Category Archives: Hedonism

(Fade to Mind) US: 24 Feb 2017 UK: 24 Feb 2017

In the 21st century, theres an increasingly sad and desperate quality to pop culture hedonism. Oddly, this is perhaps most evident in the way that R&B has given way to club music. When former R&B producers and performers embraced dance music, you might have expected an increase in euphoria, an influx of ecstasy. Yet the digitally-enhanced uplift in the records by producers such as Flo-Rida, Pitbull and will.i.am has a strangely unconvincing quality, like a poorly photoshopped image or a drug that weve hammered so much weve become immune to its effects. Its hard not to hear these records demands that we enjoy ourselves as thin attempts to distract from a depression that they can only mask, never dissipate. A secret sadness lurks behind the 21st centurys forced smile Drake and Kanye West are both morbidly fixated on exploring the miserable hollowness at the core of super-affluent hedonism. No longer motivated by hip-hops drive to conspicuously consumethey long ago acquired anything they could have wantedDrake and West instead dissolutely cycle through easily available pleasures, feeling a combination of frustration, anger, and self-disgust, aware that something is missing, but unsure exactly what it is. Mark Fisher, The Secret Sadness of the 21st Century, Electronic Beats

Tears in the Club is a provocative title, and not only because the last few years have seen far too many actual tears in music venues from Bataclan to Pulse to Ghost Ship to BPM Mexico to a massacre in an Istanbul nightclub only a few weeks back. Clubs are supposed to be safe spaces, places where communities can form. They shelter those already feeling isolated and alienated from society by gathering their patrons together as part of a singular event. Clubs are allegiances and unions of listeners, linked to each other through common sound, but its easy to overlook kinks and vulnerabilities in this bond, the desolation, and conflict that often does not dissipate at the door.

The DJ, who up until the recent advent of the celebrity hand-waver set maintained a structural need to be integrated into the scenery of the club, may be the clubs loneliest attendant. He stands outside of the action because hes the master of controls, orchestrating fun for everyone else, but only participating in the party from the sidelines, behind the wizards curtain.

Unlike the secret sadness that the late Mark Fisher alludes to in the quote above, Kingdom, and the battalion of like-minded producers he has cultivated for his groundbreaking Fade to Mind imprint, have never hidden their malaise. Perhaps thats because their vernacular is 21st century pop, even if they ostensibly make experimental club tracks. Kingdom (aka Ezra Rubin) is no stranger to the format of slowed trap-inflected R&B/pop. He has worked wonders behind the boards of several hyper-contemporary tracks for Danity Kanes Dawn Richard (DWN) and Kelela over the past few years. Now, he has upped the ante on Tears in the Club, an immersive new conceptual experiment centered around four dour pop tracks, spaced out across the breadth of the record.

These songs are exactly the kind of gorgeously constructed, intimate, and melodically rich pop songs someone from the recent past might have thought wed be listening to in 2017. Theyre futuristic, sophisticated, catchy, and psychedelically wrought. However, theyre also deeply depressive.

The decision to focus on a canvas of future-pop/R&B may lead many to think that this represents some kind of permanent realignment for Kingdom, whose past work, while still deeply expressive, was mainly targeted towards feet rather than heartstrings. The lyric sheet doesnt exactly dissuade this theory either. Nothin featuring Syd of the Internet even goes so far as to paint this fluctuation as capitulation. My real art is amazing / Aint that a shame?, she intones, giving the false impression that perhaps this whole attempt at the pop record is half-hearted and more about staying financially afloat than charting new territory. Nothin is a deep, boozy reflection on the choice to go overground, but made from a nihilistic resolve and, ultimately, a vantage of practicality: Somethings got to give right now / So this is what it is right now / All or nothin / Nothin / Didnt work this hard for nothing / So Im gonna act up, gonna act out/ Gonna stack up, and then cash out. These cues exist elsewhere on the album too. Mostly instrumental, the transitional track Into the Fold begs to be interpreted as an invitation to the dark side, its lyrics limited simply to Come / Come / To me. Where? Into the fold, one would guess.

One might even see the trajectory of the entire album in this light. It opens with the forlorn breakup tune What Is Love, whose rhetorical question SZA answers by offering a compartmentalization: Break it down / Fuck it up / Now I see / What is love. Her tenor in this verdict is not aggressive, but anodyne, if a bit dispirited. Throughout the track amidst the slinky synths are two chants: NBA Jam style grunts on loan from Jam City and SZA herself distorted and hiccupping back it up. The latter functions as a literal placeholder (i.e., these are backup vocals) and a detached mechanized force for that compartmentalization, as if she is attempting to download somehow the data set for love. Broken through romantic misfortune, the album sets off in existential crisis, attempting to find solace in the club and finding that it cant fill voids which seem to have no bottom. The corresponding bookend to What Is Love is a Club Mix of Nothin, but one with a simple house beat rather than the abstract contraptions of Kingdoms previous EPs. That its the least interesting piece on the album seems to confirm the sellout/cash-out cycle alluded to in Nothin. Its surrender.

The easy riposte to the idea that this is a sellout album itself rather than an album tangentially about selling out is the music itself, still a little too odd for the charts even when its way too wound down for the clubs. Nothin easily rivals as the Internets Girl as one of the best things Syd has done to date, while vibrant neon jaunt Down 4 Whateva might be the best thing SZAs been involved with to date. Even better still is Breathless featuring unknown singer Shacar, an evocative performance in grimy hues, wild breadths of emotion sputtering throughoutconfidence, melancholy, pain, desire, and isolation all in the span of three minutes. It too concerns the creeping changes of success (Im not sorry because Im / Blowing up) and becoming guarded by its trappings (No weapon formed against me shall prosper / Tied up and alone I get haunted by my pride / So I can sing in front of my phone), eventually slicing open the surface to display the ache underneath. I bleed/I bleed/I bleed, Shacar sings in a sonic interpolation of Beyonces I slay / I slay / I slay from Formation. He resigns to hiding in the work, trailing off his final lines to face this suffering alone: Constantly grinding out hereyou cant see that / Im still trapped, and Im still hurting.

