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swisscgny · 4 years

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MEET NEIL ENGGIST

We recently interviewed Swiss-American painter Neil Enggist to talk about his life, work and how he is coping with self-isolation. Neil’s exhibition The Practice of the Wild was supposed to open at the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York last month as the 8th edition of Art@The Consulate but was postponed due to COVID-19.

Hi Neil, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Where are you right now? It is my pleasure. I’m in New Jersey. I have a backyard studio near Princeton, in the old house where I grew up. I’m staying put as much as I can.

Tell us about yourself, where did you grow up? My mother is from Taiwan and my father was born and raised in Luzern, both coming for graduate studies in 1969 to Buffalo. I was born and raised in Princeton Junction in an old stone house near a small forest and the train station. My father was teaching in the Bronx and Connecticut, then trying his hand at importing Swiss Chocolate, but at some point in the 1970s, he turned to stained glass. I remember him cutting, wrapping, and soldering in the backyard. My mother worked for the state of NJ, and drew from the model in her spare time. I drew dinosaurs like a maniac, not very well I may add, but at some point around age 7, my father asked me to draw a dinosaur that he made into a stained glass panel. As a family we traveled to Luzern about every 2 years, and I still remember the smell of Birenwecken and lightning over the Vierwaldstättersee. I drew all the time but wasn’t precocious, as a youth, I was shy, quiet, hot tempered, diligent with school, perfectionist, and mostly played soccer and saxophone and you know, did my math homework.

When did you know you wanted to become an artist? I went to art school at Washington University in 2000, but it wasn’t until studying abroad in Florence in 02 that I had the feel of becoming an artist. There is a laminated portrait from first grade, age 6, where I put into writing that I wanted to be an ‘Artist.’ But in Florence my life felt like it shifted from art student to artist, 3 dear friends and I shared an apartment on Piazza Independenza, learning photography, printmaking, illustration, bookmaking, Italian and art history at a tiny art school called Santa Reparata. My future Love lived up the street and sometimes the cheap red wine would flow. Behind every door were Renaissance frescos, leaping off the walls were Donatellos, and it was the beginning of my explorations as a painter. I would paint plein-air small landscapes and cityscapes with oils, but by the end my ambition grew into a very large Kandinskyesque abstract rendition of Michelangelo’s Final Judgment fresco from the Sistine wall. A year later, back in St. Louis I declared painting as my major, and in the words of Joe Campbell, began ‘following my bliss.’

Neil Enggist, Sea on Earth, acrylic and stain on wood, 2011

How would you describe your style? Has it changed over the years? I would say it’s an Organic Abstract Expressionism, or Nature Action Painting. Over nearly 20 years, YES it has changed! Like a photon going from point A, painting the Ponte Vecchio, to B, dancing on a piece of steel with turmeric and ocean water, taking every single possible path! To say it’s moved linearly would be wrong, but there is a sequence of transformations or leaps, in the Ozarks, Mysticism, Heartbreak, Dylan, New Mexico, Traveling Europe, The Mir, snow painting, India, Brooklyn, Voice and Veil, Gardening, going cross county, yoga, India again, the dance, steel, the tides, The Tao and the Yellow Mountains, devotion. I’m very interested how Dylan’s work has transformed and shifted, beyond expectation, without calculation, yet somehow almost always in line with his poetic essence. My paintings have changed like dinosaurs and birds, from a common source, many branches, some seemingly from different worlds, some becoming bones and fossils, some soaring through the sky.

Tell us about your artistic practice, where do you paint, what inspires you? Well we can start with Highway 61.. music of the American vernacular, jazz, blues, country, rock, folk, hip hop.. from Louis Armstrong, Strange Fruit, Charlie Parker, to the early Bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson, folksingers like Woody Guthrie, onwards and outwards to Wutang and Nas. Basquiat inspires me. Ana Medieta, DeKooning, Paul Klee, David Hammons, Polke, Mel Chin, James Turrell, Richard Long, Kerry James, Doig, Ofili, Wangechi Mutu, John Akomfrah, Bonnard, Matisse, Puryear too. Gary Snyder's brilliant collection of essays 'The Practice of the Wild,' from where the title of the exhibition comes, has helped me attune to the wild systems at play in nature and within, and continues to evolve my way of thinking, seeing, and creative being. Taking a journey into nature, not just a dip into nature, but really feeling the connections, the web that runs through the forest and is woven into your own nature. The Redwoods, the Swiss Alps, the Coast of California.. I lose and become myself here. In my practice, nature is welcomed into the process of artistic creation. The imagined line between artistic intention and the creative functioning of wilderness is blurred, or more accurately, these spheres merge into a unified moment. It’s a spiritual practice, a kind of Taoist exercise, merging with the changes of the natural world, not holding, not fixing, listening to what the painting wants to become, and finding the color to enable the beholding. I paint outside and on the road, sometimes inside.. anywhere..

