so, ladies and gents, why don't we mix things up and give it a try?

Hybrid Post - The One

The other night (more like a week ago now, but I fell asleep when I originally started writing and never finished) I got to pondering, as I often do, and on this particular night I was thinking about the concept of "the one" or "the girl/guy of someone's dreams". I opted not to go down the logic brain "that's such a futile pursuit, statistically" path, and instead pondered the human element of it. The why of it isn't hard to figure out. People are dreamers, by and large. We have these ideals, these conceptualizations of what each of us defines as perfect. No matter how unrealistic, we often cling to these as though life could not continue without them. What I was more thinking about was how those desires change over time. How would you characterize it? As my mid twenties will be turning to my late twenties sooner rather than later, it's easy to succumb to anxiety over such matters from time to time. While I am at a good place in my life right now, and I firmly believe that if nothing in my life changed that I could continue on with the status quo and still be quite content, there's still the white elephant in the room, the "don't you want a Bonnie for your Clyde?" Sure, wouldn't we all? But what I think varies from individual to individual is how strong that desire to find "the one" is, how shaken one's belief becomes that the person exists, and, ultimately, how much is a person going to temper his/her expectations and standards to satiate that desire and to fill whatever void feels like it needs to be filled?

The biggest element to this is, of course, time. We all are steadily inching closer to our deaths with each passing second. We all have aspirations and things we want to experience and achieve before that moment comes. For many folks, whether it be a true desire or simply a biological instinct, that includes having and rearing offspring. That, of course, has the greatest time element to it of all things. Taking that out of the equation, though, life really isn't so short. In fact, it's quite long, and we have a tremendous amount of time to pursue all of our desires with far fewer restrictions than we think have, as I believe many of those are self-imposed. Yes, we change as we age, but to say that "things won't be the same" or "I won't feel the same way" are really just weak excuses. Of course things would be different; we exist in an environment that is constantly evolving around us. That does not mean that different is bad or that it prohibits continued enjoyment out of one's pursuits just because some arbitrary age milestone was attained. Even as physical limitations begin to play a role, we have the flexibility to shape how our lives change and mold that change in a manner that best suits what we feel is optimal. The more you really start to assess where these time constraints come from and where the barriers are forged, the more you tend to discover they come from within.

Now, the above is probably almost universally applicable, but it doesn't mean that it solves anything for most people. That's why people ultimately do temper their expectations with what they look for in a partner. Perhaps at the beginning of this crusade "the one" looks a certain way, shares from a list of interests, has certain personality characteristics, is at a certain point in his/her academic or professional career, etc. In time, maybe the suitable age range to date widens a little bit, and that PhD in particle physics who also competes in triathlons, shares the same favorite movies, and also wants to retire to the Swiss Alps morphs into someone who merely has a job and is pleasant. It's a bit different for everyone on how much they will compromise on and how long they are willing to stare father time in the face without blinking. Is it worse to be alone or to settle? Where's the balance? What's the best shade of grey?

Well, let's go completely outside of the box and throw away "the one" and replace it with "the all". The answer to the "either or" question is not the "either" nor the "or". It's impossible to meet one person that fulfills every single aspect of perfection through one's self's eyes. Knowing that, why try? Why set yourself up for disappointment? Why project impossible expectations onto the people you come into contact with? What good reason is there for doing that? It can't be found in one person, but I believe it can be found in all people. It can be found in a lifetime. It can be found if we are willing to open our eyes, but more importantly, open our minds to the possibility. Learning to love globally, to cherish the best in folks, to not project one person's characteristics onto another, to find the good qualities, the qualities we feel are best in a person, and to store it and take it to heart, that is where the ability to do this lies. It's a state of pure appreciation, unhindered by jealousy, immune to so many of the other pitfalls associated the more conventional approach of singular passion. My feeling is it is a much more positive approach to living, not only in the manner it can help foster positive relationships with others, but also in the sense of fulfillment and appreciation within. I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to admire individual characteristics in all sorts of different individuals without looking for all of those things in one person. While I'd never name names in this, you can believe there are people's characteristics that I deeply love or admire, and I could rattle them off. I can sit here and say "Jane Doe has absolutely beautiful lips", "Sarah Doe has the most wonderful and inspiring outlook on life", "John Doe has remarkable artistic ability", "Doris Doe is a truly wonderful parent", "I love Debra Doe's hair", "Joseph Doe's work ethic and dedication is admirable", etc. I can do that and honestly feel very fortunate that I have shared pieces of my life with these people, and I can collect all of those things that I love and commit them to that lifetime collection. It's something that I don't think I would have ever imagined myself doing, but now that I look at it like that, I find it an interesting exercise.

