Tralala Blip – “To The Moon”.

Hiya people! 🙂 

 

Those who have been following my blog since its beginnings might perhaps recall when I once shared a song by Jac Richards, – a young man from Wales with cerebral palsy who makes electronic music using his eye muscles. After that, I’ve been thinking sometimes that, as a disabled blogger myself, I’d like to be able to share more music by disabled musicians as part of my Song of the Day series, but I just don’t really know very many. I mean, maybe if I had to create a playlist or something where the only requirement would be that the musicians included need to have a disability, I guess it could be a decently long playlist, but the primary goal of this series is to share music that I like, that speaks to me in some way, and sharing someone’s music solely because they’re disabled and I am disabled, even if I don’t feel or like their music particularly much, just wouldn’t feel right. 😀 Earlier this year I learned about the thing called International Low-Vision Song Contest and listened to it this year, in hopes of hearing something really really really good that I could share, and while there were some nice songs there that I did enjoy, it wasn’t quite the level of enjoyment that would make me feel like sharing any of them on here. 

 

And then in July, I came across singer and violinist Gaelynn Lea, who instantly made a huge impression on me. I didn’t even know right away that she was disabled, only learned that some time later. I haven’t shared anything by her on here yet, but I’m sure I will at some point, I just feel like I need to spend some more time with her music. So after discovering her, I decided that if I need to become more active and actually look for some cool disabled artists. Soon after making that resolution, I heard Tralala Blipp for the first time. Initially I thought that, as much as I like weird, experimental, electronic stuff, they were a little bit too far beyond my comfort zone. But either my comfort zone must’ve expanded real quick, or Tralala Blip must have come closer to it, because soon I started to really enjoy their music. I remember that it was a Friday evening when I first heard them and for the whole weekend, the majority of what I was listening to was Tralala Blip. 😀 Looks like they’ve become one of my biggest discoveries of this year, right next to Eithne ní Uallacháin, Mary Lattimore, Angeline Morrison and the aforementioned Gaelynn Lea and maybe some other people that I can’t think of right now. I certainly wouldn’t say that all of their songs resonate with me, but generally I think it’s super cool and quirky in a fun, effortless way what they do. And even the name “Tralala Blip”, it’s so hilarious and sums it all up so perfectly. 😀 

 

So who are Tralala Blip? They’re an Australian group from Lismore, founded by Randolf Reimann, formerly from a hardcore band called Massappeal. Before Tralala Blip was born, Reimann was running workshops on electronic music for young people with disabilities. He was frustrated with the way other regional music workshops for disabled people looked like, how patronising they were, and undoubtedly boring for the participants. I totally get that, and especially ever since I read Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, where the poor main character – Melody – has to deal with listening to the same stupid record of children’s songs over and over again during class, and eventually gets a meltdown over it because no one can understand how awful it was for her. It hurt to read. During his workshop, Randolph Reimann introduced the young people to Ableton, and other accessible software and hardware which allowed them to make electronic music. If I got that right, in the beginning Tralala Blip were a larger collective than they are now and comprised of people with various intellectual and physical disabilities. Currently though, it’s a five-piece band with intellectually disabled members at its core. Aside from aforementioned Randolf Reimann, the group consists of Mathew Daymond, who is also responsible for designing record covers for Tralala Blip, Lydian Dunbar, who also has an intriguing musical project of his own (btw as a name nerd I have to say I’d never heard the name Lydian before and I think it’s really interesting, especially that it’s a very obviously musical name, as in the Lydian mode 😀 ), Phoebe Rose, who I believe does not have a disability, and Zac Mifsud, who, according to this source, dislikes tangled audio cables (I’ve never had to deal with audio cables much but I have lots of experience with other types of tangled cables and I totally agree that it IS a problem that we need to talk more about and find a solution to it, it shouldn’t be a thing in this century anymore). When I went down the Tralala Blip rabbit hole soon after I first heard their music, I also read that they even played here in Poland, which I’d never have expected. 

 

I can’t tell you why exactly, but I think my most favourite Tralala Blip song would have to be this one. It’s just so awesomely surreal and trippy! And since I’m having a really yucky day today, due to Jack the Ripper (period) paying me an overdue visit, I thought it would be a great day for some trippy music for me. And maybe for you too, if you like going on imaginary lunar trips before sleep. 

 

Question of the day.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Today I’ve got  a really fun question for you: 

 

You’re gifted twenty four hours during which you and your pet(s) are able to understand each other and have real conversations like you’re old friends just catching up on lost time. What would you want to tell them and how would you want to spend those hours with them? 

 

My answer: 

 

I have actually already written a short story about this on here  some years ago, it’s titled Breaking the Silence. Seriously, if Misha could speak, even just for a single day, this would probably be the happiest day in my life. I know I’m probably overreacting in most situations that have to do with Misha, but really, as I think I might have written on here before, I have figured out that for me, my relationship with Misha is actually my first – and so far only – relationship in which I feel I have a healthy and secure attachment to someone, I mean as healthy as it can be that your first safe attachment is to a cat and in your adulthood, lol, but I guess you get the idea, so I suppose ultimately that’s not extremely surprising. I always feel really uncomfortable when even thinking that something bad could happen to Misha or that he might feel unwell in some situation or other, and of course one of my biggest fears is Misha dying. SO there’s always that worry at the back of my brain, what if he wants something and I just have no clue? What if he’s not feeling well, like, dunno, is having a tummy ache? How the flip would I even know such a thing? He looks sleepy now, but maybe he’s actually sad? What if he actually doesn’t like the snacks that I give him and would like something different? What if he doesn’t like to be petted this way but prefers that way? I’ll never know such things, and it frustrates me endlessly.