Neil Enggist, Odyssey III, acrylic, dye and turmeric on canvas, 2020

What role does Switzerland play in your life/art? My family has a house in Luzern, with a balcony opening to a view of Mount Pilatus that I would call perfect.. at least on the days where it’s not obscured by Nebel! Since 2012, I’ve been spending many springs / summers living there, in the bohemian remodeling of our chalet attic called the Macolette. I have painted and drawn our view of Pilatus so many times, it is ingrained in my mind’s eye. I’ve explored and hiked the mountains surrounding the Vierwaldstättersee, Grindelwald, Engadin, and Zermatt, finding places on and off the path to paint. When I am in the mountains, alone with my pack, in the quietude and breathtaking beauty, I feel something akin to being home, being one with myself, being on my true path. This feeling is fleeting and eternal. Also, during many of the summers, I have worked with my great friend and mentor, garden designer, Andre Ammann, constructing and maintaining gardens around Luzern. Working with him has taught me in so many ways, to notice the minute changes of spring, to work with contrasts of nature and culture, to understand placement of boulders and trees, how to create a riverscape, to dissolve into the consciousness of the river. When we are done with the work, all cleaned, raked, and hosed down, Andre and I look at our work, and he’ll say, ‘Now, the garden starts, try to see how this will look in 10 years, in 50 years..’ This has been a major influence in my own ‘Practice of the Wild’ and painting. It has also taught me how to shovel!

You have traveled all over the world, how has the nomad life shaped your art? As a traveler, painting becomes the act of experiencing and processing place; the painting becomes an archive of experience. Traveling serves to connect the painter with the uncomfortable and uncalculated, which forces a spontaneity and body-memory response. I aim to paint as one would do battle and dance and play jazz at once. In traveling, the painter becomes the abstraction, inhabiting transient and visionary territory. Materials from places of special significance, white gypsum sand from New Mexico, pigment from the Holi festival of India, black sand from Kanyakumari, gravel from Highway 61, layer into the topography, giving the painting a personal geographic context, while opening formal and textural possibilities. On the road, I explore the spiritual territory of color, and natural occurrences of unearthly blues.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, travel is no longer possible, in what ways has the pandemic shaped your practice / life? I just drove from California to NY in 5 days to install the Consulate show, just before the Covid situation hit the fan. I am supposed to be in India right now, doing a residency in the Himalayas! I’ve had a number of shows postponed and it just really doesn’t seem like people are buying many paintings right now.. But, really compared to people who are sick, caring for loved ones, and risking their lives to care for others, my sacrifices are minuscule. And I can most surely still paint! But I’m trying to use this time to do things I would have done in ‘normal’ times, but there are no normal times anymore. I’ve been making sculptures out of half rotten wood using an ax and a handsaw. I’ve been learning some Tai Chi from my Ma. I’ve started reading the Mahabharata. I’ve been texting whole a lot of hearts to California and writing love songs, and staying out of the bar..

Neil Enggist, That Great Mysterious Storm, acrylic, ink, oil and sand on canvas, 2010

What important lessons do you think we can learn from the impact of the pandemic? Well, first and foremost gratitude for life, health, and for the things that we used to take for granted. To be grateful for the people who are dear to us. This may sound cliché, but the pandemic has shown us how connected we are, for better and for worse. We are interdependent, and what affects one region affects the global community. I hope that people can stop and reassess their personal and collective relationship with the planet. In a profound and dire way, humans and our socio-economic systems have entered an unbalanced, virus-like relationship with this Earth. Humans seem to need wake up calls to affect changes, I hope this pandemic serves as a paradigm shift for enough of us. We are in this together. Yes when this is over, it will be great to go to a yoga class, an Indian restaurant, and to toast with friends, but we each need to use this time to reaffirm our commitments to each other and to all beings of this planet, and not go back to business as usual.

What advice do you have for people stuck at home? Can you recommend something to read, listen or watch? Well I’m a Liverpool fan, and we were just about to WIN the premier league, so I’ve had to go back and watch Liverpool highlights to cope. There’s a lovely interview with the legendary skipper Steven Gerrard in conversation with Gary Neville on youtube. I’m a very lazy television watcher, meaning I don’t really watch new things, so it’s The Sopranos, and very little else. Peaky Blinders is good, violent, but solid. Kurosawa’s ‘Dreams’ is a ravishing movie. I just saw ‘Purple Rain’ again, EPIC. When I drove across country I listened to Toni Morrison’s own reading of her novel ‘A Mercy,’ and it took my breath away, literally every sentence .. I don’t know how I even made it! She’s a true master in telling a harrowing story in pure poetry. Also reading ‘An Indigenous People’s History of the United States’ and Leonard Peltier’s ‘Prison Writings.’ Musically I needed a lil rock, so I went back to the Black Keys ‘Brothers’, Brittany Howard’s solo ‘Jaime’ is good, JS Ondara, Black Pumas, Valerie June’s ‘Love Told a Lie,’ AM!R’s ‘Parachute, ‘ and the syrupy ‘Cigarettes after Sex.’ I’ve been listening as well to Gann Brewer’s most recent ‘Absolution.’ I made the video for his ‘River Song.’ Tracy Chapman’s first album is incredible. Springsteen’s ‘The River’ is like his White Album and sometimes I need to hear the Boss sing ‘Heart and Soul’ over and over.. and hear that ‘Drive All Night’ sax solo by the late great Clarence Clemons. I am from Jersey, don’t forget. Listening to a lot of John Prine too, and with his recent passing, his music shines like a diamond ring. ‘Christmas in Prison’ is one of my favorites of many. Oh and Bob Dylan just released a 17 minute song about the assassination of JFK, and it’s .. indescribable.

