01. Soul Discoveries – Some Othaness For You is a classic modern soul album. How was the creative experience?
. Karen Bernod - ..Lovely! It’s always nice when I get together to create with others. Especially when we enjoy what we’re doing..it comes thru in the music.
02. Soul Discoveries - There are nine songs on Some Othaness For You and it was released on Natively Creative Music in 2000. Why not a major label?
. Karen Bernod - Majors are not really checking for Artists like myself. The Industry has changed so much. Since I am a seasoned Artist in order for me to have autonomy being Independent is the way to go. Now ..I sure wouldn’t mind
having major distribution w/a nice licensing deal..wink wink!:-)
03. Soul Discoveries - Life @ 360 Degrees is your latest album released on the same label in 2006. How different was making that album to Some Othaness For You?
. Karen Bernod - Each album was developed at different points in my life,
at different times in my career. Both are indicative of those times. SOFU was my debut..L@360 is the next level up and so on.. I like to keep it real..lol
04. Soul Discoveries – Are you working on a new record since Life @ 360 Degree’s?
. Karen Bernod – Yes.. my next Cd will be released in 2010 entitled “Planting Seeds”. It’s also my Producer debut so I’m excited and focused at the same time.
05. Soul Discoveries – What music have you been listening to lately?
. Karen Bernod – India Arie’s new Cd, Colby Callait, Mary Mary and Karen Bernod to name a few.
06. Soul Discoveries - What has been keeping you busy?
. Karen Bernod – Getting my Hustle on and keeping it up. We Independent Artist gotta keep it movin..not much dust on my heels right now..I’m Planting Seeds for my future.:-)
07. Soul Discoveries – What do you think of Soul Discoveries?
. Karen Bernod - Great. I always appreciate those who appreciate and acknowledge good Music for the Soul!! And I thank you for your love and support.
08. Soul Discoveries – Are you planning on visiting the UK when you release new material?
. Karen Bernod - Yes I Love the UK! You have always supported me ..when I was w/Incognito..Erykah..D’angelo Chaka and even my Solo Career..I’d be crazy not to. So I’m ready..just need that booking! Jazz Cafe anyone? lol
09. Soul Discoveries - Am I right in saying you did backing vocals for Erykah Badu?
. Karen Bernod -I guess I kind of spoke before hand huh? Yes I have, and it was a very good time for Erykah. She’d just came out her timing was perfect. We had fun on that gig. Tyrone was created in london at the Jazz Cafe.We were having a sound check for the gig that nite. Erykah was messing around on the mic. My self and the other BGVst chimed in as the keyboard player plunked out some chords and Tyrone was born. That was really koooool.
10. Soul Discoveries – Do you have a message for Soul Discoveries readers?
. Karen Bernod – Follow your heart and your dreams will follow!!! Stay true to yourself and believe and have faith and remember nothing worth having comes easy so work hard for what you want and get rid of all that doesn’t serve you well. Last but surely not least…Pray! Thank You Soul Discoveries..Peace n love
Kb
xo.
Happy New Year! Let’s hope 2010 is the year that Madrid takes home the trophies for both La Liga and the Champions League!
To recap what happened in el mundo del Real Madrid in the last few days: Cristiano played leapfrog in practice, Kaká tried out a new look involving a giant headband, Garay’s new year wishes include a quick recovery for Pepe and a victory vs. Osasuna, and Zidane is becoming more involved in Madrid’s activities.
Oh, and Madrid’s players were looking hot upon arrival in pamplona for today’s game against Osasuna.
This is the first post in an experiment I am conducting where twice a month (hopefully), I post a short interview of a person whose work have a tinge or more of darkness about them (although I may branch out later), not about their work (because you can easily google those), but about their beliefs and experiences in the supernatural.
I am honored to have Budjette Tan, one of the country’s best known comic book writers and whose well-crafted works of dark fantasy I admire.
I hope you enjoy it. Here goes:
Budjette Tan holding a copy of Trese
Alamat Comics co-founder Budjette Tan is nowadays known as the guy who created Trese, the comic book series that revolves around Alexandra Trese, a supernatural detective, a link between our world and the next.
Now spanning three best-selling books, Trese has managed to capture the imagination of many Filipinos, who avidly follow Trese and the Kambal’s – her twin bodyguards – hair-raising adventures. He is also involved with Underpass, a graphic novel published under Summit Books.
You can read Trese’s first seven cases for free at http://www.tresecomics.com
Do you believe in ghosts/ elementals? If yes, have you seen one (or more)? Can you tell us about it?
Yes, I do believe in such things. I have not really seen any supernatural creature or being, but my mother has told me enough stories to make me believe that they are real.
When I was still a baby of four or five months old, we supposedly lived in a haunted house in Merville. Strange things would be seen and heard by my relatives, the maids, and the driver. They talked about lights being switched on and off, getting calls on the intercom from rooms where there were no people, slippers moving by themselves, sights a young lady seen in the backseat of the car as the driver was backing out of the driveway. My mom and dad didn’t believe in such things. And then, one summer afternoon, after my mom gave me a bath, she noticed that the right side of my face wrinkled up like that of an old man. My right eye stared at her in defiance. She slapped my right cheek and commanded the spirit to leave me. And even though she slapped me hard, I did not cry but just stared back at her. She ended up praying the entire rosary before my face returned to normal.
