Tag: heavy metal photography

Eyehategod Iloveyou. Europa, Sat. June 7, 2014.

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I want to place my palms on Mike Williams’ chest and ask a question because I know he will tell me the truth. He is wearing a Ouija board shirt, hanging out in the green (red) room of Club Europa before the show Saturday night. Mike Williams is the truest of the true, you know this intuitively when you see EHG live. There is no fucking around. There is plenty of fucking around.

Eyehategod rocks. Literally.  Drummer Aaron Hill’s pounding announces the beginning of the show and the band begins to sway, forward and back, as though in a trance, summoning? Exhuming? Doing whatever it is they do before bringing us, the audience, where we need to go. It’s a meditation, a private ritual we witness. It reminds me somehow of the ascension of a roller coaster; looking straight up into the sky with the anticipation of careening straight down with your hands up.

Jimmy Bower is wearing a t-shirt, on the back it says “We owe you nothing.”  They give us everything on stage, everything is up for grabs, for us to take and annihilate.

Eyehategod’s self-titled release on Housecore Records is the insides of Charles Bukowski, including his obliterated liver and sad and genius brain, reconfigured as a collection of punk rock sludge metal.

I was introduced to EHG by David Peisner, a writer who has written for, among others, Rolling Stone and SPIN. David and I collaborated on UnBlock the Rock, a campaign to bring Cuban metal to the United States back in March of 2013. To raise funds for airfare and visas, etc we put together a compilation, “The Red Album” including “International Narcotic” by Eye Hate God solicited by David. Which begins like this:

“They take the most holy man they got, you dig? And treat him as worse as they can, degrading, drag him through all kinds of shit, spit on him, cuss him, just do everything and then turn around and go to church and worship him on Sunday. And think you’re gonna get away with it….Don’t work that way.”

I email Mike, Is that you.

That’s Charlie Manson, he writes back.

Eyehategod’s self-titled release on Housecore Records is what punching someone in the face sounds like. And/or fucking.

Only EHG can do what they’re doing. Can play the music they’re playing. The heavily textured and complex wall of noise that is EHG sounds like mental illness, sounds like drug addiction, sounds like the inside of a prison cell. Sounds like a criminal record.

Eyehategod’s self-titled release on Housecore Records is finally here.

In November 2013, I was recovering surely but slowly from a long bout of depression where I did not leave the house. Depression is debilitating, mentally and physically, and sometimes I just could not open the door. With the help of some meds and an incredible support network, I could face the world again. The first place I went was The Acheron in Brooklyn, to see EHG perform for the first time.

I suppose a cousin of depression is anxiety and I was anxious about being around other people. I was anxious to be out. There is always a moment where I am wishing there is a flash flood or a regional earthquake that ruins everything and everything  is canceled so I can justify staying inside. Thankfully The Acheron is not a douchy rock club. Thankfully the people who go there just love metal.

Before EHG, I position myself at the front of the stage, where I meet Kyle, knower of all things metal in Brooklyn.  I am sandwiched in between him and another guy who is a metal afficionado. “Have you seen them before?” Kyle asks. “No, this is my first time.” Kyle exchanges knowing glances with the other dude, smiling. “I love seeing people at an EHG show for the first time,” the other dude says and then Kyle launches into a quick history of the band. I still don’t know what to expect. I’ve been going to shows all my life. I’ve had my share of black eyes and broken toes. Why are they smiling?

EHG takes the stage a couple of minutes later, and I am submersed in elbows and sneaker heels almost immediately. I am still shooting but nervous for my flash which lands at my feet. I am still shooting but nervous for me because now I am old and I smoked for a long time and took Depovera forever, and am a serious candidate for osteoporosis. I seek refuge, trying to navigate my way to the outer circumference of the crowd, but The Acheron is “intimate” so the crowd is dense. I make my way into the bathroom to investigate my flash. Not only is my flash ok, I am better too.

I am reborn.

Eyehategod’s self-titled release on Housecore Records is everything we’ve been waiting for.