The energy of Breathless bleeds nicely into one of the albums six non-pop tracks, Tears in the Club. Tears in the Club is not only the track most reminiscent of Kingdoms older works, but also comes with specific sonic callbacks to one Kingdoms most well-known hits, Stalker Ha off of his 2011 Dreama EP. The pop cuts wallow in a kind of boozy attachment. SZA assumes an elegantly wasted stance on her two contributions, at first sounding wine-drunk and disoriented on What Is Love, slithering on and off the beat, and then predicting before a kind of skin-shedding hook up that Im gonna take a sip and lose my way tonight on Down 4 Whateva. Tears in the Club, comparatively, is all paranoia and dark feels, a cinematic second act of perpetual anxiety and rootlessness with its sinister piano and trap-does-70s horror film vibe.

The rest of the cuts are nothing to skip over either and lend extra weight and resonance to the songs surrounding them, making Tears in the Club an experience best listened to as a whole. Each and Every Day is almost off-puttingly centered and well-postured around a traditional beat, perhaps taking cues from Sophie in its minimalism. Its simple rhythm-based chorus cuts out melody altogether and then resumes for mantras of the words Each and Every Day while the pitched-up voice of Najee Daniels chirps ok, ok, ok. The self-betterment routine continues into the uncomplicated and swoony cut-ups of Nurtureworld which beg the listener to take me away, as the listener and producer drift together.

Although three years in the making, its increasingly hard to hear this or any album without 2017 ears. In the wake of Trumps despicable first few weeks, I found myself listening more and more to a playlist Id constructed of intensely melancholy music, realizing that Id done so because I hadnt yet given myself permission to be sad. The main takeaway I get from listening to Tears in the Club on repeat is the overwhelming feeling of you cant go home again. Somethings gotta give right now, Syd says. SZA takes this a step further saying, Ill be into you even when you aint around me / Ill be missing you even when you been around me. For every transcendent feeling of closeness in the clubs this year, therell be plenty others where one couldnt feel any more distant from whos standing right next to you. The urgency of being here now vs. the creeping sense of slowly becoming an island haunts this moment, with our interconnected sociality simultaneously culling common causes and confirming our isolationist biases.

Walking back into the club after having all thats on Kingdoms mind is like getting jolted by the nightmare trap of Tears in the Club. Its all darkness and anxiety now. Its visceral grip is as pulsatingly real as it is synthetic. The escape that the nave EDM pop that the turn of the decade offered now seems like the infamous K.C. Green strip On Fire, the flames burning around us as the nihilistic fatalism of #YOLO truly sinks in. The only way through is forward, and well need plenty of forward-thinking pop to help with that. Well need lots of songs that can help reform the bonds of community that a club can offer, and which pop can alleviate. Solidarity in suffering, a shared loneliness. We cant deny ourselves the right to be sad any more than we can deny ourselves the right to dance. Kingdoms album confronts this from a place that, if not deeply personal, at least feels so.

Rating:

Continued here:

Tears in the Club - PopMatters

Thursday Food

highlights five more chefs who are charged with introducing visitors and locals alike to the best culinary offerings in Jamaica.

This weeks featured chefs are from Hedonism II, Negril

Davey Thomas

Lead cook, Pastafari Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

At age six, Davey Thomas would study the ingredients as his mother cooked. Then he would try and replicate her cooking to see how his compared. All that practice still did not lead him to a six-burner stove. Actually, he took what he thought was the safe road by becoming an auto mechanic. But the passion for cooking had already taken root and Thomas eventually heeded and enrolled in the Petersfield Vocational Training Centre, where he studied Food Preparation.

I love trying new flavours and taking traditional recipes and adding new stuff. I take pride in my cooking as it reflects on me as an individual; its my pride, he says. Thomas spends a lot of his time surfing the Internet for new ideas and says, No matter what area you are in, you have to have a passion for it, otherwise it makes no sense.

Thomas likes preparing anything with seafood and he continues to hone his skills by cooking at home daily.

Milton Paltie

Garde manger, Hedonism II Resort

An ice-carving genius, says Executive Chef Anthony Miller of Milton Paltie.

Paltie was 14 the first time his aunt asked him to prepare a meal. Having no idea what to cook he enlisted the help of a friend, who added thyme, escallion and butter to the pot. The final result steam fish got rave reviews. To this day his aunt has no idea that he was not the cook.

Briefly sidetracked by carpentry until that income stream slowed, he found himself at Couples Tower Isle, the result of hearing about a vacancy in the stewards department.

When he arrived with a friend the only jobs available were for cooks. Certain that they would not qualify, they got the jobs nevertheless and started in the pantry. After a few months we was awarded Cook 1 (the highest level team member). Every day I was working from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm for about two years. The financial controller asked why I was working those long hours. I told him its not what I was putting in but what I was getting back, and what I was getting back was a salary and experience, so I felt that I was the one winning.

Paltie realised that he could make this his profession after travelling to North America and seeing the respect accorded chefs.

He took certification courses through Johnson and Wales in Kitchen Management, Sanitation and Garde Manger. His true passion, he decided, was fruit, vegetable and ice carving. Its like a painter with his canvas. For me, my canvas is the ice or the produce.