Here's the thing that I realized, though. I was not the first person to think this in some sort of incarnation. In the car, it dawned on me that another individual did something like this in a song. When Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack was asked about his song Antonia, he revealed that the song was not about a person, but a collection of people, although many of the items were inspired by then drummer Tony (appropriate given the name of the song). That Pierre takes these quirks, traits, and interests of actual people, attributes them to one individual, and then presents it in a manner such that listeners probably believe that the song is based on an actual person goes to show that the exercise that I discussed above is one that is not out of the realm of possibility. This is why Motion City Soundtrack is a band that has kept me a fan over the past 10 years, despite me not necessarily listening to them much anymore or enjoying their latest album. Justin manages to capture a lot of beauty and emotion in unconventional ways. Below is the song Antonia, which is off their third full length album, Even If It Kills Me, which I think is easily their most underappreciated album. I think you could make a pretty strong argument that it's the best album of their discography lyrically, and the music is still in line enough with their signature sound from their first two albums. Ultimately, it's my second favorite album of theirs, which it probably took me three or four years to get to that point. I'm glad I did develop a further and further appreciation for the album and for Justin Pierre on EIIKM, and perhaps you could say I may have even filed away something for my own personal Antonia in the process.

Season of Change

While I need to finish off some work this evening, my need for catharsis has trumped my need for finishing the task at hand and getting a good night's sleep. Autumn is upon us, evidenced by the abundance of pumpkin everything and myriad of comments about the weather. It's the most polarizing season for me - I very much feel it is the greatest time of year while simultaneously fighting off the psychological ghosts and ghouls that accompany me this time of the year. By definition, one would call this seasonal affective disorder, but this... this is different (as most people with seasonal affective disorder would probably claim, I am well aware). I assert this is not a case of denial because I am so forthright with my emotions, and over the past couple of years, I have developed a far greater awareness as it relates to my moods and how they are connected with the feeling side of me instead of the thinking side of me. For years I have known why autumn impacts me so; the problem extends far beyond five years ago, but five autumns ago saw the catalyst that brought everything to the forefront, and each subsequent autumn has further contributed to the difficulty waiting to confront me anew each September.

Why is it that autumn impacts me so? Well, it's the season that evokes the most emotion from me by far, which is always very trying for me. It is the time of year that coincides with all of my most vivid memories. Very nearly all of my greatest emotional occurrences fall within this timeframe, both positive and negative, and when you combine that with the changing weather and very distinct imagery, it's a sensory assault only further accelerating the journey into yet another period of days turning to weeks turning to months trying to stave off negativity and subscribe to the "this year will be different" line of thinking. In an attempt to condense the explosion of emotions into a nice, succinct package to at least partially explain the background psychology of the season for me, I'll say that all of my best and worst memories call autumn its home. This starts from childhood, where the memories more center around unadulterated joy - tag in the backyard was most fun in the cooler weather, the World Series was the height of my sports excitement each year as I rooted on my Yankees, and as I got a bit older, my own baseball season commenced this time of year. Halloween was the time of year you could be anyone in the whole world, a truly wondrous proposition for a child. And while we feel sorrow as children, I believe we don't have the intellectual capacity to have comprehend the depth of sorrow in our youthful years. It's actually quite interesting to think about: joy is often associated with something that is pure and simple, whereas sadness is one of the most complex emotions we can try to describe.

Later on in life is where the complexity came along, and all the notable timestamps fall within this pesky three month time period of the year. The numbers on the calendar could be any numbers, but we're wired to notice trends, and when the trend is that these experiences all occur within a certain window, it can be difficult to try and convince the brain that the window is not to blame. It was autumn where I found out what was wrong with me had a name, the day that I could no longer run away from the fact that the way I felt wasn't going away on its own. Relationships in my life have been few and far between, but they have commenced and ceased in or very very close to autumn. The greatest joy and the most excruciating pain have occurred in these months. Having your heart become consumed by the deluge of love violently cascading without any regard to what is in its path is unlike any other feeling, as is the feeling when that tide sweeps back out to sea, taking far more back with it in the process. I have seen my identity lost and found in this season. I have had my hope renewed, my confidence shattered, my emotions boil and freeze, I've hurt so badly because of things that I've had happen, things that I've seen, and perhaps most of all because of decisions I had to make. I've had my heart broken and I have broken someone else's heart. I've fought and fought, and I've also been so exhausted that I felt like giving up. I've found some of my greatest friends in the entire world in this time of year, including my dearest friend of all. I've discovered the music that has shaped much of the more recent past of my life. These memories all come rushing back along with the cool air. They force their ways to the forefront of my awareness with the playback of a song or the sound of a child's gleeful scream. As humans, we all have to deal with these sensations, but it's each individual's ability to cope with the sensations that define how much of an impact and what sort of impact they have on us, and unfortunately, for me, I was never endowed with much of a mechanism for tackling such issues.