As of June 10, 2014 EHG is all over Billboard, cracking the Top 200, and as number 7 on the Tastemaker chart right under Michael Jackson. A review of their show on Saturday was written up passionately by Ben Ratliffe for the New York Times. Their future is bright, it only took 26 years and the tenacity to continue after the death of drummer and founder Joey LaCaze last year. (LaCaze is the drummer on the album). There is no question where EHG is headed, although I’m not quite sure how much redemption and destruction they’ll leave in their wake.

Eyehategod’s self-titled release on Housecore Records is 1234567890 goodbye.

 

Godmaker, #becauseloud

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Godmaker, #becauseloud

It’s almost impossible to reconcile the sweetness of  Pete Ross with his severe on stage presence as the lead singer for Godmaker. As they’re loading out of their rehearsal space, Pete says, “Tracey, do you want to see my new guitar?” He lovingly takes it out of his case and presents it like a first time father presents a new born. A little later we’re talking about all the events in his life that led him to Godmaker: Laguardia, Julliard, a hard core tour . “I was kicked out of my last band,” he tells me. “For drugs. This summer I’ll be sober for a year.” I’m kind of thrown by his openness, his willingness to be so vulnerable so immediately. Later, when Godmaker hits the stage, I realize it’s the same thing he forces from the audience; there is no small talk, it’s an immediate moment of truth.

Bassist Andrew Archey is covered in tattoos and recovering from a particularly social weekend packing t-shirts to bring to the show. This band is ambitious, they have every size in three different styles. While Jon Lane, one of the most powerful drummers on the east coast, breaks down his kit at the practice spot, they banter back and forth like brothers, and there is something so familial about it, it’s hard to believe they didn’t grow up in the same house. Archey is from Edison, NJ and Lane is from Lawrence, Kansas.IMG_0603

Chris Strait, Godmaker’s guitar player, also from Kansas, pulls up in a spray painted  Kombucha Brooklyn van, exuding health and wholesomeness. And there is something wholesome about Godmaker. Live, they have devised a way to find every empty particle of space and fill it with immediate noise. Every molecule is a hypnotic explosion.  If it’s not love at first sight, you can’t not like this band. They’ve taken everything that’s great about sludge metal and made it their own, but right when you think it’s going to get even heavier, you’re being lured toward some country. Cool country. Country you can smoke blunts to at a friend’s barbecue in their backyard on the 4th of July kind of country. Actually out in the country type country. Kansas type country.

There is something holy about this band. Something about their music will restore your faith in the power of metal. Come and be healed.

 

June 10, 2014 at Grand Victory, 245 Grand St. Brooklyn.  More info about Godmaker here: https://www.facebook.com/godmakerbk

The Many Faces of Doc Coyle

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When I think about Doc Coyle, the phrase, “Tall glass of water ” comes to mind. Or “towering mass of yummy.” A beneficiary of the sexual revolution and primary and secondary waves of feminism, it’s almost ok to objectify Doc and his dreamy dreaminess. Except, lucky us, Doc is so much more.

 I’m listening to “Do You Know Who I Am?” by Vagus Nerve, Doc’s latest musical endeavor that’s taking him out to the City of Angels this spring. Half way through I’ve lost track of time. The complexity of the song, the melodies that seem at odds with each other until they reconcile and play very nice together… “Do You Know Who I Am?” posits as many fronts as Doc does himself, it’s not a question, it’s a declaration.

 The following interview took place at my kitchen table on January 23rd, 2014 in Jersey City. It was a discussion more than anything, the way Doc conducts all his interviews, pouring himself out into the world, saying what we’re all thinking but too afraid to say, standing in his own truth.

 

 

My parents never got married. My dad is white, my mother’s black. My parents lived together til I was like five. We lived on Sanford St (in New Brunswick, NJ-ed note) and then we lived in a place called Simplex Avenue. My parents split up when I was in the 1st grade, or something like that, so I don’t really have a recollection of my parents being together. And the memories I do have, they were arguing like crazy, BAD. Horrible arguments. So my dad moved out and got an apartment on Livingston Ave.

