2018: The Journey Continues!

R.I.P. 3rd-Eye Magazine (March 2015-March 2017)

In early 2015 Wyrd's Flight was put on standby while I was working on the launch of my new collaborative online magazine, 3rd-Eye. The latter proved to be an exciting ride, until the paradigms of life suddenly shifted. I found myself lacking time and energy to keep up with the standards both readership and artists deserved. So, with the exception of a few ghostly headlines on Facebook, 3E is now lost forever... Despite the unfaltering generosity of some of my collaborators, I chose to let it go: my Zen heart always relishes a chance to explore the unsettling abysses of impermanence.

My heartfelt thanks go to those who shared the 2 year-long adventure with me: my wonderful and dear friends Geoff Birchenall (excellent co-editor), Paul Verhagen, Niels Vinck and Andreas Schiffmann. To the many, precious fleeting guests, some of whom are also dear friends: Thor Joakimsson, Guido Segers, Gareth Hodgson, Gavin Turner, Susanne Sinmara, Iñaki Campos, Tom Shilders, Nick Magur, Åsa Hagström, Ben Brown, Vanessaah Piti and J.K. Håbu. You gifted passion and time to the project and for that I'll always be grateful. Finally a big thank you to the professionals involved: Jasper Strik for designing the website and Fabban for the magazine logo.

My best 3E memories will inevitably be linked to Roadburn. The Tilburg festival is especially dear to my heart: it provided (and still does!) tons of amazing music and plentiful chances to expand my musical knowledge/life perspectives via close interaction with superb artists and dedicated fans/colleagues, whilst visiting a country I love, The Netherlands.

3rd-Eye was centred around the idea of travel as personal growth. In my and Geoff's mind, 3E was to slowly expand beyond planet-metal and he indeed pushed the envelope several times with his fantastic interviews. As for myself, my most significant non-metal contribution remains the tribute to my life-long hero David Bowie, following his death two years ago. 

Bowie in Japan (1973). The story goes that during one of the dates he took off his colourful Ziggy Stardust space-suit and threw it into the crowd. The fans scrambled to take a piece of the suit as a souvenir, but a few seconds later they realised that David was standing before them in a microscopic pink thong, so they invaded the stage like a horde of possessed meerkats. Unsurprisingly, the stage collapsed, but luckily non-one was hurt. 

Old Roots, New inspiration

In 2017 I took time out from music to dedicate myself to the final editing of my first novel, which is still work in progress due to my ruthless pruning and consequent plot re-shaping processes.
In the meantime, as ever, new ideas and objectives have begun to germinate. 

I have come to fully enjoy how every path I take, each new and disparate interest/passion I feel drawn to, weaves a brilliantly unifying thread. Thoughts and actions might appear to be spinning from and into multiple directions, but in reality (despite the inevitable dark holes and frazzled tears) the tapestry they form is one. A wyrd grid made of multiple interlinking co-ordinates, old and new, continues shaping a rather knobbly and intricate, yet organic and completely natural, human knot: me.

Stroking invisible woven threads as if they were the strings of a guitar, hopping across multiple trajectories as if they were the keys of a piano, I am still jumping on the elastic grid of my inner world as if it were a trampoline into the cosmos.  That's exactly what Wyrd's Flight has always been about: reaching out to catch fragments of reflective light and darkness to compose my own kaleidoscopic image of the universe.  

Individual consciousness (may I remind you that it's an atheist mind with a pagan heart writing) ripples quite uniquely across the unified ocean-like surface of consciousness. It is as if we live afloat a 2D surface, only occasionally peering at the sky above and the underwater haze below. Like the protagonists of my novel, my aim has always been to merge sky and ocean into a whole 4D dream-reality of unabashed mythological nature. Rekindling the small fire of this personal blog is therefore an inevitable necessity, as it serves as melting pot for some of the old & new ingredients I collect during my explorations.

WF was initially created to express my love towards the idiosyncrasies of life, to celebrate what exists beyond the obvious, the mainstream, the norm. It was created to share thoughts, emotions and revelations ignited by seeking out and witnessing wondrous events, be it man-made or natural creations... Well, 2018 will bring life-changing choices for many, including myself, therefore, in alignment with 3rd-Eye's goal, I shall broaden this wee blog's horizon to reach beyond the rituals of metal. Like the characters of my novel would say, let's embrace our dreams and create a parallel dimension where we can make them thrive, no matter what spirit-bashing ugliness goes on around us! 

WF has been and will be one of the threads in my personal parallel dimension, and perhaps a small oasis where some of you can also occasionally fly to, if anything just to scratch your head and say 'What's the madwoman up to now?!'

I have created a slideshow to mark the reopening of this blog (apologies for the format, but this is definitely not a swanky kind of blog: please watch in full screen mode if you can!). It comprises of 35 photographs (13 of which were not shot by me) which suggest some of my past, present and future inspiration. Art, music, passions, laughs and tears, it creates an intensely wyrd life-pattern my soul recognises as quintessentially her own. 

Crazy Love indeed...

MUSIC by Chelsea Wolfe: "Crazy Love" from Abyss. 

PLEASE WATCH IN FULL SCREEN MODE.

CREDITS: 13 photos used in the above slideshow are not mine. These are: all of Kaiji Moriyama's (photo 13 & 34: portraits by Sedato Ishizuka), the Yab/Yum Tantric Tibentan art, the mural by Vigeland, Date Masamune and Sarutobi Sasuke from the anime Sengoku Basara, the Noh mask (by Toshiro Morita), the b/w samurai, the b/w cloud formation, the Torii gate, David Bowie in space-clown attire. Regretfully, I can only fully credit three of these fabulous photos/images. 

No credits available for the 3 photos used in this post.