Category Archives: Life

On Being A Light Amidst The Darkness

Candle flame 776x432

There is darkness all around us. This week, of all weeks, that is clear.

Young black men shot by police thousands of mile apart – and then five police officers killed in an ambush by an angry assailant seemingly intent on vengance. Police officers, in this case, who were doing their jobs of protecting a peaceful protest against those earlier shootings.

Just a week earlier a bomb exploded at an airport in Istanbul, Turkey killing over 40 people and injuring hundreds more… a terrorist attack at a bakery claimed over 20 lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh… a weekend bombing in a market in Baghdad, Iraq, left close to 300 dead… and bombs rocked three cities in Saudi Arabia, including near a mosque in the holy city of Medina.

Meanwhile tempers flare against immigrants in the UK after the Brexit vote… a U.S. Presidential candidate stokes the fires of fear and hatred… as do similar leaders in European countries… and bombs continue to fall in Syria’s civil war…

The list could go on and on…

The divide between “us” and “them” grows stronger… where “them” is really “anyone not like us“.

So much anger. So much hatred. So many killings.

There is darkness all around us.

As I struggled to concentrate on my work today, I found a browser window open to a piece written 10 days ago by Umair Haque: The Age of Light. He writes in part:

Dark ages are human creations, remember? The darkness isn’t somewhere “out there”. It’s in us. That is how we choose them, make them, create them.

The true hallmark of a Dark Age is this. We call the darkness the light, and celebrate it, revel in it, seek salvation in it. Darkness isn’t a meteor hitting the earth. It’s a mentality. The impoverishment of the mind, brought on by rage, envy, fear.

No Dark Age thinks it is one. Every Dark Age calls itself an Age of Light. Isn’t that exactly what’s happening across the globe today? As the middle collapses, as people grow poorer, they are regressing. They are literally choosing to go backwards. But that very choice is celebrated on the streets, applauded in the towns, and shouted from the rooftops as great, noble, and wise.

That is all a Dark Age really is.

Institutions crumble, leaders fail, and there is a turn to tribalism, feudalism, conflict, and dynasty.

He goes on… his full article is worth a read.

There is darkness all around us.

In the face of all of this, how, then, do we push back against the darkness?

I don’t really know.

Sitting at my desk trying to get work done online today while every site brought more news of the madness…

… I just don’t know.

I am reminded again of the powerful words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

In a world where so much darkness threatens I think our only solution is for each one of us to be a light.

To ask ourselves each moment: can we be kinder? can we be better? can we help others in some way?

Umair is right – the darkness is within us. We cannot change others – we can only change ourselves and the choices we make.

And while that sounds hopelessly naive and cliche, I see no other way forward.

Or, at least, no other positive way forward.

We seem to have lost some kind of understanding of our common humanity.

Of the fact that all of us have the same basic needs and desires: food, drink, a safe place to live… friends, family… to laugh, to share… to be loved.

Black, white, yellow, pink, red, brown… liberal, conservative or anywhere in between… male, female or something else… we are all breathing the same air and living on the same planet, no matter what language we speak or how we dress or how we look.

We need to rebuild that faith in each other. That trust in each other.

We won’t always agree – in fact we may violently disagree – but we need to recognize that even in that worst disagreement we are still… fundamentally… human.

With parents and sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters and friends and partners and…

Each with our own dreams and desires for the future…

We must believe in that. And we must bring that belief within us.

And we must act in that capacity. Deeds, not words, as they say.

And through our actions maybe, just maybe, we can be a beacon of hope for others.

It will not be easy. We will fail. Repeatedly. But this week reminds us that we must keep trying.

We must be the light.

Or else darkness wins.

Remembering Challenger… 30 Years Later

There are moments in life where you can remember exactly where you were… moments that live with you forever.

Today was the anniversary of one of those.

I was a freshman at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH, and remember being in the “lounge” of Sackett House, one of the “mini-dorms” at UNH, where there was the only TV. (Things were different then.) I remember being there with another resident, a woman named Alison, I believe, who dreamed of being an astronaut and was in the Air Force ROTC program to start down that path.