Me and my brother would go there for a few days. Our mom had a house… based on our mother not being responsible, sometimes there wouldn’t be enough food, sometimes the lights would be cut out, there’d be no heat. She just wasn’t that responsible. Eventually we went to go live with my dad, I lived with him til I was 15 or 16 years old. I ended up living with my grandparents in Piscataway to go to this private school, Gil St. Bernard. It was the complete opposite, I went from total lower class, black/white urban environment to very wealthy, very white, very small, prestigious private school. But it was super liberal, laid back.

My grandfather was one of the most important and impressive black men in the area during that time. He was the first black real estate agent in Middlesex County. He made a lot of money, he lost a lot of money, he was really respected, he accomplished a lot. He was interested in a lot of things, he would referee basket ball games, and he would sing in church. He would referee games at that school, he basically did some wrangling and pulled some strings and got us in on a scholarship. We still had to get accepted but who knows? Maybe we weren’t that bright. Maybe there was a quota, I don’t know.

I was 15 when we (God Forbid) got together. We kind of started jamming by accident, we started writing original songs because we didn’t know enough covers. The first show ever we played was at The Court Tavern. We were called Manifest Destiny. It was the first time I was in a bar. The smoke affected me so much I had bronchitis the next day.

We played and I was like, “Dad, what did you think?” He said, “You were out of tune.” My dad was a piano player. He couldn’t say, “Great job!” No, “You’re out of tune. Get in tune.”

 We recorded 2 demos as Manifest Destiny that we never put out. They just weren’t that good, so we sat on them. Then we changed the band name to Insolubrious, it was a bad band name. But as a band we got, “Ok, this is not that terrible. This is actually pretty good.”

 

Eventually we got our bass player, John Outcalt, and everyone just got a lot better and we recorded “Out of Misery”. It was a demo we put out on tape, we started playing locally and got a nice little buzz. Our friend, Brian, who worked at a record store, Vintage Vinyl, was like, “Yo, what do you think about putting out your demo as an ep/cd?” We were like, “Cool.” And we put it out. We did some big local shows, we got some airplay on WSOU, people were passing around our demo, but we still couldn’t draw people.

We started hanging out in the hard core scene. There were people there who liked listening to heavy music and no one’s paying to play. We thought, “Our band is better than this band, our band is better than that band, if we could actually start playing in front of these people, we think they would like what we do.”

 Honestly I think we were just around enough and met enough people that eventually “no’s” started becoming “yes’es”. We were just persistent. We’d just keep bothering the same people. Any place that would let us play, we would just go and play. This guy in Pennsylvania got a garage? We would call up, “Does he have a show? Can we play?” Most of the time no, other times yes. You’d get a yes, you’d go down there and maybe there were only 10 people, but one of the guys that’s there is in a band. You meet him, you get his number, you stay in touch, then it’s like, “We’ll get you on a show out here.”

 We were pen pals with Mike D, who’s in Killswitch Engage now but at the time he was in Overcast, Back then a lot of guys in bands would have their cd with an address so you would send your demo to the band. He actually wrote us back, a hand written letter, “This is really cool, I really like this,“ things like that. I remember we played with Lamb of God when they were called Burn The Priest in a garage. We gave them our first cd and they gave us their Burn the Priest cd and we’ve been friends ever since.

We played with Everytime I Die in a book store in Syracuse, NY. We met them, they played their cd they were working on and we just became friends, fast forward 6 years later we were playing Ozfest together. It was definitely a different time, I don’t know if it’s that communal today among young bands.

We did “Out of Misery” and the same guy who put it out said, “I think it’s time to put out a full length album. We ended up doing “Reject the Sickness” with Steve Evans, the producer for Metalcore Records and he just to happened to work really close, at Tracks East. We had gotten a lot better, the material was way better, and he made us play way better than we were. And the record just sounded incredible, musically it was really cool, it didn’t sound like anything else that much, we knew who our influences were, but to a lot of people it was fresh.

Evans and Alan Douches, the guy who mastered “Reject the Sickness”. sent it to Century Media for us because they thought it was really good and that’s always a good sign. Literally I got a call from Tom B who was A&R from Century Media. That NEVER happens. Labels never call people without a multi-month/year long deliberation process of watching the band live and working on their songs and development. I think that gives you an idea of how strong the record was and how much it stood out. It was about a year from when we had the conversation to when we had to sign because of contracts and everything. And that basically changed everything.