I think heading into this autumn I had more conviction around the belief that this year would be different. Things in my life have been going pretty well, and I am happier than I have been in years, all things considered. Now, whether it be coincidence or if there's truly something to this "season of change", it of course has to happen that life would just throw some curveballs out there just to get me thinking. I think I have maneuvered that path okay so far, but that seed of doubt has been planted, the cool weather has rolled back in, and I have felt the anxiety rising within me, particularly having spent a week out of town from work in a place that houses some of the most vivid memories of mine (as fate would have it, the route from the hotel I was staying at to the office took me down a road that was the same route taken to go to a Halloween bonfire back on someone's farmland back in 2008). In contemplating this all, though, and thinking about my desire to try and make this autumn a great one to "break the cycle", it occurred to me that maybe that wasn't the best course of action, and perhaps a futile one, in all actuality. The more I thought, and the more I listened to some music, the more I felt that I had it all wrong. So often I think we have such black and white approaches to dealing with sorrow: either run from it or embrace it as our identity. Now, maybe what I was proposing was not to run from it, more to try and shove it aside and replace it with something else. Other times we wallow in our gloom because it identifies us. What I thought about, though, is to try and do neither of those things, to just try to see and understand the beauty in sorrow. I don't know that there is ever any "conquering" it, but some form of coexistence where it makes you appreciate and understand the role sorrow plays in the broader gamut of all human emotion is perhaps the best way to try and approach it. We don't try to appreciate that we feel sad, but we appreciate that we feel, period.

All in all, I don't know if this approach will be a beneficial one or not. It's certainly well-intentioned, and it seems to make sense to me (now), but I could just be digging myself a hole and no one would ever think to tell me as I could be just any other grave digger this spooky time of year, right? I do believe it's worth a shot, though. I cannot run from the seasons, rather than trying to run against the current, perhaps this is a way of riding with the current. Autumn is the season of change, so I may as well try something new!

Sabaton Open Air 2014

I'm back posting yet another music related entry in what's been a pretty good string of few weeks for me as it pertains to music. While I've been following along with the U.S. Open on the sports side of things and edited a few photos from Europe, music has been the topic I am most driven to write about (along with some really long, philosophical e-mails, but you don't get to see those). Sabaton Open Air, otherwise known as Rockstad: Falun, is a metal festival held in the hometown of Sabaton, a small city of less than 40,000 in Sweden. This was my third festival in Europe, smaller than Amphi festival, and about the same size, perhaps marginally larger than Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum. I actually quite enjoyed the size of the festival: it was big enough so that there was enough energy pulsing around the festival grounds later in the day and into the evening, but it was small enough that you would leave one day, then come back the next day and run into the new friends you made the day prior. This is probably the greatest aspect of the event for me, personally, as I met some absolutely wonderful people, and had I only talked to them for several minutes only to never see them again, I would have missed out on some friendships and social interaction.

The festival is a three day event primarily focused on power metal, although there were other genres represented at the event. Admittedly, this was a festival that, band-wise, probably could have been consolidated into a two day event; there are other festivals out there with a much deeper ticket in two days than this festival had in all three. The positive element to this is it was less pressure to constantly be trying to see one band or another on different stages or running around the grounds constantly; it allowed you to socialize a bit more freely, which I think was definitely positive. The festival grounds were very easy to navigate, and I can say that the event definitely sort of built up with each day. All three days had spectacular headlining performances, but the lineups just got a bit deeper later in the week. I would say there is probably a small bit of bias resulting from the particular type of metal I enjoy most, but my sentiments were generally echoed by the folks I met at the event, so I don't feel like I am stepping too far out of line.

In terms of the actual performances, I'll go over the bands that were the highlights for me by day. While it's becoming nearly impossible to rank live performances I've seen given the ever increasing list of bands I've seen and the different elements said bands bring to the table in different settings, I think if I was forced to pick a top 10, 3 of them would be from this festival, and Arkona is already cemented in my top 5, so they're a fourth that performed at this event.

