Au revoir!

Every journey has a beginning, and an end. And mine isn’t an exception. I realize that the vague philosophical quote makes this post sound like a suicide note, and it is, in a way. With this post I am ending my blog.

It has been a wonderful journey and I am very grateful to those of you that actually took the time to read some of my stories. For those of you that just looked for keywords and left generic comments – it’s ok, the blog wasn’t meant to be everyone’s cup of tea anyway. It wasn’t particularly structured either, I am sure most of you were wondering what the hell was going on half the time. Well, for better or for worse, that time is now over! In spite of the many sleepless nights, nerves wrecked and cameras borrowed, I like how the blog turned out. Not saying it couldn’t have been better, but I’ve always been one to learn by trial and error. And in terms of errors I made more than a few. Yes, yes, this just keeps getting more and more depressing, but it kind of hurts when you have to mercifully kill something you have created.

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And, completely ignoring the somber and depressing tone of the first two paragraphs, I will continue onwards sounding as perky as I actually should be! I was going to emphasize on how this was a learning experience, and how it helped me grow as a person, but let’s be honest – no one really wants to read about that. So, this farewell post is going to tell the stories behind the stories, or how these people ended up in my blog. (HINT: Most of them – by accident)

As you have probably noticed by now, my interviewees tend to flake out on me in the last possible minute. For this first post, I was expecting a dear friend of mine to tell a very interesting story – which one exactly I let her decide. But she overslept and missed her bus to Blagoevgrad (at 7 p.m., yes, that’s what happened), which made my interviewing her very inconvenient. So, I started going through my phone contacts desperately searching for a person that could help me. And Kalina popped out. She was nice enough to let me write about her, and to tell me a very personal story.

The second post was the complete opposite of the second post – it was very well thought out and planned, but that was the only way it could be executed. I was meant to take the interview at the Christening of my friend Anna’s son, a joyous occasion for every Bulgarian. Still, things went wrong! I was expecting to hear your everyday, run-up-the-mill story about a happy marriage and the joys of motherhood, but what I saw was post-partum depression and insecurity. I honestly, wasn’t prepared for that. I had also forgotten to bring a camera, but the photographer, hired for the Christening turned out the be a pretty stand up fella and allowed me to use his spare!

After this slight emotional trauma, my blog takes us back to class, where we learned the basics of shooting and editing a video in Windows MovieMaker and YouTube editor. And then we catch a (radio) wave with Ivo and Chanko, who were kind enough to let me do a double feature. The hilarious part here is the small blogging camera’s journey – it was forgotten and abandoned a whopping 11 times during the day of the interview. It’s so weird how easy it is to lose something that doesn’t belong to you.

And we’re moving ahead to posts that will not get me banned from using university owned hardware. The next one is my dear friend Bo’s post. There weren’t any mishaps here, she was just perfect – had a fun, little story to tell, was doing something interesting enough to make a video about, and after the entire thing was over she fed me. What more could I possibly want?!

The post after Bo’s was the horrifyingly stressful midterm post, which had me running around Skapto, looking for interview subjects. I actually froze a little bit, when I heard Prof. Gilbert say “Pick a recent news story that’s related to your blog!” What was I supposed to write about?! A celebrity’s choice of (un)dress? Putin’s decision to hinder EU trading? I was completely confuzzled (I know it’s not a word, but it’s adorable) .

And after a riveting dash through Skapto, another borrowed camera in hand, the time came for my actual midterm post – the summary post so eloquently named “The road so far.” In it I said I would try to fix the structure of my blog, but I didn’t, since I decided I loved the chaos of it. I liked how my blog became more about the stories and less about the choices, in spite of originally being the other way around. The fact of the matter is, my entire topic is just an angle, a prism, through which to think about stories. Every story has a choice.

After that came my favorite post – the story that unfurled in front of me! It was kind of awkward, kind of sad, and kind of frightening, but it was a fun little experience.  All in all – mixed feelings about this one.

Then came the class on curating web content, a.k.a. the “wook, mom, I made a macaroni pictuwe!” post, in which I clumsily tried to navigate Thinglink and Storify – the latter of which I actually really liked and plan to use in the future as well. But I will probably lose thinglink – I just don’t find it visually pleasing.

And speaking of losing things – my next post was about Tuttee, who lost a whole lot of… Tuttee. This is one of the posts, that had some initial thought and planning, by the way. It was also supposed to have a very neat video of him just doing his thing around the house – editing, cooking, etc. – but technical difficulties (by the name of an accidentally formatted SD card) killed that video in its tracks.