 

Ever since I remember, I’ve had some interest in people with serious communication challenges, whether they be nonverbal or unable to speak due to something like cerebral palsy or aphasia or being locked-in or whatever. Whenever I’d meet such a person or read about people like that somewhere or something, I’d later spend ages wondering what they might be thinking or feeling, possibly things that no one in their surroundings realises, and how frustrating that might be at times. Or maybe they just accepted it or are resilient enough that they try their best to communicate some other way. When I got out of the boarding school and had individual education for a year at my local mainstream school, I always got there and back by a taxi, because here we have such a thing that if a student is disabled they can have free transportation to and from school, at least within their region or something. And there was a girl – let’s call her Mia for the sake of this post, that often rode to her school with me in the same taxi, who had severe cerebral palsy and, at least according to the lady who rode with us as something like an assistant, Mia was also intellectually disabled. She would usually be very placid on our school rides, but what I remember about her most vividly was when one day she seemed rather cranky and didn’t want to cooperate with her mum, who tried to get her into the car seat with the help of the other lady. That was when I first heard Mia say anything comprehensible, and it was loud and clear “NO!” To me, it sounded very deliberate and purposeful, like she concentrated all of her energy to say that one word. But they didn’t even seem to pay much notice to it at all, after all, she had to go to school. But if she spoke normally, even if she still would have to go to school, I’m sure her mum would take the time and ask her something like “Why not? Don’t you like school?” And they’d have a more or less productive discussion and maybe would figure out a way to make Mia feel more “Yes!” About school in the future. As it was, for her mum it only seemed to be a random noise. Mia continued to be rather agitated on our way to her school, so that I actually asked the woman riding with us if maybe Mia didn’t feel well and that’s why she didn’t want to go to school, but she laughed and said that Mia’s “too poorlY” to think like that. And then I kept wondering how they know that for sure. I mean, maybe they do, but it’s not like there haven’t been plenty such cases where someone was unable to communicate efficiently and thus got a label like “retard” right away. That situation really made a strong impression on my brain and some time later I wrote a story about a girl (Eufemia) who becomes unable to move and speak as a result of a major accident and how she builds a sort of alternate world for herself in her brain.

 

Now that I’m a little bit more self-aware, I’m guessing that my interest might stem from the fact that, while I don’t have any obvious communication challenges – I can speak (multiple languages lol), write and all that – I’ve very often felt like I’m unable to express myself fully, due to my years of bottling things up and generally being super inhibited emotionally, and some other stuff getting in the way as well. And I certainly know what it’s like when people think you’re unable to think for yourself. 

 

So while with Misha it’s quite different, because he’s just an animal, so by definition his needs are a lot less complex, , and he’s not disabled so he can fulfil some of them by himself at least to an extent, I sometimes worry whether I’m not like what I accused Mia’s mum in my brain to be. Maybe he keeps sending me desperate cues all the time and I just keep missing them? And it’s totally not like my worries are unfounded, after all, we all had missed a whole bunch of cues back when we got Sasha – the little Russian blue kitten that we eventually had to rehome because Misha just couldn’t cope  with the situation. – We only realised what was going on at pretty much last minute. And with me, there’s the added trouble that I can’t see his expressions. On the other hand, I think I can understand his vocal cues better and can tell apart a. Meow that says “Gimme me food, now, immediately, or else…!” From a meow that says “I’m so poor and hungry, no one loves me, I haven’t eaten for a week, can you please please please give me just one little treat so I can survive the next day?” Which my Dad, for example, sees no difference in, apparently. But it’s not like he’s very vocal so the usefulness of that is limited. 

 

But anyway, have you ever seen a longer preamble to a post? 😀 

 

So, what would I do with Misha if we had twenty four hours to ourselves during which we could both talk and understand each other? Well, of course I’d grill him and listen. “Do you like to sleep on that blanket? What’s your favourite snack? Does it annoy you when I listen to music when you’re sleeping? What music do you like, anyway? Do you like it when I put a heating pad next to you before you fall asleep or is it too hot? What’s your favourite peep food? What do you mean when you…(insert whatever Mish sound or gesture)? Do you like it now that you can go out on the terrace? Are you happy with it? What’s your biggest dream? What annoys you the most? Do you like when I do this? How about that? Do you like being called Misha?” And maybe I’d record it, so I’d have a keepsake of that blissful day, so that over time I wouldn’t start thinking that I just hallucinated all that and would have a reference so that I wouldn’t forget any of the details of Misha’s likes and dislikes. And if I’d record that, maybe I’d get him to read something for me, like a bed time story or whatever, so I could always listen to it before sleep. I wonder what he’d sound like speaking. 😀 I’d tell him how much I love him, so that I could be sure that he knows, and how important he is to me and that I think he’s the most beautiful thing in the world. I would try to explain some things to him, like why I want to touch him more than other peeps do despite I know he’s afraid of touch a lot of the time, or why I always want him to sleep with me even when he doesn’t sometimes. Maybe we’d also be able to brainstorm some ways for more effective communication in the future, after Misha’s speech licence expires but I really don’t know how we’d do that. ANd hopefully we’d still have some time left to just have fun and chat lightly and do some cool things and laugh together. Misha sure would have a sore throat by the end of the day. So that would more or less be my plan. 

 

There’s also Jocky, but I think that gift belongs to Sofi, since just like Misha is officially my pet, Jocky is officially Sofi’s. I bet he’d have loads to say though. To me he always seems like he’s trying to say something. Recently there was a huge storm and Misha and I were alone at home, so knowing that Jocky is scared shitless of storms, I let him in. Except by the time I heard through my headphones that it was storming and let him in, the storm was already very fully developed and the poor thing was shaking like a leaf. So I let him in and I could just very literally feel that he was staring at me, his mouth wide open, smacking his lips and making small, whimpering sounds, which seriously sounded as if he wanted to say something. And I felt really confused, as I’m way more clueless in Jock-speak than I am in Mish-speak. As you may know, in our family, the word Bibiel, aside from being what I often go by just for fun, is also just a fun word that you can never say too often and my Dad and I joke that it brings luck, but you never know what’s the lucky amount of “Bibiels” per day for you specifically, so you should always try to say “Bibiel” as many times as possible in a day. And I’m sure that if Jocky only could, he would say Bibiel! Misha? I’m not so sure. 😀 He’d probably want to know why you want him to say Bibiel, then make up his mind whether it’s worth it, and would make up his mind for so long that eventually he’d fall asleep and forget about the whole thing. 

