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cyrelia-j · 6 years

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[fic] Undertow 1 (Jack/Parmak)

So what have I been working on? Another stupid WIP :D Couldn't get DOM!Kelas out of my head after drawing the new blog header (and also after talking with @borg-apologist ) so thought I'd mess around with a little AU with Parmak visiting the Institute in Season 7 and meeting our boy Jack. In this Jack is more gray ace and I was excited to explore more kink with him so here goes.

Warnings: None for this part except Jack's usual disjointed thought, Jack/Parmak overall and a bit of praise kink

“In one week, you’ll kneel for me.”

Jack plays the words back in his head, a small counter having already started in his head from the time that he met the Cardassian doctor known as Kelas Parmak. The counter was a conscious counter, but it appeared when he asked his innermost thoughts how much time had passed. It’s been one hour, thirty three minutes, and four seconds. It keeps counting as he pulls the old doctor back to mind, pulls every piece of him perfectly and Precisely as he stands on the table rocking back and forth on his heels, staring out into the distance while he… Considers.

Kelas Parmak age one hundred and five (mind converting the number to approximately fifty two in human years though possibly as old as sixty one as Imprecise as the conversations are) stands as tall as Jack but possibly taller if it weren’t for the congenital spine curvature, the stoop, the odd tilt of the head perpetually, servilely looking upwards. It was… Nice because Jack didn’t need to make himself higher when he met him, he didn’t try and make himself More, didn’t try to tower over Jack and that set his mind at ease.

People were afraid of him so they always tried to make themselves Big and that made him… uneasy.

Kelas Parmak is slight, he’s an albino manifested by a violet tint to his gray skin, a slight pink to his sclera, an indigo hue to his eyes, and a pair of large silver spectacles that control the shaking of his pupils. He is sensitive to light but not cold (a different Breed of Cardassian from the Northern Continent thus spoke Zarathustra) and walks with a deliberate and measured step. He’s slight of build but there’s something Off, something stronger than it looks from the soft spoken voice that everyone strains to hear but Jack, from the mouth that barely moves when it speaks. Kelas Parmak leaves a tang of cinnamon spice on his tongue that Jack tasted when he was near him.

Jack wasn’t supposed to be near him.

Jack was never supposed to meet him.

Doctor Parmak wasn’t supposed to be in the inpatient wing directly. His work, he said involved the research of genetic augments but Nurse Ratched didn’t think it was a Good Idea for Jack or the Others to have any contact with Outsiders after the Incidents. Jack didn’t understand why they still expected him to listen to any of them. He still constantly Questioned from whence their Authority over him originated. They never answered him with anything Satisfactory and they… they had no right to keep him there when Sarina was allowed to leave and Bashir said there wasn’t anything he could do for them so why… why they kept this charade up, why they persisted in him changing or why they thought like the Foolish Virgin that they would awaken and his magic power would have changed all laws and morals and-

“They must be getting desperate,” Lauren says interrupting his Thoughts. Jack’s head snaps up the counter still counting violet eyes peering up over the frames of the spectacles. In one week, you’ll kneel for me…“If they’re letting one of the Cardassian Resistance doctors even think about looking at their records.”

“They’re afraid,” Patrick adds with a sigh, watching the feed that he and Jack had tapped into. Their security will recode soon enough but for now it’s enough for Jack to stare intently at the screen and continue considering the puzzle of Doctor Parmak.

“They should be afraid, they should have listened but it’s too late now too late for Martha to pull her dress back down.”

“It’s never too late to pull your dress back down, Jack,” Lauren retorts as she stares blankly a moment at the picture book. Jack sighs, studying the figure as the meeting continues. It’s a meeting about Jack and it Irritates him that he’s not there but… but Doctor Parmak wants him as an assistant which wasn’t the intent when Jack dropped from the ceiling in front of him but that’s what it’s become and he’s riveted to the back and forth volley of words. He stands nearly perfectly still biting his finger, Lauren murmuring that the Doctor is attractive but clearly not the Right Type and that’s code for a man who hasn’t triggered Lauren’s hallucinations.

