Excitement

Flowers for Vases/descansos Album Review

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

Happy Friday, everyone! I haven’t done a lot of music reviews in my day, but this album definitely deserves tons of attention. I knew a new Hayley Williams solo album was coming after seeing some hints earlier in the week, but I had no idea when. I saw the news last night that we would get the full album today, so I jumped on it as soon as I got the chance. To say I’m impressed may be an understatement. I’ve been a fan of Hayley Williams and Paramore for years, and I loved Petals for Armor, so I was super pumped to hear this one, which Williams calls “a prequel, or some sort of detour between parts one and two of Petals.”

From the album’s first notes, I was drawn right in. The tone of the entire album felt like a discourse in heartache and isolated growth. I have always been drawn to Williams’ musical choices, from the range she uses with her vocals to her instrumental choices over the years, and this album furthers that beyond even my expectations. Flowers for Vases, written and performed entirely by Williams in her home studio, plays with a low, light melodical tone that is very pleasing to the ears.

With song titles like “First Thing To Go,” “Good Grief,” and “My Limb” the album reads like a letter to the pain and trauma Williams has experienced through her career. From the confines of a year of quarantine, the album and its inspiration are fantastically strong, an ode to the independence Williams has been embodying since starting her solo pursuits.

One of my favorite songs on the album (I’ll have to have a few more listens to pinpoint a single favorite) was “Trigger.” Beginning with a haunting piano melody which is soon joined by the low tones of Williams’ voice, the song is a testimony of the determination the artist has after suffering heartbreak.

“At first it seems easy, I vow not to give up

Let ’em debase me, while keeping my chin up”

-Hayley Williams, “Trigger”

Just some of the lyrics from this song, detailing the strength Williams is portraying as the album gains its footing.

Another great track, “Inordinary” details Williams’ move to Tennessee in her youth, discussing the hardships of moving and relationships, as well as the feeling of shattered trust that can result in a broken relationship. I feel like this track showcases some of the impressive lyric writing Williams is sure to continue to build on. She tells an entire story in around 4 minutes, with a chorus that is somewhat repetitive but never tiresome, and verses that are weighted with memories of betrayal and change that are very relatable to most anyone.

Between the lyrics, the low-toned melody, the piano and acoustic accompaniment, this album is a great continuation of the impressive work Hayley Williams has given us since she first hit the charts. I am certain the next album in her solo career will be just as, if not more impressive, and I look forward to listening to Flowers quite a few more times. If you haven’t listened to the album yet, I highly recommend it. If you have listened to it, what did you think?

**It goes without saying, but the featured photo here is not my art work, and I own none of it. Simple screenshot of me listening to the album on a streaming service!

At Long Last

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

Hey there, friends and fans! I’m beyond ecstatic to be able to announce to you all that my first ever self-published print work is available for purchase now!

In a rush of quiet editing and preparation I decided to get this short story collection off the ground this month. I have long wanted to be able to have a copy of my own work on the bookshelf, and with the grace of God it’s happened! I sat down and looked at the efforts I’ve made in the past and it dawned on me that for too long I’ve had a pipe dream that just having the book would make things happen. It seems silly, but after talking to some other indie authors (that’s right, even more than before I can count myself among the ranks of indie authors now!) I realized a lot of people make similar mistakes. Rather than accepting that we have the power to get our works to the world, we tend to think that just having them completed should make it happen. I mean, we put all that time into writing, right?

But that isn’t it. It’s got to be a full effort all the way, and I’m very happy I realized that. Having those proof copies come in and being able to hold a book completely full of my work that I put the effort into – needless to say, it awakened something in me. I truly feel, for the first time in a long time, that I have accomplished something as an author. For a long time, especially in the last part of last year, I feel I’ve let myself down in my writing. It’s been hard to focus and get a work out there, and I’ve often found myself just going through the vaguest motions in my publication efforts, content to hope an agent would grab me up based solely on my query letters. But I’m glad to say I’ve taken charge again. I’ve come into my own. I have reached for the stars and grasped my own shining moment. Lame, right? But it does feel amazing.

The stories and poems in the collection are a mix of some older and newer works, a couple of which have been living solely in my computer for quite some time. I am very happy to have a chance to give them life in this collection. Many of the pieces are centered around an Appalachian setting, some even including regional culture. My heritage, of course, is very important to me, so I love giving my work that mountain twist. It means a lot to me to be able to present these works to you all, and I sincerely hope you’ll pick up a copy. If you do, please make sure to leave an Amazon review for the work. Reviews go a long way for indie authors, especially online, and it would mean the world to me!

