Als würde ein Kalenderblatt umgeblättert

schmilzt das Eis, verschwindet der Schnee,

die Zweige werden biegsam, die Sonne schmeichelt

warm und sanft den Gesichtern.

Knospen verdicken, Vögel zwitschern, die Wellen

wogen anmutig über den sandigen Strand.

Ungetüme baggern, Möwen schreien, Boote tuckern,

Pötte gleiten, Verliebte pfeifen, Räder surren,

Cafébesucher blinzeln ins Licht

Denn zack! – Es ist Frühling!

Quelle: Pinterest

“Ich werde etwas.”

Die Maler:innen der Künstlerkolonie in Worpswede waren eng mit der Natur verbunden. Unter ihnen war auch der junge Lyriker Rainer Maria Rilke, der 1902 eine Monographie über die Landschaft und ihre Maler schrieb.

In der Monographie fehlt eine bedeutende Person: Paula Modersohn-Becker. Rainer Maria Rilke und Paula trafen sich häufig und führten viele Gespräche. Er besuchte Paula häufig in ihrem Atelier. Und doch ging deren künstlerische Entwicklung an ihm vorbei. Frauen zählten nicht.

“Die Aufgabe der Frau ist es aber, im Eheleben Nachsicht zu üben und ein waches Auge für alles Gute und Schöne in ihrem Mann zu haben und die kleinen Schächen, die er hat, durch ein Verkleinerungsglas zu sehen.”

schreibt der Vater 1901 an Paula.

Am 8. Februar 2026 jährte sich zum 150. Mal der Geburtstag der Malerin. Sie lebte gerade mal 31 Jahre und beschritt in dieser Zeit mit einem unerschütterlichen Glauben an sich selbst über alle patriarchalen Zwänge hinweg ihren künstlerischen Weg.

“Ich werde etwas.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Mit 16 schrieb sie in ihr Tagebuch: 

“Ich will malen, ich muss malen. Es ist, als ob etwas in mir brennt, das nur durch die Farbe gelöscht werden kann.“

Das sagte sie immer wieder zu sich selbst und schrieb es auch an Freunde und Familie, in der Bitte darum, ihr zu vertrauen, dass sie ihren Weg machen würde.

Das wirkliche Ausmaß des Werks wurde erst nach ihrem Tod bekannt. Selbst ihrem Mann waren viele Werke, die im Atelier in Worpswede entdeckt wurden, nicht bekannt. In nur 14 Jahren malte sie 750 Gemälde und 2000 Zeichnungen. Nur vier davon wurden während ihrer Lebzeiten verkauft.

Paula hat sich aus den Zwängen ihrer Zeit befreit.

Sie gilt heute als eine der bedeutendsten deutschen Malerinnen des frühen Expressionismus.

gelesen – gesehen – gehört

• Marina Bohlmann-Modersohn: Paula Modernsohn-Becker, eine Biographie mit Briefen: Anschaulich locker erzählt die Autorin anhand von Briefen und Tagebuchauszügen die Geschichte der Malerin. Beeindruckend fein zeichnet sie die Entwicklung der ihr eigenen Kunstform.
• Becoming Karen Blixen ist eine Miniserie, die zurzeit in der Mediathek von Arte zu sehen ist und das Leben der Karen Blixen nach ihrer Rückkehr aus Afrika darstellt. In der engstirnigen Welt der Bourgeoisie muss sie zahlreiche Herausforderungen meistern. Sie beweist dabei eine außergewöhnliche Charakterstärke und verwirklicht ihren sehnlichsten Wunsch: Mit 47 Jahren wird sie Schriftstellerin.
• Mein wunderbarer Buchladen am Inselweg von Julie Peters. Das Hörbuch erzählt die Geschichte einer Frau, die auf der Insel Spiekeroog einen Neustart wagt und dort am Ende einen Buchladen übernimmt, da sie häufig weiß, welches Buch gerade das Richtige für den Lesenden ist.

#frauengestalten #möwenlyrik #frühling #gelesen #gesehen #gehört

I’m looking for a new bag for my work laptop to replace the 16-year-old photo bag that I’m using now. But where can I buy one? In an Instagram ad, I found an interesting one, but I don’t know if I like it. What does the material feel like? How does it look when I carry it? How does it feel on the shoulder? I could order the bag, try it, and return it. Even if returns are free, I still have to package it and drop it off. I could do this with multiple bags, but that adds up to a serious amount of work. However, I cannot think of a single shop in New York City that offers a decent selection of laptop bags.

I dag har Oslo MDG årsmøte, og jeg får tilbringe dagen med rekordmange MDG-ere som gleder seg til å ta tilbake makta i Oslo til neste år. Ja, og linselusene fra Oslo Grønn Ungdom da!

Vi har blant annet vedtatt en resolusjon om innvandringspolitikk og integrering, fremmet av meg og tre MDG-ere som alle har fått den tvilsomme æren av å bli stemplet som “uekte” nordmenn av FrP denne vinteren. Noen av dagens sterkeste øyeblikk var da de fortalte om hvordan rasisme og diskriminering har preget deres oppvekst.

MDG står alltid opp mot rasisme og mistenkeliggjøring av minoriteter. Når andre partier dilter (eller løper!) etter FrP og fyrer opp under moralsk panikk på tvilsomt grunnlag, står vi fast på våre prinsipper. Når andre mumler og flakker med blikket fordi de er redd for at FrP bare vil tjene på å diskutere innvandring, hever vi stemmen. Dette er ikke et spørsmål om hva som er strategisk lurt eller dumt, men hva som er rett og galt. Alle nordmenn er likeverdige. Og fascistiske idéer som “remigrasjon” må aldri få fotfeste i norsk offentlighet.

Å omtale våre medborgere som en eksistensiell trussel er destruktivt både for samfunnet og for de som rammes av retorikken. Jeg får meldinger av folk som forteller at de mister nattesøvnen. At de føler seg stemplet som annenrangs av den harde retorikken mot innvandrere. Jeg registerer at mine egne barn defineres som en potensiell trussel av Norges nest største parti. Dette kan vi ikke akseptere.

Ja, innvandring innebærer utfordringer. Men det er praktiske problemer som løses i hverdagen, ikke problemer av eksistensiell art. Integreringen er ikke mislykka. Den lykkes hver dag. Det er bare å se på den imponerende statistikken for andregenerasjons innvandrere. Integreringen lykkes blant annet takket være enorm innsats fra lokale ildsjeler. I dag har vi hatt besøk av Mudassar Mehmood, som har fortalt om det imponerende arbeidet for å gi ungdommer fellesskap og muligheter på Mortensrud. og Sahaya Kaithampillai fra “Hvor er mine brødre”– prosjektet på Holmlia.