But he triggered something for Jack.

The intent at first was a simple one. Jack needed to see the stranger, know the stranger who was in his Space hearing the pokpok of the cane tip echoing like a siren’s song to bring him to drown. He needed to know the creature behind the sound of their dark and warm little corner of the universe so he hung back searching, following the sound but seemingly too slow to catch it, the shadow vanishing around a corner until every light blared and all suns rose with the dawn. Doctor Parmak had slipped in like Mercury beneath the door, wavering, flickering quicksilver and it had stopped Jack a moment when he finally laid eyes on him.

Doctor Parmak said he wanted to talk.

So they talked...

---

“Hmm… they can’t contain you and yet here you are at the mercy of… what did you call them… basics?”

“Basics, simple, down the ladder of the chain, slower, weaker, duller, but you you take enough insects in a swarm and they can bring down a mighty creature! Fell worlds, galaxies, collapse stars mmhm.”

“And you would… rule over them?”

“Rule? Ha! That’s what they say too- rule, who’d want to rule hm hm? Milton would- better to reign in hell than serve in heaven but but Paradise is long lost and Hell is everyone here and I… I just want Quiet! Is that too much to ask?! Freedom?Quiet?! But all men hate the wretched and there’s… there’s nothing more wretched than a seraphim cast with six broken wings… why are you laughing?”

It started with a little smile. Jack introduced himself. Doctor Parmak kept smiling non threatening, assessing good Good but holding firm, eyes following Jack’s movements, leaning on the cane, a tilt of the head as he gave his name back, lips barely moving, a flit of the tongue that was like a small lizard’s, delicate, a push of glasses, no offer of hand, as they discussed and lips still barely moved keeping Jack from reading them, still Smiling as eyes tracked, no draw back, no posturing just Watching, laughing softly, then louder, disarming because Jack didn’t… raise his voice as he would when he Needed to know something but just asked level and Curious...

“Ah, my apologies it’s just that… what you said reminded me of things I’ve heard so many times in so many academic circles. Mmm… how to explain I suppose you would say that for many Cardassians, the mightiest human is still a blind and snivelling vole next to even the weakest of us... Oh but that sounds like slight, doesn’t it? My apologies, I suppose I’m not well versed in your customs.”

“You’re not better than me. Quantifiably even… even accounting for genetic differences in bones density, the averages that make us different it… it doesn’t matter and I don’t know why you’d stand there saying things you know aren’t true I don’t know why you wouldn’t know any of this or why you’d argue it with me because you had to had to have read my file.”

Jack’s hand on his shoulder and Doctor Parmak drew in a breath but not scared, increased respirations, another push of glasses, another speculative tilt, another flick of that tongue which Jack mimicked and Parmak smiled hand over Jack’s thumb circling scales, warm hand, trapping, holding him there, looking in his eyes steadily brilliantly Jack’s thumb in his mouth biting hard before that hand released soft, stepping in challenging sweetly smiling smelling cinnamon and Jack tasting spice in the air a study, more study of him Jack uncertain unsure, a tap of the cane, another step towards him voice soft hands soft, mouth soft, warm, everything about Doctor Parmak radiating warm.

“No, I hadn’t actually. It wasn’t necessary to know about any of you individually. And I suspect were I to read your file I’d find it hardly conveys everything that I need to know about you.”

“What do you need to know about me? They said… that that you weren’t going to study us, that you weren’t going to scan, you weren’t going to cut because I don’t agree to that. You’re not cutting me open! No!”

“Mmm no, there’s no need for that. In fact… the use I have for you is much different. With your… gifts you say, you might be the assistant that I need. They offered me some young man but I fear he isn’t going to be able to keep up academically. But I have a feeling that you’ll work out quite nicely.”