A séance was held in the house and the medium spoke to two spirits, a father and a daughter, who died believing that the house still belonged to them. The medium explained to them that they were already dead and that they needed to move on. No other occurrence happened after the séance. (I’ve been planning to turn this story into a novel or a graphic novel. Maybe we’ll get to do it this year.)
When I was in college, strange things also started happening in our house in La Vista, Quezon City. I was abroad at the time all this happened and my mom called me up long distance just to tell me what they saw.
It was after dinner, my mom and dad sat at the lanai facing the garden – where we would see the usual moth fluttering near the spotlights and the occasional bat swoop down to munch on the moths. That night, a winged creature flew downwards and instead of flying back up into the dark sky, it stopped and hovered in front of the spotlight that lit the garden. The wings were attached to what looked like a human head that had no eyes, nose, or mouth. And where the ears should’ve been, the flesh-colored wings sprouted from the head and fluttered and kept itself floating. Before my mom and dad could do anything, the head vanished. And even though I was halfway around the world, sitting in a brightly lit room in the middle of the afternoon, I found myself scared to look out the window.
The Head was later seen by our cook and another maid. It was seen rolling, bouncing on the wall behind the kitchen.
At the time, the Spirit Questors were getting a lot of press. So, we invited them to do a quest in our house. Through the Questors, we found out the Head was actually a duwende – that they have the ability to change shape and they do so to play around with people. We also found out that there were two tribes of duwende living on the perimeter of our house. The Brown Duwende lived in the garden at the back. They were the “good guys”. The Black Duwende lived in the shrubs at the front of the house. They were the “bad guys”. The two tribes were trying to dominate the inside of the house.
Whenever the Brown tribe would win, good stuff happens to those in the house.
Whenever the Black tribe would win, bad luck happens. Which might have explained why my father’s business would have good years and bad years, said the Questors.
The Questors also met a diwata, who supposedly liked hanging around my mother and protected her from harm.
The Brown duwende requested that we keep the garden clean. They didn’t like it when we didn’t sweep away the dead leaves. They also asked if we could give them seafood and sweets every 5pm, which we left at the foot of a particular tree. We followed these requests and didn’t see the Head anymore after that.
Like I said, a lot of weird stuff has happened around me (seems like my mom is the magnet for weirdness), but I myself have not seen anything unusual. Probably, the only time I might have seen a ghost was when my father died. I slept in his room and when I woke up, I saw a shadowy figure seated at the couch. It was staring at me. It didn’t look like my dad. It was a thinner, slimmer figure. The figure vanished soon after I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
What’s the scariest place you’ve been to? Why was it scary? Did you end up experiencing anything supernatural there? Do you plan to go back?
Back in college, one of the urban legends we kept hearing about was the 13th house on 13 Street in New Manila. According to the story, a sale man / repairman / exterminator was called to the house. (The main character’s job changes, depending on who tells the story.) Even though he quickly found 13 Street, he could not find the house itself. After house #12, the numbering of the house would skip to #14. It was getting late and the sun was already setting. He was about to give up when he suddenly noticed that he was parked right in front of house #13.
He rang the doorbell and an old lady opened the gate. The lady was so happy to see him, that he had finally arrived, and he was ushered into the dimly-lit house.
The old lady supposedly showed him around the house and then wanted him to go to the basement. She said, she had prepared his favorite dish – adobo, supposedly. The lady smiled at the man and was trying to push him towards the door that lead downwards. The man panicked and gave some excuse about forgetting something in the car. He rushed out the door, out the gate and ran into his car and drove away as fast as he could.
The next day, he realized he forgot something in the house. So, he drove back and could not find it anymore.
One night, while hanging out at the 24-hour Mister Donut at Greenhills, one of the guys started telling this story again and after the story was told, we decided we just had to try and find the house for ourselves.
When we got to 13 Street, we saw that it was narrow road. So, to be able to implement a quick gate-away, we decided to drive into the street in reserve. While my brother drove the van, the rest of us were walking around trying to look for house #13. One of the guys had a camera and started snapping away, hoping that we’d catch some spirit or ghoul when the picture was developed. (We didn’t.)
And just like in the story, we could not find the 13th house. At a certain point, we just ended up scaring ourselves because a barking dog. We all jumped into the van and drove as far away as possible. We must’ve looked like the cast of Scooby-Doo that night.
We never did go back. Maybe we should try to look for it after all these years.
What’s the scariest ghost story you’ve heard?
I guess that story of me as a baby is the scariest one I’ve been told.
How has your supernatural experiences (even if they come in the form of secondhand stories) influenced your work?
Based on the things we were told about the duwende tribe in our house, that became basis for how things worked in the world of Trese.