 

And then we also have fishes, well, my Dad does, but I’m not sure if there’d be anything specific that I’d want to talk to them about. Sometimes I wonder how come they’re not bored swimming all the flippin time in the fish tank, and if it’s not annoying for them at night to hear the constant noise of the pump, because for me it sure would be, so maybe I’d ask them about that. 

 

How about you and your pet(s)? 🙂 

 

Bibiel and brands.

Today’s daily prompt from the WordPress Jetpack app is the following: 

 

What brands do you associate with? 

At least I guess the prompts thing are only a thing in the mobile app and not the website, though not sure. Anyway, I thought I’d answer that question just for fun. 

 

So, generally, I’m not really someone who cares about brands particularly much. In fact, if I’m totally honest with you, I guess I don’t even fully understand the concept of buying something for a triple price just because it has a particular label and, even more so, people who can’t afford the real thing and buy a fake instead. I can understand loyalty to a brand simply because you like what they make, and some expensive clothing brands do make better quality stuff and more original than what you’ll find at some typical mainstream clothing store where everything seems basically the same and boring and artificial so I think it’s worth investing in good clothes that actually have some style and that are going to last some time and that are not synthetic, but most people seem to care about brands for snobbish reasons or something, or because they have sheep-like tendencies and if they’re told that something is worth having, they’ll just get it if only they have the money. I really don’t think I get that on any deeper level. Like, I know some people who, if they can’t afford the actual brand, they’ll put a sticker with the name of that brand on a cheaper clothing item. It blows my mind why that would be so important to anybody. Generally though, I care very little about things like fashion. Actually, that’s another good thing that I should’ve included in a recent question of the day post where I asked you about things that you were told you’d grow out of, but never did.  I never cared about those things and people often said to me or to my Mum, especially other visually impaired women or older girls, that over time, I’d naturally become more interested in that since most girls are and I’d realise that it’s an important thing. Well, so far I just haven’t. I often joke that my Mum is my fashion stylist, because she, and Sofi, are very much into all things fashion, not necessarily in the sense that they like to be trendy, at least Mum certainly does not, but they’re very conscious of all things fashion, appearance etc. and even if my Mum doesn’t necessarily want to be trendy herself, she always knows what is fashionable and is a good observer of such things. As it happens, my Mum and I also have roughly similar styles, and she usually knows what I like and what I look good in, so for the most part I do trust her as my stylist, and where I do not, which is usually because of our age difference and the fact that she’s, well, my Mum, so doesn’t always have enough objectivity, I can always seek a second opinion from Sofi. My Mum really hates those large mainstream clothing stores and so do I. They can feel really overwhelming and there’s not much diversity there.

 

My Mum very often does clothes shopping, whether it’s for herself, Sofi, me or Dad, at second-hand clothing stores. The quality can vary a lot, but if you’re like my Mum and your hobby is going through second-hand clothing stores, and you have a lot of time to hunt for good things, it’s easy to find really nice things, especially if it’s a generally good shop. These things usually tend to be a lot more durable, since, well, someone had already used it before, washed it many times, and if it’s still in a good shape, it’ll probably continue to be for years to come, not just for one season. And at good second-hand clothing stores, you can also find branded clothes, obviously at a cheaper price. Sofi gets a lot of compliments on her clothes at school and questions where she got this or that, and people would be really surprised at the answer. 😀 My Mum and Sofi are taller than mainstream clothing stores think people are supposed to be, so this way it’s a lot easier for them to find clothes that they actually like and that fit well at the same time. Whenever we visit a foreign country, my Mum also feels an almost compulsive urge to find a second-hand clothing store and see what they have, because unlike huge clothing stores, these usually have more character and more differences between countries. I like second-hand clothing shops for yet another reason. I don’t know about other countries but here, apart from clothes, in some second-hand clothing shops you can also find other things. For example really nice porcelain figurines, or even hand-made decorative objects. But most importantly, I know some second-hand clothing stores that sell books in Swedish and Norwegian. LOADS of them. All of my Norwegian books, and all of my Swedish books that weren’t bought in Stockholm, are from second-hand clothing shops. 😀

 

These days, my Mum is good friends with a woman who runs an little outlet store near us, she has access to various interesting Scandinavian brands, and both Mum and I have quite a lot of clothes from there myself and are very happy with them. My Mum isn’t attached to any specific brand either, nor is she to Scandinavian brands in general, but they just seem to fit her style.

 

Mum also looks through Zalando Lounge almost every day, where you can get things from various brands, not just clothes, at a more affordable price for a limited time, she mostly does it just out of sheer curiosity and for fun but occasionally she’ll buy something from there. For example that’s how I got my Bang & Olufsen headphones that still serve me reasonably well. 

 

So, generally, when it comes to clothes specifically, I do have some branded clothes, but I really don’t care about the brands themselves and I don’t have them because of their brand as such. 