Thank you Neil!

To find out more about Neil Enggist go to www.neilenggist.com, contact Neil at [email protected] and follow him @neilenggist

Scroll down for more information about the exhibition The Practice of the Wild which will open to the public as soon as it is safe to do so. Please note that all paintings depicted in this article are featured in the exhibition.

NEIL ENGGIST

THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD

8TH EDITION OF ART@THE CONSULATE

THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD by Swiss-American painter Neil Enggist is comprised of a series of abstract mixed media Nature Action Paintings, a method by which nature performs an integral part in the artistic process.

Neil Enggist, The Storm Ends, acrylic, ink, dye and sand on canvas, 2019

“My work seeks to embody the random precision through which life and spirit intersect. Within a liminal environment, I present set of conditions where the form can be born through an unfolding of natural currents. The nature of water, marks of evaporation, melting, freezing, burning, gravity, animal tracks, traces of dance, time, storms, tides and all manner of seasonal and emotional weather coincide to transform the canvas into a terrain in flux. Whether I am dripping ink into a melting tuft of snow, pouring the ocean on burning ink, or slashing the surface with a fallen pine branch, each action is composed within a system of nature. The result is a site of becoming where oceanic, emotive, and mystical stories interplay”

Raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Neil Enggist studied fine arts at Washington University in St. Louis and Santa Reparata in Florence. He earned his MFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 2016 where he made paintings on steel in the tidal zones of the Bay Area, searching for a language between art and nature, incorporating ideas of performance and sculpture imbedded in the earth art movement. Enggist has participated in a number of art residencies including the Lucid Art Foundation in Point Reyes, CA, and most recently journeyed to the land of his grandmother to paint the City of Shanghai and the Yellow Mountains of China. Through his extensive travels in Europe, the Americas, and Asia he developed a body of painting and poetry shown in New York, Milan, Mumbai, Luzern, and Paris. Enggist lives and works between New York and Luzern, Switzerland.

Neil Enggist, The Schreckhorn, acrylic, ink, pigment and oil on canvas, 2007

THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD is the eighth edition of Art @ The Consulate, a curatorial initiative by the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York to showcase the work of Swiss artists living in the United States. Follow Art @ The Consulate on Social media #SwissArtNYC

Neil Enggist, A Candle Burns at Night, Acrylic and ink on canvas, 2008

#SwissArtNYC

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lotsofdogs · 6 years

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Chase Update: Three Years Old

I found myself Googling whether or not I could still refer to Chase as a toddler on his third birthday on Sunday and the answer according to the wise old internet is no. While some sources say children are toddlers until they’re four years old, when I think about a toddler, I picture a clumsy little one toddling around and that most certainly is not Chase anymore. So I guess he really is a little kid now!?

I know every parent says it so I’m going to follow suit and say I cannot quite believe my first born child is officially a three-year-old kid and no longer a baby or a toddler. HOW!?

I started sharing monthly updates about Chase when he was a baby and slowly decreased their frequency once he grew up a bit. I don’t have a plan for updates for Chase or Ryder in the future but will likely share as often as I feel the urge to update and address how things are going with our two boys. (I have my first Ryder and postpartum update in the works and hope to share it soon!) For Chase, I see updates happening twice a year or so which is fitting since I shared my last 2.5 year old Chase update on the blog back in January.

It’s crazy for me to think about how much has changed with Chase since his second birthday. He’s now talking a mile a minute and asks a bazillion questions a day. When Chase is awake, he’s almost always running and talking and things definitely feel crazier than ever around here. One of my favorite personality traits Chase possesses is his intense curiosity and he seems to genuinely love learning about anything and everything. He’s especially interested in whales, sharks, space, dinosaurs, airplanes, fire trucks and cars.

Chase continues to be incredibly social and loves playing with his friends and other children. Big kids are intriguing him more and more and if a big kid ever takes Chase under his or her wing at the pool or park, he is in heaven. Chase needs to know everyone’s name at all times and remembers almost all of them. He loves singing, dancing, playing and running. (He will honestly turn to me and say, “Mom, do you want to run with me?”) His energy knows no bounds and I truly love how joyful and excited he is on a daily basis.