“I’m not taking orders from you? I know you heard me, I don’t take orders hm. I don’t-”

Nystagmatism met paroxysm and both battled to a standstill, Parmak with the saucy cinnamon tilt of head and fingers dancing over the exposed ridges of his neck mirrored on Jack’s, Jack followed absently, both of them stopped having danced circles in the empty common room around the couch, a chase around the sofa ashes ashes, all falling down, step left step right, Parmak holding up a single digit smile dark on his face but not Threatening just… commanding.

“One week. In one week, you’ll kneel for me…”

“Why… why would I kneel for you?”

“Because you want to be a good boy of course...”

Whispered sibilant susserated auditory smoke sending shivers as the Doctor slowly turned his back on Jack the ghost of that voice, that scent lingering in the air before the room started back up, stopped time resuming, People egress ingress, in out and Jack fled back when the lights came back on and he realized until then the room had been nearly pitch black with Doctor Parmak still seeing him clear as day.

“Good boy…”

---

“Well you certainly must have made an impression,” Lauren teases as Jack watches Doctor Parmak neatly parlay Jack’s temporary Extra Privileges to Assist him. He blinks a few times before jumping down. “You’ll have to tell me your secret.”

“See Jack, this is why Sarina said that you catch more flies with honey,” Patrick says and Jack is… pleased that Patrick has something to smile about because Patrick like the rest of them has been a lot quieter since Sarina’s departure, but unlike Jack the silence from the other two is an inward reflection, a rebirthed quiet hope for their own liberation and Jack… wonders what it might be like to have people on the Outside waiting for him. Sarina didn’t have anyone but Lauren and Patrick… they’re different.

Jack doesn’t hope. Jack doesn’t dream. Jack doesn’t particularly care who wins the war because the walls of his room, his cell look the same no matter who owns the galaxy. Bashir speaks loftily about freedom and subjugation but Jack’s lived most of his life in chains and still doesn’t understand if it’s good enough for His existence why they’re not willing to pledge the save to save billions of their fellow man. Jack will never Understand the anger at him for doing what he was told, never understand why they Hate that he refuses to call them equal. Equal men didn’t wear chains and that either made him Prometheus or Sicinnus using his gifts in the service of Themistocles… In one week, you’ll kneel for me… Never, he thinks, even as he watches The Federation barter him away like an Athenian slave.

Jack doesn’t belong to anybody.

But still feels the memory ghost of breath on his face, the counter counting higher, indigo eyes above the glimmering lenses blinking every second…

Good boy...

#star trek ds9 #ds9 fanfic #ds9 jack #kelas parmak #jack/parmak #light ds stuff #like squint and you'll miss it for this part #fanfic #cyrelia-j

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skillele · 3 years

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Practice with singing

Playing with a singer to accompany the song wasn’t too bad. It helped a great deal to have a singer that doesn’t need much instruction on timing matters (e.g., when to come in a song, phrasing). As a musician herself, she was able to provide feedback on certain chords that I’m less familiar with (e.g., Dm) that didn’t sound quite right when I played it. It was a fun experience and it was rewarding to reach one of my goals of playing recreationally. In some ways, the singer was a relevant desirable difficulty because her phrasing helped me stay on beat. But at times, it was also a non-relevant desirable difficulty when the singing was distracting. I think it is simply because I’m not used to hearing another person while I play, so my attention was pulled in different areas. I also changed my location during this practice session. It was interesting to see the transfer from inside my house to outside and in my car. There were a lot more visual and auditory distractions (e.g., people walking by, sirens). But again, this is likely the kind of environment that I see myself playing in (i.e., social settings). Overall, I did pretty well with the distractions. When it came time to record for my final demo, there was a wall that I kept hitting where I couldn’t get a perfect take. Mostly, my fingers would just play the wrong note because my mind would blank. This could be from the distracting environment, which made me less focused on which note came next. We decided to take a break so that her voice and my playing wouldn’t get too fatigued. This seemed to help me engage with the right amount of focus.