Akkurat nå har Oslo et borgerlig byråd som gjør integreringsjobben vanskeligere ved å kutte kraftig i bydelsøkonomien selv om byen går med solide overskudd. Når kassa er tom rammes alle tjenester som ikke er lovpålagt. Som ungdomstilbud og forebygging. Det verste er at forebyggingen bygges ned i de samme bydelene der politiet ruster opp. Det er en ekstremt dyr måte å spare penger på. Sosiale problemer løses ikke best med batong og pistol.

Oslo MDGs årsmøte skjer samtidig som Oslo FrPs årsmøte. I fjor stilte Simen Velle til valg i Oslo under slagordet «la oss ta byen tilbake». Han spredte en valgkampvideo som fremstilte mitt nabolag som et skummelt sted, med kriminelle ungdommer og gjenger ved Tveitablokkene. Her går jeg tur med min yngste datter i barnevogna nesten hver dag. Jeg inviterer gjerne Simen Velle på trilletur i nabolaget mitt. Så kan han få lov til å møte folk i øyehøyde og snakke til dem, ikke om dem.

Heldigvis er Velle bare stortingsrepresentant, ikke minister. Det er takket være MDG. Jeg håper vi får mulighet til å blokkere FrP fra makt i Oslo til neste år også. Vi er i alle fall bedre rusta enn noensinne! Vi kan jo ta oss råd til å kopiere retorikken til FrP på ett punkt: la oss ta byen tilbake!

Det er fint å se et mer eller mindre samlet presse-Norge hamre løs på iNyheter. Men det er jo også litt frustrerende å se at dette først kommer når Helge Lurås, Ole Asbjørn Næss og Jarle Aabø har begått den ultimate synd, nemlig å mistenkeliggjøre media selv.

De konspiratoriske anklagene iNyheter har kommet med mot Redaktørforeningen og presse-Norge skiller seg jo ikke vesentlig fra de mange grove konspiratoriske og villedende uttalelsene og ubehagelige karakteristikkene som deles ut av iNyheters journalister på mer eller mindre daglig basis.

Vi snakker jo om de samme aktørene som sto bak Resett, som drev direkte rasistiske hetskampanjer. Med seg på laget har de nå fått mannen bak “Ja til bilen i Oslo”, som på mer eller mindre daglig bassis fyrte opp til hets og et voldsomt og aggressivt personfokus mot navngitte politikere, meg selv inkludert.

iNyheter spiller en destruktiv rolle i norsk offentlighet, akkurat slik forgjengeren Resett gjorde. Utrolig nok har de også lyktes i å karre til seg pressestøtte. De fortjener mer kritisk oppmerksomhet i den seriøse pressen. Ikke bare når deres virksomhet rammer media, men også når det rammer andre.

Dette må være noe av det frekkeste jeg har sett i mine snart 11 år i Oslopolitikken. “Vi har lyktes med å snu underskudd til overskudd”, skryter Oslos finansbyråd Hallstein Braaten Bjercke. Det er en løgn. Tallene i Oslos budsjetter er grønne fordi kommunen har fått økte overføringer fra staten både i fjor og i år. Gjennom budsjettforliket på Stortinget mellom AP og MDG, SV, Sp og Rødt fikk Oslo over 500 millioner ekstra. Mer enn nok til å kutte byrådets grove kutt i velferden.

Høyre og Venstre-byrådet skal altså ikke ha noen ære for dette. De har heller ikke gjort noen “snuoperasjon”. De tok over en kommune med sterk økonomi, mye penger på bok og lavere gjeldsgrad enn da de selv styrte sist. Dette har ikke stoppet dem fra å dikte opp en historie om “økonomisk krise”. Denne “økonomiske krisen” har de brukt som unnskyldning for å innføre de groveste kuttene i Oslos velferd på flere tiår. Samtidig som de har kuttet i kommunens inntekter gjennom å kutte eiendomsskatt til de dyreste boligene. Kutt i velferd for å gi skatteletter til de rikeste er gjenkjennelig høyrepolitikk.

Det har lenge vært et problem at media oppfatter borgelig styre som “normalen” i Oslo, og blir sløvere og mer ukritiske når Høyre styrer byen. Men de er heller ikke vant med så uærlige politikere som vi har nå. Hele historien til byrådet har vært en bløff siden de tiltrådte, og journalistene virker genuint forvirret om den økonomiske situasjonen til kommunen.

Dette bør være enkelt: hvis politikerne har råd til å redusere sine egne inntekter med 600 millioner i året, så er ikke kommunen i økonomiske krise. Når de samtidig kutter i velferd med mer enn 500 millioner, så er det ikke snakk om “krisegrep”, men en usosial politisk prioritering.

Kommunen har lomma full av penger, men “kuttene i 2026 må vi gjennomføre”, forklarer finansbyråden. Høyre og Venstre kutter altså i kommunens tilbud fordi de vil, ikke fordi de må. De mener at Oslos rikeste har hatt for lite penger i lommeboka, og at byens skoler, barnehager, eldreomsorg, ungdomstilbud og andre tjenester har vært for rause luksuriøse. Det er i det minste en ærlig sak.

卒業式が近づいている。 結局、就活もろくにせず、やりたいことも見つからないまま、 なんとなく好きだったあの子にも気持ちを伝えられず、 このまま卒業してしまう。

俺の住んでいる村は小さな村で、子どもは全部で三十人ほど。 今年卒業するのは、そのうちたった六人。 誰がどこへ行って、どんな仕事をするのか、 そんな噂は自然と耳に入ってくる。 何も決まっていないのは、俺だけだ。

そんなことを考えながら、川沿いの道を歩いていると、 釣りをしているおじさんの後ろ姿が見えた。 彼の横を通り過ぎようとしたとき、竿の先が一瞬だけこちらを向いた。 風もないのに、まるで意志を持っているかのように。

「遠回りかどうかは、個人の感覚に過ぎませんよ」 釣りを続けたまま、こちらを見ずに、 まるで何ターンも会話を飛ばして、大事な部分だけを短く伝えてくる。 何も相談していないのに。

「そんなもんすかねえ。俺は、他人がそう言ったなら、遠回りかなって思っちゃいますけど」 俺も分かったふうに、同じトーンで返す。 まるで、分かっているかのように。

それだけ言って、おじさんのそばを離れる。 内容なんて、どうでもいい。 ただ返事をし合うだけで、信号を渡し合うだけで、人は少しずつ成長する。 初めて話したとき、おじさんはそんなことを言っていた。 それ以来、俺たちは、ノリで会話を続けている。

おじさんは、すごい。 何がすごいのかは、うまく説明できないけれど。 この前なんて、柔道部のやつらがやってきて、「帯を締めてください」って頼んでた。 おじさんは黙って、静かに道着を正していた。