Day 1: Eternal of Sweden got the event off to a good start; I was pleased with their performance as an opening band. These guys were heavy metal throwback, like they'd been playing for a couple of decades, or they wanted to recapture the glory days of yesteryear and formed a band playing that style of music. Probably not something I'd listen to all of the time, but I thought they were just fine for the beginning of the event. After what I felt was a bit of lull, I got re-engaged once Revamp came on. Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties and a long delay that set their start time back a good 20 minutes, which maybe killed the atmosphere in the crowd a bit, but after a somewhat flat first couple of songs, they really brought the energy back in a big way as they progressed through the set. Floor Jansen sounded great, and the band was pretty nice when I saw them signing autographs, too. I actually got to chat with Henk a little bit after the festivities were done for the evening, too. He's a funny guy. Following Revamp was Arkona, whom I never have enough good things to say about. Arkona had never performed in Sweden before, and leading up to the event, I was quite surprised to hear how many people had never heard of them. I was wearing the shirt I purchased on their 2011 North American tour and talking them up the entire day. Some might say this is a bad move, because in the event others don't like them as much as I do, you make your recommendations look bad, but this is Arkona, and they never disappoint. Surely enough, the crowd went wild for them. They played a great mix of songs, starting of with some new material from Yav and throwing in many of their popular staples such as "Slavsia, Rus", "Stenka na Stenku", and "Yarilo". You haven't really lived until you've participated in a Wall of Death to Stenka na Stenku, to be quite honest. I'll cut short gushing about my favorite Russians and their amazing music, though. I was thrilled to see them make the front page of the local Swedish newspaper, though, and was quick to post it online for all to see. I'll write an artist spotlight on them some day, I'm sure. Finntroll was the last big highlight of the evening for me. I was pleasantly surprised with their performance, as I was underwhelmed when I saw them in the U.S. It seems to me that was more a reflection of some poor sound that night, though, as they sounded great at Rockstad. They definitely had the most raucous fans of the entire festival, too, which was a bit annoying in the 30 minutes leading up to the show, as I literally could not hear people next to me, but made for a fun show while they were playing. The last band of the night, Amaranthe, was not my thing, but they were decent, catchy, and I met two friends that I spent the most time with in Falun before that show, so they were a highlight due to that, if not the music.

Day 2: Admittedly, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon up at the beer tent socializing and staying out of the rain, as it rained quite a bit the first two days, but I can definitely say that as background music went, the opening few bands definitely surpassed the opening few bands from Thursday. The three highlights of the day for me, though, were definitely Amorphis, Masterplan, and Rhapsody of Fire. Amorphis I had never really listened to prior to coming to Rockstad, as I don't listen to a whole lot of progressive, but they definitely put on a good performance and made me interested in listening to them more following the festival. Masterplan is a band that I listened to sparingly in the past, admittedly. I do enjoy their music, but the vocals are just underwhelming to me. I just always felt I'd rather listen to other power metal bands where I thought the vocals added more, other things equal. That said, I do love me some Crimson Rider, and their live performance was definitely enjoyable. I left Amorphis on the mainstage early to be up front for Masterplan, which was really more just to be very proactive to ensure I'd be up front for Rhapsody of Fire. Ironically enough, after waiting through almost all of Testament's 90 minute set, which I wasn't too disappointed in not seeing since I'm not a fan of thrash, it was just too cold and wet, and I was too hungry, so I relinquished my front and center spot for food and temporary warmth. The outcome suited me just fine, as I both filled my belly and ran into my friends, so we shared a beer and still got a good spot for Rhapsody of Fire. Now, if you haven't listened to Rhapsody of Fire, prepare for an epic journey (don't worry, I didn't go too hard on this one). As symphonic power metal goes, it doesn't get much better than these Italian metal gods. Fabio Lione is on the short list of best male vocalists I have seen. He sounds great on their albums and was even better live. The atmosphere was electric during their performance. The crowd engagement was good with Fabio pulling a page out of Freddie Mercury's book to see if the crowd could hang with him on vocals. We got everything from the most fast, melodic, epic songs all the way down to a sweet ballad. Top 10 band performance + awesome friends = perfect night cap.

Day 3: The big day got off to an auspicious start by virtue of the fact that it wasn't overcast from the get-go. Similar to day 2, the first few bands were spent more socializing and less being attentive to the actual music, but I had to ensure that we saw Twilight Force. I had listened to them in advance of coming to Europe and was looking forward to seeing them live. There's no such thing as too much cheesy power metal, after all. Complete with tales of adventure, abundant chorus, melodic riffs, the good old high range metal vocals (although sometimes far too forced to the point they don't come off well at all), and nifty elf outfits, Twilight Force was definitely higher at the top of the list of my favorites of the entire festival. You could tell they were having fun up there, too. They're a local act from Borlänge, just 20 minutes away by train, so it had to be a great moment for them. Following Twilight Force was Battle Beast, another band I hadn't listened to prior to arriving. I really enjoyed their set. Noora Louhimo has a bit of a throwback, raspy heavy metal vocal style, but as a female vocalist, it served as a very nice contrast to the more prevalent operatic type vocals in the power and symphonic metal scenes. That's not to say she doesn't have the voice for the cleaner vocals, because she flaunts those as well. Her variety and uniqueness complement an excellent instrumental group to create a great band overall. Later in the evening, I had to make a decision; ultimately I decided to hold my spot on the rail for Van Canto and forego being able to watch Týr and having a less than optimal spot for Sabaton. I knew that I may never see Van Canto again, and no one out there is like Van Canto whatsoever. I'll see Týr open for Eluveitie, and Sabaton, while not having seen them at their grandest event, I have seen twice already and will again in October, so I decided to stay up front for the a capella metal band from Germany. It's almost hard to even try and comment on their set because it is so one of a kind. Anything you try to come up with words for to relate to other folks is almost futile because unless they've seen Van Canto, there's nothing else in their bank of experience you can tap into to try and relate it to. What I enjoyed about their set was that they played a lot of original material; obviously their cover songs are what people probably discover and know them for, but for them to come up with original material and go through the creative process like any other band, only without any actual instruments (drums aside), that's pretty neat. Like just think about a jam session with these guys just getting creative with their vocal chords. It's an interesting prospect to ponder on. So, truly, this was a great performance, and I managed to catch a Red Bull can that was thrown into the crowd at the conclusion of their set, which I still have presently (need to decide what to do with it).

