how's everyone feeling about this upcoming new year?


#1

title is self explanatory, feel free to get in touch with how you’re feeling about this upcoming year:

what you you may hope to see in your local scene, goals and aspirations for your own projects, or generally whatever is creatively sitting on your chest at night and keeping you up :smile_cat:

keepin’ this place alive is the best thing we can do for the future of social media underground :smiling_imp:

🧿 :crystal_ball: 🧿


#2

:nail_care:

honestly i’m so ready to move on from the place i’ve been and get back to contributing to a local music scene. got my sights set on anywhere with music, art, DJing, the whole works. considering moving back to Atlanta or beyond. Chattanooga is the last place you wanna get stuck lmao

:sunglasses:

looking at places like Asheville, Philly, Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta, etc. etc. etc. … Need a passport and a reason to leave the states too … our social scenes are dying with the infiltration of social media and the ilk that follows

trying to get off-grid, buy some land ? or major warehouse space ? who honestly knows at this point. . .

spent the last few years getting technical and hands-on experience building stages and whatnot for major festivals, working in theaters, etc

honestly feel like i’ve lost the capability to be creative bc of exhaustion and physical pain. navigating my transition and working in the industry i do requires me to take time off and rest, and within that time i grow SOOO restless, feeling out-of-the-loop considering my displacement from any real metropolitan area and current circumstances with being evicted and losing my car this past fall.

anyway, normal social media feels like a constant loss, and i no longer feel heard or seen. the major corporate agenda is obviously silencing the non-monetization-fetish creative population. mental and psychological brain drain …

:sunglasses::gun:

i have had the hardest time utilizing the internet and normally abundant communication resources here in the last few years… since pandemic everyone has gone radio silent and underground or we really can’t use what facebook/instagram/tik-tok platforms we have to promote our work without paying some sort of ridiculous upfront cost: time, attention-span, etc. this new short-form media gratification psychology is sooooo damaging and brings out the accelerationist contemporary.

there’s no way to fight the spectacle outside of totally dropping off the face of the planet… and even my recent experiences being bound to the road in one form or the other invokes such old-skool notions, the greenhorn raver population has no clue what they’re missing out on…

i’m sounding old as hell :white_flower:
here’s to more sun salutations and mixing without headphones in this upcoming year … :black_heart: ✣✤✥°o。

༶•┈┈⛧┈♛ one love y’all ♛┈⛧┈┈•༶


#3

good question astrofolk, and good (vague) plans!

i’m hoping to regain a bit more control of my life this year. left Berlin just before covid fucked everything up and moved country twice during 2020… (Australia to visit, where i got stuck for a bit and then Italy… i think both countries political responses to the virus were pretty fucking nuts… ).

so i’m also missing Berlin (and a bigger metropolis) and looking forward to getting more involved with the Italian scene (though the supposed Italian anit-rave laws are a concern… what a load of crap… like raves are what Italy needs to worry about now… talk about finding a scapegoat…)

planning to teach some english to get by and wanting to get back into performance (live electronic music). and a bit of DJing. so that should keep me busy and i hope to make some nice friends/solidify blossoming friendships and have some fun through the experience:)

plus my better half is keen to make a baby. so balancing all of the above should keep me busy and full of plenty of new experiences. but overall i want to feel like i have more control of my life - and i think performance might help with that. 2020-2022 was pretty rough. it was a tough time and culminated in the sudden death of someone i loved… so it’s been difficult. just looking to enjoy life again.


#4

my condolences. grief and loss have been frequent topics in recent years, and i feel like even as an expected life event the way we have to deal with grief is so different from what has been. good luck with the prospects on spawning a mini-raver!

:black_heart:


#5

thanks.

yeh, it’s a bit overwhelming to be honest… there’s paperwork and stuff to sort and bills to pay… and so many memories unearthed during the sorting… it’s almost like being too busy to really process the loss… the weeks-long process of getting the bad news, getting to the other side of the world, sorting the funeral, scattering the ashes, xmas, new years … it’s all a sad blur…

my own life is on hold while packing away another’s… someone i’ve known all my life…

so here’s hoping 2023 is better. more emphasis on enjoying life and making friends (seeing as i moved not so long ago).

spawning a mini-raver… haha… i like it… a nice way to look at it:)


#6

imo, there’s the sense that with social media, you’re pretty much doing it primarily for yourself. at least with my experience. I personally quit twitter a few years ago and primarily stay on tumblr most of the time lol. Insta is a necessity for me when it came to my internship + checking up with people.

for me, a lot of social media is just archive work. especially with youtube and mixcloud. I know im not gonna get a lot of engagement, but its more for me to have something to put out and get back to when I want to.


#7

Not really relevant, but my grandad (from east coast of Scotland) used to sing a song called “Chattanooga Choo Choo” or something, so nice to have it confirmed that it’s a real place.

I’ve fallen a bit off with music. Mixclouds new rules mean that it isn’t a place I can make an archive any more - I’ve been a bit off mixing and stuff anyway and that makes it seem even more pointless. Might see if I can do YouTube without getting takedowns but the idea of someone getting my mix with like 5 ads in at various points makes me feel a bit ill. That’s probably a bit precious of me though.

I’m revisiting a lot of old music that I used to be into when I was younger. Guitary stuff. And that’s making me try and play the guitar a bit more, which I always have phases of doing. And I’m having one of my periods of obsession with The Fall where I’m continuing to work through their discography - Shift Work is my favourite of the recent ones.

Still isolated from any scene - feel a bit too old for it now which is a bit stupid. Not got lots of money, though enjoying work atm. Going to do a counselling course and carry on with my job. Get a bit healthier. Read more. Those are my main goals for the year - keeping it simple.