大浴場では、「一度も曲がらなかった」と噂されていた。 まっすぐに、ただまっすぐに歩く人だった。 「必要なら、村の木は切った方がいい」と言ったのも、彼だった。

あるとき、彼が珍しくこちらに話しかけてきたと思ったら、 それは独り言だった。 「飛行機から足を出して、憧れの先輩を語るような気持ちで生きていたい」 何の話かは、さっぱり分からないし、正直、関心もない。 でも、就活や恋愛で悩んでいる俺とは、まるで別の場所にいるようで、 その距離感が、少しだけ羨ましかった。

そして、おじさんは突然、すごい勢いでバンザイをした。 そのとき、横から見える肌が、思いのほかきれいだったことだけを、なぜか覚えている。

ーー遠回りかどうかは、個人の感覚に過ぎない。 何の話か分からなくても、そこに力を感じたなら、その言葉は本物だ。 その言葉がトリガーになったかは定かではないが、 俺は卒業式の日、気になっていたあの子に告白することにした。

I was going back home from a night out with some friends, and I drove past some of the places we used to go to. I know that the relationship was unhealthy and codependent, and it was really intense like a drug. But at the same time I wonder if I can grieve losing that drug. Like the thought of cuddling her, or watching TV while she lays on my chest and gently falls asleep. Her falling asleep on the car trip back.

En lo alto, en lo bajo, en las contradicciones: aparece y desaparece.

Parece ascender, estancarse o descender.

Parece estable e inestable: es ésto.

Sin expresarlo; más bien, como el pájaro que mira. Sólo ojo.

En la consciencia y en la inconsciencia.

Jag har ett bekännande att göra: jag spenderar helt orimligt mycket tid på Discogs. Inte nödvändigtvis för att köpa musik (fast det händer också), utan för att bara... bläddra. Titta på olika pressningar av samma album. Läsa om vilken studio något spelades in i. Kolla vem som spelade congas på ett obscurt funkalbum från 1974. Det är som att falla ner i ett kaninhål av musikinformation, och jag älskar varenda sekund av det.

Om du aldrig har hört talas om Discogs, låt mig presentera din nya favoritwebbplats. Eller möjligen din nya tidstjuv, beroende på hur man ser det.

Vad är Discogs egentligen?

Discogs är världens största databas för fysiska musikreleaser. När jag säger “största” menar jag inte bara stor – jag menar gigantisk, omfattande, närmast ofattbart detaljerad. Det finns över 14 miljoner releaser katalogiserade, bidragit av över 500 000 användare världen över.

Men det är inte bara en databas. Det är också en marknadsplats där folk köper och säljer vinyl, CD, kassetter, och alla andra fysiska musikformat du kan tänka dig. Och det är en community av musiksamlare som tillsammans bygger den mest omfattande katalogen över fysisk musik som någonsin har existerat.

Discogs grundades 2000 av Kevin Lewandowski, som ville skapa en plats där elektronisk musik kunde katalogiseras ordentligt. Precis som många bra internetprojekt började det som ett nördprojekt och växte till något mycket större än skaparen någonsin kunnat föreställa sig.

Varför finns Discogs?

Du kanske tänker: “Men jag kan ju googla musikinformation?” Och jo, visst kan du det. Men Discogs existerar på en helt annan detaljnivå. Det handlar inte bara om att veta att ett album existerar – det handlar om att veta exakt vilken pressning, från vilket år, från vilket land, med vilket katalognummer, på vilket skivbolag.

För vinylfantaster är det här guld. När du står i en begagnad skivaffär och funderar på om en LP är värd att köpa kan du slå upp den på Discogs och direkt se: Är det här en första pressning från originallandet eller en repressning från 10 år senare? Är det en vanlig release eller en limited edition? Hur mycket brukar den gå för på andrahandsmarknaden?

Men även om du inte samlar vinyl (ännu) är Discogs ovärderligt för att förstå musikhistoria. Det visar hur album har resurfacerats över tid, vilka versioner som finns, hur cobverart har ändrats mellan releaser. Det är som att se evolveringen av musik dokumenterad i exkrucierande detalj.

Så fungerar katalogiseringen

Det som gör Discogs speciellt är hur galet detaljerat allt är katalogiserat. Varje release – och jag menar verkligen varje release – dokumenteras med information som:

Format och media - LP, 12” Single, CD, Cassette, 8-Track, MiniDisc (ja, även MiniDisc). Antal skivor, vilken hastighet vinylskivan ska spelas på, om den är colored vinyl eller picture disc.

Land och år - Inte bara “släpptes 1975” utan “släpptes i Storbritannien 1975, sedan i USA 1976, sedan i Japan 1977 med bonusspår”. Varje marknad får sin egen post.

Katalognummer - Det mystiska numret på skivomslaget som ingen vanlig människa bryr sig om, men som är guld för samlare. Det är hur man identifierar exakt vilken pressning man har.

Skivbolag - Inte bara huvudbolaget, utan distributörer, underlicenser, allt. Det finns poster där fem olika bolag är involverade i en enda release.

Credits - Alla som varit inblandade. Musiker, producenter, mixare, mastering engineers, fotografer, omslagsdesigners. Om någon spelade tambourine på ett spår finns det dokumenterat.

Tracklista - Med exakta längder, och om det finns olika versioner på olika sidor av en vinyl är det noterat. B-sidor, hidden tracks, bonus tracks – allt finns.

Identifikatorer - Barcode, matrixnummer, pressansvarighet. Ja, det finns människor som bryr sig om vilket pressningsverk i Frankrike som tillverkade en viss skiva.

Den här nivån av detaljer är helt galen, och det är precis det som gör Discogs så användbart. Det är skillnaden mellan “jag har Dark Side of the Moon” och “jag har den brittiska första pressningen från 1973 på Harvest Records med det solida blå märket och posters.”

Marknadsplatsen – köp och sälj musik

Förutom att vara en databas är Discogs också en fungerande marknadsplats. Säljare från hela världen listar sina skivor, och köpare kan bläddra, söka, och handla. Det är som eBay, fast bara för musik och mycket mer specialiserat.

Det smarta är hur marknadsplatsen integreras med databasen. När någon lägger ut en skiva till försäljning länkar de den till exakt rätt release i databasen. Det betyder att köpare vet exakt vad de får – ingen gissning om det är rätt version eller pressning.

Priserna bestäms av marknaden. Du kan se vad en skiva historiskt har sålt för, vad den för närvarande listas till, och vad folk faktiskt har betalat för den. Det är transparens på en nivå som inte finns på många andra marknadsplatser.

Jag har köpt en del skivor på Discogs genom åren. Mestadels obscura saker som inte finns på Spotify eller i vanliga skivaffärer. Och upplevelsen har nästan alltid varit bra – säljarna är generellt passionerade om musik och vill att köparen ska vara nöjd.