Also, I do want to thank you all for your endless support. I hope you’ll enjoy the works in the book as much as I enjoy being able to present them to you. And, in case you’re wondering; yes, I’m already considering going the same route for one of my novels soon. Stay tuned! Here’s the link for the work: https://amzn.to/2tC2jOX

Beating the Monday Blues

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

Mondays suck. Lets face it. But that doesn’t have to stop us from doing great things. We, as artists and writers, really need to give ourselves a bit of a schedule to follow. Some authors will find themselves needing a more strict and rigid schedule. Throughout history there are some authors who have stated that they wouldn’t let themselves do anything else until they had typed X amount of pages or written X amount of words per day. This can be quite a daunting idea for some us and for others it can honestly be nearly impossible. If we don’t have a set schedule at work it can be very hard to try and have a set schedule with out writing. This can lead us to breaking any type of schedule we may try to set. That’s not good at all.

Other of us (myself included at times) don’t like trying to demand ourselves to meet a certain deadline. Granted we may sometimes be under contract and actually have a deadline, but that doesn’t mean that we can just force ourselves to vomit out a certain amount of work just because it’s what we say we need to do. Part of this can be fixed with the inspiration I so love to write about. Even while typing this I am listening to music on my old Mp3 player to make sure I stay motivated despite the feeling of inspiration that I’ve had today. I have used the music on this player to help me write and focus on my craft for so long that I’ve had to change players three of four times because I’ve worn some of the others out and just ran out of room on one.

But we do want to continue performing our craft at the level we are now and we do want to improve. We may find it hard, or even impossible to do that if we let the world get in the way of our productivity. Yes, it’s Monday, and yes that means we are going back to work and/or school and are feeling the typical mourning over the loss of the weekend, but Mondays can be positive as well. Mondays can symbolize the beginning of a whole new week of work. This can be the week where we tackle that hard chapter and vow to gain something from it. Or maybe this is the week we complete that particularly hard painting or song. Maybe it’s even just the week we convince ourselves to pick up the tools of our trade and produce SOMETHING. Mondays can be real downers. They can kill our spirit and motivation and bring us so low that we don’t even have the ability to produce anything at all that week. But they can also mean a lot. They can be the day we start the ending to our latest novel, or start that new painting, or the day we start writing our own music instead of just learning what has already been done. Monday may come at the worst possible time, but it can also bring us a never-ending realm of possibilities. Don’t waste them!!!!

Your Work, Your Audience, Your Knowledge

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

I know I’ve written on and touched on this subject a number of times, but it has once more surfaced in my mind and in my work. For any artist there is a very specific thing, or a number of things about which you are going to be most passionate and in turn, most knowledgeable about. This is what your subject matter should be. It seems a bit obvious, but the amount of people out there who try to write on something about which they are completely clueless is surprising and disturbing. You should never betray what you know and love. You know what you love, and more importantly you KNOW what you love. The things that you are inspired to write about are often going to be things which you have an outstanding knowledge of, because you already love them. Granted, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not going to have to do research on anything by any means. Just as much as you can have outstanding knowledge of or passion for such things as the specific laws of your hometown, you can also have a passion for a general subject, such as life on the beaches of North Carolina that you’ll have to do some research on for specifics. Whatever it is that you’re passionate about, that is what you need to write about. Don’t listen to anyone who says that your desired subject matter is not going to sell. That’s complete crap. If you love, someone else out there is going to love it too, and even if it isn’t their favorite subject your passion will bleed into the work if you do it right, and they will feel that. Don’t think for a second your audience isn’t going to feel your love. If you are truly loving your work, no matter the subject matter, your audience will feel your passion in their hands and their very hearts while they read it. That is the mark of a truly great writer; make your audience FEEL. But that’s another post entirely. I just felt the need to remind all of my readers here that no matter what else you do, you HAVE to write your passion. A very dear friend of mine, and extreme supporter of my writing has given me some flack about my subject matter on a number of occasions, but afterwards he always stops me with a very serious piece of advice that I would like to share here before I go. Coming from a professional, published author (myself) and an even more successful likewise published author and member of one of the most prestigious writing guilds in the country here it is in my own words.