My memory is hazy after 3 decades about the exact details… but I seem to recall that it was just she and I in the lounge area watching the launch. Her dreaming of being an astronaut, and me dreaming of flying into space and space stations and moon bases and more. I was then and still am a dreamer about all things related to space.

Living in New Hampshire we were of course caught up in the massive attention focused on Christa McAuliffe, the first “teacher in space”. The media attention was focused on our state – and particularly Concord, NH, where she taught.

But even with all that massive media attention, we probably were the only ones watching in our small dorm… at that point in time Space Shuttle missions had come to be pretty routine… and “boring” to most people. Wikipedia’s list of Shuttle missions shows that there were 9 launches in 1985 and in fact the Space Shuttle Columbia had just launched on January 12, 1986, and landed on January 18.

But the Challenger launch 10 days later was anything but routine.

I remember sitting there watching the launch… and then I just remember the fireball that none of us can ever forget.

I remember the hope… the hope against hope… that maybe, just maybe… someone had survived.

And then the despair when it was clear that nothing could have survived.

I remember Alison in tears… I assume I was probably in tears, too.

I remember that we, as a nation, joined in a collective moment of shock… and then mourning.

The histories tell me that the explosion occurred 73 seconds after launch. Watching one of those original news reports today it seems such a long time.

Later, of course, would be the endless hours of replays… the hearings and investigations… the learning all about O-rings and cold temperatures… and so much more.

Two-and-a-half years later, the Space Shuttle flights would finally resume with great safety improvements – as well as a heightened awareness in the public. Spaceflight was no longer “routine”.

But at that moment on that January day in 1986, we who dreamt of space flight watched our dreams be shattered… and the emotional effect lingers to this day.

30 years… 3 decades… seems like such a long time.

But that day… that moment… that image… will live with me forever.

I remember… and I give thanks for the crew of the Challenger… and all of those who have given their lives in pursuit of dreams.

May we all together carry those dreams forward…

An audio version of this post is also available:

Image credits: NASA Johnson Space Center on Flickr (and here) CC BY NC 2.0, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Flickr CC BY 2.0, and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr CC BY NC 2.0

My 3 Words For 2016

2016threewords As has been my tradition for a while now, I like to start off on January 1 writing about my “three words” that represent my aspirations for the year ahead. (See my 2015 three words and also earlier years.)

So here we go for 2016…

STRATEGY

I’ve found myself quite “busy” this past year, but the question is whether I’ve been “busy” with the right things. And more to the point – has there been a reason for some of the things I’ve been doing.

Not that you absolutely NEED a reason for everything… but we live in an age of distraction, and if we aren’t careful it’s easy to find that we’ve frittered away time that we could have spent otherwise.

In 2016 I want to think a bit more strategically about the various activities I’m involved in. To make conscious choices about what I’m doing – and for whom – and why.

And to have a bit more of a plan in some cases.

Some common phrases come to mind:

Connect the dots.
Think of the big picture.
Do fewer things better.
Less is more.

In some ways this is perhaps a continuation of, or a refinement of, the “Essentials” that I talked about in 2015.

The point is that I want to think and act a bit more strategically this year.

HEALTH

In the chaos of 2015, I let my health slip down in my list of priorities. I haven’t been making the best choices in terms of eating or exercise. Sadly, I’ve gained back 25 of the pounds I lost over the past few years. I didn’t run a single race in 2015 – and in fact ran a measly 213 miles over the entire year… not even running at all in the entire month of December, and only a pathetic 6 or 7 miles in both October and November. There are other examples.

I need to change this.

I need to put a priority back on taking care of my health. Because if I don’t do it, who will? And I want to be around in the long term for my wife and kids.

REFLECTION

I want to make time this year for more reflection. Caught up in the maelstrom of being “busy”, I haven’t been taking the time to…

Pause.

Think.

Contemplate.

Reflect.

It’s hard to carve out that time to just think about things… to think about how all the dots are connected.

But we need to do so… or at least *I* feel the need to do so.

This time of reflection feeds back into the “strategy” word above… and indeed into the “health” word as some of that reflection can happen while, say, running.

These are my aspirations for 2016… what are yours?