Min samling – digital katalogisering av fysisk musik

En av mina favoritfunktioner på Discogs är “Collection”-funktionen. Du kan markera vilka releaser du äger, och Discogs skapar automatiskt en katalog över din samling. Det är som att ha ett digitalt arkiv över alla dina fysiska skivor.

För mig, som har en vinysamling som har vuxit lite okontrollerat över åren, har det här varit en livräddare. Jag kan söka i min samling, se vad jag äger, och framförallt undvika att köpa dubbletter när jag står i en skivaffär (har hänt fler gånger än jag vill erkänna).

Du kan också se statistik över din samling. Hur många skivor du har, från vilka år, från vilka skivbolag, vilka genrer. Det uppskattade värdet baserat på aktuella marknadspriser. Det är nördigt på bästa sätt.

Vissa människor använder samlingsfunktionen som wishlist också – markera skivor de vill ha så de kan hålla koll på när någon listar dem till försäljning. Det är smartare än att bara försöka komma ihåg vad man letar efter.

Artistexempel och djupdykningar

Låt mig visa dig ett par exempel. Kolla in den här artisten eller den här. Även för relativt nischade eller specialiserade releaser finns detaljerad information.

Det fascinerende med Discogs är hur demokratiskt det är. Stora mainstream-artister med hundratals releaser får samma noggranna behandling som obscura lokala band som pressade 100 exemplar av en singel 1982. Allt dokumenteras med samma detaljnivå.

Det är den här aspekten som gör Discogs så värdefullt för musikhistoria. Små, independent releases som annars skulle glömmas bort finns bevarade i databasen. Framtida musikforskare kommer att kunna använda Discogs för att spåra exakt vad som släpptes, när, och av vem.

Community och kultur

Discogs-communityn är något speciellt. Det är en samling av musiknördar, vinylfantaster, samlare och allmänt musikbesatta människor som tillsammans bygger något större än sig själva. Och det märks i hur folk beter sig.

Det finns omfattande riktlinjer för hur releaser ska läggas till och formateras. Det finns diskussionsforum där folk debatterar detaljer som “borde vi räkna promo-kopior som separata releaser?” eller “hur kategoriserar vi en skiva som pressades i Sverige men släpptes av ett tyskt bolag?”.

Det finns även ett votingssystem där användare kan rösta om tillagd information är korrekt. Om du lägger till en release måste den granskas och godkännas av andra användare. Det håller kvaliteten hög men kan ibland kännas lite byråkratiskt.

Men generellt är folk hjälpsamma och välkomnande. Om du gör fel kommer någon att förklara varför och hur det borde göras istället. Det är en community som verkligen bryr sig om att få saker rätt.

Discogs vs MusicBrainz – vad är skillnaden?

Om du läste mitt tidigare inlägg om MusicBrainz undrar du säkert: vad är skillnaden? De verkar ju ganska lika.

Skillnaden är fokus. MusicBrainz fokuserar på musik som abstrakt koncept – låtar, inspelningar, artister. Discogs fokuserar på fysiska objekt – den specifika skivan du håller i handen. MusicBrainz bryr sig om att “Bohemian Rhapsody” finns, Discogs bryr sig om att det finns en japansk 7” pressning från 1976 med ett speciellt omslag.

De kompletterar faktiskt varandra perfekt. MusicBrainz är bättre för digital musik och metadata. Discogs är bättre för samlare och fysiska releaser. Många använder båda, och de länkar ofta till varandra.

Det finns också en skillnad i hur marknadsplatsen fungerar. Discogs har en integrerad köp/sälj-funktion som är central för tjänsten. MusicBrainz är rent informationsdrivet utan kommersiell aspekt. Båda modellerna har sina fördelar.

Att bidra till Discogs

Om du vill bidra till Discogs är det relativt enkelt att komma igång. Allt du behöver är något fysiskt musik att katalogisera. Kanske har du en gammal vinyl som inte finns i databasen? Perfekt! Lägg till den.

Processen är faktiskt ganska terapeutisk. Du tar hand om din skiva, läser all information på omslaget, skriver ner tracklistan, fotograferar omslaget, fyller i alla fält i formuläret. Det är som att ge din musik en formell dokumentation.

Det finns en hel del regler att lära sig. Hur man formaterar artistnamn, hur man anger titlar, vilken information som ska stå i vilket fält. Men det finns utmärkt dokumentation och hjälpsamma guides. Och communityn är där för att hjälpa om du kör fast.

Jag har själv lagt till några obscura releaser genom åren. Det känns bra att bidra till att göra databasen mer komplett. Och det finns något tillfredsställande i att vara den som först dokumenterar en viss release på internet.

Pricing och värdering

En av de mest användbara aspekterna av Discogs är värderingsfunktionen. För varje release kan du se statistik över vad den har sålt för historiskt. Det ger en realistisk bild av vad saker faktiskt är värda på marknaden.

Det är särskilt användbart när du hittar gamla skivor på loppis eller i någon släktings källare. Istället för att gissa kan du slå upp exakt vad marknaden betalar för just den pressningen. Ibland hittar man guldkorn, oftast är det inte värt särskilt mycket, men det är bra att veta.

För din egen samling räknar Discogs automatiskt ut det totala uppskattat värdet baserat på genomsnittliga försäljningspriser. Det kan vara både uppmuntrande (“min samling är värd mer än jag trodde!”) och skrämmande (“jag har spenderat hur mycket på skivor?!”).

Värderingarna är generellt ganska träffsäkra eftersom de baseras på faktiska transaktioner, inte gissningar. Men kom ihåg att skick spelar stor roll – en near mint-kopia är värd mycket mer än en som är välanvänd.

Discogs-appen och mobil användning

Discogs har en mobilapp som är ovärderlig när du är ute och jagar skivor. Du kan skanna barcodes för att direkt se vad något är och vad det brukar kosta. Du kan kolla din samling för att se om du redan äger något. Du kan lägga ut saker till försäljning direkt från telefonen.

Jag använder appen konstant när jag är i skivaffärer. Det har räddat mig från att köpa dubbletter flera gånger, och det har hjälpt mig identifiera bra fynd som jag annars skulle missat.

Appen är inte perfekt – ibland är den lite långsam, och vissa funktioner fungerar bättre på desktop-versionen. Men för grundläggande funktionalitet när du är på språng är den helt okej.

Utmaningar och kritik

Discogs är fantastiskt, men det har sina problem. Det största är nog att kvaliteten på poster varierar. Eftersom vem som helst kan lägga till releaser finns det ibland felaktig information, ofullständiga poster, eller dåliga bilder.

Modererings-processen kan vara frustrerande. Ibland tar det lång tid för ändringar att godkännas. Ibland blir korrekta ändringar avvisade av användare som inte förstår reglerna ordentligt. Det är priset man betalar för community-driven innehåll.

