Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Limelight at the End of the Tunnel



My band, HALLWAYS has released our first full length album, Ghosts. I never thought I would get to this place in my life. Honestly, I can't help but to be overly sentimental...

Many long hours of my complicated and strange existence have been spent day dreaming about performing. At times it's been physically painful, wanting it so bad and knowing if I gave up on the dream, I would somehow be going against my own nature or not fulfilling my future correctly. It's strange but I have theorized that perhaps I have put enough crazy energy out into the universe to bring the fevered experience into my life.

I have been working on my vision of "total art" or "Gesamtkunstwerk", the German concept of combining multiple forms of expression since I was very young. I just didn't have a word for it until college. I slowly and unconsciously began developing my interests separately and at different points in my life. Each became a passionate but abstract obsession at the time; drawing, piano, singing, songwriting, sewing, illustration, miniatures, photography, video, poetry, painting, creative writing, performing, arranging, field recording, graphic design, art direction, production and management.

I get overwhelmed and distracted easily. The limitless inner energy that fuels my intense need to create and explore also feels too huge to contain and channel accurately. Ghosts represents a master thesis of sorts. It somehow miraculously ties together my poetry, singing, songwriting, photography, graphic design, piano, art direction, producing and management and interest in field recording. It takes me closer to my original and yet ultimate objective, bringing me full circle, in a sense. Above all, it was created with and because of my brilliant partner, Grant whom I share this passion for creation with. The universe never ceases to astound me, as my experience has already exceeded my farthest wish for this life.

I know to others it may not reflect the amount of work, time or phenomenon that has gone into or occurred around it, but this project is a deeply personal revelation and I hope that you, my friends and readers feel somehow connected to it. I truly believe that by sharing what we create, we are able to communicate more accurately about our experiences, and thus have a more complete perception of ourselves.

Ghosts is now available for sale online at Sonic Boom and Easy Street Records. See the links below.

Thank you for listening. All feedback will not be taken as personally as this speech was written!

Hearts,
Stephica

Buy Ghosts from Easy Street Records-
http://store.easystreetonline.com/rel/v2_viewupc.php?storenr=375&upc=678277179721

Buy Ghosts from Sonic Boom-
http://www.sonicboomrecords.com/catalog/default.aspx?searchbox=+hallways+ghosts

Friday, June 12, 2009

Electric Ladyland - The First Museum of Fluorescent Art

Tweede Leliedwarsstraat 5
1015 TB Amsterdam, Netherlands
+31 20 4203776

They also have an amazing collection of florescent minerals and rocks. I have seen with my own eyes. Go if you can get there.

*Stephica

Peanuts

The Confetti Ghost

Neumos Show 1 - 02/05/09

Neumos Show 2 - 05/12/09

Comet Tavern Show - 04/10/09

There is a gnome that attends our HALLWAYS shows; throwing confetti in the air and blowing bubbles to frustrate the powers that be. When we opened for The Vaselines at Neumos on May 12th, Jonathan Cunningham reviewed our performance on Seattle Weekly's "Reverb" blog. His last paragraph states:

On a random note: Why the hell did people keep shooting streamers and blowing bubbles into the crowd? I felt like I was in Fear and Loathing at one point with all types of ribbons and bubbles and party favors (not those kind of party favors) touching my face! I'm not sure if that was a part of the act, but it sure seemed weird.

Muuuuuhahahahahahaa!!!
*Stephica

Thursday, June 11, 2009

"Sugar in Rocks"



I am extensions. Lanky limbs overlapping one another in an effort to find their habitat. Twitching fingers and repeated attempts to rest. All gams and nervous vigor, I squint up into creamy lemon sun. Grass is thousands of cool, emerald tinsel. The front yard, a lifetime stretched out ahead. I am weary, a traveler of nine years. An afternoon of endless breaking points, familiar discomforts and fascinations. Small stones break open in small hands with dagger dedicated to uncloaking the secrets of the universe. I broke open rocks and found love.


© *Stephica



Wednesday, June 10, 2009

"Wait" by Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours.  Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands.  And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
     
Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

-Galway Kinnell

Monday, June 1, 2009

"My Hero, Just As You Are"

How do you know when something extraordinary is about to happen? How do you know when someone wants to discover you and see you for who and what you really are?

I can feel your bones burning to find gold. I can feel you from here...six feet away, ten miles of silence. I do not know who you are. I do not know where you come from. I cannot see your smile. You spin your records and write your reviews but do not reveal your identity. I swear I've seen you before. I may even know your name. But I do not know who you are. I do not know where you came from.

When my house fell upon me, straight out of the sky like lightening, I did not call you. I did not question. You don't feel like a God to me. Or a rescuer with a parachute to sweep me off my feet. But yet that is exactly what you have done. Taken me to a new place of worship each time I recognize you are not who you said you were. I have moved every time you have lied or said nothing at all.

I have said too much. I have removed myself from your judgment, this conversation. Everything I have ever said is to be used against me. You think you control me. But this is not me. And you will never be you. The truth of honestly is only an illusion. It is not false, just open to interpretation. Deeper and deeper I will go until I am out of breath. Underwater living. Underwater dreaming. Waking, walking, dreaming life.

© *Stephica