P.S. There is, of course, a fourth word that will consume a great part of 2016 for me… CURLING! Particularly given that my 13-year-old daughter will now be going to the 2016 USA Curling Junior Women’s National Championships in two weeks in Minnesota…

An audio version of this post is available:

Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other… And Walking On…

Footprints Today was one of those days. You know the type I’m talking about.

When the to-do list seems to just keep going and going and going…

When for every one thing you check off, it seems like three more get added…

For every blog post I published or document I created, there was another one that I was reminded that wasn’t done yet. The email messages came in with new projects and things to add to the list. An IM message reminds me that there was another project still lurking out in the background that needs finishing up. Another message bringing a request from someone to know when I’ll finally have a chance to do something I should have done four months ago… the finance department pings me wondering when I’ll finally get to doing expenses… a calendar reminds me that I still need to book the flights for an upcoming trip…

The hits kept on coming and coming…

Not just in my work life, but also in my personal life… the guilt of not being able to meet with someone to help on a project that I helped start, but then haven’t been able to do much more with… drama within organizations with which I am involved… chaos in the lives of those around me who I love dearly… a reminder at dinner time that I need to find substitutes for the curling game I’m not going to be able to play in on Saturday… the lingering feeling that I’m dropping the ball on something else… and then the parent evening tonight… the unfinished email messages…

It was one of those days…

And then when I take a “break” to look in on social media, I find that world is exploding with amazing news all day today! So many things I want to write about… to podcast about… heck, just to READ about…

And the frustration that there are some big pieces of writing that I want to do. There are things happening all around us that I can see – dancing right in front of me – that I know that I can pull together and connect the dots in ways that would help these things make sense to other people. The frustration that I know I could help people understand.

But yet the pieces sit there… dancing just out of range… taunting me… beckoning… calling me to pull them together and make them whole…

It was one of those days…

And as the end of the day approaches there is a sense of frenetic activity… of an unsustainable pace… of burning too many candles at too many ends… of ropes fraying… of the need to do fewer things better… of the need to be more present…

And I must pause…

… and remind myself that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to simply…

… breathe.

To take that moment to pause amidst the chaos… to have a moment in the madness…

…

and then to pick yourself up…

put one foot in front of the other…

…

… and walk on.

Never Give Up

Curling final 770

Never. Give. Up.

I was vividly reminded of that lesson last night in the championship game of the Men’s Curling League at the Petersham Curling Club where I play. Our team, which had played extremely well together all year, had made it through the playoffs to be in the final championship game against another excellent team.

This was it. The end of the long curling season and a chance to have our names inscribed on the league trophy at the club.

After 5 of the 8 ends (think “innings” in baseball or “periods” in hockey), both teams were tied. Then the other team scored 2 points in the 6th end. Then they stole 1 point in the 7th. So we were going into the final 8th end three points down with a score of 7-4.

We thought we were doomed. It was highly unlikely that there was any way out. Scoring 3 points to tie was going to be extremely difficult based on how well the other team was playing.

In my mind, I had mostly given up.

But part of why I enjoy the sport of curling is the degree of skill it takes… but also the unpredictability of what can happen. A piece of lint on the ice could cause a rock to go off in an unplanned direction. A change in humidity can make the ice slower or faster than it was just a few minutes ago. The skip can call the sweepers on too early or too late and have the rock end differently than planned. The person throwing the rock can throw it wrong… missing the line he/she is supposed to hit or throwing it too hard or too light.

So many variables.

The 8th end began as you would expect. The other team fired their first rock through the rings… just got it out of there. They were up by 3 points – all they wanted to do was knock rocks out and make sure we couldn’t score any points.

But then things happened. We made some good shots. They missed a couple of shots. We missed some shots. They made some good shots… the game went on.

But in the end we came down to the final stone of the opposing skip with 4 of our stones sitting in the rings. You can see a photo above that I took of the way it was set up. Our skip had his final stone to throw, too, but we expected the opposing skip to simply come down and sit on our rock that was in the blue “four-foot” ring. Either that or hit our rock out and roll over behind the other rocks where it would have been extremely difficult to get to his rock. It was a comparatively “easy” shot and the opposing skip had made shots like this all the time.

Looking at it I thought we were done.

But… the other skip’s final stone was too light! Even with the frantic sweeping of the team the rock didn’t make it down to the rings and instead hit the rocks in the front.

