Behold! This is maybe the first time I’ve actually scheduled this to be on time! Go me!
You may notice that the title of these dumps has changed! Yes, that’s because I realized that I wasn’t just talking about Tuonela Magazine stuff in here, but rather, the general what’s been going on in life. So instead of a journalism dump, now we just have some monthly madness as I catch up and drop what I’ve been doing lately here. Even though I’m slow with these blogs, I do like writing them. It’s almost like keeping a little journal for myself, but publicly.
First of all, I fully admit that I’ve just not been having the best time lately, on an emotional front, though by month’s end, I have felt a bit better. I do genuinely believe that weaning off my antidepressants last year was the right move to make, but this does mean that I have to wrestle the beast that is my mind a whole lot more than I did when medicated, and in case it hasn’t been blatantly obvious, I’ve been going through a rough time since last summer. Why did I stop my meds? Because I was just too numb to do anything and the depression wasn’t progressing or going anywhere on the meds, so I wanted to try something different. Sure, the meds kept me a little more level, emotionally, but they also weren’t helping me get over any of my issues. In fact, I felt like they were making me quite complacent. I’ve been without them for at least a year now and it’s a different kind of struggle, but not one that I’m regretting. That said, the sheer bipolarity of emotions and the mood-sensitivity is really unpleasant to deal with and I wish I had more organic methods available to me to deal with it. That said, I’ve been doing a lot of work to improve my situation and it is paying off. One of those things was reconnecting with yet another deeply beloved friend of mine, whom I haven’t see since pre-COVID at least, and that’s been absolutely wonderful.
Mother’s Day, specifically, is apparently a hard time for me now. My mother-in-law is trying to kill herself slowly and seems to be completely okay with taking down the rest of her family with her, and yet this woman still gets well-wishes for Mother’s Day, while after everything I did for my own cub, all I got was animosity for… never having betrayed him or for never breaking any promises. It feels like this is another holiday in which I want to just stay off the internet for a few days so it doesn’t pour a ton of salt into my still-very-open wounds.
I also haven’t been to any shows at all this month (first time that’s happened in full-on years by now), simply because there wasn’t anything much of interest and I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew, since I had a lot of things to do - for example, I didn’t have a podcast episode for this month recorded before the 7th, which I still managed to push out on time for the 15th, but that took some effort and juggling. It’s looking like the same thing will happen with next month. Fortunately, The Mosfets were willing to be my guests and though I didn’t get the audio fixed this time, I think it was a really fun epsiode (though I do feel bad that Keith and I didn’t give Ilari a whole lot of opportunities to talk… shows what happens when Canadians nerd it up, yikes, hah). I have picked VERY few festivals to cover this year, after last year’s 9 weekends booked solid, so I hope to have a more relaxed summer spent in my garden this year. That said, this month was still a bit chaotic because I had a ton of Classless Act interview transcripts to write up and it seems NCH Software wants to charge me a ridiculous price to upgrade the transcription software that I bought years ago and I just… don’t think that’s worth my money, considering how few interviews I actually do these days. So I had to do it manually. I’m good at this, don’t get me wrong, but man, it’s just not fun to transcribe without a foot pedal.
Perhaps the biggest news of this month was, however, the official news that Ember Falls, whom you may remember as my favorite band since right around 2015-2016, have decided to call it quits. This news was, in fact, leaked to me a month or two beforehand, so I was braced for impact, but it nevertheless sucks to hear that artists you know and love are struggling with the scene as much as you are, and have decided it’s too hard for everyone to continue. It’s something I sympathize with, as I’ve been doing music journalism for so long and I’ve dedicated so much of myself to it and… I really don’t know if it’s been super worth it, in the long run. The music scene in Finland is very unforgiving and, if I’m being honest, you don’t really make many friends, despite all the work you do for other people. I’ve gone out of my way to help artists by doing extra interviews, extra features, reviewing albums no one else wants to review… all for what frankly feels like almost nothing. Sure, I have some awesome memories and I’ve done some cool things and met some cool people along the way… but when it comes to living your life in a practical sense, I’ve made no money from it despite a 10+ year history of it, including a very, very dedicated journalistic integrity, where I never share anything that people don’t want shared and make an active effort not to be mean with negative reviews and respect that (almost) all art comes from a place of love and effort… and I rarely even get a thank-you for everything I do. Some people are kind enough to give me a CD or a shirt, but even that is rare. So I really do understand how the scene wears you down and dries you up and stops feeling worth it after a while. I’m only sorry that Ember Falls didn’t blow up bigger and that it wasn’t more worth it for them to continue. They were really doing something special. Lene and I whipped out a look-back feature article out of our asses on them in an afternoon so we could premiere their final track, but in hindsight, I almost feel like I could have done better. The band gave me so much and I wish I could have given more back to them. That said, even in their swansong, they failed to ever release a bad track, and that’s a pretty badass thing to have on your record, if I may say so! I’ll really, really miss them…
GATHERING OF GEEKS May 2023 ft. The Mosfets
PREMIERE: Ember Falls - Avalon; A Farewell to Ember Falls (2015-2023)
INTERVIEW: Get to know Classless Act pt. 1 ft. Griffin Tucker
INTERVIEW: Get to know Classless Act pt. 2 ft. Dane Pieper
INTERVIEW: Get to know Classless Act pt. 3 ft. Franco Gravante
(the rest coming next month!)
ANNIVERSARY REVIEW: (2003) Helloween - Rabbit Don’t Come Easy
ANNIVERSARY REVIEW: (1983) Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind
ANNIVERSARY REVIEW: (1993) Helloween - Chameleon