A recipient of many awards, Paltie has copped: the 2002 JCDC silver medal for ice carving and fish platter

2004 Curry Festival gold medal for fruit, vegetable and ice carving

2008 Wow Festival Master Ice Carver

2015 & 2016 Taste of Jamaica gold medalist for the ice carving

2106 Taste of Jamaica silver medal, lamb platter

I think cooking chose me, he tells Thursday Food.

Rashane Reid

Harry San Japanese Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Twenty-one-year-old Rashane Reid says, Cooking is in my genes; my father is a chef (in Nantucket) and as a child he always had me in the kitchen. My uncles are restaurateurs and bakers, my grandmothers gizzada, grater and toto cakes were amazing and famous.

As a child I was in awe of my fathers knife skills and knew I wanted to follow suit.

My first culinary expression was a fried egg which I overcooked. I was instructed by my mother to repeat the process until I got it right. To this day I am still fascinated by how many ways a simple egg can be prepared and, also, there is nothing about an egg I cant tell you. My mother continues to be my motivator. A few years ago she had a stroke and I made a promise to always make her proud.

My driving philosophy comes from my favourite book You Can Work Your Own miracle by Napoleon Hill. It says: I am who I am, where I am, because of my daily habits.

Hedonism is Reids first full-time job. He started as a trainee and through dedication and hard work now enters competitions like Taste of Jamaica. Hedonism took me from a baby to a man, and the best part of being a chef is seeing peoples faces when they taste your food. There is a bond between the diner and the chef.

Reids favourite meal to cook is chicken back with pumpkin served with cornmeal dumplings.

Odiane Whitelock

Pastafaria Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Odane Whitelocke remembers, as if it were yesterday, the day in 2005 when he decided he wanted to become a chef. My family members had a restaurant and I had started to work in there. I fell in love with it. That same year he enrolled at HEART Petersfield, where the love affair continued.

In 2009, in a quest to further his culinary skills, he attended George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. For me, cooking is an art and I love art. Its an area where I am very confident in my abilities and not afraid to challenge myself through competitions.

In 2015, Whitelocke placed third in the Taste of Jamaica Chef of the Year and in 2016, he placed first in the beef category with a dish he called authentic beef roulade.

Being from a family in which both parents cooked, food and cooking were always a part of his socialisation.

His favourite dish to cook is chicken and beef pasta in Alfredo sauce.

After 12 years his passion has not waned. Indeed, he is fully aware of just how much more there is to learn.

Oshane Powell, cook

Flame Chop House, Hedonism II Resort

At the age of seven Oshane Powell was cooking curried pork. Not that he intended to. But one day his stepfather, the cook in the family, had an emergency. It was left to Oshane to handle dinner. Thankfully, the pork was a hit and a chef was born.

Powell, who studied Food and Nutrition in school, nevertheless went on to work as an auto mechanic but would continue to cook at home for the family. The neighbours would always ask: Who is cooking? as the aroma wafted through the yard.

Deciding to give cooking his full attention, Powell arrived at Hedonism as a trainee and, through hard work and love of art, started fruit and vegetable carving. Using YouTube and cooking shows to practise and improve he eventually ended up cooking in the main kitchen.

In 2016, Chef Anthony Miller entered Powell in the Taste of Jamaica cooking competition. Powell copped the Junior Chef of the Year title with his chicken breast wrapped with sausage and a sweet potato tower, as well as a seafood chowder.

I love food. I am passionate about food, so I am willing to learn everything! he shares with Thursday Food

.

Excerpt from:

Chefs to Watch for 2017 - Hedonism II, Negril - Food ... - Jamaica Observer

Outrageous charmers and beautiful women, buffoons and musicians populate George Etherages Restoration comedy, Man of Mode, which opened Thursday at UNC School of the Arts.

In an inspired and inspiring collaboration, the Dan River Girls, an Americana sister band, played Restoration-era music for the ball scene, as well as more-contemporary folk tunes and incidental music. Fiona Burdette, mandolin, and Ellie Burdette, bass, are in the School of Music at UNCSA. Jessie Burdette, the younger sister, plays violin.

They opened the show with a freewheeling French-Canadian fiddle piece that set the mood for the romp and rowdiness to follow.

Guest artist Jesse Berger, director, has filled the stage with all the elegance and hedonism of the court of Charles II, who was called the Merry Monarch. The Restoration brought about the return of the monarchy to England after a five-year occupation by Oliver Cromwells Puritans. Much of the theater of the time reflected the courts mood.

The extravagant wigs by Emily Young could easily be the stars of the show on the heads of lesser talents, but these actors bend their properties to their wills, employing every fan and furbelow to express their characters inner life whether deep or shallow.

The costumes are meltingly gorgeous, from Patrick Nolins gold coat, nipped at the waist and encrusted with jewels, to Mrs. Loveits feather-festooned frock. They were designed by Jordan Jeffers.

Berger and the design team, from the School of Design and Production, present a gorgeous world that could seemingly exist in any time. Jacob Harbeck, scenic designer; Morgan Ochs, properties design; and Matt Tillett, lighting, change an elegant gallery into a garden by rolling on a couple of small hedges and subtly changing the illumination. The time of day and place are transformed.

Setting Man of Mode in Restoration England, where and when it was written (1676), only serves to make it seem more fresh and modern. With the exception of the deliciously coordinated curtsies, the manners and passions in the play are remarkably au courant, as Sir Fopling Flutter might say.