Det finns också en viss elitism i vissa delar av communityn. Vinylfantaster kan vara... intensa... om exakt hur saker ska göras. Om du är nybörjare kan det kännas lite skrämmande. Men de flesta är faktiskt trevliga när man väl kommit förbi den inledande nitiskheten.

Från säljarnas perspektiv tar Discogs en procentuell avgift på försäljningar, vilket vissa tycker är för mycket. Men å andra sidan tillhandahåller de en plattform med miljontals potentiella köpare, så det är väl värt det för de flesta.

Discogs och den digitala framtiden

I en värld där streaming dominerar kan det verka konstigt att en databas för fysiska skivor fortfarande blomstrar. Men det är precis vad som händer. Vinyl-försäljningen har ökat stadigt de senaste åren, och Discogs växer med den.

Det finns något med fysisk musik som streaming inte kan ersätta. Att hålla en skiva i handen, läsa liner notes, studera omslagskonsten – det är en upplevelse som är värdefull i sig. Och Discogs hjälper människor att hitta, värdera och uppskatta den upplevelsen.

Jag tror att Discogs kommer fortsätta vara relevant så länge folk samlar fysisk musik. Och med tanke på hur vinyl-marknaden ser ut just nu verkar det inte bli problem på länge.

Varför Discogs är viktigt

På ett djupare plan representerar Discogs något viktigt: bevarande av musikhistoria genom fysiska artefakter. Varje skiva som katalogiseras är ett bevis på att musik existerade i en viss form vid en viss tid på en viss plats.

Det är lätt att tänka att musik bara är de ljud vi hör, men presentationen – omslaget, formatet, hur det paketerades och släpptes – är också en del av historien. Discogs bevarar den historien på ett sätt som ingen annan databas gör.

Dessutom demokratiserar det musiksamlande. Innan Discogs var det svårt att veta vad saker var värda eller ens vad som fanns tillgängligt. Nu kan vem som helst med en internetuppkoppling bli en informerad samlare.

Kom igång med Discogs

Om du har blivit nyfiken (och jag hoppas verkligen att du har det) är mitt råd: skapa ett konto och börja utforska. Sök efter artister du gillar och se alla olika versioner av deras album. Kolla vad dina favoritskivor går för på andrahandsmarknaden. Lägg till några skivor från din egen samling.

Om du samlar vinyl är Discogs helt enkelt ovärderligt. Det kommer att förändra hur du jagar skivor, hur du uppskattar din samling, och hur mycket du förstår om de fysiska objekten du äger.

Och även om du inte samlar fysisk musik är Discogs fortfarande fascinerande att bläddra i. Det är som ett museum för musikhistoria, fast ett där du faktiskt kan köpa utställningsobjekten.

För mig har Discogs blivit en daglig del av mitt musikliv. Det har fördjupat min uppskattning för musik som fysiska objekt, lärt mig om otaliga obscura releaser, och ja, kostat mig en del pengar i skivinköp. Men det är pengar väl spenderade.

Så nästa gång någon frågar vad din gamla skiva är värd, eller du undrar hur många versioner av ett album som faktiskt finns, vet du var du ska leta. Och när du väl är där, reservera några timmar – du kommer behöva dem.

No es fácil encontrar lo que busco. Busqué en las montañas, en los valles, en el mar y hasta volando por el cielo. Lo busco ahora. No lo encuentro en la música, ni en las películas, ni en las voces, ni en palabras que van apareciendo página tras página. No parece estar tampoco en mis sueños.

Imagino que en el futuro lo buscaré, supongo que con la misma fuerza. Ya experimentado, es posible entonces que lo encuentre. Hasta con rabia.

¿Todos buscamos? Por lo que veo, puede ser así. Pero no sé lo que buscamos. A ciencia cierta, digo. En apariencia vamos tras esta o aquella emoción. Al menos, es lo que encontramos.

Quizás un papel, un guión, una identidad, el mapa de un tesoro. Lo que nos confirme, nos gratifique; lo que nos haga fuertes, importantes. Y la felicidad, como si fuera a aparecer debajo de una piedra, una pantalla, o en un granero abandonado. En otro ego.

-Alargar la vida. Oxígeno. -Carne fresca. -Un punto de apoyo para ascender. -Un impulso.

Quizás esta búsqueda sea un escape, la fuga del cuerpo. Hacia otra imagen, otro sabor, otro sonido, como quien de ese modo se agarra, se adhiere a la vida. Y no quiere soltarla. Pero los hechos nos alcanzan.

Buscamos. Algo pendiente. Algo qué buscar. De nuevo. Sigue. Una hora más.

-Sin objeto. Sin meta.

A chiller day, starting with some of the tasks from yesterday’s emergency and ending with some meetings. Ended the day with a 3 hour call with my partner, but I was too socially exhausted to fully focus on her — my bad.

There is a question that almost nobody pauses long enough to ask, yet it may be one of the most important questions a human soul will ever consider: if you could save just one life, what would it truly mean? Most people live their entire lives never fully realizing that God has placed inside them a quiet, holy power that can change eternity for someone else. We are surrounded by noise, busyness, pressure, and distraction, and in all the movement we forget that the smallest gesture in the right moment can alter the direction of a person’s story. It does not require a spotlight. It does not demand a title. It asks only for a heart willing to be interrupted, a heart willing to see another human being with tenderness, a heart willing to extend grace in moments when the world looks away. And because God built people with eternal souls, because He wove His own breath into humanity, every moment of compassion becomes far more than an act of kindness. It becomes a thread woven directly into someone else’s destiny. It becomes something Heaven records. It becomes something God uses in ways you may never see with your earthly eyes. That is why the idea of saving just one life becomes so staggering in its significance, because it reminds us that no act of mercy is wasted, no word of encouragement is too small, and no prayer whispered in faith goes unheard.

When Jesus told the story of leaving the ninety-nine to go after the one, He revealed something about the Father’s heart that should reshape how we live every day of our lives. He was not simply teaching a parable about wandering sheep; He was unveiling how deeply God values individuals that the world often forgets. The ninety-nine represented security, predictability, and the comfort of staying with the majority, but Jesus was never drawn to the majority. He was drawn to the one who felt lost, overlooked, or beyond reach. He was moved by the one who wondered if they mattered. And that truth becomes a mirror for every believer who wonders if their smallest acts of kindness hold any weight. The moment you choose compassion, you reflect the heart of the Shepherd. The moment you bless someone in silence, without recognition, you participate in a rescue mission that Heaven takes seriously. This is not about trying to be a hero or trying to impress God; it is about learning to listen to the quiet tug in your spirit that says, “Stop. See them. Speak life. Lift them up.” For in that moment you step into the same divine rhythm that moved Jesus toward broken hearts and weary souls.