 

As for other things, I guess you could say that I sort of associate with Apple. I’ve had an iPhone for over three years now (after sticking for almost a decade to a Nokia E66 with Symbian because I didn’t want to deal with a touch screen for all sorts of reasons, and I would joke that I’m sticking to the Nokia due to my loyalty to Finland). I still feel very ambivalent about touch screens, but generally, I’ve come to really like Apple products. So much, in fact, that now, after those three years, suddenly I’m an owner of a whopping FOUR Apple devices. I originally didn’t plan for it all to happen this fast, some external circumstances sort of helped me, but in the end, I’m really happy with all my Apple products. I now have an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook, and an Apple Watch, and I’m using all four quite extensively. In that time, we’ve also become a bit of an Apple family. Sofi has an iPhone and even AirPods Pro, and my Mum has an iPhone and an Apple Watch as well. I do like Apple, and having a whole Apple ecosystem. It’s very comfortable and stable, and Apple things are just nice and intuitive to use, and look nice aesthetically. And I do think about myself a bit as an Apple peep now, it’s hard not too when it’s so evident that I am. 😀 Some people, like our Olek, who is a huge Samsung fan, seriously think that I did it because I think Apple is somehow supreme and that it was a bit snobbish of me or something, but really, that was totally not my motivation. Here in Poland it’s not as striking, but in countries like the US, an iPhone is basically the default phone for a blind person. Because, while Android phones do have accessibility options as well, Apple just generally tends to do their accessibility better, or, at least, has created a strong impression of that over the years. As someone who uses my phone mostly via my Braille-Sense (a Braille notetaker whose Braille keyboard basically works like a Bluetooth keyboard), I can’t imagine myself efficiently using an Android device. As it is, Apple systems already have enough Braille-related bugs for my liking, and it all is even less stable and smooth on Android. I do sometimes like to create an impression that I’m a huge Apple fan, but that’s joking and annoying the Android fanatics in my family more than anything else. I’ve got Apple stickers on all my Apple devices, and whenever something doesn’t work for my Dad or Olek on Android that works well on Apple, I make sure to let them know about it very emphatically. And I’m a bit of an Apple service person for Mum and Sofi. Also I have an iPhone SE, and those have a bit of a reputation apparently that only people who can’t afford a better iPhone buy them, just so they can have an iPhone. Well for me, I just don’t need anything better. I don’t need a better camera, and I certainly don’t need a larger screen. On the contrary, I’m very happy to still have a Home button and a Touch ID. The battery could be better but oh well. In fact I’m a bit worried what my next phone will be. I mean, there’s still SE 3 and the 13 mini, but the mini is apparently going to be discontinued soon and Apple is only making larger and larger phones, not smaller. And the next SE is not likely to have a Touch ID, which makes me a bit worried about using Face ID with nystagmus. I mean, there is an accessibility option that makes it so that you don’t have to actually look at the screen actively for it to recognise your face, but when we tested it on my Mum’s phone, I was able to unlock it with my face, and it’s not like we look super similar, so I feel that’s concerning. So maybe I’ll need to downgrade to a specialised phone for the blind (with Android, but fully accessible and with a specialised price), we shall see. So no, it’s not like I like everything about Apple or that I like Apple for the sake of it being Apple. In fact, I’m often very annoyed at Apple, for example for the way it keeps unresolved accessibility-related bugs going for years, and keeps introducing such amounts of accessibility-related bugs with every major OS release that if these were mainstream bugs affecting all people, the Apple people would literally be buried under endless lawsuits by now. But somehow, even though I don’t remember having to deal with so many bugs on Windows as I do on MacOS, I find the latter just way more comfortable and intuitive and can’t see myself going back to Windows any time soon, unless perhaps on a virtual machine when I find the courage for that, because I’ve never used a VM before so I’m rather apprehensive. 

 

Another tech-related brand that I guess you could sort of say that I associate with, although I don’t have any deeper feelings for it, not even the level that I have for Apple, is the aforementioned Danish brand Bang & Olufsen. I have B&O headphones and a B&O speaker. I got the headphones soon after I got the iPhone, as I was looking for some good headphones that would fulfil my rather very specific criteria and just couldn’t make up my mind. And then Mum found these headphones on Zalando Lounge and they seemed really good. I’d never even heard of B&O before, but did some research and they seemed like a good brand, and the headphones ticked a lot of my criteria. And then I wanted to buy a speaker, to be able to listen to music from at night, because until then I did it on my desktop computer which was really noisy, and there was some perpetual electrical issue with its speakers which caused them to make really weird sounds, so that you felt like you were sleeping in a lab or something, and better yet if it decided that it wants to install an update in the middle of the night or something. I figured if I have an iPhone, I might as well listen to music from it, but didn’t really want to do that on the built-in speaker. I looked through lots of speakers online and their reviews, but, really, buying audio stuff is such a nightmare! So eventually I saw a review of a B&O speaker, and it seemed really good as well, so I thought I’d buy it, since I was reasonably happy with the headphones. And so I did. I’m actually even happier with the speaker than I am with the headphones, to be honest, it looks good, works well and has the ideal, warm, bedroom-y sound but when you want it loud it still sounds very good. I only found out afterwards that generally B&O is considered to be more of a lifestyle brand than an audiophile one. They do sound really good, but they clearly care more about design, and that alone is one reason why probably my next speaker or headphones will not be B&O (though I really hope I won’t need to make any audio purchases in a long time). I do like devices that look nice aesthetically, but with audio equipment, it’s not really the primary thing, and it’s not something for which I’d be willing to pay more than for worse-looking but similar-sounding device. Most of all though, despite the headphones have leather earpads, which is something I really wanted for the sake of them being comfortable and which is not that common these days, the headband can be very uncomfortable if you have to use them for longer periods (which I often do) and can seriously aggravate things like migraines. But at least now I know what I do NOT want in the future. 

 

In conclusion, I might be a bit of an Apple Bibiel, but I really wouldn’t say I’m particularly strongly attached to any brand? 

 

How is it with you? Do you have any favourite brands at all? 🙂 

 

Lavinia Meijer – “Sun”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

I don’t know how about other bits of the world, but here in Poland, or at least in my northern bit of the country, we’ve had quite a long summer this year. Today is also very sunny and warm, but apparently actual autumn weather is supposed to start this coming weekend. So I thought I’d share this warm piece by harpist Lavinia Meijer. There is a Polish flavour to it as well, since it was written by Hania Rani, a Polish composer and pianist. 

