Curie Author Showcase (May 26th, 2018)

• In spirit of Curie's mission to promote undiscovered but exceptional content, we wish to use this twice weekly section to provide an author showcase for some of the outstanding authors who received Curie upvotes in past week. Curie curators and reviewers nominate authors for inclusion in this showcase and author approval is sought and attained.

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Image used with the permissions of @vadimlasca

Now we officially start of today's Author Showcase with a very talented director from Venezuela, @vadimlasca . Vadim is also a talented Curie Curator now. This is actually the third video directed by him to get a Curie upvote. This is the second music video, while the other was a sort of documentary with his daughter Oriana reporting on a skin disease she actually has called Vitiligo. You can check out that video here.

This music video is from a Venezuelan artist named Jassiel. The song is A Tu Manera which translates to In Your Way.

Vadim shared the following about how this newest music video came about.

I just want to tell you how the project came about. The Manager of Jassiel called me and asking me to listen to Jassiel's new single, and invited me to think of a music video that should be "a reflection of real life", where everyone lived their life "in their own way", like the title of the song. After many discussions, ideas, micheladas, more micheladas and more discussions, we defined that the music video should be as close to the documentary format as we could, moving away from the overproductions and ostentation style that urban music videos usually have.

Image used with the permissions of @mixology

My favorite Dali painting - The Persistence of Memory Source

This is not a story about his work, career and commercial success, though, but about some interesting data related to his personal life extracted from his own book and some psychological studies.

As the above excerpt from @mixology 's post states - this post delves into the mind of one of the great modern artistic geniuses who deep down inside was just lonely and trying to carve out his own existence in this world. It is great to get a look inside the head of the great Salvadore Dali and see just what it was that made him and his melted clocks tick.

I can say that through the knowledge and understanding of the great minds' work and their emotional world, we tend to understand the world around us and ourselves much better. - @mixology

Image used with the permissions of @tesmoforia

As Cosplay does for many people, it allowed @tesmoforia to come out of her shell. Often times putting on that costume, that mask, or that cape can allow a normally shy and reclusive person to join in the fun, many times with perfect strangers at Comic Cons and similar shows around the world.

Cosplay (one of my hobbies since 2006) was able to offer a lot of peace to my life. I was not only able to canalize all this diffuse energy that overwhelms me every day, it was also able to help me to gain confidence in myself and having a so much better self-esteem as participating in contests and traveling to compete in other states on my country filled me with confidence, confidence to understand that if I wish to accomplish something, this something is possible in the precise instant that I decide to imprint it with two things in harmonious balance:
Love and Dedication.

For me, Cosplay is more than just a hobby, it was my own therapy during my youth (on the current time, I’m 29 years all, and a lawyer), and at the present time it is one of the activities that I enjoy the most to do: Creating a new suit for me represents one fantastic adventure!, it is a therapy for my restless mind and insecure heart.

@tesmoforia takes this hobby to another level by adding in her own crafting skills. This tutorial post shows you the step by step process of making an amazing looking Pokemon Team Mystic Badge.

I’m the kind of person who is very unquiet and with a hyperactive mind, if I’m not creating something, anxiety consumes me whole. I had always been in love with creating since I was a child, and this fact is the reason why I stepped into many hobbies and crafting arts: From the embroidery to paint, from drawing to sewing, from creating suits and props, to wig styling and scriptwriting for performances (also Decoration, Card making, bags designing…)

Image used with the permissions of @dreamrafa

We continue our string of amazing guitar work featured in the Author Showcase for the third straight post. Today's talented guitarist is @dreamrafa (Rafael Sequera). He plays an incredible rendition of Joe Satriani's Wormhole Wizards while accompanying himself on other instruments.

@dreamrafa was nice enough to let me ask him a few questions in a sort of short interview that turned into more of an enjoyable conversation.

My first question for him was, "What inspired your love for music?"

Music itself inspired me!, I always enjoyed music when I was a kid, even if I could not play anything...

Having a real instrument and listening to the sounds it produced was magic for me, I just couldn't stop playing with it.

Next up I asked, " For this post you chose a song by the great Joe Satriani. Who would you consider your Top 3 "Guitar Gods"?"

Well, its hard to choose just 3, but the ones who most influenced me are Satriani, Steve Vai and John Petrucci.

I was thrilled with this answer as in my comment on his post I mentioned Vai who is one of my favorites. I then shared a story with him about my first ever concert. We went to see Whitesnake shortly after Vai had joined the group. About halfway through the show Vai jumped into an incredible rendition of the (U.S.) National Anthem followed by about a 30 minute solo while the rest of the band went off stage and took a break. It was amazing.

Rafael then pointed out that he was in the middle of uploading a video of his band @echoes playing a live cover of Vai's For the Love of God. He sent me the link to it a little while ago and it has been playing on repeat since. Go check out this new video here: For The Love Of God - Steve Vai (Live Performance by @dreamrafa cover band)

I then wrapped up our discussion with this two-part question, "What was the first song you ever learned to fully play? What has been the toughest song for you to learn to play?"

Well the first song on guitar I think it was some Guns & Roses, "Sweet Child O' Mine", it was a very popular song at that time and I wanted to impress girls lol

The hardest is also a hard question... Every song been hard at some point, that G&R song was pretty hard for me as a beginner... Lately I would say some Eric Johnson or Jason Becker tracks, those are pretty hard.

Be sure to follow @dreamrafa and his band @echoes. You can actually find information on purchasing their album on their page.

Image used with the permissions of @willymac

Today we wrap up the Author Showcase with a heartbreaking story of a little boy, his stuffed elephant, and an encounter that would change his life forever. Even though this story is non-fiction, as usual I will not spoil the story for you. Instead I will let @willymac share a bit about it and himself and then let you read the story for yourself.

That encounter with the pachyderm so long ago has made me hypersensitive to the way I imagine an animal is feeling and I have always seen them as beings and not just animals. That also is one of the main reasons I have been a vegetarian for many decades.

As for writing, I have kept a daily journal for the past twenty two years, more to pretend I'm writing than actually being creative. My family would have made rich material for William Faulkner, so I had lots to motivate me. Plus, I have always been a photographer and documented my family life along the way, and, as ideas occurred to me, included thumbnails of the stories I planned to write "when I had the time", so somewhere over 6,500 pages journals served some purpose. I had as much fun creating the Journal covers as I did writing the text.

I have written three books, all on Amazon. Leaving Saigon, Sterling:For the Republic, and Hunter's Junes (a little over 1,700 pages, total).

I have been a licensed Amateur Radio operator for over 50 years, Served in the US Air Force, have a couple of college degrees, and count dogs among my best friends; all making me perfectly normal.

This Curie Author Showcase was written by Curie Curator @randomwanderings (Gene) with input from other Curie curators and reviewers. Author permission was sought and obtained from all authors featured in this showcase. All works are the copyright of their respective authors and used with permission.