Following Van Canto was the apex of the show, and the second of three new performances to make it into my top 10 all time performances I have seen. Of course, because it's their event, Sabaton are going to pull out all the stops and have resources that the other bands won't have access to. I wouldn't try to slight other bands simply because they didn't have fancy firework turrets, pyrotechnics, Caroleans, and the works, but I can't dismiss what Sabaton has done with this event overall. Like I mentioned in the opening, Falun is a very small town, so the fact that Sabaton is a world famous band that came from the tiny, historically mining town, and the fact that they return to their roots every single year and put on their best performance is positively wonderful. It is just one of many ways that Sabaton show what thoughtful, high character guys they really are. As a band that composes lyrics primarily in English, as do many bands because of the ability to reach out to a much wider audience, for Sabaton to be able to come home, interact with the home crowd in Swedish, and to play Carolus Rex, considered by many to be the crown jewel in their discography, entirely in Swedish was a beautiful thing to witness. The Swedes deserve that moment, and it is incredible for Sabaton to give it to them while also accommodating all of the non-Swedish speaking individuals as well. It's all done in true Joakim style, too, good humored, humble, and ever so generous to the fans. They always give back to the fans in some way: bringing folks on stage, Joakim trading his vest with another in the crowd, fan interaction, it's all so kind, and more importantly, it's genuine. I truly do believe there are no nicer guys in all of music. To me, what truly, above all, made this set were the events that transpired in this video:

To witness this was so touching. I have seen so many incredible shows, bands, and performances in the past five years, but there are far, far fewer in number the times where an event is so moving on a much deeper, more profound level. This was one of those select moments for me, something I will never forget, something that will be just as powerful each time I watch it. To me, watching an incredible music performance is second to watching an incredible human performance, which is what I saw that wonderful evening. Furthermore, I really feel that Sabaton are really a good representation and embodiment of Sweden as a whole. I have made the remark, "the only person nicer than a Swede is a drunk Swede". It's a joke, but there is certainly some truth in the statement. Sweden and the folks there were so incredibly friendly, welcoming, and provided such an absolutely incredible environment for me that is beyond words. This is an event, a band, and a country full of people that I will forever cherish.

Ending the blog post on that note seems like a logical stopping point, but the numbers folks in the group have noticed that there's still a third top ten performance I haven't mentioned. Well, Brothers of Metal had the tall order of following Sabaton. People might wonder why Sabaton isn't the last to perform. Well, if they were, they'd never be able to get off the stage. No one expects the last band to top Sabaton, of course, but the only downside is that the lion's share (use of lion in the context of Sweden was intentional) of the crowd leave after Sabaton. That didn't stop Brothers of Metal from putting on a positively killer show. I do want to save a blog post for them, as for a local band to put on the performance they did, it was positively remarkable, and they deserve additional recognition for that. It's unfathomable for me to think about walking down the street to a bar and seeing a band put on the type of performance they did, yet they did it despite having only a fraction of the number of followers as the majority of the bands performing this event. So stay tuned for a post on them in the near future.

To close, I really just have to once more emphasize what an incredible event and experience this was. The music, the atmosphere, the new friends from all over the world, there's nothing else in the world like going to a festival like this, and I am eternally grateful that I had this opportunity and hat Sabaton make an event like this happen. The world is such a vast place with so much to see, I can't say that I know I will ever return to this particular event again because there are only so many vacations one can take in a lifetime, but Sweden is absolutely a country I would love to return to again to be able to see some of the truly lovely people I have met both there and elsewhere in Europe. Jag älskar Sverige!

Local Artist Spotlight: The Returners

For this spotlight, I am going to detail a group that I alluded to in my previous post on Orlando Nerd Fest, The Returners. The Returners are a five piece group from Austin that positively blew me away; this was due in part to many factors. To organize my thoughts, I feel it will be more interesting to convey my chronological thought process rather than structure by topic.

My initial reaction right from sound check was that this band was going to bring something big to the table. I was instantly filled with anticipation sheerly by virtue of keyboards and a flute! Given my music tastes, this should come as no surprise. The next thing that caught my eye was the double bass drums. This is where I really started to get excited. Keys and flute suggest some sort of folk or orchestral type arrangements, but double bass can only mean one thing: metal. Following that, I noticed the fretless bass, so my assumption there is that the bassist is going to be quite talented. And, to cap it all off, the guitarist is wielding a seven string guitar. For those of you counting at home, that's five out of five on band members that have me amped up for the performance, and this all before even a single note has emanated from any of the speakers.