Because we had a record deal we had a manager, because we had a manager, we had a tour, because we had a label we could have a bigger record budget. Once all that started happened, everyone quit their jobs and moved home with their parents and just went for it.

We came out in an awkward era, we didn’t come out early enough where everybody just made a lot of money being in a band making record deals. But we didn’t come out late enough where we were prepared for the new way of how things were going to be. If you came out in mid 2000, you basically understood the new way; that you had to promote, the new way you had to tour…we came, we had some decent success, and had some good footing and then everything changed, and not just for us.

 

It was easier if you were already really big and you had a good team with a really good manager and a good label and really basically doing the work to kind of convert to “music 2.0”, whereas the band just makes records, they tour, and everyone else is handling the promotional side, the marketing side, if you were doing it yourself and didn’t have a great aptitude for evolution…I think a lot of bands struggled with that transition.

I left God Forbid in August of 2013. I think I went through, what is that? Post-pardem depression?

I was working on this original project and a cover band project, but things weren’t moving at the pace I wanted things to happen. I took this gig with UnEarth, and the tour ended up getting cancelled.

God Forbid ended and whatever my “new thing” was going to be didn’t develop. I was single for a long time, my immediate family is not really what I think of when I think of a wholesome family environment, it’s just made me think about all these elemental parts of life that I didn’t really have, that I think are important. It’s the reason why people go to church, it’s the reason why people have children, because people want to feel a part of something and I wasn’t a part of something.

I did the same shit for 10 years. My band was everything. I wrote, toured, came home, wrote, toured, hung out with my bro. That was it. Then my brother left the band, my girlfriend broke up with me. Then my grandmother passed away. I was living with my grandmother, so it was like this cocoon where life was set in stone: This is where I live, here’s my band, here’ s my bro, here’s my girlfriend. Basically everything was gone, one after the other and I didn’t have feet to stand on.

One thing that should be stated, me and my brother had a very codependent relationship. More so on my end. I didn’t make a lot of friends when I was younger. I didn’t have a lot of my own friends. Because basically, my brother was my best friend. We did everything together.

When I was thirty years old, I was trying to develop friend-making skills. (laughing) And that’s really weird. It’s not common. I don’t have a normal learning curve for development. Sometimes I have to let myself be that because I beat myself up a lot thinking about being behind the ball about certain things. It’s a societal pressure. There’s all this stuff you supposed to be doing: you should have a kid if you’re this age, you should be married if you’re this age.

That weighs in on you. Because people look at you and think, “Oh, you’re a little, hmmmm?” That’s tough for everybody. But that’s the risk you run of being in a band and “going for it”. Like, I’m going to mortgage everything on this, if it doesn’t work out, I’m going to be 10 years behind everyone else in terms of doing normal stuff.

If the band was more successful, and I could buy a house with the money I was making from the band, then I’d be less behind the curve. It’s not like money is the most important thing but money does help you attain the essential amenities of “the adult” standard.

 Vagus Nerve, is actually the biggest nerve in your body that connects your brain to the rest of the nervous system. Me and Ravi Orr, the singer, met through a friend of a friend, started working on material sending traces back and forth, he lives out in Pennsylvania, so the distance always been an issue, as far as getting it going. This past year, we started putting a band together got some really good players but the guitar player was playing in another band, he’s really busy, so it’s been kind of difficult but both me and Ravi are both moving to California.

At the end of the day, you have to take risks. You have to see what else it out there. I if don’t do it now, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life. The only reason I was going to stay here was for Vagus Nerve, and me and Ravi had a discussion he & his wife want to move out there too. I’m going to LA because I think there’s more opportunity for a guy like me out there. It’s not zero. It’s zero right now. Zero degrees, zero opportunities, zero chances of going surfing right now.

Ever since I’ve been on my own, things have been consistently getting better. I’ve never done this before, and it’s scary the first time, you think, “Will I be able to eat?” So this is the next challenge. Can I go somewhere and actually make something of myself?