The idea that you could save a life sounds dramatic, almost too large, almost too heavy to imagine. Yet the truth is that God rarely asks us to perform grand acts. Instead, He places us in situations where the simplest words can be the difference between collapse and hope, where the smallest kindness can pull someone back from emotional or spiritual darkness, where the decision to pray for someone becomes a turning point they will remember for the rest of their lives. Many people assume their ministry must be enormous to matter, but Scripture teaches the opposite. The kingdom of God is often built one conversation at a time, one moment of compassion at a time, one act of obedience at a time. And when James wrote that whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover a multitude of sins, he wasn’t writing theory. He was describing the eternal ripple effect of one willing heart. Think about that for a moment. Entire generations can shift because one person extended grace at precisely the right moment. Entire family lines can be restored because one believer cared enough to reach out. Entire destinies can be rewritten because one soul refused to give up on someone others dismissed.

There are people walking through this world right now who appear strong on the outside but are fighting for their life on the inside. Some are one conversation away from giving up. Some are one expression of kindness away from believing they still matter. Some are one prayer away from feeling God again. And God, in His unseen orchestration, often places you directly in their path, not because you are perfect, but because you are willing. You have no idea how many divine appointments you have already stepped into without recognizing them. The day you smiled at someone who was breaking. The moment you encouraged someone who had no strength left. The time you prayed quietly for a person you hardly knew. The small gesture you made without thinking, which may have been the very thing that kept someone from a terrible decision. We underestimate how fragile the human heart can become when life presses hard, and we underestimate how powerful the human heart becomes when God moves through it. To save one life is not simply a dramatic rescue; sometimes it is simply being present, being real, being loving at the exact time someone needs it most.

If you could see into the spiritual realm for even a moment, you would be astonished at how closely Heaven pays attention to these seemingly small interactions. Angels celebrate when one wandering life turns back toward God. Heaven rejoices when a discouraged believer is lifted up. God marks every moment when His children choose love instead of indifference. We often think of spiritual warfare as massive, cosmic battles, but in reality, many of the greatest victories are won in quiet, daily acts of faithfulness. Every time you speak hope into someone who is drowning in despair, you push back darkness. Every time you forgive when bitterness would have felt easier, you set a soul free. Every time you notice a person the world ignores, you mirror the heart of Christ. Scripture is filled with monumental moments that began with something small: a boy offering five loaves and two fish, a widow dropping two mites into the offering, a young man running to tell others what he had seen, a woman reaching out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. God does not measure the size of the moment; He measures the willingness of the heart behind it.

To save just one life is to step into the mystery of divine partnership. God could do everything without us, yet He invites us to participate in His redemptive work because love grows inside us when we serve others. Compassion expands the soul. Mercy strengthens the spirit. Kindness opens doors that sermons never could. When you speak life into someone who has forgotten how to breathe, you become part of God’s healing movement in the world. And often the people who make the greatest difference are the ones who never realize how much they have done. They simply showed up. They simply cared. They simply listened. They simply followed the quiet prompting in their heart. When you realize that you do not need to be extraordinary to change eternity, you become free to live a life that touches others in profound and lasting ways. It is not about being perfect. It is about being authentic. It is not about being strong. It is about being available.

There is a kind of holiness in the unnoticed moments, the ones nobody applauds, the ones that will never make it into a book or a sermon. These moments reveal the true character of your heart, and they reveal the true nature of God working inside you. When you encourage someone who has lost their way, you are not only giving them hope; you are reminding them that God has not forgotten them. When you pray for someone who feels invisible, you are wrapping them in a spiritual covering they may never know existed. When you take the time to see someone deeply, beyond their exterior, beyond their failures, beyond their mistakes, you imitate the God who sees past every surface and looks directly into the soul. And in those sacred interactions, something eternal is exchanged. You pour love into someone, and God pours love into you. You lift someone up, and God lifts you up. You become a vessel of His heart in a world that desperately needs light.

To save just one life is not merely to rescue someone from physical harm, though that, too, is sacred. It is to awaken a heart that was drifting. It is to breathe hope into someone drowning in sorrow. It is to remind a person who feels forgotten that God still knows their name. Many people think spiritual influence requires a stage or a microphone, but the truth is that some of the most powerful ministry in the world happens in quiet corners, whispered conversations, unexpected hugs, or moments when someone simply says, “I’m here, and you matter.” God has always worked through ordinary people doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. And when you realize that your smallest acts might be holding up someone else’s story, it changes how you move through the world. You begin to pay attention. You begin to listen more deeply. You begin to look for the one instead of staying comfortable with the ninety-nine.

When you begin to move through the world with an awareness that God may place someone in your path who needs exactly what you carry, you stop treating encounters as accidents. You stop seeing interruptions as inconveniences. You stop assuming people will be fine without you. Instead, your heart becomes attentive, sensitive, and willing, because you recognize that God orchestrates moments long before you ever step into them. The person sitting quietly at the edge of the room may be fighting a battle you cannot see. The friend who seems a little more distant this week may be desperately waiting for someone to notice. The stranger who crosses your path may be at a crossroads where a single word of kindness could shift their direction. When you understand this, you begin to look into people instead of just looking at them. You begin to listen beyond their words. You begin to care with a depth that only comes from knowing God has entrusted you with something sacred. And every time you choose to act on that holy awareness, a life bends closer toward hope, often without you ever realizing your impact.

The extraordinary thing about saving just one life is that the person you reach today may become the person who reaches someone else tomorrow. Hope multiplies. Healing ripples outward. Encouragement echoes into future generations. You never know if the teenager you speak life into becomes the adult who chooses faith instead of self-destruction. You never know if the lonely neighbor you comfort becomes the person who later comforts someone else at their lowest point. You never know if the person you pray for becomes the one who leads their family to God years from now. This is the miracle of the one. A single heart lifted up can lift many. A single life restored can restore others. A single moment of compassion can spark a chain of redemption that travels farther than your eyes can see. This is why Heaven pays such close attention to the smallest acts of mercy. They are seeds. And seeds, once planted, grow into things far larger than their beginnings.

Many believers underestimate their influence because the enemy works tirelessly to convince them they are insignificant. He whispers that their words don’t matter, that their kindness changes nothing, that their prayers fall unheard. But the enemy’s greatest fear is a believer who understands their true impact. Because the moment you realize that you carry the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, the moment you realize that your voice carries the power of life and death, the moment you realize that your compassion can pull someone out of despair, the moment you realize that God sends you into people’s lives as a living reminder of His love, your entire posture toward the world changes. You stop shrinking back. You stop doubting yourself. You stop believing the lie that you have nothing to offer. Instead, you begin waking up each day with a sense of holy purpose, knowing that God may use you at any moment to alter the course of someone’s eternity.