Sir Fopling, obsessed with style, has just returned from the fashion capital of the world, Paris, France, and he is mad about all things Parisian. He is wildly eager to impress his English peers with his newfound Continental sophistication. Alas, poor Fopling, played with blithe absurdity and over-the-top vanity by Tij Doyen, is the butt of every joke and the dupe in every scheme.

Tony Jenkins is appropriately appealing as the premier womanizer, Dorimant. Emily DeForest not only rocks an intimidating wig as Mrs. Loveit but also masters her character; shes a joy to watch. Emily Weider is wonderful as the cool and subtle Harriet Woodvill.

All of the performers are terrific, and Foplings Pages deserve a particular shoutout for their consistent prancing. Christian Muller, Chris Holtkamp, Christian Thomason and Dyer Rhoads move like a brace of white ponies. They also double admirably as footmen and hooligans.

Many hilarious stage directions are written into the dialogue. Berger and actors have found effective and comic gestures to punctuate the script.

Kelsey Buterbaugh, Emma Factor, Reed Horsley, Chessa Metz, Cameron Morton, Cody Robinson, Mary Mattison Vallery and Ricky Watson Jr. round out the cast.

Theres little point in describing the plot: Men and women fall in love, get bored, pick fights, marry for love or money. Its the whole catastrophe beautifully played.

And, in case youre wondering, the word fop was already in use at the time the play was written, but Etherages Fopling cemented it in the lexicon.

Go here to see the original:

Style, romance win in 'Man of Mode' at UNCSA - Winston-Salem Journal

Thursday Food

highlights five more chefs who are charged with introducing visitors and locals alike to the best culinary offerings in Jamaica.

This weeks featured chefs are from Hedonism II, Negril

Davey Thomas

Lead cook, Pastafari Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

At age six, Davey Thomas would study the ingredients as his mother cooked. Then he would try and replicate her cooking to see how his compared. All that practice still did not lead him to a six-burner stove. Actually, he took what he thought was the safe road by becoming an auto mechanic. But the passion for cooking had already taken root and Thomas eventually heeded and enrolled in the Petersfield Vocational Training Centre, where he studied Food Preparation.

I love trying new flavours and taking traditional recipes and adding new stuff. I take pride in my cooking as it reflects on me as an individual; its my pride, he says. Thomas spends a lot of his time surfing the Internet for new ideas and says, No matter what area you are in, you have to have a passion for it, otherwise it makes no sense.

Thomas likes preparing anything with seafood and he continues to hone his skills by cooking at home daily.

Milton Paltie

Garde manger, Hedonism II Resort

An ice-carving genius, says Executive Chef Anthony Miller of Milton Paltie.

Paltie was 14 the first time his aunt asked him to prepare a meal. Having no idea what to cook he enlisted the help of a friend, who added thyme, escallion and butter to the pot. The final result steam fish got rave reviews. To this day his aunt has no idea that he was not the cook.

Briefly sidetracked by carpentry until that income stream slowed, he found himself at Couples Tower Isle, the result of hearing about a vacancy in the stewards department.

When he arrived with a friend the only jobs available were for cooks. Certain that they would not qualify, they got the jobs nevertheless and started in the pantry. After a few months we was awarded Cook 1 (the highest level team member). Every day I was working from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm for about two years. The financial controller asked why I was working those long hours. I told him its not what I was putting in but what I was getting back, and what I was getting back was a salary and experience, so I felt that I was the one winning.

Paltie realised that he could make this his profession after travelling to North America and seeing the respect accorded chefs.

He took certification courses through Johnson and Wales in Kitchen Management, Sanitation and Garde Manger. His true passion, he decided, was fruit, vegetable and ice carving. Its like a painter with his canvas. For me, my canvas is the ice or the produce.

A recipient of many awards, Paltie has copped: the 2002 JCDC silver medal for ice carving and fish platter

2004 Curry Festival gold medal for fruit, vegetable and ice carving

2008 Wow Festival Master Ice Carver

2015 & 2016 Taste of Jamaica gold medalist for the ice carving

2106 Taste of Jamaica silver medal, lamb platter

I think cooking chose me, he tells Thursday Food.

Rashane Reid

Harry San Japanese Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Twenty-one-year-old Rashane Reid says, Cooking is in my genes; my father is a chef (in Nantucket) and as a child he always had me in the kitchen. My uncles are restaurateurs and bakers, my grandmothers gizzada, grater and toto cakes were amazing and famous.

As a child I was in awe of my fathers knife skills and knew I wanted to follow suit.

My first culinary expression was a fried egg which I overcooked. I was instructed by my mother to repeat the process until I got it right. To this day I am still fascinated by how many ways a simple egg can be prepared and, also, there is nothing about an egg I cant tell you. My mother continues to be my motivator. A few years ago she had a stroke and I made a promise to always make her proud.

My driving philosophy comes from my favourite book You Can Work Your Own miracle by Napoleon Hill. It says: I am who I am, where I am, because of my daily habits.

Hedonism is Reids first full-time job. He started as a trainee and through dedication and hard work now enters competitions like Taste of Jamaica. Hedonism took me from a baby to a man, and the best part of being a chef is seeing peoples faces when they taste your food. There is a bond between the diner and the chef.

Reids favourite meal to cook is chicken back with pumpkin served with cornmeal dumplings.

Odiane Whitelock

Pastafaria Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Odane Whitelocke remembers, as if it were yesterday, the day in 2005 when he decided he wanted to become a chef. My family members had a restaurant and I had started to work in there. I fell in love with it. That same year he enrolled at HEART Petersfield, where the love affair continued.

In 2009, in a quest to further his culinary skills, he attended George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. For me, cooking is an art and I love art. Its an area where I am very confident in my abilities and not afraid to challenge myself through competitions.