Unbelievably… we had just scored 4 points to win!!!

Our skip didn’t even have to throw his final rock.

We sat there with our mouths open… uncomprehending at first.

And THEN we celebrated!

Never. Give. Up!

An audio commentary is also available:

My Four Words For 2015

2015 four words 300px As I have done for the past several years now, I like to start off on January 1 with a post about a few “words” that represent aspirations I have for the year. As I did last year for 2014, I’m going to write about four words for 2015, as compared to the three words I wrote about in 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. And while I’ve been doing this for my own reasons, I should credit Chris Brogan for starting the idea of writing in this way publicly many years ago.

So here is my current thinking for 2015…

ESSENTIALS

Over the past six months or so I’ve been giving a great amount of thought to what exactly I want to be doing – in many different aspects of my life. Part of that came about as part of looking at my role within the Internet Society and thinking about what makes the most sense for my particular skills and interests. But perhaps a larger part came about in some of the reading and discussions my wife and I have been having around what many call “minimalism” or variations on that theme. Basically… looking at how to do fewer things better. We only have so many hours in the day and we choose how we are going to spend those hours… and we choose what we give our attention to. My wife’s ongoing experience with cancer treatments has certainly changed our overall perspective and made us think about what is most important to us.

This year I want to continue that effort into distilling things down to what are really the “essentials” in my life upon which I wish to focus. This may mean focusing more and putting aside some side projects… or admitting that some project ideas may just never happen – and that’s okay.

To go back to that wonderful quote from the poet Mary Oliver:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

And even more so… what will I do – or not do – in pursuit of that?

BOOKS

Given that my last book was published four years ago back in 2011, I do feel a bit of a desire to have another book come out some time soon. An obvious candidate is to pitch O’Reilly on doing a Second Edition of Migrating Applications to IPv6 given that a lot has changed in four years and that there is much more that can be said about IPv6 based on the deployment experience to date. I also have several ideas for books in the telephony/telecom/VoIP space.

I also have several ideas for books outside the pure technology space… more in the public relations / marketing / social media space. And there are some other ideas I have floating around my head…

Ideas for books are easy… it’s making the time to create the book that is the challenge! I’d like to see what I can do in 2015 to at least get some book project underway.

HEALTH

“Health” was actually one of my three words back in 2010 and as I noted in my 2011 post I went far in 2010 dropping 45 pounds and starting to get into running. Last year “running” was one of my words and I’m now pretty confident that running is part of my lifestyle and just part of what I do.

But… now this year I need to focus a bit broader than just running. It’s been a while since I’ve had a physical and there are some other health issues I’d like to address. It’s time to do a bit more to ensure I’m around for the long term.

CURLING

This is not so much an aspiration as an admission that this year may more heavily involve the sport of curling that I enjoy so much. There are two aspects here. First, my soon-to-be-13-year-old daughter enjoys curling and shows some interest in doing more competitively. IF she does that (and it’s still an “if”), that will set us on a potential path of bonspiels (tournaments) and camps that may set the tone for much of our family activity for the year. We’ll see. Second, I very much want to see this be the year when we start making some headway with starting up the Monadnock Curling Club and looking at bringing the sport of curling to our region of New Hampshire.

That’s what I’m thinking about right now for this year… I have a sense that 2015 could be a big year on a number of different fronts… we’ll have to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile… Happy New Year! May 2015 be a great year for you!

An audio version of this post is available:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Revisiting My Four Word for 2014 – How Did I Do?

2014fourwords On this final day of 2014, I thought I should reflect back on my “four words” for 2014. They were:

Running
Religion
Audio
Strategy

How did I do? Let’s take them one by one…

RUNNING

The good news is that I did make running more a regular part of my life. By adding up the monthly totals in my iPhone app I see that I ran over 288 miles this year. It was spotty, though. I only ran 6.2 miles in September yet I ran over 56 miles in July! I finished the year doing 26 miles in December… which works out to be about 6 miles a week. Good… but not great. Next year I’ll aim to do better.

It was also a strange year in that I ran only one race… and that was the short 1-mile “Pumpkin Mile” that was part of the Keene Pumpkin Festival and that I ran with my five-year-old daughter. For all the other races I wanted to do I either had a schedule conflict or in one case it rained harder than I really cared to race in.