Eating

As the months (okay, years) go on, I am relaxing more and more about Chase’s eating. Yes, I still get stressed about him actually consuming food since he would always, always rather play than eat and he’s still very light for a three-year-old but he’s been growing along his own little curve for three years now despite his lack of desire to eat so I suppose I should just learn to let it be and trust that he won’t starve himself.

As far as food go-tos, Chase loves bananas, berries, pumpkin muffins, chocolate chip larabars (I truly buy them by the case on Thrive Market), homemade popsicles (LOVE these for getting fruits and veggies in him in a fun way that feels like a treat), Simple Mills crackers, cucumbers, carrots, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pizza, apples, burgers, oranges, macaroni and cheese aaaand of course ice cream and anything with sprinkles and icing.

Lunch is generally his best meal of the day as far as food consumption is concerned and we struggle the most with getting him to eat at dinnertime.

Sleep

I’m not sure if touching on sleep now that we have a three-year-old is really of interest but since Chase is still napping, maybe it is? I don’t know! Chase is such an energetic kid and does not stop moving and playing when he’s awake so I’m very grateful that he’s still napping for the most part even if it’s not every day. I’m actually working on this blog post as Chase is supposed to be napping and he’s currently in his crib singing, “We Will Rock You,” soooo there’s that.

So, while Chase clearly isn’t napping every single day, I can usually count on five days of decent naps around here. On the days when Chase doesn’t nap, I try to encourage “quiet time” and will let him read books in his crib. He’ll often do this for an hour or so and sometimes it morphs into imagination games with his stuffed animals. I don’t really care what he does in his crib during his “quiet time” but I do feel like most days he truly needs this time alone to rest after such intense play!

Sometimes Chase won’t nap and quiet time doesn’t happen but on those days he will often be in quite a mood by the late afternoon. We’re talking tears, whining and the whole enchilada. He’ll often be weepy and whiny up until dinner time which can really test my patience but I try my best to dial things back and stay home for a quiet afternoon when he’s acting incredibly fussy. I say all of this to say YES, he’s still napping and YES I think he still needs his naps. I am not sure when I can expect him to drop his nap but I’m definitely not pushing it!

Challenges

Right now our biggest challenge seems to center around listening, particularly at the very end of the day/bed time. Chase seems to know exactly how to push our buttons and let’s just say the word “no” is his go-to response for many things these days. (He’s also a master negotiator.)

He seems to get a huge burst of energy and adrenaline the minute we say it’s bedtime (amazing how that happens, huh?) and will run all over the place, squealing and doing everything he can to put off bedtime and avoid brushing his teeth, putting on his pajamas, etc. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do and how to respond but for the most part, staying firm and telling him that he has to listen or he won’t get as many stories before bed usually works but it can be incredibly draining to go through this whole shebang at the end of a long day.

As far as the whining, crying and general disobedience are concerned, two things that work better than anything (most of the time) include distraction or turning things into games and taking the time to slow down and talk with Chase about his feelings. When Chase is crying or throwing a fit, I find that when I simply ask him, “What are you feeling right now?” he’ll often calm down as he tries to think about what he’s actually feeling in the moment. It’s not a foolproof method to overcome these challenges but it works 10,000 times better than allowing myself to get exasperated and frustrated which only escalates his emotions, frustrations and tears. He definitely responds best to calm but firm correction and communication.

I am always open to learning about the way other parents handle discipline and how others deal with their children when they’re not listening, so if there is anything that has worked particularly well for you in this regard, I’d love to hear it!

The Big Brother Transition

A lot of people have asked how Chase is transitioning into his new role as a big brother and the short answer is really, really well. Truly I am so impressed with Chase and tell him every day how proud I am of how kind and loving he is toward Ryder. I think the three-year age difference is working in our favor because we can communicate with Chase and he understands everything that’s happening.

Chase is very interested in everything from nursing to diaper changes and I think his curiosity has helped with this transition as well. He seems to take his big brother role seriously and if Ryder is ever crying, he’ll look at me and say, “Mom! He needs some milk!”

This isn’t to say everything has been super smooth but I was prepared for some serious jealousy so I’ve been really grateful with how the adjustment has been going so far. Chase had a couple of accidents (only pee) after Ryder came home from the hospital (we were warned that there might be some potty training regression during this time so at least I expected it and it was really limited) and occasionally at the end of the day Chase will tell Ryan to “hold the baby” so I can cuddle with him to say prayers or tuck him in at night. While Chase does have his “I need my mom” moments for sure, I think I struggle more with feeling the dreaded mom guilt over the loss of so much one-on-one attention for Chase than he even seems to notice right now.