In 2015, Whitelocke placed third in the Taste of Jamaica Chef of the Year and in 2016, he placed first in the beef category with a dish he called authentic beef roulade.

Being from a family in which both parents cooked, food and cooking were always a part of his socialisation.

His favourite dish to cook is chicken and beef pasta in Alfredo sauce.

After 12 years his passion has not waned. Indeed, he is fully aware of just how much more there is to learn.

Oshane Powell, cook

Flame Chop House, Hedonism II Resort

At the age of seven Oshane Powell was cooking curried pork. Not that he intended to. But one day his stepfather, the cook in the family, had an emergency. It was left to Oshane to handle dinner. Thankfully, the pork was a hit and a chef was born.

Powell, who studied Food and Nutrition in school, nevertheless went on to work as an auto mechanic but would continue to cook at home for the family. The neighbours would always ask: Who is cooking? as the aroma wafted through the yard.

Deciding to give cooking his full attention, Powell arrived at Hedonism as a trainee and, through hard work and love of art, started fruit and vegetable carving. Using YouTube and cooking shows to practise and improve he eventually ended up cooking in the main kitchen.

In 2016, Chef Anthony Miller entered Powell in the Taste of Jamaica cooking competition. Powell copped the Junior Chef of the Year title with his chicken breast wrapped with sausage and a sweet potato tower, as well as a seafood chowder.

I love food. I am passionate about food, so I am willing to learn everything! he shares with Thursday Food

.

Original post:

Chefs to Watch for 2017 - Hedonism II, Negril - Jamaica Observer

Admirable aplomb Tiffanie Darke. Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images

Its no easy task, writing a memoir of an era, constructing a narrative that your entire generation would even recognise, let alone sign up to. There are many people who would disagree on principle, of whom I think I am probably one. Tiffanie Darkes Now We Are 40: Whatever Happened to Generation X? sets itself a bold and daunting task, with a central question that is preoccupying us all: Democratic earthquakes are undermining much of the progress we made and fought to achieve. Or, even more straightforwardly: The political denouement to all of this was starkly illustrated in the Brexit vote. The inclusive, liberal, multicultural society we thought we had built was rejected by just over half the country.

It is, you have to admit, a head-scratcher: to find oneself having to argue, again, that grabbing women by the pussy is unbecoming behaviour for a head of state; that it is functionally impossible for Polish people to have caused the British housing crisis, or for Mexicans to all, or even predominantly, be rapists, or that Muslim children are no more dangerous than other children. How on earth were our values so poorly defended that wed have to go back to square one and argue them all over again? And yet, of Darkes diagnosis, I agree with almost none.

Its a very tricky form in which to ask these questions, moving from chatty personal reminiscence I began to rebel against my mums choice of wardrobe for me; she loved all those 80s bright colours to large statements about society, interspersed with interviewees of varying relevance. Martha Lane Fox makes elegant observations. Eleanor Mills is good at distilling causation for example, porn has changed the way young women see themselves even if you dont always agree. Ben Elliot, founder of the luxury concierge company Quintessentially, is less enlightening. They seem to have been chosen the way you would populate a newspaper feature: whoever will take your call when youre on a deadline.

The social observations are made with the glibness of a futurologist, except they are about the past so it would have been possible to interrogate them a bit more closely, and thereupon discover them to be incorrect. We currently have a female prime minister, Darke writes (leave aside for the time being that this was also true of the 80s). The US voted a black president into the White House and narrowly missed voting in a woman; senior political party members, heads of business and church are now openly gay. Race, sexuality and gender politics have come a long way, thanks to us.

Except no, it wasnt thanks to us; these identity politics battles were fought by the generation before us, by the GLC and the Southall Black Sisters, by Peter Tatchell, by Stuart Hall, by second wave feminism. If Generation X had any defining ideology, it was a sort of hedonistic indolence, a puckish refusal to take anything seriously, the adoption of irony as a creed, an MO and a style statement. While Darke namechecks irony, there is no serious attempt to square these positions that we were the pioneers of inclusivity and multiculturalism on the one hand, and we just wanted to get off our tits and dance to repetitive beat music on the other. Yet the only way to answer todays sense of political homelessness (as Tony Blair described it) is to confront the fact that we didnt build our political home. We thought the home was already built, and anyway, homes were for losers.

If Generation X had any defining ideology, it was a hedonistic indolence, a puckish refusal to take anything seriously

In a chapter entitled Clintons Cigar, Darke describes the process by which, via the internet, restrictions around reporting on authority began to melt, power fell victim to the truth. The US president was undermined, she says, by the new media (the Drudge Report), then the old media (the Washington Post), and was finally hoist on the petard of his own dishonesty. I agree that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky marked a political turning point, but no further; the deeper relevance is that a billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife, ploughed untold amounts of money into slinging mud at Clinton, some of which finally stuck.

This pattern has been repeated at key moments since, from the creation of Islamophobia by well-funded thinktanks in the US to the generation of a set of alternative truths about the EU by Arron Banks. Conceivably, it wouldnt have been possible before the internet, but it is far more complex than the creation of transparency by a sudden rush of democratised news. Its a story about wealth infiltrating politics in a completely new way, and might well tell us something about why we no longer recognise our civic terrain. Power falling victim to the truth this aint.

Sexual politics is perhaps the hardest thing of all to generalise about, and one could not, in good faith, ask of a single perspective that it do anything beyond starting a debate. However, lines such as there is a consequence to casual sex, and any girl who thinks she can sleep with as many men as she likes and not beat herself up is lying begin that debate in an unfortunate place, one that has never heard of sex-positive feminism, has no understanding of the importance of female sexuality in driving equality forward in the first place, and doesnt even have the curiosity to ask why, in the 90s, we explicitly retook the words slut and slag as compliments.