My goal starting off 2014, though, was to get running more a part of my life… and I think I can safely say that I did that.

RELIGION

Back at the beginning of the year I wrote:

But you wouldn’t know any of this from what I write and post online. There are thousands of blog posts online from me since 2000 and many thousand tweets/updates/posts on social media…

… but pretty much NONE of them say ANYTHING about religion.

There are a lot of reasons for WHY I have been silent about the religious side of my life in my online activity… and I’ll write a post about that at some point (probably soon).

But I’ve realized that in being silent and hiding this aspect of myself I’m not really letting myself be truly whole.

So I’m going to start… I’ve been letting pieces of that side of me leak out into Facebook lately. THIS blog post is a huge step for me.

I‘m not going to be “in your face” about religion or anything (that’s not the UU way! 😉 ). But I’m going to stop hiding that side of me. I will treat it instead just as yet another facet of the complicated person that I am (and that we all are).

We’ll see… this will, in all honesty, be a bit challenging for me… but is an area I’d like to grow personally.

This has been hard for me, but I have started to be more open about this side of myself. For instance, I participated in a panel that was recorded on video distributed on YouTube where I talked about our church and my involvement in the “community breakfasts” that we do for the homeless each morning during the winter months. I also shared on Facebook and social networks when I was giving a sermon at our church in late October on the subject of “Facebook and Fox News: Escaping the Echo Chambers of Affirmation“. I actually recorded that sermon but have yet to put it online… perhaps in 2015.

I also shared out more links from our church’s web site and social media feeds into my own feeds… which was a big step for me.

Baby steps… but at least I’m no longer hiding my this part of me. We’ll see where this goes from here.

AUDIO

Unfortunately this area remained a bit of an “aspiration” this year. I had hoped to do more with audio this year. Now I did do more with my “The Dan York Report (TDYR)” podcast… producing over 155 of the short episodes. I also didn’t miss a single week of For Immediate Release (FIR) reports, producing 52 of those reports. I also started using several new applications on my iPhone to more rapidly produce podcasts

BUT…

… I’d had aspirations to do more. Here’s how I wound up with what I had hoped to do:

FIR On Technology with Dan York – Sadly I only cranked out one episode during the entire year. 🙁
Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast – I’d hoped to publish some interviews… but… nope. None. Zip. Nada.
Internet Society Deploy360 Programme – I only published one episode here, too, but a very large part of this was that I spent a good bit of time seeking an audio publishing platform that supported IPv6… and never found one (SoundCloud doesn’t). In the interim I held off on publishing episodes.

We’ll see if this gets better in 2015. I thoroughly enjoy audio and would like to get back to doing more!

STRATEGY

I wrote in January:

Finally, there is an exquisite irony to me that while my job title at the Internet Society is “Senior Content Strategist”, my own personal content online is severely lacking a strategy. I am inconsistently writing across 8 or 9 different places online – and I’m adding more sites like the Monadnock Curling Club… and there are a few other projects in the works.

Yes, this is a bit of a case of the proverbial “cobbler’s shoes”, but in 2014 I’d like to pull some of this together a bit more and have a bit more discipline about what I’m doing with all my online content. I’m at least aggregating my online content at my danyork.me site, but this year I want to do more with getting more consistent with the creation of content.

Alas… still a work in progress…

So there I was for 2014… good progress with two of my words… less so with the other two. How did your year work out?

An audio version of this post is available on in my “The Dan York Report” podcast:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Ceremonies of Light and Dark

What I so love about this time of darkness in the northern hemisphere is all the “ceremonies of light and dark”. Because it is so dark, we seek out times to celebrate the light.

To drive back the darkness.

To celebrate with friends and family.

To embrace the wonder of the flame.

To shine out as a beacon of love and hope.

And there are so many different ceremonies of so many different religions and faith traditions:

– the advent candles and candlelight services of Christian churches, along with the Christmas trees.
– the menorahs of Judaism.
– candles and fires of earth-centered faiths.

… and, of course, all the lighting of our home decorations….

I enjoy the candles the best… the simple flames, burning as they do.

This is one of my favorite parts of the season…. the light in the darkness.

