"Thumbs Up" by The Howl & The Hum

Here's another wonderful, touching song that addresses the problem of young men and depression and suicide, all stemming from a stifling, damaging, traditional masculinity (please do take a few minutes to hear and see Sam Fender's devastating song "Dead Boys" previously here.)

Singer-songwriter Sam Griffiths spoke about the song:

"'Thumbs Up' is the confession that us men don’t know how to talk to other men about important stuff...This song was written in the silence after suicides of friends, during depressive episodes, and over non-existent conversations about how we communicate our feelings: our highs, our lows, our loves and losses. It also references 80s movie icons Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a brief admittance of vulnerability in the face of what we call masculinity...It’s an odd one, isn’t it? But then I went to an all-boys school, where there’s so much silence and you only talk about objective truths, football, but not the emotional flow of feelings...It’s that masculinity; that thing of pride. But now we’re in age where masculinity can take a different guise and suffering is a huge part of that, and it feels such a shame that we can’t talk about it...Looking back, we may see our friends as being like superheroes at school, like my best mate at school, who killed himself a month after leaving. No-one, No-one had taught us how to talk to each other."

Lay by my side
We’ll watch all the films that you like
Silent all, silent all night
If that’s what you want

TV screen blue
We’ll sit and watch Predator 2
Cos it makes you feel silent & strong
Silent and strong

I think we should talk
I think we should talk

You give me a thumbs up
Just like the terminator did
When drowning in lava
Is it any wonder
Is it any wonder
I worry about you kid?

Open your mouth
The darkness can finally come out
As Bruce Willis cries
You realise
You could be alright

I think we should talk
I think we should talk

You give me a thumbs up
Just like the terminator did
When drowning in lava
Is it any wonder
Is it any wonder
I worry about you kid?

There’s a hole in my home town
All my friends seem to fall down
But never will float out
But you’re not alone now
You’re not alone now

Watching films with my brother
Wondering our place on this rock
And wondering what it’ll take now
To ever just stop

https://www.thehowlandthehum.com/

...And this is how you guarantee a recession...

The UK has guaranteed that all employees out of work due to the virus will get 80% of their salaries so they can continue to live and not be homeless.
France has suspended all rent and utilities for small businesses so the economic fallout will be less of a catastrophe.
The United States response so far: *dithering*

"Breathing Out" by Keaton Henson

Exquisite, achingly beautiful and agonizingly intense music. This is "Breathing Out," the last movement of Six Lethargies, a 70-minute orchestral piece by singer-songwriter-and-now-composer Keaton Henson (previously here, here, and here).

"Six Lethargies is a six part, long form work for string orchestra, written by musician, composer, writer and visual artist Keaton Henson. The album explores themes of trauma, empathy, mental illness, and the relationship between music and emotion. It was created intensively over three years, during intense episodes of the very themes it explores. He used his personal experience to plot out six distinct elements of trauma, anxiety and emotional difficulties.

Unable himself to read or write music, Henson first created maps of his personal experience, using complex linear drawings and paintings which he then translated into themes and melodies. A common theme throughout his work is always the element of emotion and vulnerable honesty; he shares the darkest and most complex parts of his personal experiences via his art, leading to work of breathtaking emotional resonance. By contrast, Henson himself is generally reclusive, revealing little else of himself, wherever possible avoiding interviews or public appearances.

As the Six Lethargies project began to take shape, Henson reached out to neuroscientists, psychologists and music theorists, to learn more about the acute relationship between music and emotion, and specifically its effect on us physiologically. ‘Thrill engineer’ and bio-data expert Brendan Walker worked closely with Henson to investigate this relationship and developed software to monitor electrodermal activity (EDA) in order to create a real time visual representation of the link between feelings, anxiety and music.

In fact, when Six Lethargies made its stunning sold out debut at London’s Barbican in July 2018, a portion of the audience were hooked up to ‘galvanic skin response monitors’, which read their anxiety levels in real time whilst listening to the performance, this in turn was fed to the lighting desk and it was this that controlled the colour and intensity of the venue’s lighting rig. As a result the audience were effectively watching how they were feeling while listening to the music, and as a result this amplified the emotional response of the audience to the music.

Known for his past struggles to perform live due to anxiety disorders, Henson himself watched from the sidelines as the audience reacted to an Orchestra performing the work with lighting controlled by their emotions.

This show marked the first new work by Henson for several years, he had released a number of indie/folk albums in previous years – resulting in plays on Radio 1 and huge critical praise, but due in part to the challenges posed by this growing renown and constant demands for him to perform live and appear publicly he had instead decided to retreat from the public eye, disappearing from the world of music and art. However, following the success of the Barbican event, performances at Sydney Opera House and the National Concert Hall Dublin followed. These shows were immersive, measurable experiences which showed how music can physiologically affect the body. They also illustrated how anxiety can be monitored and how it’s triggers could be potentially monitored or predicted, perhaps even eventually controlled, an important factor to consider when dealing with anxiety.

The success of these shows led to the recording of the Six Lethargies album, recorded earlier this year with the Liverpool Philharmonic at The Friary in Liverpool. Through its six movements the finished recording conveys both a personal, internal experience but it also seeks to create the possibility of a similar physiological response in the listener.

Six Lethargies is a profound and intense musical experience, but it is also, completely tonal, musical and ultimately an enjoyable listen on various levels. In spite of its subject matter and meticulous design, it is music that can be listened to as you would Henson’s compositional heroes such as Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Barber and Pärt. However, it can also be listened to as a cathartic and purgative experience, unbroken from beginning to end, taking the mind and body through a series of peaks and troughs and eventually leaving it in a stimulated but calm state."
from thankfolkforthat.com, https://thankfolkforthat.com/new-release-video-keaton-henson-breathing-out/

http://keatonhenson.com/

A Black Day

This is a black day for us here in the United States and ultimately for the rest of the world. I feel nauseated the way I did on 9/11. My country has been hijacked by idiots and fools who fell for the lies of a con man--look at the electorate map and you will see, predictably, the midwest and south, the backward areas with the lowest IQs and the highest poverty rates, overwhelmingly voted for racism, sexism, and bigotry. And angry, older, white males came out in droves. There goes any bit of decency or humanity left in the collective American spirit. This is an ugly country now, one I no longer know--a country of fear, anger, hatred, violence, ignorance, and mistrust. I am deeply disappointed and in despair.

This fascist liar is going to ruin all of our lives... and those who voted for him, and those who voted for anyone else other than Clinton, have allowed it to happen. You were trusted with a vote and YOU LET THIS HAPPEN. We will all live to regret it. He has vowed to reverse every Obama executive order including orders for gun control and minimum wages and the ability to use stem cells in vital medical research, he has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act which will allow the insurance companies to again gouge and cheat their insured while denying coverage for pre-existing conditions (all the diabetics in the south are in for a rude awakening), round up and eject over two million tax-paying undocumented immigrants, cancel US participation in the UN climate change programs, throw a wrench into the works of the Iran Nuclear Deal, ravage trade deals and add a 45% tariff on goods coming from China (sorry Wal-Mart shoppers, your shopping trip just got a WHOLE lot more expensive), spend 20 BILLION dollars to build a tin wall which could tip us into a recession again, and cozy up to a murderous dictator (Putin got what he wanted! America now has an idiot at the helm). Anything good that happened in the last eight years is going to be annihilated.

Well, I give up. The "people" have spoken and if destruction is what they wanted, that is what they got: a Republican controlled House and Senate and Trump to guide them all. But at least I live in California where Clinton won by a large margin. We also legalized pot and passed some extremely strict gun laws. And we voted to keep our humanist, Democratic leaders. So...I'm just going to go ahead and have a nice life here in a kinder, more liberal corner of the country despite him, and try to ignore as much as humanly possible anything to do with him for the next four years. Let's see what shape the country is in then...
Oh, and to the midwest and the south: you're on your own. We don't trust you anymore, with anything.

Sorry world. We tried.