When young women today are facing open misogyny unseen since the 1950s, Darkes tepid half-morality isnot enough

When young women today are facing open misogyny unseen since the 50s, this kind of tepid half-morality sleep with whoever you like, so long as its not too many people, because thats dirty is just not robust enough. You need to allow for the possibility that not all girls are the same. As for there always have been and always will be men who take more than is offered, who fail to decode the semantics of when no means no (and, you know what, it is complicated), its certainly complicated the way Darke tells it. Someone goes further than the other person wants them to, allowing something to happen that is unwelcome at the very least.

The syntax is wild. Nobody did anything, one person just allowed something to be done, although was it the person who went further or the person for whom that was too far? And the unwelcome thing, what was that? Did he sneeze in her handbag? Either party, and it is normally the woman as she is usually physically inferior, cannot always be in full control of a physical experience. Wait, what? Does that mean physical inferiority necessitates that one relinquish control? Is it just my triceps that are inferior, or could my reflexes use a little work? I cant figure out whether the mangled language makes these assertions more or less difficult to stomach.

I still applaud the aplomb; aggregating a lifetime is hard enough on ones own account, let alone on everyone elses. But these sure as hell werent the 90s I remember.

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Now We Are 40 by Tiffanie Darke review a generation lost to hedonism and irony? - The Guardian

In psychology, flow activities are ones that would presumably make us the happiest. They are activities like sports or cooking that require more work on our part but are characterized by full immersion and focus. A new paper argues that we are often faced with a dilemma - while studies show how engaging in flow activities would make us happier, we tend to spend more of our free time on passive activities, like Facebooking or watching tv.

In two studies, researchers L. Parker Schiffer and Tomi-Ann Roberts at the Claremont Graduate University and Colorado College, conducted a survey of about 300 people to find out what they thought of different types of activities. These ranged from passive like listening to music to flow-inducing like making art. As the paper explained, flow activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment of energy.

The participants had to rate whether they found the activities enjoyable or daunting as well as how often they engaged in them. Another question related to which particular activities the participants regarded as providing lasting happiness.

The answers revealed that whatever people thought would require more effort would also bring more happiness. But people were still more likely to spend their time in passive activities because they found them easier to get into and more enjoyable. On the flip side, flow activities were seen as harder to start up, even if generally better for you. Its just easier to stay sitting on the couch than getting up to run, which might be quite tiring and even painful at first.

To be able to navigate this paradox of happiness, researchers propose techniques that could help reduce the initial effort required to get into a flow activity like going to the gym. They recommend you do things like choosing a gym near your house and preparing your workout clothes the night before. Or if you want to get into painting or have something to write - set up your writing or painting materials in advance. Just doing that much can help get the process underway and make it easy to start doing something you will find ultimately very rewarding.

The researchers also suggest using controlled consciousness - mindfulness and meditation techniques to get the ball rolling before a flow activity. While the paper advocates for future research to come up with more techniques that would help us engage in happiness-creating flow activities, they do warn that there are high stakes involved here that could prevent us from achieving happiness due to a pursuit of hedonism:

People know that flow activities facilitate happiness better than more passive leisure and yet they are not doing these activities because it seems they do not know how to overcome the activation energy or transition costs required to pursue true enjoyment. This disjunction perhaps leads us to assume that happiness is going to happen to us as an outcome of our pursuit of hedonism. Thus, we develop a more passive approach to happiness, opting for the easier pleasurable activities that require less energy and are less daunting than high-investment ow activities.

Cover photo:Indian schoolchildren, their face and bodies painted as tigers, run at a park in Bangalore on August 1, 2015, during an awareness programme about the endangered tiger species. (Photo credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images)

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Science: How to Get into the "Flow" and Do What Makes You Happiest - Big Think

FrontPage Magazine

Leftism: From Bloody Tragedy to Therapeutic Parody FrontPage Magazine In less than a decade, the New Left's embrace of hedonism and identity politics transformed it into a life-style choice and New Age cult for the affluent, pampered boomers rich enough to postpone adulthood indefinitely, and to avoid the consequences of ...

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Leftism: From Bloody Tragedy to Therapeutic Parody - FrontPage Magazine

Aisling Franciosi and Synnove Karlsen star as Georgia and Holly in the new BBC3 drama

. Photograph: Mark Mainz/BBC/Balloon/Mark Mainz

It is well-known as the setting for gritty tales of drug addiction and deals gone wrong. But now a new drama will move away from the Edinburgh presented to cinemagoers in Trainspotting to explore the dark side of university life in Scotlands capital city.

Clique, a twisty tale of friendship, feminism, ambition and death, which arrives online on BBC3 details what happens when Scottish first-year students and best friends Holly and Georgia fall in with a group of wealthy and hedonistic older students and their outspoken mentor, a lecturer at the university. It paints a picture of the city as a party town for privileged southern students in which dark secrets lurk beneath the clinking champagne glasses and lighthearted chat.

The shows creator, 28-year-old Jess Brittain, admits she drew on her own experiences at college when writing the series. It did come out of having a slightly weird and not particularly satisfying university experience, she says. There have been some great university comedies, such as Fresh Meat, but its rare that you have something that looks at what a dramatic and torrid time this can be. Yet its amazing how many people when you ask them didnt actually have the best time at university. I wanted to write something that reflected that.