And speaking of killing things – next is the post, that I feel most insecure about. Yeah, the one about John Constantine, the fictional character. On one hand I think it’s a neat little blogger co-operation, on the other I actually did it, because another interviewee flaked out on me, this time too late to find a replacement. In the end, I actually ended up exerting a lot more effort than I would have on creating a regular post. What I enjoyed here is the fact that I could let my imagination run amok and do whatever it does best – create pictures and translate them into words.

And while that’s my medium of choice, there are people who just love their pictures. Preferably on a wall somewhere. Why, yes, I am referring to my latest post! In it, I interviewed Pesho and partly his roommate, about the time they got so drunk that they became graffiti artists. This post happened in the spur of the moment, after a chance meeting around campus, since my original interviewee…. Flaked out on me! Well, in this case she just refused to be interviewed due to horrifying mood swings and complete lack of interest, but the result was the same.

As you can see, every story has a story. It’s these little things, that I will remember them by. I didn’t answer my question, I realized that it doesn’t really have one answer. It’s all about the shape and texture of the story. Those are usually shaped by choices, but more than that they are shaped by the people who make these choices. So, dear reader, if I have to leave you with one thing, I will just rephrase the message from my midterm post.

Make

Great

Stories.

Au revoir!

Oh, and let me leave you with this short video that is in no way related to the story. I call it “The life of the Director”, although it’s just a clip from the student holiday celebration at Redenka. (Hint: Some of the people in the video have been interviewed for class by other students)

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Amateur Street Artists

For this week’s post we have another familiar face – Petar Georgiev. He’s a junior here at AUBG, majoring in European Studies. He’s also an active member of the student community – ex-president of The Griffins, part of the BLIMUN society – and also a very friendly and open-minded person. I went after him for an interview, after I heard rumors of a particularly interesting event. And he agrees.

Petar invites me over to his room in Skapto 3 to do the interview. I enter and am immediately overwhelmed by the copious amount of what I can only describe as stuff in the room. If you take a look at the pictures, you will understand what I mean by that. And every little object is a memento of one story or another. A football from The Griffins’ first win, medals, empty bottles, posters, books… Everything in this room has history. And one of these objects is part of Petar’s story.

We sit down and start chatting, he tries to recall as much detail as possible. The adventure (as many in AUBG) begins at club Underground – a staple of local student life and favorite watering hole. Everyone at the university knows this is the place you go to party until the end. Whether it is of the night, conscious thought, or your allowance – you just wait for it to come. There are many interesting stories about Underground, few of which I’ve had the questionable pleasure of witnessing, but this one only starts there.

“What story do you want me to tell you? Oh, wait, I know!”

Petar plants himself on the bed next to the memory-laden desk and starts talking. Unlike previous interview subjects, Petar’s really talkative and open, getting the story out of him required almost zero effort on my part. He smiles as he recalls the faithful evening at Underground, the story’s point A. He and his roommate decided to go out on a whim, it was the evening before the makeshift Berlin Wall at ABF was torn down. Why am I mentioning this? Well… read on.

So as he and his roommate, Ivan Nikov, stumbled out of Underground in a drunken haze a marvelous idea came to light. Instead of going home and sleeping it off, our two heroes decided to wander the streets of Blagoevgrad in search of excitement. And they found it in the face of a hooded graffiti artist, who was defiling (or improving) the back wall of a random building.

“I remember thinking that this guy’s a real rebel and that I should help him in his fight against oppression – totally in the spirit of the upcoming destruction of the Berlin Wall”

So, Petar and Ivan went over to talk to him, throwing caution to the wind. At first, the artist was distrustful, scared even – how was he supposed to know they weren’t cops – so he assaulted them with a can of spray paint. And by assaulted I mean started violently spraying paint in their general direction. It took some persuasive drunk hand gesturing and horrified yells of dismay to snap the outlaw out of his delusion. When he realized the two were friendly, he started apologizing. Both of them remained unscathed from the paint attack. The three got to talking and realized they had a lot in common – they all disliked oppression and they all liked being drunk. After some more conversing and convincing, the artist allowed Petar and Ivan to tag along and help him out with his current… projects. Ivan and Petar loved the thrill of it all – skulking in the night, three shadowy figures armed with the weapon of change that is street art.

They had to avoid the police a few times, but all in all it was a peaceful evening. Well, as peaceful as a night out on the town, doing graffiti drunk can be. And after all of this, they even received souvenirs! Petar as the more prominent street artist (probably) received the spray paint bottle he had used – a rite of passage he had not expected. Ivan received something completely different. A tiny bust of Sophocles – an ancient Greek philosopher.

“It was really weird in the morning, ‘cause it took some concentration and effort to remember where these came from…”

Petar laughs about this entire misadventure and is certain given the choice he’d do it again, but this time he’d like to be a more active participant in drawing the graffiti – a skill that will definitely set him apart from other EUR majors.