There are people whose entire spiritual journey began because someone stepped into their life at precisely the right time. There are testimonies shaped by chance conversations that were never really chance at all. There are stories transformed because one believer chose to be present, to be compassionate, to be willing. It is easy to romanticize ministry as something huge, sweeping, and dramatic, but the real work of God almost always begins with one heart touching another. Think of how many times Jesus stopped for individuals: the woman at the well, the blind man calling out from the roadside, the leper who dared to approach Him, the woman caught in adultery, the paralyzed man lowered through the roof. Each of these encounters changed a life, and in many cases, changed entire communities through them. Jesus did not rush past people to get to the crowd. He allowed the one to slow Him down, guide His steps, and shape His journey. His example becomes our invitation: slow down enough to see the person in front of you, because the one standing before you may be the very soul God sent you to reach.

To save just one life does not mean you must know exactly what to do or what to say. Most of the time, people don’t need perfect words—they need real presence. They need someone who sees them, hears them, and refuses to walk away when things get complicated. They need someone who is not afraid of their feelings or their brokenness. They need someone who reminds them that their worth does not evaporate in difficult seasons. They need someone who prays for them not because they are a project, but because they are precious. And when you offer that kind of presence, you become a living expression of God’s love, the kind of love that reaches into dark places and pulls people back into the light.

At the end of your life, God will not measure your success by accomplishments, followers, achievements, or recognition. He will measure how you loved. He will measure the times you chose mercy over judgment. He will measure the times you said yes to His quiet nudges. He will measure the moments when you stepped into someone’s story and refused to let their pain go unnoticed. And in the vastness of eternity, the lives you helped lift, the souls you helped strengthen, the hearts you helped restore will stand as testimonies to the power of one willing heart. You may never know on earth how many lives you touched, how many people you saved from despair, or how many stories God rewrote because of your obedience. But Heaven knows. Heaven keeps record. Heaven celebrates each moment you chose love.

If you could save just one life, what would it mean? It would mean everything. It would mean that you allowed God to work through your hands, your words, your prayers, and your presence. It would mean that you stepped into the eternal significance of being a vessel of His compassion. It would mean that you lived in alignment with the heart of Jesus, who crossed galaxies of glory to save not just crowds, but individuals—one by one, heart by heart, soul by soul. And the truth is, you will save more than one. As long as you keep moving through this world with a heart that listens, with a spirit that obeys, and with eyes that notice the invisible, you will change far more lives than you realize. You will bend the world toward hope. You will become a resting place for weary souls. You will become a lantern for those walking through darkness. And God will weave your everyday moments into a tapestry of eternal difference.

You do not have to be a preacher, a missionary, or a hero to make an impact. You simply have to be willing. Willing to love. Willing to notice. Willing to speak. Willing to pray. Willing to step into divine appointments that look ordinary on the outside but shake heaven on the inside. And when your life finally stands before God, you will see the faces of those who made it home because somewhere along their journey, your heart said yes. That is the power of saving just one life. That is the miracle of a willing soul. And that is the legacy God is inviting you to step into every single day.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

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On 2 November 2023, a dead man released a new song. John Lennon, murdered outside his Manhattan apartment building in December 1980, sang lead vocals on “Now and Then,” the final Beatles single, almost 43 years after his killing. His voice was not synthesised, not cloned, not approximated by an algorithm trained on his catalogue. It was his actual voice, recorded on a cheap cassette player at the Dakota building sometime around 1977, rescued from decades of technical oblivion by machine learning software that could do what no human engineer had managed in nearly three decades of trying: separate his singing from the piano bleeding through beneath it.

The technology that made this possible, a neural network called MAL (a double homage to the HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Beatles' road manager Mal Evans), was developed by Peter Jackson's WingNut Films during the production of the documentary series Get Back. Its purpose was straightforward if technically extraordinary. MAL could be taught to recognise individual sound sources within a mono recording and then isolate them, pulling apart instruments and voices that had been fused together on a single track. As Giles Martin, the song's co-producer and son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, explained to Variety: “Essentially, what the machine learning does is it recognises someone's voice. So if you and I have a conversation and we're in a crowded room and there's a piano playing in the background, we can teach the AI what the sound of your voice, the sound of my voice, and it can extract those voices.”

That technical feat unlocked something that had been attempted and abandoned twice before. It also raised a question that reverberates far beyond a single pop song, however beloved: when artificial intelligence enables the completion of an artist's unfinished work decades after their death, what kind of creative act is that, exactly? And once the precedent has been set, with a Grammy Award as validation, who gets to decide which ghosts sing next?

A Cassette Labelled “For Paul”

The story of “Now and Then” begins with grief and a cassette tape. In January 1994, Paul McCartney approached Yoko Ono, believing she might have some of Lennon's unused recordings. Ono gave McCartney three cassettes from Lennon's so-called retirement period in the late 1970s, when he had stepped back from public life to raise his son Sean at the Dakota. One cassette bore the words “For Paul” in Lennon's own handwriting. It contained rough piano-and-vocal demos of four songs: “Free as a Bird,” “Real Love,” “Grow Old with Me,” and “Now and Then.”

The first two songs became reunion singles during the Beatles' Anthology project in 1995 and 1996, produced by Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra. Both reached the charts. Both featured new instrumental contributions from McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr layered around Lennon's demos. “Now and Then” was supposed to be the third.

On 20 and 21 March 1995, the three surviving Beatles gathered in the studio to work on it. The session did not go well. A persistent 60-cycle mains hum saturated the recording. Lennon's voice and piano were locked together on the same track, meaning any attempt to raise the vocal also raised the piano. The noise reduction software available at the time, a Pro Tools plugin called DINR, could not adequately clean the tape. Jeff Lynne spent two weeks trying at his home studio. The results were unsatisfying. “It was one day, one afternoon, really, messing with it,” Lynne later explained. “The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn't finish.”

There was also the matter of George Harrison's opinion. McCartney later recalled that Harrison had dismissed the song as “fucking rubbish,” though Harrison's widow, Olivia, offered a gentler interpretation before the song's eventual release. “Back in 1995, after several days in the studio working on the track, George felt the technical issues with the demo were insurmountable and concluded that it was not possible to finish the track to a high enough standard,” she said. “If he were here today, Dhani and I know he would have whole-heartedly joined Paul and Ringo in completing the recording of 'Now and Then.'”

Harrison died in November 2001. The song sat on a shelf for another two decades.

The Machine That Heard What Humans Could Not

The breakthrough arrived from an unexpected direction. During the production of Get Back, Peter Jackson's team confronted a similar audio problem at massive scale: 60 hours of footage from the Beatles' January 1969 recording sessions, much of it captured by a single microphone that had picked up instruments, voices, and ambient noise in an undifferentiated jumble. The documentary would have been impossible without a way to separate those sounds.