The result has been hailed as the new Skins, although Brittain, who cut her teeth on the cult teen show her brother Jamie Brittain and father Bryan Elsley were co-creators says that she sees it as a cross between Gossip Girl, The Secret History and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I went to Leeds rather than Edinburgh but, like my lead characters, I found myself embroiled with a very confident and self-assured group of girls from the south-east, and it was very discombobulating, she says.

A lot of the time that I was there Id feel as though I was in a music video or a Vice magazine article and it was terrifying. There was this sense of a high-gloss, unobtainable life and I wanted to capture that. Edinburgh seemed like the perfect setting because it also has a high proportion of wealthy and confident students from London and the south-east mixing with people from less privileged or more ordinary backgrounds, and as a city it just lends itself to that weird, otherworld thing.

The centre of Clique is the relationship between old friends Holly and Georgia and fellow first-year, Elizabeth, who find themselves drawn to charismatic economics lecturer Jude McDermid (Sherlock star Louise Brealey) and her tight-knit gang of high-achieving star students.

I wanted to capture the terrifying pressures that students are under now, that incredibly pressurised, ambitious and driven feeling that you have to have your shit together at all possible times, says Brittain.

Its come up five or six notches since I was there and I thought God, I had a shit time at uni not because I was under ridiculous amounts of pressure but because I failed socially. Now if youre one of those people like me who fails socially, theres also an additional pressure of well, youd better have decided what youre going to do once you leave, and didnt you do three internships in the summer before you came? And that also all feeds into the social pressure on women to look and be perfect. It seemed as though that would be interesting territory to explore.

The scenes that are most likely to cause controversy involve the ferocious Jude, a woman who dismisses modern feminism as so much clicktivism, and witheringly tells a student who suggests that women still suffer from sexism that they are the problem, thanks to all that moaning on Tumblr and making yourselves the victims. Her scenes are certain to provoke intense debate. Absolutely, admits Brittain. Its a tricky subject writing with any sort of feminist content at the moment. Obviously I am a feminist and thats something Im preoccupied by and interested in but I dont see Jude as a villain. She stands for a sort of response to the whole kind of unease and shame and frustration about not being able to express anything in the public sphere any more without it becoming incredibly heated. I really wanted to look at the thin line between feeling frustrated with how youre supposed to think and then being offered an alternative which can look very alluring but is not all that it seems.

She admits that she is braced for some backlash. I started writing Clique during a relatively quiet time, and then Trump happened and changed everything because a lot of women feel like they are at crisis point, she says. And that has made me slightly nervous that here I am suggesting some slightly controversial things or putting things out to have them discussed and what was a light conversation topic is now a danger point.

She is also keen to stress that Clique tells a very specific tale. Its a thriller, but its also about female friendship and of course if you write something about female friendship then it can rub people up the wrong way because they say, well, thats not my experience, she says. Im not saying this is everyones experience at university, but what I would hope is that it represents a type of insecurity about who you are and how you become an adult. That perpetual state of fuck, were adults, what do we do now? and the knowledge that you have to grow up and sort out who you are and try and go and get a job. I hope Clique captures how that feels.

Even if it does provoke a backlash, Brittain says shes ready for it. Writing for young people, you will never make anything they categorically all love, and thats a good thing because young people have incredibly high standards. Clique will be hated by a lot of people but also hopefully loved by a lot, and Id rather that than people went, hmm, I suppose its OK.

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Feminism, ambition, hedonism: drama explores lives of university's privileged - The Guardian

To outsiders, gay cruises are often seen as the pinnacle of hedonism within the community. After all, is there anything more gratifying than the idea of spending a week partying with hundreds of other gay men, all horny and ready to get down?

In his new feature length documentary, Dream Boat, director Tristan Ferland Milewski breaks down this stereotype through a frank yet surprisingly moving exploration of cruise life, telling unique stories that fly in the face of what one may expect. Of course, sex and alcohol play a role, but that's not the only reason why hordes of men fork out hard-earned money to take #gay cruises.

The protagonists who feature in Dream Boat represent a true array of different cultures and identities, including;

Each of these men cite different reasons for joining the 'Dream Boat', but ultimately, they're all striving to find their own identity, whether they define themselves through love with another or love for themselves.

Amidst the numerous and admittedly impressive bulge and ass shots that Milewski hones in on, Dream Boat takes time to introduce us to each of the main 'characters' in full, allowing them to feel comfortable enough to share their own personal struggles derived from living as gay men.

"My family didn't tolerate me."

Whether it's through specific cultural pressures or rejection from their families, each of the men who star in Dream Boat have a painful story to tell, humanising them far beyond the stereotypical hedonists that are often perceived to frequent gay cruises.

One particularly poignant conversation reveals a cruise attendee's fear of coming out to his mother, arguing that no pain would be greater than knowing that she could be alive somewhere in the world, refusing to converse with her son ever again.

Over the course of seven nights, the 'Dream Boat' holds increasingly more extravagant parties that become the focal point of Milewski's film. Tight close-ups of faces touching and bodies grinding reveal the euphoric allure of these trips in sumptuous detail, but there's more going on here than just an explosion of chiseled abs.

On the surface, casual sex is rife as made evident by the sea of used condoms left in the aftermath of one particularly raucous party. However, talk in the cabins focuses far more on the pursuit of love and the difficulties that gay men in particular face in this search.

"I think nobody wants to be lonely."

At one point, Dipankar explains how members of the gay community can be shallow and judgemental towards one another, claiming that only those with attractive bodies can succeed in love. Conversely though, and rather depressingly, Marek reveals that despite sculpting his muscles in a bid for attention, he finds it almost impossible to meet men who like him for who he is. Instead, the majority of would be partners would rather spend time counting his abs than getting to know him better as a person.