There have also been numerous moments where Ryder is screaming which sets Chase off on a downward spiral and then both kids are crying and screaming and I just want to cry, too. But thankfully Chase is usually very understanding when Ryder cries and will let me nurse him or try to soothe him to sleep while he plays. Chase will also often start singing the Daniel Tiger song, “When you feel so mad and you want to roar, take a deep breath and count to four,” to try to help Ryder “calm down” when he’s crying which makes my heart melt.

Chase understands that he must be gentle around Ryder and he will often walk right over to him and gently touch the top of his head and give his little brother a kiss which is simply the best thing to witness. He likes to get right up in his face and talk or sing to him which is both comical and adorable. Thankfully Ryder is a pretty laid back little baby and seems to love watching his big brother entertain him!

Likes

Playing outside

Imagination games

Dinosaurs

Dragons

Sharks and whales

His friends

Swimming

Visiting the library

Boat rides on the lake

Watching the birds/filling the bird feeder in our backyard

Helping Mom cook

Listening to stories/books

Seek-and-find games

How to Train Your Dragon

Dislikes

Being told it’s time for bed

Getting dressed

When we have to leave the house in a hurry

Three Year Old Favorites

PLAY

Plasma Car

Flashlights

Balls

Magformers

VTech Rock & Bop Music Player (Chase loves this for car rides and thinks the headphones are so cool!)

Bath Bombs

Water WOW! Activity Pads

Touch & Teach Book

Water Table

Toy Airplanes

Puddle Jumper

Shark toy

Trains + Train Table

Kitchen Helper Cooking Stand

LeapFrog Laptop

Melissa & Doug Take-A-Long Tools

BOOKS

Pete the Cat Books

National Geographic Ocean Animals

My Big Book of Beginner Books About Me

Daniel Tiger Books

5 Minute Bedtime Bible Stories

Gigantosaurus

The Ultimate Book of Vehicles

Past Updates

2 1/2 Years Old

26 Months

20-22 Months

17-19 Months

13-16 Months

Twelve Months

Eleven Months

Ten Months

Nine Months

What I Wish I Knew Before My Baby Was Born

Eight Months

Seven Months

Six Months

Our First Sleep Training Experience

Traveling With A Baby For The First Time

Five Months

Four Months

Three Months

Two Months

And Then He Smiled

Three Weeks

The First 12 Days

Q&A: All About Birth & Life With A New Baby

Chase’s Birth Story: Part I, Part II

[Read More ...] https://www.pbfingers.com/chase-update-three-years-old/

#health #fitness

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7m0r0-blog · 6 years

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401 1.1 Deconstruction. (Emmanuel Dultheo)

We were previously asked to create a mindmap diagram to evaluate and write down all the components in our brand. Here i’m going to break down and reflect on the different headlines given.

IMAGE & INDENTITY

I want to start by saying that I’ve always had a quite reserved personality which is one of the things people can easily observe when they meet me for the first time. As an artist in the past I could say that it was very difficult over coming what i would call “Post upload anxiety”, which is basically not being confident enough to share your art with other people. This kind of explain why I wrote “Anti-Social Socialite” Which is a big part of my character, I take a big pleasure engaging, collaborating and discuss with people, but I may be perceived by people as anti social given that I act very “non chalantly” at times which may be very confusing or seen as a character flaw as a first impression. I have always been a little bit naive in the sense that I trusted things and words easily, as a kid I always looked at cartoon and anime character as almost a father figure like naruto, luffy, Ash, and Like i would see how they acted and they were similarities like they would be the strongest but they always had a team, they didn’t believe in the traditional ways of thinking, they were always humble and other qualities which all gave me confidence to be myself at all times and later find out that all these qualities also help a lot in real life and plays a big part when chasing success. As for my image I always liked the outliers in most fields like sport, music, tv. I think my image is a influenced by a lot of different cultures, like hip hop, London streets, Martinique’s streets, French, Black French, Skateboarding. A mix of different cultures which means for example back then I was a fan of skateboarding trainers, but I also liked the baggy jeans too or a nike tracksuit and Lacoste trainers. So the way I dress, talk, and act would be influenced by a series of different cultures.

CREATIVE OUTPUT

I put out my first video as Doranbeats on youtube in 2015, the year after 2016 I decided to make a beatstars account to start selling my beats online, It was working and still is but then i wanted to work closely with artist because most of my sales were coming from overseas, at the time I did not have that many contacts so I decided to record on my own beats and this is when I made the transition from producer to artist which means i can be creative in different format, I then named myself Doran, but I then changed it to N.AroD because I didn’t want those two brands to be associated together, but later down the line “N.AroD” was still too similar to the original producing brand so I went with 7M0R0, which is pronounced “Tomorrow” Because it is a powerful word that people use everyday, its easily pronounced if you can’t speak the language, the meaning of the word is very interesting and the spelling kind of make it stand out. It is spelled like that because of the era I grew up in as a teenager, we started seeing more and more brand names especially in music start with numbers or replacing letters with numbers which is kind of a trendy behaviour nowadays but will later be seen as one of the characteristics used to identify this era of the culture, knowing that I was going to develop the brand I wanted this kind of characteristics in the name of the brand so It will always be memorable and associated with this era of hip hop. After my first project I just kept releasing singles via soundcloud, to build a fan base and so people can observe diversity in my music.