 

The Flanders – Havana Connection

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Growing up in Flanders, NJ in the 1980’s was a lot like living in Cuba in the first decade of the new millennium. In both epochs of my life, my friends and I ate copious amounts of pizza. We had nothing to do and nowhere to go. There was no internet, and no one had cell phones. Our pot was lame. We finagled beer and vodka and drank on the streets. We were made stronger by the Power of Metal. When I write that, it is said like thunder and each syllable is very important. The Power of Metal.

Except, in the 80’s, in Flanders, I was a very young teenager. I had no control over my circumstances. At the age of 11, my father would finally leave, which was a good thing because he took his out of control temper with him. The judge awarded custody to my mother, forcing my father to contribute the legal equivalent of pitching in here and there. We were struggling financially, and the absence of a father, not necessarily mine, made adolescence even more difficult. Heavy metal was a natural outlet. Metal united me with all the other misfits of society, and we loved the Misfits. The voice of my frustration against the injustice of my circumstances, against the suffocating feeling of adolescence, of being controlled by adults who stood in the way of my fierce determination to be self destructive, was heard through Metallica, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, Testament, Anthrax.

 

To live in Cuba means to be isolated from the world. Kind of like living in Flanders in the 80’s. There are three television channels that show Friends, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Gilmore Girls, courtesy of the state. There are three newspapers. To have access to internet, you must have permission from the government. Most Cubans do not have access to the internet.

Living in Cuba is the eternal suffocating feeling of adolescence, even when you’re a grown up. You have no control over your external circumstances. You live with your parents. In most cases, your bedroom, when you have one, the guitar player Yanio does not, bears the same decorating savvy as it did when I ripped my first centerfold out of Circus Magazine.

In Flanders, in the 80’s, when I lived with my mother, and I was angry, pictures from metal magazines, right angle to right angle, joined forces to create a motley montage of hair and heavy metal hands. Ratt, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Queensryche, with an occasional intruder like Chief Seattle because he was also righteous and had long hair. Alejandro,the drummer of Escape, has this wall, with Scarlett Johansen looking completely comfortable out of place because she knew, if given the chance, that Slipknot and Megadeath would love to be her boyfriend. She had no fear on the wall of metal.

I ripped down my photos when I became more sophisticated and slightly gothy and punk rocky and wrote poetry like most ugly girls in high school. My hair was thankful. So was my vagina, in lieu of skin tight jeans, I started wearing loose anti-objectification garb. But, I had options. There were choices. Even in culturally vapid Flanders, I could land my hands on DK and Black Flag and go through my whole Sid and Nancy worship phase. (I kid you not, I saw that movie no less than 20 times and still confuse Sid Vicious with Gary Oldman. Watching JFK was a complete mind fuck.)

Metal came to the island poco a poco after the ban against John Lennon was lifted in 1966, after the first wave of rock music came to Cuba. Cubans who had the opportunity to travel to Germany or other countries of the USSR came back toting Metallica and Judas Priest. Metal did not come to Cuba from the US, as the majority of US tourists go to see old cars and marvel at the musicians in the square who play Guantanamera or Hotel California. The activists who travel there on some humanitarian mission or another tend to cling to the hip hop movement, also state controlled, extolling Martin Luther King who can’t get any peace where ever he is trying to rest, since Cubans aren’t permitted in hotels, nor or they permitted to demonstrate against these segregationist policies. Todavia.

Metal is an expression of individual liberty, explosive and furious, passionate. For these Cubans, born into the successes of the revolution and the suffering of the Special Period, they are finding their own way, despite all odds, to define who they are.

 

 

In Cuba, this is especially difficult. In Cuba, this is especially courageous. Access to instruments, practice space, electricity, social acceptance, accessories, is difficult. You are not permitted to speak freely. Escape, the band featured in this documentary, shouts, growls, screams what they feel, explosively, forcing people to listen.