 

Question of the day.

If you could take a pill after which you never had to eat again but also couldn’t, would you take it? Why or why not? 

 

My answer: 

 

Sometimes such a pill would sure feel tempting. Eating, but also preparing food, thinking ahead about what you’ll eat, it all can take up so much time and energy, and good food can cost a lot these days. I sometimes have moments when I am physically hungry, but sort of can’t decide on anything, or I’ve had situations when it sort of feels like almost every food’s texture suddenly feels totally meh. Other times I just have so much more interesting things to do than eating, so popping a single pill would feel like a fun alternative. Also it would be the ultimate solution for emetophobia, and also for people with things like ARFID, or those who have to follow a strict and very specific diet but very few things on that diet are things that they actually like, or they don’t have that much choice at all in what they can eat.

 

But if that pill worked so that you wouldn’t even be able to eat at all after taking it, no thanks. My first thought is what the flip would happen if you did eat, for example because you forgot that you cannot after the pill or because of social reasons, like when you’re at your aunt’s and everyone is eating the cake so you don’t want to be rude. Would it all go up right away or what? Or would you just be so repulsed by food after taking the pill that you would just be unable to take even the miniest bite. Or would it just not digest at all? Yuck. I think, kind of intuitively, I’d also be afraid of any other potential side effects of such a pill. Like, I assume it would work for one’s lifetime, but how do I know that it will provide me with the right amount of nutrients for me specifically, and what do I do if it doesn’t, given that I can’t eat after taking it? Also, despite I’d say my relationship with food is quite weird and complicated, I generally do like food, I mean who doesn’t? I’ve heard it from several people who can’t eat or couldn’t for some extended time, or their food was very restricted, that, unsurprisingly, it’s a real pain in the brain long-term, not to be able to eat in a normal way, and really frustrating, even if they aren’t really hungry because they get their nutrition some other way but they just really miss the taste of food and the normalcy of eating. If the nutritional pills were to become mainstream, maybe that would become less of an issue, but still, for those of us who know how real food tastes like, I think we’d really miss it nonetheless. And then when it comes to me, I am a lexical-gustatory and gustatory-lexical synaesthete so for me, food and tastes are basically everywhere. To give you an example, recently Mum took Misha to the vet and I went with them to hold Misha on the way there and back, and when we were done with the vet Mum popped into a grocery store to pick some food while I stayed in the car with Misha and the radio was playing in the background. ANd someone on the radio said a Polish word which for me tastes just like my Mum’s rice and champignon croquettes. And since I happened to be ravenously hungry, I couldn’t deal with that and just had to phone Mum straight away and ask if she could buy the ingredients for the croquettes and make them for us (Olek loves them too). I’ve always got random food cravings like that due to my synaesthesia, ever since I can remember. 😀 I also find it really satisfying kind of sensorily and aesthetically when I am eating something and at the same time listening to something that contains a lot of words that I associate with this particular food that I’m eating. For a normal peep, when they have to go without food for some extended period of time for whatever reason, they will avoid going past grocery stores or looking into the fridge or reading recipes and generally everything that has to do with food. But how do you avoid words and sounds? 😀 Sometimes when I fast for religious reasons, I’ll actually make myself think about particularly yummy words on purpose, to make it more challenging for myself and more of a sacrifice, but that’s different because I never fast for longer than a day. In fact I don’t really fast the way some people do that I don’t eat anything at all because that’ll make me feel truly awful the next day, so I eat just enough to sustain myself and not give myself a migraine and as plain food as possible. So I still do eat something, and I know that tomorrow I can eat whatever I like. In the pill scenario, it’s a more indefinite time so I think that would be way harder. That’s also why I feel really really grateful that I’ve never really needed to be on any sort of diet, because I think with the synaesthesia thing it would be harder for me. I’d imagine it would be much the same with the pill. 

 

So, no, all things considered, I definitely wouldn’t take it. Totally not worth it. 

 

How about you? 🙂 

Mared – “Don’t Wanna Know”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Today I’d like to share with you an English-language song by Mared, a talented Welsh singer and songwriter, a lot of whose music I’ve already shared on here. She released this song last year, however I’m sharing a live acoustic version of it. 

 

Torine Michelle – “Weak”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

I thought we could listen to some Norwegian pop today. It looks like the singer whose song I want to share with you today – Torine Michelle Bjåland – is reasonably popular in her home country. As far as I’m aware, her career started when she took part in the Norwegian Idol as a teenager. Later, she became more famous as a result of performing Alan Walker’s song Faded, which was originally recorded with Iselin Solheim as the vocalist – I like Iselin and have shared a few songs by her on here as well in the past. – In 2022 Torine Michelle, now just Torine, released her debut EP in 2022, dealing with the topic of her family which sounds like they must have been involved in some sort of cult or something. Generally her later music is quite rebellious and frank, I don’t necessarily love all of it but I appreciate her rawness and authenticity. This is one of her earlier songs. 

 

Floraleda Sacchi – “The Beatitudes”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today I chose a composition played by Italian harpist Floraleda Sacchi, one of her many pieces that I’ve shared on here so far. It was written by Russian composer Vladimir Martynov. I like the sound of this on the harp. 

 

Lavinia Meijer – “Written on the Sky”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today, I chose another neoclassical piece arranged for the harp and played by Dutch-Korean harpist Lavinia Meijer, some of whose music I’ve shared on here before. This piece was composed by German-British composer and pianist Max Richter. 

 

Catriona McKay & Alistair MacDonald – “Munelicht” (Moonlight).