INDUSTRY AWARENESS

Growing up I didn’t get much information about the Industry, after a lot of thinking and investigating, I came to the conclusion that no one would “come out of the blue” to sit me down and teach me about the industry, and thats when I did my research and surrounded myself with passionate people that I finally got insight on what is behind the curtain. One thing that also helped me a lot when trying to figure out the industry and how it works was watching top entertainers interview and dissecting them. It is a lot of valuable information such as, how to get paid, how to beat “creative blocks”, beneficial behaviours...etc. There are also a lot of podcasts/tutorials and things that tells you a lot about the industry, I watched those too but not as much as interviews, as some of those videos would be completely outdated advice.

EXPERIENCE

Spending the most part of my childhood living in my grand mother’s house in Martinique, helped me built character and taught me a lot about different human behaviours. It also gave me informations as to how to deal and talk to other women as i was living at the time with 3 or 4 women (mum, grand mother & aunties) and my grand father. Before this time period i was living in French Guiana for about 2 years, I really love it out there because it is a land in south America full of diverse cultures (Taki-Taki, Asian, Creole etc...). One of the reasons why i got along with people or managed to get accepted in certain circles without trying is because from a young age I been exposed to a multitude of different cultures, which helped develop my own personality and confidence from young. One of the most mind opening trip, I have had was back in 2007, when for a month and a half, my mother and me went to Switzerland. This was so shocking to me at 9 to be around kids from all around the globe and in this massive private school with crazy budgets. I was mind blown to know that there was so much things happening outside of my culture and even worse, that certain people weren’t even familiar with my country or my struggles. I think these different experience really helped me once i came to London as a teenager, not knowing the language, the culture and “the streets”, I’m saying that because I found out a lot of people from here accepted me for how weird i was even though they wouldn’t accept other people with the same interests as me sometimes. I didn’t know exactly what i was, or who i was but I understood I had to stand behind everything I was presenting to people from a young age. Whilst all this was happening I also learnt how to appreciate life and the value in it, because of numerous death in my family and around me. Which is one of the principles reflected by my brand, to value life which is different from “getting the most out of life” to me.

PRODUCT

The first piece of music I’ve ever owned was from a French singer/song writer called Pascal Obispo, at the time it was my favourite music ever because of the instruments he was able to play, I also think this where part of my love for pianos come from, because I’d always watch him perform live on tv. Another important album for me was “welcome to jamrock” by Damian Marley, and also I had a lot of positive memories attached to this album. I was already listening to a lot of music from Jamaica (Dancehall, Reggae & Bashment) but what made me gravitate toward Damian was is non chalant energy, his look and how he was using is voice so meticulously in every single track on this project. Growing up I was also obsessed with video games especially games from animes such as naruto, one piece and pokemon, i already explained why i liked this so much earlier. What bred this love for animes, and cartoons all started because of DBZ mangas I used to read, I had tons of mangas in my room all the time. With that said Nintendo and Playstation played a big roll in my life The brand logos were all around the house. My favourite games were, DBZ Budokai, Pokemon Red, green and platinum, GTA san andreas, Dragon quest, One piece and saint seiya. After awhile I started paying more attention to music and developing my taste in music, and it was kind of all over the place. My favourite project of all time is from Wiz Khalifa called “Taylor allderdice” everything about this project just seemed so coherent and holistically made. A group that had a big impact on my understanding of music was Green Dayz, I loved some of their tracks so much because it was never traditional rock, it just sounded amazing to me. And no one in my entourage at the time could understand why i gravitated towards this kind of music. Other project also influenced me later down the line, such as WATTBA, Better dayz Pt.2 (which i never knew about before 2013), Trapsoul, Rolling papers and DS2. Moving onto movies, they aren’t usually that memorable to me. I just have that 1 film that i hold above everything else, because i related to it so much and the writing, I just found amazing, This movie is called “17 years”.

MARKET AWARENESS

I became familiar with Hip Hop culture I’d say way later than my peers, and by becoming familiar I mean get a basic understanding of it. Due to my geographical position on earth, our culture was very much influenced by jamaican culture which as well as American Hip Hop culture, with trends such as graffiti, baggy clothes, nike and jordans. Anyone could come to my Island and pinpoint the different influences from hip hop culture, but growing up in the island not knowing the history of hip hop due to language barriers I always thought it all came from us and found it normal. I was never questioning why I’d wear certain things and brand because I didn’t know where it was coming from at all. With the advancement of technology I started understanding more and finally understood that i was part of the market if I was influenced by it. One thing that I started noticing as well was auto tune, and i first noticed it when Lil wayne first came out with his hit singles such as “a milli”. Jewellery is another thing that I realised was a big part of hip hop artists brand and at the time I just thought that every artist had to have jewellery because it has been pushed on the market for so long. With technology the music industry became more accessible to regular people, which i first observed when I realised that more and more people i knew or seen at some point in my life were later part of this industry, which also means that they were going to be more and more artists.