After all of this initial anticipation, the event itself didn't disappoint, in fact, it met and exceeded any and all expectations I could have had. If you were to take this band out of this convention room and drop them onto a stage with thousands of people watching, they'd fit perfectly. It was unbelievable. I thought they excelled in so many aspects of their performance, particularly for a group that just formed last year. The musical talent is evident; they can flat out shred. It's the little things, though, the attention to detail, that I felt really made them stand out and created that much more of a lasting impression. There are many bands with a great deal of talent and who can perform in front of an audience, but creating a cohesive setlist with a good flow so that it guides the crowd through a vast gamut of experience and emotion is something that is not quite as easy to do, but the The Returners did a very good job of that, in my estimation. They went loud, they went soft, they picked up the pace and brought it back down, they mixed in vocals with instrumentals, and they did it all with transitions that produced a very good ebb and flow for the entire set (and also within their songs and medleys given the arrangements they created). Staying on the subject of the setlist, too, it was a very diverse, well thought out, and well executed blend of tracks. They hit on crowd favorites, but they really went with some less widely known tracks that I definitely appreciated, Ecco being one of the games that I was really pleasantly surprised to hear. My second favorite song of the set (I'll get to the favorite in a second) was their Star Ocean 2 Medley. I think this song really summarizes all I've commented on quite well, both in terms of musical talent and the thoughtful arrangements. The video doesn't do them justice, as the sound really mutes the bass, but you get the general idea of what they bring to the table.

So, back to my favorite song. All this time I have spoken very little about the vocals of this band, which are perhaps the greatest of their many strengths. Lauren, "The Flute", in addition to being a talented flutist and knowledgable video game enthusiast is a phenomenal opera vocalist. This surprise was spoiled given she opened with a vocal intro for Random Encounter earlier in the day, which is probably a good thing because if I had discovered that along with all of the other astounding revelations about this band all at once, I'd probably have to watch the show from the floor because I wouldn't be able to pick my jaw up off of it. While much of their performance is purely instrumental, Lauren definitely has her moments where she puts the pipes on display, none more so than their cover of Phantom of the Opera. Now, here's the thing, right from the instant I heard the first organ note, my thought is "you don't do Phantom of the Opera unless you know you're going to nail it". I knew Lauren could nail it from her vocals in other songs, but here's where they left the crowd in awe: John, the drummer, absolutely killed it on male vocals. His vocals alone are incredible, but the fact that he can sing like that while playing drums is pretty remarkable. Here's a guy who could never pick up a drumstick again and focus solely on singing if he wanted to, and he'd probably be very successful doing it. If I had to guess, though, he's probably in like 10 different bands because he's a drummer, and that's what drummers do, right? Supply and demand :) Don't take my word for it, though, below is a video. While the song is also in the video of their set linked above, the vocals are barely audible in that video, and in this video you can hear them pretty clearly (albeit with video from the opposite side of the room).

Music aside, the band members were all so incredibly friendly. While I didn't spend an incredibly long time talking to everyone, it was long enough to see how humble they were and very gracious of the support they'd received. I also don't think it would be a stretch to declare Lauren as the nicest person ever. She really is so sweet. So here's a proposition for everyone (yes, all my legions of readers, haha): go to the Facebook Page of The Returners and "Like" them. Let me know in the comments, and I will do a drawing at random for one person that I will give a digital download pre-order for their upcoming album, Immune to Silence (what an awesome name, by the way). Who can argue with free music? Plus, when you factor in the lack of readers, poor distribution of posts on Facebook, and the general laziness of people, you're probably going to end up with like a 50/50 shot to win, so take advantage of the easy numbers game you'll be getting into. Worth a shot, right? The Returners, to me, are a band with limitless potential. They already have talent and performance beyond that of so many acts, and as they spend more and more time together, they will only continue to become more polished, have tighter performances, and expand their repertoire of songs. I am very excited to see what the next chapter holds in their story.

Orlando Nerd Fest

This post comes far too late after the 2014 Orlando Nerd Fest, but I have been traveling and taking care of other pressing issues. I want to take a moment to overview the event and some of the particular high points and reflections on the event and its significance.

To begin, I should probably explain what Orlando Nerd Fest is more explicitly. It is a multi-day event centering mostly around video game music (VGM), while also having some artists, indie game developers, gaming rooms, and vendors at the event. This event is new, and it differs from other conventions in that there is constant music; it is the primary focus rather than just a minor element such as in large conventions like Dragon*Con. I attended two days of the festival, so those are the ones I will be commenting on.