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A constant reminder

Another week, and another blog post. The chill of winter is slowly creeping up on everyone here at AUBG, and the words “God, It’s so cold!!!” have once again become a sort of battlecry against the upcoming finals or a possible excuse to end an awkward conversation. But I digress. Today’s post is going to be very different. I don’t mean to sound cheesy, so just keep reading.

John Constantine

In what was either a stroke of genius or horrifying stupidity I decided to choose a slightly different interviewee for today’s story. After last week’s midterm review one thing became clear(er) to me, being a half-decent writer can go a long way. So, I decided to push it a bit further. For this week’s interview I choose a fictional character. Some background to that, I was doing research on… well, one thing or another – curse you Wikipedia and your endless hyperlinks! – but I stumbled across a technique that writers use to give their characters more substance and depth, Fictional Character Interviews. While hardly a novel approach, I found it fascinating. I know it just makes me look lazy – not actually interviewing a person. But there’s a lot more thought and research that goes into such an article! And, hey, if it’s good enough for Forbes or Kurt Vonnegut, it’s good enough for me!

The character I chose is as some of you might expect a vague pop-cultural reference which will appeal to roughly half the readers and that’s assuming I’ve judged my followers correctly. Meet John Constantine. Many a critic have called him the by-product of both Punk Rock culture and Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. He drinks and smokes as if they’re both going out of style. He isn’t particularly nice or friendly, at times he’s downright brutal in his cynicism. Imagine the proto-character for every supernatural noir detective ever conceived. And now let’s get to the interesting part.

He walks in the bar with him enters the heavy smell of cigarette smoke and guilt – bitter and overwhelming. He takes a look around, quickly examining every nook and corner, and possible exit – when in the business of staving off unnatural forces it’s good to always have a quick exit strategy. We sit down and he orders scotch. He takes the whole glass in a single sip and gestures the bartender to just leave the bottle. Finally he looks at me and smirks, belittling my attempts at breaking the fourth wall and making me twitch, a damp uneasiness settles down in the back of my throat, making me cough.

“So, have at it, mate.”

He cheerfully proclaims after three glasses worth of scotch and silence, the belittling grin still on his face. I can’t help but feel nervous (mostly about the feedback this post is going to receive). He stretches his arms and leans back on the chair, happily sedated and ready to talk. I ask him to tell me a story of a choice he had to make. His eyes dart at me, all traces of inebriation now gone and replaced with a weird mix of curiosity and anger. The air around him becomes more menacing as he is studying me, trying to decide whether or not to punch me in the face. I would feel frightened, but by this point in my life I am more or less used to it, comes with the territory.

“Alright, then. You want any old story, eh? Or are you after something a bit more… specific?”

I am now sure that I’m being tested. Somehow. He gauges my reaction to the question and takes his time before going back on track with the conversation, filling the time with acerbic wisecracks and small talk. Finally, I am deemed worthy for one reason or another (mostly because I write this). And he begins to tell me his story – how arrogance quickly becomes guilt.

His eyes darken, and his brow is furrowed, as he recalls events long past. His fingers are constantly shuffling and looking for something to grasp, fold and crumple nervously – the coaster under his glass quickly becomes unraveled strips of paper.

He tells me of the time when he formed his own punk band – Mucous Membrane. But his short-lived punk rock fame isn’t the focus of the story. His arrogance is. He recalls this time in extreme detail, since it was also around the time when he seriously got into examining the unexplainable and dabbling in the occult. It was also the time when his arrogance cost him not only his soul, but the lives of a few of his comrades as well as the soul of the little girl he was trying to save. He laughs and recalls what he said to himself before everything went south:

“John, me boy, you’ve had some daft schemes in your day, but if this one goes pear-shaped… you’re in for a right kicking.”

At the time he didn’t realize exactly how much of an understatement that was. On tour with Mucous Membrane at the Casa Nova Club in Newcastle, he found the aftermath of a magical orgy gone horribly wrong: an abused child, Astra, had conjured a hideous monster that took revenge on the adults who were tormenting her, and the monster refused to leave. With typical recklessness, John convinced some members of the band, along with several occultist friends, to try destroying the creature by summoning a demon of their own – Nergal. This decision he would grow to regret on numerous occasions. The newly summoned demon was under no one’s control and after it had destroyed the child’s monster, it tormented Constantine’s friends and took the child to Hell. John suffered a nervous breakdown after this incident, and was committed to Ravenscar Psychiatric Hospital, which he drifted in and out of over the years. No wonder he was so reluctant to tell this story.