Don’t listen to others. Don’t write what others write just because they write it. You know what you want to write. You know what is in your heart, soul and mind. That’s what you have to write. You know it best. You carry it with you all of the time and you know it at a depth that others can only wonder at, but no matter how obscure the subject matter might seem you the world it’s yours. You know it and you love it, and if you put that onto the pages and into the work, the audience will feel it and then THEY’LL know and love it too. Don’t think for a second they won’t. That’s their job after all. You’re the story teller and they’re the receivers.

That is the best advice I can give anyone I think. I’m going to wrap up with a few more pieces of advice from my own mind and experience. Don’t forget these statement; they’ll get you far. Feel free to comment and contact me with anything you have to say and remember these pieces of advice. If you can’t provide them (your audience) with something to feel then there is no proper exchange. You have to feel it first and put those feelings into your work- put your blood, sweat and tears into the work, so the audience can feel them as well. Only then can there truly be an exchange of literature. If you don’t believe that, go back and read works from the Romantic Period. Those authors had true feelings that they spilled into their work, and no matter how much or how little you know about the subject, you’re enthralled because you can FEEL the piece itself. Feelings bring work to life. You have to remember that. So please, I ask everyone who has any sort of artistic passion, DO NOT work on something you aren’t passionate about. Don’t try to pass off dead work. You HAVE to give it life, you have to give it feeling and passion. That is the only way to bring literature, or any sort of art, to life and make it worthwhile for you and for the audience. Don’t ignore that passion that’s in your heart, no matter how much you’re afraid someone won’t like it or will criticize it. It’s your passion, and someone else WILL love it too, if only because they feel your own love within it. So don’t keep that from the world. It’s your job, your calling, your duty even to share this passion with a slowly dying and passionless world. We are the lifesavers, and we can’t let the world die with us. Remember that. Thank you all for reading.

New work!!

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

I have been working on a few things this summer, but I started one last week that I am just ecstatic about. It has so much potential and I already feel immensely connected to it. I wrote an intro for the piece to start out and I really can’t wait to share it with people, so I decided it was going up here. On the off chance anyone decides it would be fun to steal it, it’s a copyrighted piece- I am a professional after all. Now, I really want feedback on this. Not many people comment on my other posts, to my dismay, but this one is something that needs a lot of insight. I love hearing what people think of my work, no matter how small the piece is. This particular one is something that goes in a very different direction than my usual works, and I’m very excited to throw myself into a new genre of sorts. One of the things I am reaching for here is to present a piece that reads slightly like a stream of consciousness narrative but one that holds a bit more order and tradition than that. Before I attach the piece I would like to thank my new followers and say that I sincerely hope my attempts here can really help and inspire other authors and allow fans to have an insight into my work and my life as an author. Thank you all for your support and help. Without further ado, here is the intro to one of my newest works. 

                I can’t breathe. My heart is pounding, my legs are throbbing and I can’t breathe. I don’t know how long I’ve been running or how much longer I can keep it up, but I know I can’t stop. The sun has been down for what seems like forever and the faint light is still clinging to the autumn day. My lungs are on fire; my chest feels like it’s going to explode. It’s just when I think things can’t get any worse that I make a terrible decision. I glance behind me to see how close my pursuer is and my foot finds a hole I hadn’t expected to be there. I feel my ankle snap like a twig, the sound ringing out like a shot in the silence. I hit the ground, feel the wind rush out of me and grab my leg. I don’t even have enough breathe to scream as I roll over, mouth open in a terrible grimace and find that my attacker is on me.

                I see now that he is brandishing a knife and realize instantly that he means to use it on me. In the faint light I notice the tell-tale stain of rust on the blade as it arcs toward me, catching the reflection of the tree line I’d intended to be my salvation just before it plunges into my chest and out of sight. My first thought, rather than of my life, is of such a poorly manicured knife and what sickness it could bring if used in a culinary fashion.  I don’t have time or energy to react to the man’s attack, and soon it’s too late.

                I feel the pressure first, like being in school and having the pencil in your pocket stab your skin when you sit down. Before I know it the pressure becomes a white hot poker of misery as split and severed nerve endings begin screaming in a hellish, tortured chorus, the warmth inside my chest spreading outwards as my blood flows from newly opened veins. My last thought is a realization that both allows and solidifies my outcome; I am dying.