The performers range from rap and nerdcore to metal and many things in between. There were bands big and small, those who were local, those who traveled across the country, and a special group that traveled across the world! The band, you ask? Well, it was Nobuo Uematsu and the Earthbound Papas. For those of you unfamiliar with Uematsu, the man is a legendary composer in the video game world responsible for most of the iconic music.in the Final Fantasy series, among other games. If you want to see an RPG gamer fawn over someone, put that person in a room with Uematsu. His band performed and also did a signing session, where I had my PS2 copy of Final Fantasy X signed by the band. Seeing them really have fun and laugh about how they could have all of the adoring fans do anything they wanted was very entertaining. So yeah, that was a cool experience, and anyone with an appreciation for video game music will understand the influence Uematsu has had in the gaming world.

The following bands were my highlights of the convention, in no particular order (excluding Uematsu, since I mentioned him above):

Eight Bit Disaster: Video game music in the form of a funk rock band from North Carolina. Their music was good, the band members fun and entertaining, and they had a good mix of songs, including some less highly celebrated ones from games such as Dr. Mario. Musically, I thought they definitely deserved a better time slot, for sure. My only question: how can a funk rock band cover video game music and not do something from Toejam and Earl???

Urizen: It's hard to really say enough about this band, as they were a fantastic group to cap off the festivities. Their stage presence without all of the extra-curricular items was very good, and then when you factor in the entire story that they play out with props, machines, and crowd involvement, you've got a heck of a show. Their music is somewhere between electro-rock and electro-metal, as some songs can get a bit harder and feature some aggressive double bass, but all in all, I think they can be diverse and cater to whichever type of crowd they play for. What they also did wonderfully was incorporate other acts from the festival into the performance, having other musicians come and help battle space aliens, for example. The crowd engagement was perhaps the best of the entire event, and fun was had by all.

Critical Hit: Critical Hit is the brainchild of Andrew Gluck (Piano Squall) and Jason Hayes (of Blizzard music acclaim, most notably) and features Hayes along with a host of numerous other professional musicians performing very well done arrangements of video game music. Their sets tend to blend Eastern and Western gaming along with different genres of games and play songs that both appeal to casual gamers and more dedicated fans. With the musical talent they've amassed, it's impossible not to put on an impressive show. While their lineup features some musicians with serious chops, including an award winning concert pianist from the time she was 14, Tina Guo on cello stole this show. Her charisma while playing reigns supreme, and her talent on the cello is just absurd. Expect them to be touring in a city near you next year!

Bit Brigade: A lot of bands play video game music. Bit Brigade plays video games, music. If you want to see a speed run of old favorites such as Legend of Zelda, Megaman, or Castlevania and have it accompanied by some sweet metal music, Bit Brigade is the band for you. Now if we could all only have our own band accompanying us in our gaming sessions. The did Legend of Zelda at the event, and it was a great performance. One of the most impressive things when you actually see them perform is just how little time they get to take it easy through the whole set. It's basically a nonstop dose of gaming and metal for 55 minutes.

The Megas: The Megas are an electro rock band that are unique in that they take the Megaman series music to a new level by borrowing the musical style and adding lyrics pertaining to the game, which is pretty neat. On stage, they sounded great, have spiffy outfits and a good color scheme, and they just came across all around as very polished. If I had to nominate best looking musicians at the event, Tina Guo takes it on the female side and Eric, who does guitars and vocals (who looked like Lleyton Hewitt at the event), takes it for the males. I really enjoyed them, and they reminded me a little bit of a softer, slightly more poppy version of Attention System, one of my favorite local bands from Atlanta.

Schaffer the Darklord: Schaffer the Darklord (or STD, as he is also called) was one of the funniest and most entertaining performers at the event, in my opinion. I am not a fan of rap, or even nerdcore for that matter, but he was funny and engaging enough to win me over. He throws a few more words from the dictionary out there than most other performers I've seen doing nerdcore (which, admittedly, isn't a whole lot), and he really does a great job creating a villainous persona while still coming across as a likable person under the persona.

Killer Robots!: Really, the best thing you can do is click the link. Killer Robots! are the robot version of GWAR. In terms of which set had the most pure fun and insanity, Killer Robots! take the cake. In all honesty, the music, which is surf rock, takes such a back seat solely because the performance itself is so entertaining. The band comes on after a live action movie intro, and pool noodles cut into thirds are distributed into the crowd for the ensuing battle against all sorts of monster, aliens, lobster creatures, and I couldn't even tell you what else. Oh, and your friends...especially your friends.

Random Encounter: The local group featuring one of my favorite instruments, the accordion, put on a great, high energy show. Any group that features Chrono Trigger music in its set list is a winner in my book, and their cover of Frog's theme is one of my favorite covers of a video game song. I had been waiting to see them for a while and just happened to keep missing them when they played a local event, so I was tremendously excited to finally see them, and they didn't disappoint.

The Returners: These folks get their own blog post, so more on them later. Yes, I liked them that much.