I ask him if he’d do it all again, fearful of the response I might get. He looks up from his glass, blue eyes a-fire with anger and sadness. I stare back at him, trying not to flinch. I feel it – the unmistakable thrill of excitement, crackling from the base of the spine to the pineal gland, signaling danger. It’s never good when even the person who has crossed the line realizes it. I remain silent, waiting for tension to lift. John’s anger slowly drifting away, giving way to unmeasurable sadness, beaten into submission by cynicism and self-restraint. He looks at me and mumbles

“Jesus, we’re all bloody doomed, aren’t we? The entire species is flying off to Hell for its holidays. Somebody stop the world. I’m scared and I want to get off.”

And with that, he abruptly ends our conversation, getting up from the chair and putting on his signature trench coat in one motion. And by the time I wave goodbye, he’s already at the door – all trench coat and arrogance. And then he’s gone – leaving only a nod, a wink and a wisecrack.

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Check out the art and covers of the series, from which John Constantine originates with the covers of the top 10 best story arks:

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Losing it

Hello again, dear reader! And now that we’re past the cliché greeting sentence for today’s post, let me introduce you to a person, who’s a whole lot (well, for factuality’s sake, he’s no longer “a whole lot”) of inspiration. Meet Trayan Kostashki, someone who I’m more or less certain you have met or heard of before. If you haven’t, well, there’s still plenty of time, he has not even graduated yet – second semester senior, majoring in Journalism and Mass Communications and Business Administration, here at AUBG.

Here’s Tuttee now

Some more background info – he is into video production, interned for Forbes and just recently won the 48-hour Documentary Challenge, organized on campus. I can list his achievements for a while, but that isn’t really the purpose of my post. To be honest, Tuttee was one of those people, that I know I can count on for a good story and was saving him for a time when I would really need a good blog post. But, hey, why not try and make every post good? Me and a couple of friends are invited over at his place to hang out and chat, a usual Monday evening. So I decide to try and combine fun and functionality and do the interview there.

We climb up to his room and sit down. Yet again I notice the katana hanging on the wall. He sits down in front of his computer and reclines back in a very aristocratic manner. He is the ruler of these lands, a king in his kingdom. Although, the little smirk that pops up occasionally on his face is meant to tell you he could probably rule any other land.

Having said that I feel it’s time to reveal what Tuttee’s choice was and how it affected him. Now, I’m sure you know where I’m heading with this – he lost a lot of weight and got into more than decent shape over the last year. Yes and no. He decided he wanted to treat himself – body and mind – better. Healthier. Smarter.  Or as he himself puts it

“I now treat my body as a temple, as cheesy as it sounds. I feel this has made me not just happier and healthier, but altogether – better.”

He decided to change more or less out of the blue last year, he recalls the date very clearly – 24 January 2014. His weight was never really a bother to him, people liked him no less, but he did perceive it as a hindrance. When I ask him about the reason he rolls his eyes a bit in his vaguely royal fashion and replies

“I got sick of being fat.”

Here’s Tuttee just a few months back.

While all of this seems rather trivial, you don’t see people like Tuttee every day. He is the type of person, who is willing to take life into his own hands, do what needs to be done to achieve the envisioned results. But if someone else has homework, hey, why not copy it. To me these are people that have realized the value of their own time, and who respect themselves enough to not waste it on activities that in no way further their personal growth. He knows what he wants, he knows what he likes and he’s not afraid to ask for it. He will do the work and reap the rewards.

However, in spite of his impressive willpower and drive, he is still reluctant to say it was easy. He goes on to explain how his friends were incredibly supportive and kept him going, when he didn’t really feel like it. He doesn’t really say it, but I’m certain living with Panayot Apostolov was a huge morale boost. But Tottee’s is a story for another time (or post).

Back on track – during the last 10 months, Tuttee lost a whopping 33,5 kg (73.8 lbs), which is more or less the size of an average-sized male Mandrill sphinx. It must be nice to have that monkey of your back. Or abdomen. Do you know what else is nice? Reading a blog post without bad puns in it. Unfortunately, dear reader, you stumbled onto me and inspiring stories and bad puns are sort of the bread and butter around these parts of the internet. And now past the obligatory sidetrack, back to Tuttee.

As always I ask the final question whether he’d do it again. He just looks at me with the same expression everyone has when asked that question – head slightly tilted, eyes just a bit narrower than they should be, an expression of exasperation – and replies.

Check out the neat little thinglink to see how losing this much weight has benefited his body.

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Interactive Media 101

Today in Multimedia Journalism at AUBG, we learned about making the content we create interactive. We learned about neat little tools such as Storify and Thinglink. It’s interesting to examine how far online content has gone, both of these would’ve been practically unusable not long ago. I digress. Check out the fruits of my efforts, the images are direct links:

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