CLIENT/FAN BASE

I started putting products (Beats) out on YouTube to build a fan base and get my beats heard by potential clients, knowing that YouTube is one of the biggest online platforms. In the first year I managed to get 400+ subs so I carried on, then i was missing sales because i was missing emails, so I joined beatstars to sell my beats online without me having to email files at crazy times. Once I did that I wanted to expand my reach to IG,Facebook and Soundcloud. So that’s exactly what I did, I created multiple account for doranbeats on different platforms and started uploading Doran’s content on them. As for my soundcloud audience 7M0R0 just kept dropping music at least once a month.

CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS

I’ve always had a good relationship with my clients, and never really had any complaints. Dealing with clients, contacts and potential clients I always show respect and always make sure i’m attentive to what they have to say about my services and their demands. This way of carefully dealing with people always helped me meet even more people, because once a good first impression made people would in some cases recommend me to their friends or clients.

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

My sound was influenced by a lot of different artist from different cultures. My French rap influence were, Booba, Lafouine, Soprano & Alpha 5.20. I gravitated towards them because the way they produced music was never seen before especially in the french rap culture. Zouk Music is a genre of music from Martinique which also was a big part of my understanding of rhythm and music in general. Jamaican singers were the closest to my own culture so I naturally gravitated towards Bashment, Reggae and Dancehall, with influences from Vybz Kartel, Popcaan and Mr. vegas, with other Caribbean artists such as Kalash and Eugene Mona (both from Martinique). My American hip hop influences come from 50Cent, Wiz Khalifa, Chief Keef, Lil Uzi Vert, Snoop Dogg, Famous Dex, Chris Brown. Not all of these artists influences my sound directly, but some played a big role influencing my brand on other levels such as “Image & Identity”. Other American Artist I felt inspired by was Rihanna, Jason Mraz, Neil diamonds, Al Green and Jamiroquai.

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alhorner · 7 years

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How Alicia Keys arrived Here – cover feature and short film

Every day is a near-death experience in Alicia Keys’ “dark, desolate, beautiful” New York. It was in an elementary school car park that the revelation struck. “I’d just dropped my son off for class this one time, and I read the illest article. So, the average American lives 76 years. But break that down to days, and that’s only 28,000 days on this earth,” she grins, slowing those last few words to a crawl for impact. 76 years sounds like an eternity. 28,000 days? That seems far more fleeting. “Time, man,” she laughs. “Time is not to be fucked with.”

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This epiphany lit a fire within the R&B icon, who wrote a song about it, presumed by many to be the first single from and blueprint for her upcoming sixth studio album. Instead, the fiery, danceable gospel of Here, released this week, is as much fueled by fury at the thought of those never given a chance to make it to that number – the men, women and children not allowed anywhere near 28,000 days on this earth. From soulful single ‘Hallelujah’, about the refugee crisis in Syria, to tracks informed by war, police brutality and the “school-to-prison pipeline” for young black males, it’s a record on which Alicia, for the first time, feels “ready to speak on what’s happening” in a divided election-time America and beyond. There’s happiness, hope and healing on Here too. But make no mistake – this is an infectiously fired-up Alicia Keys unlike we’ve seen before, whose frustration at the systems ending lives before they really begin can no longer be contained.

“My sister asked me if I was ready to be the Nina I was born to be, the Bob I was born to be, the Lennon I was born to be. Because the time is now. We’re living through it. The world is fucked up,” she says, her voice crackling with anger. “It’s backwards, and it’s getting more backwards, blatantly backwards, than I think it’s ever been before. But it’s actually a good thing I think, in a strange way.” Until recently “the world and especially America did a really good job at covering up and hiding” the kind of racism currently living out in the open, she suggests. “But now that the veil is gone, there’s no hiding anymore. We can actually attack it.”

Keys may talk up this new release as coinciding with something of a personal political awakening. But dig beneath the tabloid headlines – her marriage to rap producer Swizz Beatz, her Nietzsche-referencing speech at the launch of Tidal in 2014, and most recently, her public decision to stop wearing makeup – and she’s always appeared awake to the horrors of the world. The 35-year-old spent her son's sixth birthday in 2014 outside the Nigerian consulate in New York, protesting the Boko Haram kidnappings in Nigeria. Last year, she raised $3.8m for AIDS awareness in one night at her 12th annual Black Ball in Manhattan. In 2008 she was hailed by black rights groups for telling an interviewer that Tupac and Notorious BIG were "essentially assassinated, their beefs stoked by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing”, though she later claimed the comments had been misinterpreted. For someone so plugged in to and outspoken about human rights issues, Here is the first time that hunger for change has spilled explicitly out into her music, on an album that doubles up as a return to her hip-hop-infused New York roots. She says it collects the sounds, stories, struggles and sunshine of a place she likens to “an electric painting... this explosion of people, accents, sounds and smells of people the cooking in the street. Those dudes with the pretzels! Oh man, I love the pretzels.”