I hope to include more practice like this in the future. It’s a lot more stimulating for me. I wouldn’t have been able to play with someone singing at the beginning of the semester. I had to get down the basics. From strumming patterns, to locking in chord switches with at least four chords, I think I have come a long way.

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ashatteredmindblr-blog · 6 years

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‘Hallucinations’

I started off the planning for the track ‘Hallucinations’ by looking at the different classifications of schizophrenic hallucinations. Through conducting research I discovered there are 4 main types of hallucinations that are commonly experienced by sufferers of schizophrenia: Visual (seeing things), Auditory (hearing things), Tactile (feeling things) and Olfactory (smelling things) hallucinations (Psycom, 2018). With this in mind I constructed a mind map and started to add little themes that I read about in my research that I could translate sonically.

Once I had a mind map of key terms, I started to research methods of sound design and composition that I could employ to sonically recreate some of the elements for each of the 4 types of hallucination. I read that visual hallucinations were often a vivid distortion of reality and quite often manifested as strange and frightening visions, so part of the sound design process involved creating scary sounds using film compositional techniques like jump-scares (Asbjoern Andersen, 2015) with the use the distortion plugin iZotope Trash (iZotope, 2018).

I read that one of the most common manifestations of auditory hallucinations was through hearing voices that were not there, often appearing scattered in all directions and commonly talking maliciously about the person having the hallucinations (Merell Dow, 2004). To recreate this theme I focussed heavily on the manipulation of the human voice and the stereo image of the audio. I recorded some samples of me and my girlfriend talking in various levels of intensity and completely mashed up the sound so that is unrecognisable so I could use them as small rhythmic nuances throughout the and use stereo image processing to create immersivity in the stereo field (Daniel Keller, 2018/ Caroline Scott, 2015).

With tactile hallucinations, I wasn’t sure how I was going to represent this theme with sound at first. Then after researching into the effects of infrasound (Rob Schwarz, 2013) and the effect that these frequencies below 20 Hz can have on humans (Neuro Research Project, 2013) I thought that incorporating 17 Hz bass tones into the track would be best way to represent this hallucination. As humans, we cannot hear tones below 20 Hz but we can still feel them. One of the descriptions of olfactory hallucinations that I came across was “feeling something that wasn’t there” (Very Well Mind, 2018).

I also looked into some of the typical delusions that schizophrenics have. I found out about 4 main types of delusions: Grandiose (belief that you have superior abilities and qualities), Somatic (belief that you are ill or infected), Erotomanic (belief that someone is in love with you) and Persecutory (belief that someone is mistreating you). I took two of these themes (Erotomanic and Persecutory) and I decided to write a section of the song that juxtoposes between the two using call and response. I set about trying to recreate these musically. With erotomanic, I layered organic wind instruments (violins and double bass) and light tones processed with some spacey reverb to create a relaxing and flowing melody. With the Persecutory theme, I resampled a synthesiser called the Mucocoder Hypercyclic (Mucoder, 2018) as I thought that the tone it was producing was very tense and upsetting - to me I thought it had a very paranoia inducing sonic quality. This section comes in at the end of the track, around the 3:21 mark.

Other techniques I employed involved designing strange sounds that could not be explained. To do this I looked into some strange sonic examples in nature that nobody could accurately pinpoint the source for. I found an article on Mental Floss called ‘9 Strange Sounds No One Can Explain’ (Caitlin Schneider, 2015) and tried to emulate some of the noises using resampled Massive sounds (Native Instruments, 2018) and granular processing. Some of the sounds didn’t come out the way I wanted them to but they still worked perfectly for the job.