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Today I have for you a piece from a very interesting album. Despite I’ve been familiar to some extent with the music of Scottish harpist Catriona McKay, I’ve actually only discovered this album fairly recently. The album I’m talking about is Harponium Electrosessions, which is an electroacoustic remake of her earlier solo album Harponium, recorded in collaboration with Glasgow-based composer of electronic music and sound artist Alistair MacDonald. As you may know, I like me a good folk-electronic album, and all sorts of experimental things to do with the harp, so I found it really enjoyable and hope you will as well. The title of this piece means moonlight in Scots. 

 

Laoise Kelly – “Brendan Ring’s”.

Hey guys! 🙂 

 

For today I chose a folk piece played by a harpist whose music has not yet been featured on my blog before, even though I myself have been familiar with her for many years. Laoise Kelly is originally from co. Mayo. This particular tune is a reel composed by Brendan Ring, a contemporary Irish musician as well as maker of uilleann pipes. 

 

Anne Crosby Gaudet – “Dawn”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today I chose this serene harp piece by Anne Crosby Gaudet. Anne’s music has already been frequently featured on my blog, but for those unfamiliar with her, she is a harp teacher from Canada, who composes learner-friendly music for the harp. 

 

Georgia Ruth – “Grand Tour”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Today I’d like to share with you a very interesting-sounding song by Georgia Ruth, a great Welsh singer whose music has been featured many times before on my blog. It comes from her album Fossil Scale. 

 

Declan Galbraith – “I’d Love You To Want Me”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today, I chose a song by Declan, from his third album, You and Me, released when he was fifteen. It is a cover, like a lot of his songs pre- Child of Mind, and originally this song was sung by American singer Lobo. I think the original is okay, but Declan’s version is better, although obviously I also like it more because I have some emotional connection to it because Declan used to be one of my faza peeps, so even though that faza had faded long ago ad I believe it no longer is there at all, even in the faded form, I still like him and have a lot of memories associated with his songs. 

 

Órla Fallon – “The Parting Glass”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Yesterday I shared a song by Celtic Woman, so I thought that today, we could listen to Órla Fallon – one of their original members. – This song, being a traditional Scottish song also very popular in Ireland, has also been performed by Celtic Woman by the way. It is a farewell song that was sung at all sorts of gatherings of friends in Scotland, until Robert Burns wrote his Auld Lang Syne. Órla is singing it to a different tune than the traditional and most common one, which sounds a whole lot like Mo Ghile Mear.  

 

Celtic Woman – “You Raise Me Up”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today I chose a song by the famous Irish supergroup Celtic Woman, I guess that’s one of their more popular songs worldwide and theirs is the only version of this song that I actually quite like of those that I’ve heard, not that I actively dislike the others or something but don’t particularly like them either. The melody of this song was written by Norwegian composer Rolf Lovland from the group Secret Garden, and was originally titled Silent Story, although there apparently was some drama involved with this song as it is almost identical to some other, Icelandic song. The lyrics were written by Irish songwriter and novelist Brendan Graham, and the song was first recorded by Secret Garden with Brian Kennedy as the vocalist, although their version was not particularly successful, in comparison to Celtic Woman’s, for example. I am sharing a live recording of it sung by Celtic Woman. 

 

Steeleye Span – “All Things Are Quite Silent” & Shirley & Dolly Collins – “All Things are Quite Silent”.

Hi people! 🙂 

 

Today I’d like to share with you a song that I’ve recently been listening to a lot. I’ve known it for some years and it immediately captured my attention when I first heard it sung by Shirley Collins, even though back then I didn’t really like her music much, I think she’s one of those artists who has to grow on you over time, but I immediately loved the melody of this song. It sounds like it might as well have been a hymn, but at the same time there’s something slightly eerie about it, in a cool way. Then I got to know Steeleye Span’s version which resonated with me a lot more back then, as they were more within my musical comfort zone, especially that at the time I was listening to loads of old English folk rock. Then after my English folk rock phase calmed down a little bit as I started to discover other things, folky and not, I hadn’t heard this song for what felt like ages, until earlier this summer, except now I like the Shirley Collins version just as much as the Steeleye Span one. People seriously do change, I guess, even Bibielz. 😀 So I’m sharing both versions. I suppose the Steeleye Span one might appeal to a broader audience of people who are not necessarily into pure folk and Shirley’s might feel underwhelming to many in our current time of musical and emotional maximalism (not that I’m anti-maximalist or anything, depends on a situation 😀 ), but I believe that Shirley Collins’ captures the feel of this song better, and her version was earlier. 

 

This song is a lament of a woman whose husband was abducted from their marriage bed and forced by a press gang into the navy. This reminds me a lot of another interesting English folk ballad – The Lowlands of Holland – but in this one, the abandoned wife, while obviously sad and broken-hearted, is a lot calmer and optimistic. It was collected in Sussex in 1904 by Vaughan Williams from a man called Ted Baines, but, actually, the original tune that he sang it to isn’t quite as interesting as this one at all. As far as I’m aware, the only recorded version of it older than Shirley Collins’ was by Louis Killen and he also sings it to this more complex melody, so maybe it was him who altered the original, no idea. 

 

For those who are unfamiliar with these artists, Shirley Collins is an English folk singer from Sussex, who started her career in the late 1950’s and often sang together with her now late sister Dolly who accompanied her on the portative organ. She is considered one of the key figures of the second English folk revival that happened in the 60’s and is known for her characteristic way of singing and the very natural, plain way she interpreted the traditional songs that she sang, in her native Sussex accent, without adorning them much or trying to be expressive. Among other musicians,  she collaborated a lot with Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings who later became her husband, however their marriage was a difficult one and after they divorced, it affected Collins so badly that she lost her singing voice for decades. She only returned to singing some ten years ago or so. In this song I’m sharing, she is accompanied by her sister Dolly, and it first came out on her album Sweet Primroses in 1967. 