Well, there you have it. I can emphatically say that the Orlando Nerd Fest 2014 was a great success, and I can definitely see this as one that continuously grows over the years in both attendance and prestige, because it seems to me the folks putting this on did a good job and the attendees had a real blast.

RIP

While I have a seemingly endless amount of things I have still yet to do today and other thoughts and pieces I have been yearning to write but have not done it because of said things, I had to make time for this post. At age 63, Robin Williams is dead, and that is simply something I cannot postpone my thoughts on for another time.

Admittedly, I am not typically one that pays much attention to celebrity deaths. A lot of that is due to being removed from pop culture in general, and there is a component where perhaps I feel the death of a celebrity can be talked about in a manner that is somewhat inappropriate to me. It's obvious why so many people care when a celebrity dies, but it wouldn't be innately right to place a celebrity death above the death of an "average" person. I also don't know how it would feel to be a family member of a deceased celebrity, but I imagine the whole situation being run on the news and talked about by the general public does not make it easy to go through the grieving process. I by no means feel indifferent to celebrity death; a loss of life, no matter who it was nor what the cause, is always a painful thing to someone else, and while as individuals we may never share contact, experiences, or the like, we as people all experience the same emotions. We know what it is to laugh, to cry, the joy of life and the pain of loss. So death, by and large, is a sad event, but one that I don't drastically differentiate based on the person who dies, aside from people close to me in my own life. So what makes the death of Robin Williams different? Why did I drop everything to write about his death and not that of others?

Undeniably, celebrities have touched the lives of so, so, so many people. If they hadn't, they wouldn't be called celebrities. I can't say that Robin Williams moved me on a deeper level than other celebrities or that he has any extraordinarily profound significance on me, personally Of course, it is obvious to say that he touched, many, many lives all over the world, but that does not make him unique relative to other superstars. After seeing the initial reaction of those around me, though, it really accentuated just how loved and just how much of an impact this man had on so many people, and that was primarily due to his ability to make us laugh, and laugh in the purest way. What I mean by that is that to laugh, truly laugh, is an unfiltered expression of joy. To laugh is to, at least momentarily, remove one's self from any negativity and sorrow, to enter a state where everything melts away into happiness, even if only for a second or two. Even in the darkest of times, there is solace in laughter, and though it may be hard to come by in those times, being given the gift of laughter is perhaps the greatest gift one can receive. Indeed, there may be times where when engulfed in a bleak reality, one of unrelenting darkness and misery, that laughter may be all we have, our only reprieve. That is the gift Williams so regularly gave to us all, and all the while, his life may have well been in the blackest of places, illuminated only with his desire to hang on to the laughter, to give this gift to the world, to smile and spread the elation that he may himself never possess again. If this is the case, and only he knew for sure, that desire burned brightly for so many years, but even the brightest flame will dull to a flicker before becoming extinguished, and much to the dismay of all of us, that flame finally burned out.

It may come as a surprise to so many that the man once titled "The Funniest Man Alive" could be possess such sadness that he would take his own life. There are many people with depression, myself included, that know all too well how unsurprising this is, though. The routine putting on a skin that is not your own to fool the world just enough to make it through another day is all too common. And here's what's interesting: there's a key word in that previous sentence. It's "fool". The word fool, as a noun, is used interchangeably with the word jester. As a verb it obviously is used a bit differently, but the job of a fool or a jester is to entertain and to make laugh. Obviously as a verb, to fool is to trick or confuse, but depending on the context, it can also have the entertainment element to it, typically because the manner in which an individual is "fooled" is to the bemusement of onlookers. So when those of us who have depression decide to take on the world again for at least one more day, many times we arm ourselves with humor to fool the world. Perhaps Williams was the best of us all in this regard. And in his death, hopefully Williams gave us yet another gift, maybe almost as valuable as the gift of laughter he gave us in his life provided we as a population are attentive enough to see it, and that is the gift of awareness.

The fact that suicide as the cause of death for the funniest man alive is such a terrible and ironic fate, one most never could have imagined, should draw people's attention to the seriousness of the problem that is mental illness. "If this man, of all people, took his life, then this may be more serious than we imagined". It might be too soon for people to open this dialogue up for discussion, but when a beloved man such as he dies with that affliction being the primary cause, it's hard to imagine this issue going unnoticed. It's my hope that there is awareness generated and that the topic of mental illness does not get pushed to the background. It would be a small bit of solace and great continuing legacy for this incident to go on and become the impetus for change, for more open discussion about the prevalence and severity of mental illness all over and the resources available to help remove the very real and very painful barriers that range from preventing someone from operating at the fullest extent of his/her abilities to being a completely debilitating and crushing weight on a person's daily life. I don't know that this may come out of this all, but I'd like to think I can play some small part by being someone to talk about it. Rest in peace Mr. Williams, and may your death be a means to help save the lives of others.