When I was picking out key terms from my research I kept coming across words like ‘Stressful’ and ‘Irritating’ (Neel Burton, 2012). As these kept cropping up, I thought that it would be best to incorporate some everyday annoying sounds into the track. I went on a multitude of sound-walks around Bristol to gather as many annoying sounds as I could - police sirens, children screaming, cars, building sites and various other ever present and incredibly irrating sources of noise pollution heard everyday living in a city. If you listen carefully you will be able to hear these sounds crop up throughout the track, although some sounds have been heavily processed to the point of being unrecognisable - but I feel that adds to the hallucinatory aesthetic of the track.

Andersen, A. (2015) ‘How to Create Horror Sound Effects that are Truly Scary!’, A Sound Effect, 26th October 2015 [Blog]. Available at https://www.asoundeffect.com/how-to-create-horror-sound-effects/

Burton, N. (2012) ‘Schizophrenia: Coping with Delusions and Hallucinations’, Psychology Today, 31st August 2012 [Blog]. Available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201208/schizophrenia-coping-delusions-and-hallucinations

Dow, M. (2004) Schizophrenia [Online]. Available at http://www.schizophrenia.com/family/delusions.html (Accessed 6th March 2018)

izotope (2018) ‘Trash’ (Version 2) [Computer program]. Available at https://www.izotope.com/en/products/create-and-design/trash.html (Accessed 6th March 2018)

Mucoder (2018) ‘Hypercyclic’ [Computer program]. Available at http://www.mucoder.net/en/hypercyclic/

Native Instruments (2018) ‘Massive’ (Version 1.1) [Computer program]. Available at https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/massive/

Neuro Notes (2013) ‘Infrasound Can Mess with Your Head’, Neuro Research Project, 19th February 2013 [Blog]. Available at https://neuroresearchproject.com/2013/02/19/1289/

Psycom (2018) Schizophrenia: Hallucinations and Delusions [Online]. Available at https://www.psycom.net/schizophrenia-hallucinations-delusions/ (Accessed 6th March 2018)

Scott, C. (2015) ‘Binaural Sound is Back: Making Audio and Immersive Experience’, Journalism, 25th September 2015 [Blog]. Available at https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/binaural-sound-is-back-making-audio-an-immersive-experience/s2/a568654/

Schneider, S (2015) ‘9 Strange Sounds Non One Can Explain’, Mental Floss, 6th April 2015 [Blog]. Available at http://mentalfloss.com/article/62731/9-strange-sounds-no-one-can-explain

Schwarz, R. (2013) ‘Infrasound: The Fear Frequency’, Stranger Dimensions, 21st June 2013 [Blog]. Available at https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/06/21/infrasound-the-fear-frequency/

Universal Audio (2018) Mixing in Stereo: Adding Width and Depth to your Recordings [Online]. Available at https://www.uaudio.com/blog/studio-basics-mixing-stereo/ (Accessed 6th March 2018)

Very Well Mind (2018) The Internal Experience of Schizophrenia [Online]. Available at https://www.verywellmind.com/the-internal-experience-of-schizophrenia-2953095 (Accessed 6th March 2018)

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behappydaily-blog1 · 7 years

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5 Steps for Dealing With People Who Talk Too Much

One day recently, Jean*, a young professional woman, started her session with me by ranting about one of her co-workers. “The man does not stop talking,” she said. “Today he asked me how my weekend went, and before I could utter a word he started telling me about everything he had done.”

We all know someone like this man—people who talk without listening, who seem to think that what they have to say is as fascinating to everyone else as it is to them, and who don’t seem to understand that listening is an important part of communicating and connecting to others.

What makes these people tick? What can we do about them? And maybe more important, what can you do if you happen to be one of them?

Talking is part of what we humans do. “What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats—and they in turn can listen to ours,” Henning Mankell, author of the Wallander mysteries, wrote recently in the New York Times.

But people who talk too much don’t seem to get this balance. Why? A number of my colleagues on PT have written about the difficulty some of us have either listening to others or to ourselves.