However, that doesn't mean audiences will drown in Dream Boat's tale of woe. If anything, Milewski's documentary is actually a rather uplifting affair, soaring on waves of joy and ecstasy. Judge the men who attend these cruises all you want because they don't care. Instead, Dream Boat takes great delight in exploring how each of these protagonists rise above their loneliness or insecurities, living their lives to the full.

Whether you're watching the men take part in a high heel race or dress up in drag as Sia, there are more than enough moments of levity here to remind us that people can only be truly happy once they embrace their own identities, regardless of how difficult that can be at times.

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Like any community, the gay men who party on the Dream Boat have their fair share of positive and negative experiences, but Milewski's camera commendably takes the time to portray each of the protagonists with a frank honesty, one that is refreshingly free of judgement or pretence.

If you're excited to see Dream Boat, then you may also enjoy the work of Canadian director Xavier Dolan:

Ultimately, love is love. Anyone who wishes to be reminded of this beautiful fact in all its glory need look no further than Milewski's stunning documentary. Climb aboard for a film that openly explores issues of #LGBT identity and love through a wonderfully colorful and exultant microcosm of the gay community.

Check out the world premiere of Dream Boat as part of the official selection for Section Panorama Dokumente at the Berlinale And if you can't make it, watch out for the film's theatrical release this summer instead!

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'Dream Boat': Love Comes In All Shapes And Sizes In This Candid Berlinale Documentary Set On A Gay Cruise Ship - moviepilot.com

American LGBT writer Michelle Tea takes a leap from memoir to something a tad more explosive

Themes of identity, sexuality and addiction loom large as Tea attempts to write through her demons.

Book Title: Black Wave

ISBN-13: 978-1-908276-90-2

Author: Michelle Tea

Publisher: And Other Stories

Guideline Price: 10.0

For two decades the feminist and queer counter-culture writer Michelle Tea has documented her experiences in a variety of forms from memoir to essay to feature length films. While she is widely published in America, her new novel Black Wave is her first book for the UK and Ireland. Readers familiar with Teas writing will know to expect an intense and astute portrait of lives on the fringes. Themes of identity, sexuality and addiction loom large as Tea attempts to write through her demons.

This new book is a Generation X queer womans version of late 1990s San Francisco. A metaliterary novel with flashes of mysticism, it is an inventive and challenging read. Its 27-year-old protagonist Michelle Leduski wears no flowers in her hair. Bohemian living is fast disappearing under the gentrification of the city by the dot com millionaires. Even Michelles beloved Mission district is losing its edge. The Chameleon has closed, good cocaine is hard to come by, rents have soared. As she documents her drug-fuelled adventures around Valencia Street and its environs, Michelle seems like the last girl at the party. And as the city cleans itself up, Michelle is spiralling downward.

Her hedonism makes for an exhilarating first half, told with a third person omniscience that sardonically reflects on the mess. First to go is Michelles stable girlfriend Andy: Sometimes Michelle felt resentful toward Andy for being so moderate, for sipping some ridiculous fake drink like a daiquiri while Michelle got hammered on shots and cocaine. Beguiled at an open mic event by an 18-year-old poet, Michelle finds herself taking ever more risks for her highs, which end, unsurprisingly, at heroin.

As a published author, our narrator is adept at describing her experiences: Heroin was love, the generic of love, what you got if you couldnt afford the original. In a scene that will stay with readers, Michelle hits rock bottom after a binge, vomits on the street outside her apartment while she callously dismisses Andy, then trudges back up the dingy stairwell with years of grime sticking to her feet.

As with her acclaimed memoir writing, including Rent Girl, Valencia, and How to Grow Up, Tea paints a gritty picture of queer living. Fictional Michelle is from a working class family of two gay women her mothers Kym and Wendy and lives the penniless existence of a frustrated artist who dreams one day of saving a thousand dollars. Having already written a memoir on her life to date, Michelle finds she has little left to say and also worries about her invasion of privacy of her family and friends. Tea uses her background as a memoirist to bring Michelles character and writing difficulties to life. The first half of Black Wave reads like a lightly fictionalised autobiography with a fascinating look at a subculture.

Meditations on the femme and butch aesthetics are interesting and often funny. Elsewhere, the plight of gay teenagers is to the fore: To be a butch girl in high school, to be better at masculinity than all the men around you, and to be punished for it! Michelle ties her life decisions to her sexuality and struggles to find her identity: Being cast out of society early on made you see civilisation for the farce it was, a theatre of cruelty you were free to drop out of. Instead of playing along, you became a fuckup.

But this fuckup knows she has to grow up. Fearing that she has become an aging and hysterical femme who could not handle her cocaine, and realising her addiction to alcohol and drugs, Michelle heads south to her gay brother Kyle in LA, determined to clean up her act before the new millennium.

As luck would have it, her new life is to be a short one. The end of the world is fast approaching, which sees the novel take a mind-bending shift into the world of apocalyptic fiction. Time destabilises in an alternative America of poisoned mists, exploding planes and mass suicides, brought on by the alienation of modern life. It is a hugely inventive twist that takes the road-to-recovery storyline and literally smashes it to pieces. Dream synchronicity with perfectly matched lovers, bioluminescence and sex with Matt Dillon all feature as Michelles sobriety quietly takes effect in the background.

There is the sense that to escape from the world of San Francisco, everything as she knows it must end. At the start of Black Wave, Michelle was a poet, a writer, the author of a small book published by a small press that revealed family secrets, exposed her love life, and glamorized her recreational drug intake. By the novels end, the glamour of her former life has given way to a hard won peace that will see her through to the end of days.

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Black Wave review: From hedonism to the apocalypse - Irish Times