Metal, the white, working class equivalent of hip hop, the trumpet, I mean electric guitar, for collective frustrations, was identified with western values and ideals by the Cuban government and seen as contraband. Cuban metalheads, frikis, were arrested for having long hair only 15 years ago. Patio Maria, Havana’s equivalent of CBGB’s, gave a home to those early bands, Zeus, Agonizer, Escape, and Hipnosis and a birthplace for metal until it was shut down in 2000.

What is so ironic, so fucking ironic, about that, is that metal led me down the path to my commitment to social and political justice. I found a deep correlation in the injustice of my parent’s relationship, the subsequent lousy divorce settlement, our financial struggle, in the themes explored in my favorite metal songs. And I loved Stephen King. (See Among the Living) I emphasized with the plight of native americans (Chief Seattle, again, righteous and long hair. The first metal head ever! Run to the HIlls, brothers!) I was concerned about the nature of good and evil, I also wanted to bring the noise. Metal, when you scratch the surface, is against the status quo. I wanted to rock and roll all night, and party every day. That first act of resistance, of realizing you had choices, you didn’t have to participate in the capitalist 80’s culture of cocaine and bad hair, yes, Cuba, the worst tenets of capitalism, were born into the consciousness through metal.

It was through metal, and punk, and hip hop, through Dee Snider and John Denver and NWA, that I became politicized and took my first steps towards becoming anti -imperialist. It was because of the PMRC (Parent’s Music Resource Center, led by Tipper Gore) and “Tales of the Witch Trials”, cassettes by Jello Biafra on his political views and why pot was really illegal, it was because of “Injustice for All”, that I became a “revolutionary” in college. It was really because my sister bought “Back in Black” on vinyl when I was 11 that I would arrive with hungry eyes and narrow perspective in Havana 15 years later. To find other metal heads, despondent and discouraged by their own society’s shortcomings, just like me. Just like me.

Two years ago, visionary and metalhead, Yuri Max Avila rallied the Cuban government for support, and Maxim Rock, the premiere (and only!) metal venue was born in Havana. Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Escape, Combat Noise, Zeus, Agonizer, or Hipnosis play. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the club closes and frikis trudge on down to the park at G and 23rd. Five or 6 people contribute towards purchasing a bottle of vodka and the night begins. Again. The same way it did the night before. A week before. Years ago.

And the Award Goes to…

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A documentary film maker records the present to present the past in the future. We are the Billy Pilgrims of film making. Our schizophrenia doesn’t become apparent until the editing process, if at all.

When I set out to document Cuban heavy metal band Escape, I had every intention of approaching the film with the sterility of a German dental assistant. I wasn’t going to chug vodka with the band, for example. I certainly wasn’t going to sleep with anyone. I was going to love them from afar, like a sick relative in the hospital you don’t want to touch. I would admire, observe, cringe, document.

But, I do not have the clinical approach of a German. I possess more the unbounded love of a German Shepard. Let’s be friends, let’s be friends, let’s be friends. It’s not entirely my lack of discipline, the band was really, if I have one memory, the band was really giving to me. So, when a handful of people who have nothing except but an Olympic sense of sharing are constantly giving to you, any objective purpose is lost between “Muchas gracias!” and “Ay! Que bueno!”

And so Escape and I were friends for 9 long months. This is tremendous and rare. Americans are not legally allowed to travel to Cuba. Once they arrive, the Cuban government does not allow Americans to live with Cubans. Often, Cubans and Americans fall in love. There are countless stories of how these predestined love affairs crumble once somebody gets a green card. But true international love? Tremendous and rare.

After you shoot a documentary, you have to edit it. I am trying to “manifest” the perfect editor by abandoning responsibility. I imagine leaving hard drives on someone’s doorstep wrapped in a blanket with a note. It’s a horrendous act, and even the kindest, shyest young editors will confront you with your actions. You need to look at the footage too, they say. It’s your movie.

So you look at the footage. It’s an interview with the guitar player who came with you to every bureaucratic ordeal possible. Whose mother, struck with Lupus and missing one leg, travels with you to immigration so you can live at their house legally. Everything he says is amazing. While you’re editing, you try to email someone in Cuba to pass along a message. “Oh, I love you all so much, not a day passes where I am not thinking of you.” Instead of returning to edit, you bask in the depth of your love, “It’s amazing I can feel this much! My heart has no limits!” Maybe you go clear your head and watch Law and Order, lost in the wonderment of it all.