“Listening requires complex auditory processing," according to Daniel P. Ellis of Columbia University. We develop the capacity to listen automatically, according to Ellis, which is one of the reasons that even a very young child will react differently to the sounds of a robin’s song and a police siren. It is also a tool in learning. Maybe this last part—that says the ability to process complex auditory signals is an important factor in our ability to learn—explains why it seems that so many people who talk at us have difficulty learning how to be more related. This is not to say that all people who talk incessantly are not deeply connected to others. But it does seem to make it difficult for them to recognize different moods and responses in their listeners.

In the best of communication, there is a kind of give and take between talking and listening, a sharing of who is the speaker and who is the listener based on mutual respect and caring about each other’s feelings. Some people who talk a lot are not able to engage in this interactive rhythm, not because they do not care, but because they cannot tolerate the emotions that might emerge as they listen to another person. In fact, in the course of my work as a therapist, I have found that many non-stop talkers actually use their words to stop themselves from knowing what they are feeling.

This is what happened with Max*, a smart, articulate man with two young children. His wife was threatening to leave him because, she said, he did not care about or understand her. Max talked his way through two sessions, almost without taking a breath, before I was able to interrupt him and ask how he was feeling. His eyes filled with tears and his voice cracked as he replied, “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that. I don’t want to feel how I’m feeling. I don’t want to think about how I’m feeling. I don’t want to feel.”

I asked Max if he thought that might be part of the problem that had led his wife to ask for a divorce. He nodded and said, “I haven’t been able to let myself feel anything for a long time. She thinks it’s because I don’t feel anything. It’s really because I’m in danger of feeling too much.”

Max had hit the nail on the head. Some people talk about themselves because they genuinely think they’re more interesting than anyone else they know. But many people, like Max, are overwhelmed by their own feelings and push them away by talking. Either way, these monologues are the opposite of the kind of story-telling exchange that Mankell describes, that bring us closer to other people. And both of these kinds of talking make it hard for a person to learn to manage his or her feelings in another way.

So what can you do if you’re troubled by a co-worker, friend or loved one who talks too much? Here are five simple suggestions that might help:

First, listen—but not for too long. As you are listening, try to formulate for yourself what this person is trying to communicate: Is it a wish to be admired? A thought that they cannot get out of their head? A feeling that they cannot manage? (See my PT colleague Sophia Dembling’s terrific blog about what it feels like to listen too long.)

After listening for a little while and formulating what they are trying to communicate, ask them if they would mind terribly if you interrupt them. They might say, “No, no, I’m talking too much, you go ahead.” (Don’t get caught up in denying this truth out of politeness; it will just distract you both.) If they say, “Let me just finish this thought,” respond gently with something like, “Oh, I thought you had finished. Can I tell you what I heard you say?” (Of course, some people still have to say it their own way. Let them finish, since you won’t have a choice; but then interrupt them as soon as they start to move to something else.)

When you interrupt, be ready to say something about what you hear them saying. Don’t go for a deep psychological explanation. Something simple and to the point, but if possible, something that reflects something positive about them. Don’t be surprised if they start to talk over you—many people talk over everyone else because they are afraid of criticism. Again, say, “Wait, I’d like to finish my thought now,” and then say what you were going to say about them.

Don’t stop with a comment about them. Add some experience of your own that will confirm that you understand what they’re experiencing. A memory of a similar event, a similar feeling, a funny story—anything that gives you a chance to share your own experience but that you can tie to theirs.

Stop the conversation when it goes on too long. It’s really not damaging to tell someone who you’ve been listening to for more time than you have to spare (and more than you want to give away) that you’re really sorry, but you have work you have to do and you’ll have to continue this conversation later. And if they are the kind of person who comes back later to continue the conversation, just say, “No, sorry, I’m busy right now"—because, finally, you have the right to protect your own boundaries.

#lessonlearnt #physcology #worklife #learnphyscology

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