 

Steeleye Span are an iconic English folk group formed in the early 1970’s by the aforementioned Ashley Hutchings together with Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, who earlier performed as a duo. In the initial line-up they were also joined by the couple Terry and Gay Woods. Maddy Prior is one of the best female English folk rock singers of her generation, next to the amazing Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention. As you might know, I love Sandy Denny very much and I’ve already shared some songs sung by her on here. This song was released on Steeleye Span’s debut album in 1970, titled Hark! The Village Wait. 

 

Steeleye Span: 

 

Shirley & Dolly Collins: 

 

Question of the day.

Let’s have a question of the day today: 

 

What’s something you were told you would grow out of but never did? 

 

My answer: 

 

Oh my, for me, there are quite a lot of such things. The first example that pops into my brain is my fazas. I remember back when I had a faza on Enya, I think I was about thirteen or younger, which was my first major faza and I didn’t really know yet that it’s going to be something quite long-term for me and that I’ll have fazas on more people, I also didn’t use this word with the exact same meaning as I do now, but I remember talking about my faza to my godmother, and she was something like: “Wow, isn’t it so cool having such fascinations and inspirations when you’re young? I used to be like that too, it was so amazing…” “So why are you no longer like that?” – I asked. – “Well,” – she said – “I don’t really have time for things like that anymore, and besides, you know, you just grow out of it at some point.” Honestly, that really worried me and sort of scared me and I thought that it would be awful if I grew out of it as well. I mean, I know, and I knew it then, that things like that usually don’t come on suddenly but more gradually and so probably people who experience them don’t really feel them in a negative way, but I thought that for me, my Brainlife would become super boring if I were not to have fazas of any kind anymore. And, so far it hasn’t happened. I mean, yes, I’d had a little limbo during which it felt like my faza on Gwilym had faded without any new faza to come in its place as the dominant one, and then things were a bit all over the place for some more time, but eventually it turned out that what I thought was my faza on Gwil fading was probably just a temporary thing, most likely caused by my feeling rather low mentally rather than the faza actually, properly fading, since it came back later on even stronger than it originally was. I’m so happy that I still have such things like fazas, because it feels like my brain is still quite youthful. Maybe part of it is also that my external life isn’t that very eventful or interesting – I mean it’s sure interesting enough for me, but most people, like my godmother who is a social worker with four kids, have a lot more going on – so my Brainlife plays a much more crucial role and I focus on it a lot more, be it fazas or my Brainpeople or anything else like that, I’m definitely a lot more in touch with these things than an average peep I suppose, and I have a lot more time and possibilities to nourish my faza life properly. Which I’m really grateful for. I think if I’d have a more active external life though, I’d still try to keep my Brainlife rich as much as possible, because otherwise I think I would feel a bit empty and things would quickly start feeling pointless to me. 

 

Speaking of having a Brainlife, I also haven’t grown out of my Brainworlds and Brainpeople, and people say it all the time that having imaginary friends and worlds is very much a kid thing. I’ve read a lot of books, as a kid and later on, where the main character has an imaginary friend or an imaginary world, and then as they develop and grow up, these imaginings fade away over time, usually as a result of them making friends with actual real people or stuff like that. The main example of that that I can think off the top of my head would be Marigold Lesley from Magic for Marigold by L. M. Montgomery who had an imaginary friend as a little girl, who eventually faded away and I remember that when I first read that book, I found it a little distressing, even though it happened fairly gradually. But then there are such people like Valancy Stirling from the Blue Castle, who by the way has been one of my literary faza peeps, also by Montgomery, and Valancy has her imaginative blue castle despite being in her late twenties, and even when she meets the man that she falls in love with, there’s nothing in the book that could make us think that the blue castle consequently disappeared. Or the Bronte siblings had their imaginary worlds as well. Not to mention people like Tolkien. So I think you can still keep your imaginings and they don’t have to be instead of relationships with people but can sort of coexist. I created some of my Brainworlds, or paracosms if you prefer a more traditional term, to help me cope with various things as a little kid, as a sort of way to internalise people or things or places that I liked so that I could always have them with me, others have sort of created themselves in a way because I don’t really remember the process of me making them up very well, and some are entirely created by me very consciously and are not based on any real people or places or anything like that. They have changed a lot over the years and some of my Brainworlds have sort of faded and I spend a lot less time in there, for example as a kid in early primary school I loved to spend time with sea people called Magnus and Nerissa (though originally they had different names), they live in the seas under water together with their children and they rule the seas and live an indecently sumptuous life there, though sometimes you can even find them in a lake or a river and other bodies of water if you’re lucky, and they sometimes invite land people to visit them when said land people are unhappy and need a bit of a break from their normal life. When they invite you, you’re able to go into Magnus’ castle and they make it so that you can breathe under water. They’ll usually invite you to dinner and then to sleep there because they have a very special sleep room for guests, and then Magnus will usually send you back onto the land but he’ll give you some specific magical object that will be able to help you so that you’re no longer unhappy, and a sort of enchanted ball that will be able to transport you back to their sea world when you’ll need it or ask them for help. Sometimes, when he decides he can’t help you otherwise, he’ll just let you stay there in his palace indefinitely and you become one of the sea people. So I used to hang out with them a lot as a kid, but these days I rarely see them. I just don’t feel the need to do it as often, but instead I hang out more in other Brainworlds. So while things definitely do shift and change a lot, I wouldn’t say as much as that I’ve grown out of my Brainworlds. In a way, some have actually expanded way more now that I’m an adult, as, being older, I can naturally think in a more multi-dimensional way and be more deliberate about what I do in my brain. I think it’s really great paracosming as an adult and I sort of feel for people like my Dad who think things like that are either exclusively for kids, or even something crazy or useless. Not that I’ve ever talked with my Dad about my Brainpeeps at all, but I know he doesn’t really use his imagination much. I feel that if I didn’t do it, I’d be very cynical all the time and, just like my fazas, I suppose it keeps my brain relatively youthful and flexible. I think it’s really sad when adult people totally lose the ability to think in a bit of a child-like way. Of course, there’s the dark side to it that’s called maladaptive daydreaming, which can be quite mentally painful long-term, but that’s its own kettle of fish. 