“There’s a kind of magic here,” Keys explains of her hometown, on a relatively quiet Thursday afternoon. It’s the sixth anniversary of her wedding to Swizz Beatz this weekend, and after our interview she’s away on a “kinda romantic getaway,” she blushes. Swizz is one of the “perfect team” around her who worked on Here, which she describes as “this collision of sounds that’s about to start the illest conversations.” Though she’s hesitant to discuss exact artists she looked to when shaping its sound, she calls it “diverse…. like a thunderbolt struck it.”

Here – geographically speaking – has pretty much always been New York for Keys. The daughter of a powerhouse Italian-Irish mother, Terri Augello, and absent flight attendant father, Craig Cook, she grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, in an apartment on 43rd and 10th. Inspired by her dynamo mother, a legal aid and actor, she threw herself into her studies at a performing arts school after writing her first song aged 13 about the death of her grandfather. By 21, she’d sold 12 million copies of her debut album Songs In A Minor. By 22, she had five Grammys to her name. By 24, her Diary of Alicia Keys album had become the sixth biggest-selling album by a female artist of all time. 15 years later, a decade and a half since the heart-melting piano waltz of ‘Fallin’ first rung out on radios, she remains one of the biggest and most influential names in pop, called on by Barack Obama to perform at his second Presidential inauguration and now with 35 million album sales behind her.

Though her success has taken her all over the world, Keys insists that spiritually she’s never strayed far from her roots. She still lives in Hell’s Kitchen, where her children attend piano lessons at the same school that she learned to play at. “It’s kind of crazy every time I walk in. On one hand it’s a community and I feel very protected. On the other, I feel like I’m trapped in the Twilight Zone, all those memories,” she laughs. It’s a very different place now to the one she grew up in though, the slow-creep of gentrification having turned a neighbourhood that she once used to carry a pocket knife around in for protection into a safer space. “It was totally the place for the most disenfranchised,” remembers Keys. “It was pornography and X-rated stores, pimps and prostitutes, needles and drugs but also Broadway and theatre and promise and possibility and dreams and broken dreams. That definitely reflects in my music, now and forever.”

25 people were killed by police in New York last year, seven of which were unarmed black males. Last night, Keys was in Philadelphia, where she dedicated a performance at the Democratic National Convention to the Mothers Of The Movement – a group including the mothers of black police brutality victims Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and New Yorker Eric Garner. “It’s outrageous and devastating to me as a mother,” she says of the long-lasting epidemic of police violence towards POC that saw a total 1,134 black men killed by US law officials in 2015. “America can we see it’s out of control. The whole world can see it’s out of control. You’ve gotta be blind to not see it’s out of control. I have babies. Those were someone’s babies too. Those babies went outside and were killed and now they’re never gonna come back. Why? Because they’re black? Because they’re doing nothing but wearing a hoodie or reaching for their wallet?”

Learning to not be afraid to embrace your individuality is one of the key themes of Here, says Alicia. “I think a lot about my son. So what if my son wants to paint his own fingernails? So what. What do we do to our boys when we say ‘don’t cry! Boys don’t cry. Hold it in, man up, toughen up?’” That lesson about individualism extends to female body image, too. “Some of us wear business suits and have tough faces and wrinkles that speak to years of struggle and pain and strife to be recognised and appreciated. Then some of us are so glorious and big with our beautiful booties so huge, swaying in the summer sun,” she beams. “We’re so unbashful and glad to be ourselves and different from everyone else.” There’s a pause, and she smiles. “That’s a beautiful thing.”

Here arrives four years after Keys’ last album, 2012’s Girl On Fire, but “not reeeeeally four years,” she says playfully, nodding to her newborn baby Genesis. “You put out a record, then you promo a tour a record, and that itself it a two year process. So by the time you go back and actually engage in the process of what you’re going to build next, that’s another year, you’re up to three. Oh and throw a baby into the mix? Pshhh, there goes four!” Alicia wrote over 100 songs for Here, which she says is “so many things. A dialogue, a conversation about who we are. What are we living through? What are the stereotypes we’re battling to break out of?”

“I’m ready right now, I’m in my zone right now. I’m accessing a part of myself I’ve never been ready to access before,” she adds confidently. “I want people to find themselves to it, relate to it, identify with it, feel feel it, get lost to it, cry to it, laugh to it, dance to it, pray to it, grow to it… If you feel it, and if you lived it, and if you believed it, and you gotta say it because you can’t hold it back, then that’s soul music, you know what I mean?” You only get 28,000 days on earth, and that’s if you’re lucky. Alicia Keys is using hers wisely.

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