The idea that these different enkanto and elementals group themselves into tribes, the idea that these supernatural beings can be dealt with or negotiated with using the right type of food came from those experiences. The idea that one’s career and life can be influenced these beings also came from those stories. The idea that a duwende can affect the lives of a household, became the jumping off point for things like, “Maybe the scions of Makati are so fortunate because they keep a tikbalang with them and maybe that tikbalang is living is in the tallest tower in Makati.”
What advice would you give someone who comes face to face with a ghost/elemental?
I think the advice given to “what would you do if you encounter a rabid dog / a bear in the forest / a snake in your basement” applies to what you should do when you encounter a ghost or elemental : DON’T PANIC. DON’T PROVOKE IT. RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN.
And one must not forget the great words of Winston Zeddemore: “…when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say `YES`!”
Again, you can read Trese’s first seven cases for free at http://www.tresecomics.com
I lie like a dog and make up the most ridiculous shit imaginable and sell it to you for as much money as I can. This makes me pretty much the same as any other writer. I like that writing is about one step removed from grifting. Writers and carnies have a lot in common. We have to jump up and down to sell you our goods, scream at the crowd, do a little dance can promise you two headed babies, talking dogs and angels getting fucked by Harry Potter’s lollipop-farting unicorn. It’s just part of the job of being a writer. Writing is a silly way to make money, but the only other people who get paid to lie for a living are carnies, cops and hookers and those jobs are way too much work.
what are you currently working on?
I just finished up Sandman Slim 2: Kill The Dead. It’s the first sequel I’ve written and it just about killed me. When I only wrote standalone books I could do pretty much anything I wanted to my characters. Kill them, ruin them or fuck them up any way that amused me as a writer. All of a sudden with this book, I had to care about all the terrible things I’d done to these characters in the previous book. Plus, I had to think of new terrible things to do to them while setting things and up for the third book. It was a whole new way of thinking and I learned a lot from slogging through it. And I hope to hell this remains the hardest book I ever write, but that’s never going to happen. what has had the greatest influence on your work?
Other books and writers, obviously. William Burroughs was a huge influence when I was starting out. J.G. Ballard was another. Elmore Leonard and Barry Gifford taught me to simplify and streamline my prose.
Music is a big influence, too. Early LA and New York punk was the main music of the young me and I have a lot of references to it in my. I’ve also been listening to electronic music since I was a kid. I was introduced to it at a very young age in New York. I don’t remember how young, but it was younger than 10. Maybe six or seven. Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by machine-generated, distorted and unnatural sounds. When I’m working I’ll often have on mild electronics like mid-70s Tangerine Dream or a more recent band with a similar sound, Redshift. When I want something noisier or moody I listen to Lustmord, Controlled Bleeding or William Basinski.
Visual artists have had a big impact my writing. The Surrealists, especially Dali, Ernst and Tanguay. Also photographers such as Joel Peter Witkin and John Santineros.
There plenty of movie influences in my work, too, but you can find those all over Sandman Slim so I’m not going to go into them here.
what is the greatest misconception about you or your work?
I don’t own as many guns as Stark, but I used to drink like him. what do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the medium you work in?
10 years into the 21st century, books and publishing are finally catching up with the late 20th century. It wasn’t that long ago that Dickens could walk into any publishing house in New York and feel right at home. Publishing was still a horse cart and buggy whip kind of business for way too long. No matter how many computers they had or how much online advertising they did, publishing was still stuck in a business model straight out of the 19th century. Online publishing, print-on-demand, and strange, wonky little devices such as the iPhone and Kindle have blown up publishing in a big way. Publishing is where the music business was a few years ago. They don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, but for the first time they’re taking the question seriously.
how has technology impacted upon the work you do?
I couldn’t do 90% of what I do if I didn’t have friendly, relatively non-crashing machines around me. My handwriting looks likes a mental patient scrawled his Oedipus complex nightmares on a wall in his own shit. Even typewriters were deadly for me because I was such a terrible typist. The manuscript for my first novel weighs about 15 pounds because of all the white out and staples holding together all the mismatched paper I used to cobble the thing together. Word processed manuscripts don’t have the character of those old piles of scrawled paper, but I’ll take the ability to actually get the words down in a readable way over amusingly eccentric manuscripts.
I also do a lot of photography and I couldn’t live without Photoshop. It saved my life and whole photo shoots more than once. God bless you, Adobe.
what’s the greatest piece of advice you would like to pass on?
There’s only one piece of advice that’s worth a damn: Don’t kill anybody and don’t kill yourself. Anything else that comes along can be dealt with.
where can we find you online?
RichardKadrey.com and KaosBeautyKlinik.com
what are you reading at the moment?
The City & The City by China Mieville, The Boys by Garth Ennis and Voluptuous Panic, a book on Weimar Berlin. what are you listening to at the moment?
Shortwavemusic by William Basinski and the new Tom Waits live album, Glitter and Doom. anything else we should know?
You’re going to be dead a lot longer than you going to be alive. So, fuck things up and have fun now while you’re something more than a sticky patch of whining ectoplasm stuck to the bottom of God’s Crocs.
