IMPACT
Bloom Vol 20: Dating Me
Nails on a chalkboard. A semi-truck skidding to a halt on the interstate as its back jack-knifes, sending sparks cascading across rows of cars like the Fourth of July. A never-ending vacuum on a Saturday morning outside of your apartment door. What do these three things have in common? They are all analogous to how I used to treat me when I was alone. Emotional intelligence ultimately falls to us: our ability to regulate our emotions, and perceive our emotions. I had never lived on my own until last year. Be it parents, roommates, or a significant other, I had always had someone around. As a socialite and a former serial monogamous, my adult years have teemed with staggering levels of distraction. Equating external human interactions and connections to distractions might sound harsh. What ...
Bloom Vol 19: Smile
In this ongoing series, DJ and mental-health advocate Alex Wagner shares stories and inspiration to create awareness. I often received remarks on my seemingly perpetual state of happiness in elementary school – a smile that would never leave my face. One time, I happened to eat something most unagreeable with myself, resulting in me spending some time in the main office – my teacher, Ms. Gould, passed through and remarked, “Alex, see, even after throwing up, you’re still smiling – nothing will take that smile from you.” Eventually, time would lessen its presence. As partially defined last week, a significant component of emotional intelligence is our ability to understand, perceive, and control our emotional states. I had forgotten just how powerful a consistent smile could be and how it t...
Bloom Vol 19: Smile
In this ongoing series, DJ and mental-health advocate Alex Wagner shares stories and inspiration to create awareness. I often received remarks on my seemingly perpetual state of happiness in elementary school – a smile that would never leave my face. One time, I happened to eat something most unagreeable with myself, resulting in me spending some time in the main office – my teacher, Ms. Gould, passed through and remarked, “Alex, see, even after throwing up, you’re still smiling – nothing will take that smile from you.” Eventually, time would lessen its presence. As partially defined last week, a significant component of emotional intelligence is our ability to understand, perceive, and control our emotional states. I had forgotten just how powerful a consistent smile could be and how it t...
Bloom Vol 19: Smile
I often received remarks on my seemingly perpetual state of happiness in elementary school – a smile that would never leave my face. One time, I happened to eat something most unagreeable with myself, resulting in me spending some time in the main office – my teacher, Ms. Gould, passed through and remarked, “Alex, see, even after throwing up, you’re still smiling – nothing will take that smile from you.” Eventually, time would lessen its presence. As partially defined last week, a significant component of emotional intelligence is our ability to understand, perceive, and control our emotional states. I had forgotten just how powerful a consistent smile could be and how it ties to my well-being. Growing in my understanding and means to observe the nuances within my behavio...
Bloom Vol 19: Smile
I often received remarks on my seemingly perpetual state of happiness in elementary school – a smile that would never leave my face. One time, I happened to eat something most unagreeable with myself, resulting in me spending some time in the main office – my teacher, Ms. Gould, passed through and remarked, “Alex, see, even after throwing up, you’re still smiling – nothing will take that smile from you.” Eventually, time would lessen its presence. As partially defined last week, a significant component of emotional intelligence is our ability to understand, perceive, and control our emotional states. I had forgotten just how powerful a consistent smile could be and how it ties to my well-being. Growing in my understanding and means to observe the nuances within my behavio...
St. Paul & The Broken Bones Dive Bomb Into The Psychedelic on The Alien Coast
Paul Janeway never wanted to be in a band that had his name in it. But his friend and co-founder of St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Jesse Phillips, changed all that. “I grew up singing in church since I was four years old,” Janeway said during an interview ahead of the band’s recent show at Pappy & Harriet’s. When Paul and Jesse and met, the frontman was pretty innocent, except for a potty mouth that had him quipping he was “baptized with my mouth closed.” That initial innocence led to the nickname of “Saint Paul” — and the rest is history. “Jesse thought it would be funny to call me St. Paul — I didn’t really want my name in the band — and then the first song we ever wrote together was a song called “Broken Bones And Pocket Change.” The band grew from Janeway on vocals and Phillips o...