 

Another such thing I haven’t grown out of, which is not so cool as the former two, is this weird thing that I call sensory anxiety. As I’ve often written on here, it’s really hard to describe in a way that makes sense and at the same time fully captures it, and I actually use the phrase “sensory anxiety” to collectively refer to a few related things at once that I experience. So I won’t be describing that here in detail but generally the point is that it makes me feel uneasy about or scared of certain sounds, or usually sequences of sounds, it’s very rarely just one sound, and it also makes me afraid of silence in, I guess, a fairly similar way to how sighted people are afraid of darkness, though it’s a fairly simplistic analogy. I don’t know what the cause of that shit is really, and will likely never know, but I’ve heard all sorts of theories and had all sorts of theories myself. I’ve obviously heard sensory deprivation as a result of blindness. Sensory processing disorder. Misophonia/phonophobia. I’ve tried exposure therapy with some particularly difficult trigger, a sound that wasn’t even occurring in my surroundings anymore for years but still kept intruding on my brain, but it didn’t really work and actually made things worse. Even things like that maybe I’m ultra-sensitive to subliminal messaging, because weirdly enough, especially as a kid, a lot of what I was scared of were jingles, ads and similar things, and when I’m scared of a sound it often feels like it sort of seethes with aggression directly towards me even if objectively it’s quite calm-sounding. And some people, including my first therapist to whom I was very attached, said that probably all it is is just that my nervous system is a bit hypersensitive due to being immature in some way, so it’s a matter of time and I’d surely grow out of it at some point. I also know some blind people who had similar experiences mostly in early childhood, I’d say preschool age or so, and eventually did grow out of it. I seriously waited for that to happen to me, but it never did, so I don’t think it ever will at this point. I can grow out of or become de-sensitised to a particular sound over time, so that I no longer fear it as much as I used to when I first heard it or not at all, although it’s not a rule or anything, but frankly, now I can’t even imagine it happening in a realistic way, I guess my whole brain would have to be rewired somehow, because it’s become so ingrained. I just can’t imagine not having it at all, it feels almost as abstractive to think of as it is to think that I could see. 😀 I’ve generally come to terms with it, which was all the easier that I’ve had this sensory anxiety thing ever since I remember and I’ve largely learnt to cope with it in different ways, and as I got older I’ve also discovered that, probably, if not my sensory anxiety, I also wouldn’t be able to appreciate the cool, beautiful and interesting sounds as deeply as I’m able to. But I still can’t help but feel a little disappointed that it had gone away for other people so quickly but not for me and they can totally genuinely laugh about how silly they were as a kid, being panically afraid of some totally random thing that most people don’t even notice at all. In a way it has lessened, because when I was a little kid I would get it all the time over basically everything, and now it takes something really creepy to set me off properly, with smaller creeps I’ll just feel slightly uneasy or hypervigilant for a little while and then it goes away. Also when I was younger, after I figured that it’s not really appropriate to shriek out loud when you’re scared of something, my default reaction was to freeze, and now I only freeze when something is ultra creepy. But at the same time, it feels like it’s actually gotten worse, because once I do get fully creeped out by something, it seems to affect me a whole lot deeper and it takes me ages to recover, and once I’m in the fully creeped out state I’m really overwhelmed and scared of EVERYTHING and the world is super unsafe and everything is evil and I can even get a bit irrational sometimes with the so called magical thinking and stuff. 😀 I sometimes wonder what it’ll be like in, say, twenty years, and it feels quite depressing. 

 

There are probably more such things, but these are the ones that I can think of right away. 

 

And you? How do you feel about the thing that you didn’t grow out of? Would you like to grow out of it, or are you happy with how things are? 🙂 

 

Tomine Harket – “Follow Me”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

I feel like I haven’t shared any Norwegian or generally Scandinavian pop in a while, so here’s a song by Norwegian singer Tomine Harket. To those who don’t necessarily have an interest specifically in Scandipop but like the more widely popular stuff, Tomine might be known as the vocalist for Alan Walker’s 2018 song Dark Side. To People who are more into older music, her surname might sound familiar due to Morten Harket, vocalist of the famous Norwegian 80’s group A-Ha. Which would be a correct association, as Tomine is the daughter of Morten Harket and Swedish actress Camilla Malmquist. Her cousin Ragnhild Harket is also a singer who took part in The Voice Norway in 2017 and I’ve also shared one song by her on here. Tomine debuted in 2010 in Melodi Grand Prix, which is a music competition organised by the Norwegian public broadcaster – NRK – that works as Eurovision preselections, though I believe she did not have much success there. She then had quite a long break, and this song came out in 2015. 

 

Lynn Saoirse – “Carolan’s Welcome / Mrs. Cole”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Today, two traditional airs composed by Turlough O’Carolan – the famous 17th century Irish blind harper – played on the harp by Lynn Saoirse, from her album The Seas Are Deep which includes a lot of music composes by O’Carolan. Not much is known about this first tune, as even its original title didn’t survive to our times and we don’t even know if it originally had any lyrics – many of O’Carolan’s songs did. – It was the Irish band The Chieftains (I’ve shared one of their songs on here as well, together with Maire Brennan) who named it Carolan’s Welcome, when they adapted it to serve as the theme music for pope John Paul II’s visit to Dublin in 1979. As for the second tune, I haven’t been able to find much about it, but given its title, Mrs Cole must have been one of his patrons or someone else significant in his life, as a lot of his music was composed in honour of various people.