A time of hope… for the light that is yet to come.

Video: The Keene Interfaith Community Breakfasts

One of the great changes in my life over the past year has been helping out at the community breakfasts for the homeless that happen now each winter weekday morning at our church in Keene, NH. While they are held in our church building, the teams of volunteers who staff the breakfasts also come from several other churches in our community. (In fact, we’re looking for one more church or other community group to step forward and help on the one remaining day that needs coverage.)

It’s been quite an eye-opening experience for my wife and I, both in terms of learning about the quantity of people in our region who are homeless… but also in hearing some of the stories and knowing that while often it is very definitely choices that get people into these situations, sometimes it is instead circumstances – job losses, medical expenses, family issues – and that the line between those who have and those who have not can be very thin and fragile.

Recently a local community TV show recorded an episode with several of us who have been involved with the community breakfasts. I represented our church and spoke about some of the changes that being involved has brought about with me and our family.

Give it a listen… and if you are in the Keene, NH, area and interested in helping, we’re always looking for people to help during these cold winter months!

What are the “community” breakfasts that take place at the Keene UU Church (KUUC) during the winter months? How did they get started? How are they an example of interfaith service programs? And how can people get more involved?

In this episode 501 of her show “My Karma Ran Over My Dogma”, Rev. Sandra Whippie explores these topics and much more with a panel including:

Rev. Michael Hall, KUUC minister and member of the Interfaith Clergy Association
Charlie Gibson, member of the Catholic churches in the Keene area
Dan York, member of the Keene Unitarian Universalist Church (KUUC)
Marcia Winters, member of the Keene United Church of Christ (UCC)

P.S. For the purpose of including an image for this post in the “carousel” at the top of the site, I’m including this screenshot of me talking:

Danyork interfaith breakfasts

Of Leaf Bags, Yankee Frugality And Our Disposable Society

Lawn bags There I was at the Keene dump at 7:00am this week about to drop off nine bags full of leaves that we’d raked up in our lawn. (The down side of all that beautiful foliage we enjoy!) I backed my Subaru Baja up to the massive pile of leaves and got out to start dumping my bags of leaves into the pile with all the other ones.

As I did so, I noticed a guy with a pickup truck about 20 feet away who was meticulously folding up the now empty paper bags that he had obviously used to bring leaves to the dump.

We gave the silent nods of acknowledgement that people often do at the dump… and then curiosity got the better of me and I asked “so do you re-use your bags?”

“Oh, sure! I usually get a good three years out of them,” he said.

I nodded… and we both continued our separate work. But what blew my mind at that moment was simply this:

I had never considered re-using the paper leaf bags!

They were just the things you put leaves in and then threw out at the dump. Nothing more than that.

My package of 5 bags cost me $3.29 at my local hardware store. I bought two packages and so my investment thus far was a bit under $7. ($6.58 if we’re being precise.) I was figuring I would probably need another set of bags to finish out the season and so I’d buy another set soon.

$10

In my mind just “the cost of doing business” and living in New England. Since the drop-off of leaves is free at our city dump, that $10 is my cost for the season, plus of course the bit of gas to drive out to the dump.

Not a big deal in the flow of our regular household budget.

But still…

$10 can buy other things. $10 could pay for the gas I need to drive back and forth. $10 could be donated to someone who might need it more.

It was a reminder to me that we live in such a consumeristic society where we just think about everything as being disposable. I was thinking about things as being disposable, particularly because these are just paper bags that will automatically degrade along with all of the leaves in them.

But why not re-use them?

By the time I unloaded my nine bags the guy had driven away and I was the only one at the pile. A couple of my bags were ripped from sticks and needed to be thrown in the pile… but I did save seven of them. Just emptied out the leaves and then folded them somewhat back together.

Now I don’t have to buy that third set of bags – and if I’m careful I can probably not rip these bags and hold on to them for next year.

The only way out of being a “disposable” society is for us to think about ways that we can indeed reduce, re-use and recycle… and in this case I chose to re-use!

What about you? Do you re-use leaf bags? (If you are in the part of the world that needs them.) Or have you never bothered with leaf bags anyway and just used tarps and such?

You can hear an audio version of this post on SoundCloud: