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Forget the stress of the end of the year, the hardest week of all is actually the first week of January. Why?, you ask yourself in surprise. Think about all the resolutions you have made in the last weeks, in the last days, until the vry last hours of the previous year. Do you realize your responsibility?

Yes, I know that many of them were linked to long-term action plans and naturally could not all be fulfilled in a single week, but the first week of the year will be decisive whether at least half of those long-term plans will ultimately be implemented or forgotten by, let us say, middle April. Do you realize the importance of the decisions you make in this decisive week? Well, now you do.

So, while writing this lines to you, I am also pretty much awaere and therefore worried about what I am saying to myself. How to convince me that all that hard work making lists, resolutions and sending wishes to the universe would not be in vain?

So sorry to alert you to another problem in your life that you were not even aware of until now. However, fear not, because I also have the solution! Actually, it came in the form of a message printed on a t-shirt and it said: Dream. Plan. Do.

The perfect protocol to make our year-end resolutions come true. Pure genious! Just three words, but look at their synthesis capacity:


1.Dream: The first step of the journey, where the magic happens. There are no limits here. What projects touch your soul? This is where they can rise and shine!

2.Plan: At this point, you might think: “Now is when the fun is gone, the hard work comes in and the resolutions fly out the window”, but I would rather say that now is the time when we take off the glitter of our dreams and put sneakers on them. The path can be long and exhausting, but it can also be a form of training, a reconnaissance of the terrain, a rite of passage, if you will. It is in the planning stage that many of our dreams come up against mundane limits, such as financing and accountability. Fragile dreams tend to succumb. Make sure your dreams are strong and mature enough to continue the journey.

3.Do: Show time! Bye-bye, sneakers and hello high heels! It is time to perform, taking the risks that any initiative implies. It is scary, it is stressful, there are butterflies in your stomach, but you know you are doing what you have to do, because you are doing your thing. Regardless of the results, you were true to the promises you made to yourself. You won, honey!

What happens next? Probably by that time you will be involved in new resolutions, and the game starts all over again. That is okay. It means you are not only living, you are also evolving.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, dir. Michel Gondry), Clementine, character of actress Kate Winslet, comments that she would like to have the job of naming hair dyes. “The job is taken!”, she complains.

I remembered the scene while choosing lipstick colors on sale. Among the nude tones alone, the variety was impressive: cookie nude, (just) nude, nude matte and my favourite one, naked nude. What could be this colour, so mysterious that needed two synonymous words to be described?

Of course, the marketing worked for me and I bought the naked nude lipstick. Given the package received and the pale beige color of the lipstick, this naked nude was nowhere near as glamorous and daring as its name promised. The job is definitely taken, dear Clem!

I have been thinking a lot about the current mainstream pop and I could not help thinking that if I had to add a colour to the scene, naked nude would be a great option. There is a lot of glamour and eccentric names written in capital letters, a lot of pleonasm in the song lyrics, a lot of repetition in the costumes, wigs, and stage mannerisms.

No doubt the result is very colorful and noisy, but at the same time pasteurized and the result sounds as stimulating as a pale beige palette. I do not agree with the theory tahys says this happens because people happen to like the same things. My point is that in order to like or dislike something, first of all, I must be aware that that thing exists.

And here is the problem: always playing the same songs (whether new releases or oldies), radio stations make it very difficult for you to get to know a whole new world of wonderful independent music, which by the way, will not reach the top spots on streaming platforms, because the algorithms suggest… guess what? Mainstream themes!

And what would be the way to break this vicious cycle? Sincerely? I do not know. The mainstream scene is a million-dollar business, which involves many things beyond music. There is always something to do though, and no matter where you are, there is certainly an independent local scene, no matter how small. A local scene that you can strengthen, whether by promoting or attending events.

After all, expanding your taste beyond the “top hit” lists is also up to you.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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It is not new that I complain here about my noisy neighbors and about the apartment building where I live, which seems like a real acoustic shell, which amplifies any type of sound. Therefore, I will not go back to the details of my problem.

Today, I would like to shed light on the solution. No, unfortunately, I do not bring a “one-size-fits-all” solution, that will suit to all your problems, just a strategy that worked for me and that might work for you, too. It has to do with getting out of your “acoustic shell”. Oh, yes, you do have one, trust me on that.

In this case, what I am calling the acoustic shell has nothing to do with where you live, that is, with external influences, which you, ultimately, cannot control, but with what resonates inside your head. The pattern repetitions that we develop have to do, of course, with such external factors, but they usually go far beyond that.

Our acoustic shell will resonate accordingly to how much we nurture this reaction. Asking yourself; “Is my reaction proportional to the action received, or am I adding a generous dose of other problems to them?” may help you take that step aside, whch allows you to have a provileged view of the situation, thus making it easy to manage a problem or critical situation.

Practical example? I recently finished a task which, in theory, was very pleasant (producing the second season of a podcast about comic art research), but turned out to be a nightmare to medue to my, say, technical diffculties.

During over ten weeks I was busy recording and editintg episodes, repeating to myself “get real” mantras (“I volunteered for the chore, nobody asked me to. I did it because I wanted, I made my choice” etc). Despite my goodwill, it did not work at all and I spent the whle time feeling a mix of self-pity and anger.

Okay, but where is the magical solution?, you ask yourself.

The solution (I never said it would be magical), darling is to take things as a grown up. Am I saying you should mute your inner child? Yes, but only for a short time, just enough for you to remember that doing stuff we would rather not is part of life, but it is not the only one.

Grown ups know that, although most of our life is fullfiled by obligations that do not always make sense to us there is also the other part: the things we do because we are passionate about, because we believe they must be done, we believe they must exist.

Stepping aside for a moment, I finally could see the situation through a diffferent perspective and, suddenly, there was no room for feeling miserable anymore. I did what I had to do, and I did it professionaly. Frankly, the result is quite good (check it out), despite the circunstances.

Another thing that grown ups know is how great it feels to get the job done.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Do you know when several small problems add up to the stress of the end of the year and you think you simply will not be able to handle all your tasks? When this happens to me, I feel at odds with all of humanity. In order not to spread even more bad mood around or at least, to be a feisty gal, but with fabulous skin, earlier this week I decided to make an appointment with a beautician for a facial.

The lady on the other side of the phone asked me to arrive at nine o’clock in the morning. I took the task so seriously that I actually arrived ten minutes early. Long story short, I left there at noon.

You might be wondering what kind of facial cleansing lasts three hours. I do not know either, because what I had was standard procedure. The rest of the time was filled with conversation. Not necessarily with me and always on her part.

Frankly, I cannot blame her. Apparently everyone is dying to talk. And talk a lot. Could it still be a remnant of the trauma of mandatory isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic? Were we like this before 2020? Or maybe, and that is personal guess, it is a mix of things with a pinch of anxiety generated by the indiscriminate use of cell phones and exposure to the internet?

The fact is that I left my self-care moment feeling completely exhausted. No kidding: exhausted. All that talking about different topics, without getting anywhere, highly reactive and with a slightly resentful tone made me physically tired.

As everything in life has different aspects, the positive side of this peculiar experience was that it made me question not only the repetitive mental behavior that I had been stuck in for the last few weeks, but it also made me reevaluate my situation.

While waiting for the creams to act on my face, some thoughts arose:

  1. Maybe I am not as bitter towards he world, as I thought I was
  2. Maybe my bad mood is actually below average
  3. Maybe, despite all the problems, I am okay.

Being okay, meaning feeling fine just the way you are, can be revolutionary. After all, well-being has a lot to do with completeness, self-satisfaction and other items that, despite of what the huge wellness lobby out there keep telling us, cannot be purchaised.

Speaking from the perspective of music creation, much of what is produced in terms of entertainment is linked to the idea that a film, a play, a book etc. has the primary obligation to awaken positive sensations and make you feel happy.

I completely disagree with this premise. Just as my three-hour facial was not exactly a walk in the park, but it achieved its goal, the transformation caused by art can come in many ways, through various sensations, and perhaps many of them are not directly linked to a feeling of well-being.

Subjecting creation to the rules dictated by entertainment industry is a gross reduction of the potential of art. Perhaps it is even a subversion of its primary role, which is to move people, to change a state of mind, a way of thinking, of perceiving ourselves on society.

Will you let your world shine beuatifully, just like a post-facial skin?

Be seeing you!

G. F.

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This morning I read another report about the sphere inaugurated in Las Vegas with a concert by the band U2. Feedback on the show has been very positive and everyone seems quite impressed with the tons of LED lights and the (poor words, so worn out) immersive experience.

I wonder if these people have ever been to a planetarium in their lives. I remember memorable shows at fantastic planetariums in Osnabrück, Germany and Lisbon, Portugal. And we are talking about the 1990s and 2000s!

Honestly, I am surprised (in a negative way) by the collective mesmerization, in the worst sense of the word, with inventions that, honestly, are nothing new (the true global cult of cars, so harmful to the environment, comes to mind).

It seems that everything that has been done before social media simply never existed. I would say there is a tendence of treating “old” (pre-social media) events as new stuff, or even worse, sometimes they are considered revolutionary, disruptive etc. The very word “experience” has reached a level of overuse by publicity pieces, that it no longer inspires the slightest confidence.

Thge point here is not to question the quality, much less the merit of the band U2 (who, in fact, neither asked nor need my opinion).The reflection I would like to bring today has to do with the widespread use of pyrotechnics in the most diverse musical events.

How much of our already weakened attention can withstand yet another bomb of visual stimuli and still reserve some attention for the music?

Among the artists you know with astronomical numbers of followers, how many people they brought to the stage on their last performance? Hard to rememeber, right? No wonder, with screens that go up and down, dancers with vibrant choreography and costume changes, musicians are just a tiny detail.

I cannot help but thinking that the sparkling lights are taking a place that should be occupied by the music/musicians.. That is, when we are lucky enough to have musicians on stage.

Currently, not only many festivals host attractions whose performances are based on pre-recorded beats, they also consider lip-sync part of the show. And I am not talking about kind-of-hidden-pro-tools-lip-sync”. I am talking about headline performers who would shameless scream words (“Jump”, “Make some noise”) in their mics, while their pre-recorded song goes on.

I am ready to hear any arguments in favor of these resources, I honestly am. However, I fear that any theoretical contortionism will end in some sort of an absolute defense of the concept of entertainment, which I am not opposed to either.

Previously this year, I discussed the difference between large and small concerts, and I am perfectly convinced that there is an audience for everyone. I do not see entertainment as a problem, not at all. The problem is, when there is nothing but entertainment.

Particularly in relation to music, the problem ist that music production has to be reduced to mere entertainment. This is indeed sad, because it means a loss, a decline in its status a form of art. Have you ever heard someone making a comment like: “Well, I did not like that film/exposition, play, because it is sad and I go out to be happy”? I have the impression that this sort of weird reasoning had spread itself throughout society.

Do you know what would really impress me? That people would no longer be hungry and that, at night, everyone would have a shelter. Other than that, honey, there is no sphere giant enough to impress me, and all I can think of all the buzz is: it has been done, babe.

Be seeing you!

G. F.