So you look at the footage again. It’s another interview with a friki you mistook for the man of your dreams, your soul mate, after you decided to never sleep together again. What a douche bag. Everything he says is stupid. You check your email to see if he sent you an apology yet, and he has not. Maybe you go ahead and watch Law and Order, fuming in the unfairness of it all.

The first months of editing were like that for me. Great Adventure could not conceive of dipping and rising, careening, turning twisting, upside downing and right side upping going on in the roller coaster of my psyche. I defied physics. Meanwhile, my life was passing me by. Spring was ending, but my May was still January. Since July of 2009 and March of 2010, Mexico was my home, my sanctuary when my Cuban visas ran out. I was anticipating another trip. There was no trip to Mexico. There was no more life savings. Only passionate cover letters about working in restaurants. In Jersey City, for better, for worse.

Thankfully, in June, I flew to Chicago for a friend’s wedding. I was reminded that an entire world existed outside of my computer screen. My friend got married, and I took pictures. Freezing moments in time that she had anticipated for the last 6 months, so she too could travel back in time and remember cake and kindness and cousins.

I returned, and my editor and I, one of the best people possible I could have expected to assist me, Anna, finished our grant proposal for Sundance. We took a period of 9 months and made it 26 minutes and 37 seconds in 6 weeks. We are amazing.

In my time travel, I write letters to the future. One, in particular, I post it future Facebook, announcing a huge amount of money that we have procured for the film. The letter is poetic, touching. Many people “like” this post.

I am so happy to have this grant done, I see it as the foundation of our fundraising to procur money, but I realize that I wouldn’t have been able to be here, in this moment, without some very important people. Whether or not we are successful with this particular grant, I am sure we will be successful with many of our other fundraising efforts and I want to say thank you now, because it’s not the money so much. The money is awesome, and necessary, like water, but it is the support of everyone who has allowed me, in the worst economy since the depression, to leave my stupid job and do whatever I want, to make a movie about a Cuban heavy metal band called Escape.

I am trying to stick to a chronological order, so nobody gets jealous of when they were thanked, but please forgive me if you are further down on the list than you think you should be. Thank you to the gorgeous people at 248 who encouraged me to make this decision. Thank you Aki for my beautiful amazing camera necklace and all your encouraging words! Thank you Dan Stafford for helping me pack. Thank you Ms. Macaroni and Danikins and Nikki for storing all my stuff for me. Thank you Michael Colluci for driving me to my sister’s house and sending me a cable one year ago. Thank you Judie for changing my ticket so we could spend extra time together before I left. Thank you Pat Lambe for driving me to the airport one year ago to begin this journey. Thank you High Mountain Mama’s for all your support while I was away. Thank you Nikki for sending me green stuff so I could survive. Thank you so much Escape, but especially Jenny for being my best friend and sister while I was trying to find my way. Thank you so much Judie for flying me to Puerta Vallarta! And thank you Judie and Cliff for letting me live at your house, and for letting me live in your house when it was stocked with Whole Foods! Thank you Esteban for letting me stay in your beautiful home and being my mentor. Thank you Anjelika for buying me and Jenny my first dinner in New York after almost a year. Thank you Sinem for letting me live in your living room while I collected my thoughts and watched Law and Order basking in the insanity of it all. Thank you Nikki and Drew for amazing dinner when I got back. Thank you Negro for all your help and support. Thank you Jen for correcting my submission. Thank you LE for always keeping me in the back of your mind. Thank you Darren for finding someone to brew Escape Beer for a fundraiser and thanks to Marty, the brew guy. Thank you Chiqui for the tattoo time and the Patio Maria video and for being pretty much the reason I was able to make this film. Thank you Alioth for letting me live on your couch. Thank you Kate for help with my free money! Suzy, thank you for website advice. Thank you Diana for being an amazing roommate and friend. Thank you Eric for lending me a camera so I can breathe. Thank you Anna for not killing me. Thank you Mom. Of course. For everything.