Blue October’s Justin Furstenfeld’s Sober, Peaceful Life
“That’s what I’m all about–on my bio everywhere–it says ‘recovery advocate’,” Blue October frontman Justin Furstenfeld tells me, adding, “It’s my responsibility to share my experience of strength and hope about recovery.” May 10, 2022 marked one full decade of sobriety for the singer/songwriter/producer/actor, whose recovery journey was poignantly recorded in 2020’s Get Back Up, a documentary made with the specific intention of inspiring others. “I wanted kids in rehab to see for once that somebody lived,” he says, hoping it could counter other well-known stories of tragedy and loss to addiction in the music industry. “I was so sick of seeing all my favorite people go, that I wanted to say, ‘Man, well, how cool would it be if you could capture six years of sobriety on tape and then give it...
Bloom Vol 18: Emotional Intelligence
Music is a powerful key to pieces of our minds and hearts that might succumb to cobwebs and rotting wood otherwise. Music threads thought and understanding into the fabric of emotional comprehension, allowing us to feel magnified to limitless degrees, potentially, everything. It is wondrous to allow abstraction to help us articulate emotion, perceive it, and even evaluate it. We developed these forms of communication through music and the arts that can unpack the heaviest of loads. Pink Floyd’s “Time” plays in the background as I make my way through these lines. I hear the ringing clocks, the clops that fane a helicopter’s whirling blades, and timpanis that roll panned dramatically left and right, verberating in the distance. The guitar comes in low. I am a student of my library, re-readin...
Mark Tremonti’s Sinatra Covers Album Was Written in the Stars
Three years ago, Mark Tremonti — guitarist/singer-songwriter/founding member of the rock bands Creed, Alter Bridge, and Tremonti — became absolutely obsessed with Frank Sinatra. Though he’d always been a fan of Frank’s and sang along suitably with Sinatra’s low register, this time was different. It was as if Tremonti was being deliberately pulled in Sinatra’s direction. Tremonti watched movies, read books, and insatiably scoured Sinatra’s catalog. He sang his songs relentlessly, even teaching himself to breathe, enunciate, and inflect like the legend. But still, even after 18 months, Tremonti couldn’t quite identify the reason for his newfound passion. Then it happened: Tremonti’s daughter, Stella, was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Today, Tremonti is temporarily trading in his hard-rock se...
Bloom Vol 17: Just a Thought
It was mid-50s out in the crisp Pacific Northwest air. Discolored hands carrying bags of groceries in the cold, a washed, dull look splashed onto my face. Between point A and point B, I felt alone. It’s challenging to fit into much of anything when you walk on a tightrope wearing neon blue and sequin, I murmured to myself. As Broadway crested its peak, I wondered if I had plateaued. I had a myriad of tiny conspirators passing through clamoring for the captain’s seat to my day. I sighed, hoping to myself that a deranged criminal would come to shoot me, making my desire to die not my fault, merely my beneficial coincidence. For all of the solutions in the world, for all that we are capable of, we are still human and can have thoughts like these. More passive, with no plan, no timeframe. A fe...
Bloom Vol 16: The Power of Sensitivity
Alanis Morissette and the notion of sensitivity hadn’t ever been paired together before for me. Years back, we used a website called the random Alanis Morissette song generator which would, after the input of a few choice words, spit back to you a song full of resentment and malice for your enjoyment. Her grunge-infused success never stirred me as coming from a sensitive soul either. Jagged Little Pill sold a fascinating haul of over 30 million records, propelling her to stardom and a permanent place in the history of American music. It also catapulted her into a world that she would have to prepare herself for deeply, and compensate within; at moments, one she’d have to survive. “They wanted the outcome and the fruit of my trait,” Alanis said in an interview with the legendary Elaine Aaro...
Bloom Vol 15: What Has Been Lost
For Mother’s Day in 2017, I prepared a song called “Spirit” for my mother. She had been battling breast cancer along with other health complications, and her morale was declining. The fight was one of many years, multiple cancer outbreaks and several events weighed upon her consciousness. “Spirit” possessed the sound of the animal kingdom, with soaring resounding synths that crooned upward with poise. Elephants were her favorite animal, and I made sure they trumpeted with pride. My good friend Sabre laid down vocals exuding grace. I designed a piece that embodied who she was as a human being and what she meant to me. It was the first song I had ever recorded explicitly for her. She was the most radiant being I had ever met in my life, a soul that desired nothing more than to see others shi...