Jackson's team, working with dialogue editor Emile de la Rey and machine learning researcher Paris Smaragdis at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, built MAL from scratch. They scoured academic papers on audio source separation, determined that existing research was insufficient for their purposes, and created their own training data at a quality level that surpassed what had been used in prior academic experiments. The neural network was fed isolated recordings of individual Beatles instruments and voices, learning the spectral signature of each until it could reliably distinguish John from Paul, guitar from bass, drums from background chatter.

As Jackson described the process: “We developed a machine learning system that we taught what a guitar sounds like, what a bass sounds like, what a voice sounds like. In fact we taught the computer what John sounds like and what Paul sounds like. So we can take these mono tracks and split up all the instruments.”

When McCartney saw what MAL could do for the documentary, the connection was immediate. If the software could untangle the sonic chaos of the Twickenham sessions, perhaps it could also rescue Lennon's vocal from that stubborn cassette. It could. Within seconds, according to McCartney, the machine stripped away the piano and the hum, leaving Lennon's voice isolated and clear. “They said this is the sound of John's voice,” McCartney recalled. “A few seconds later and there it was, John's voice, crystal clear. It was quite emotional.”

Giles Martin was emphatic about what had and had not happened. “AI is not creating John's voice,” he told MusicRadar. “John's voice existed on that cassette and we made the song around him.” The distinction matters enormously. No synthetic voice was generated. No words were invented. No performance was fabricated. The technology's role was purely subtractive: removing what obscured a real human performance so that it could finally be heard.

Building Around a Ghost

With Lennon's vocal isolated, the completion of “Now and Then” became a conventional, if emotionally charged, production exercise. McCartney recorded new bass, a slide guitar solo in the style of Harrison as a tribute, electric harpsichord, backing vocals, and piano that echoed the feel of Lennon's original demo. Starr laid down a finalised drum track and added backing vocals. Harrison's guitar parts, both acoustic and electric, recorded during the abandoned 1995 sessions, were extracted and incorporated.

Rather than use AI to recreate the Beatles' signature vocal harmonies, Martin took a more analogue approach. He pulled actual Beatles vocal recordings from existing multitrack tapes of songs like “Eleanor Rigby,” “Because,” and “Here, There and Everywhere,” and wove them into the arrangement. “I'm not using AI to recreate their voices in any way,” Martin told interviewers. “I'm literally taking the multitrack tapes.” He added, with characteristic directness: “It might have been easier if I used AI, but I didn't.”

A string arrangement written by McCartney, Martin, and Ben Foster was recorded at Capitol Studios. The result was a song that featured all four Beatles: Lennon's 1977 vocal, Harrison's 1995 guitar, and McCartney and Starr's 2022 contributions, a creative object spanning 45 years of performances by musicians who were never all in the same room for this particular song and two of whom were dead by the time it was finished.

Validation and the Weight of a Grammy

The commercial and institutional response was striking. “Now and Then” debuted on the UK Singles Chart on 3 November 2023 and reached number one the following week, becoming the Beatles' 18th UK number one and their first in 54 years, since “The Ballad of John and Yoko” in 1969. It set the record for the longest gap between number one singles by any musical act. At the ages of 81 and 83 respectively, McCartney and Starr became members of the oldest band to claim a UK number one single. The single was the fastest-selling vinyl release of the century in the UK, with 19,400 copies sold on vinyl alone, and accumulated 5.03 million streams in its first week, the most ever for a Beatles track.

Then came the Grammy. On 2 February 2025, “Now and Then” won Best Rock Performance at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, beating out songs by Pearl Jam, IDLES, the Black Keys, St. Vincent, and Green Day. It was the Beatles' first Grammy win since 1997, when they had won for “Free as a Bird,” itself a posthumously completed Lennon demo. It was also, historically, the first AI-assisted track to win a Grammy Award.

Neither McCartney nor Starr attended the ceremony. Sean Ono Lennon, John's son with Yoko Ono, accepted the award. “Since no one is coming up to take this award, I figured I'd come and sit in,” he said. “I really didn't expect to be accepting this award on behalf of my father's group, the Beatles.”

The Grammy matters not merely as an honour but as a legitimising act. The Recording Academy, by bestowing its most prestigious recognition on a track that could not have existed without machine learning, effectively declared that this kind of creative act falls within the boundaries of what the music industry considers real, valid, and worthy of its highest prizes. That declaration will be difficult to walk back.

A New Category, or an Old Power Reasserted

Here is where the philosophical terrain gets uneven. The careful, collaborator-blessed, estate-approved process behind “Now and Then” can be read in two fundamentally different ways.

The first reading is optimistic, even utopian. This is a genuinely new kind of creative act, one that exists outside traditional notions of single authorship. No individual made this song. Lennon wrote the melody and sang the vocal but never finished the composition and could not consent to its completion. Harrison contributed guitar parts in 1995 for a song he openly disliked, and his participation in the final version was sanctioned by his widow and son rather than by the man himself. McCartney and Starr completed the arrangement nearly three decades after the aborted sessions, working with a producer (Giles Martin) who had not been involved in the original attempt. The technology that made it possible was developed for an entirely different project by a filmmaker from New Zealand. The result is a creative object with no single author, no unified moment of creation, and no clear boundary between human artistry and machine capability.

The second reading is more sceptical. Strip away the sentiment, and what happened is that the surviving members of a band, along with their associated estates and production teams, used new technology to finish a project on their terms, shaping how a dead colleague is remembered in a way that he cannot contest. Harrison called the song “fucking rubbish” in 1995. Lennon never heard a finished version of any kind. The decision to release “Now and Then” was made entirely by living people (McCartney, Starr, the Lennon estate, the Harrison estate) with commercial and emotional interests in the outcome. Olivia Harrison's statement that George “would have whole-heartedly joined” the project if he were alive is precisely the kind of claim that cannot be tested. It is an assertion of posthumous consent by someone who is not the deceased.

This is not to impugn anyone's motives. By every available account, the completion of “Now and Then” was undertaken with genuine love and reverence for the material, with painstaking care over the production, and with the blessing of all relevant estates. But the power dynamics are worth noting: it is always the living who decide how the dead are heard.

Precedent and the Catalogue of the Unfinished

The Beatles are not the first case of AI assisting in the completion of a deceased artist's unfinished work, but they are the most culturally significant. In October 2021, a team led by Professor Ahmed Elgammal of Rutgers University and Austrian composer Walter Werzowa premiered an AI-completed version of Beethoven's Tenth Symphony at the Telekom Forum in Bonn, Germany. The project had been organised by Matthias Roder, director of the Karajan Institute in Salzburg, to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. The AI was trained on Beethoven's complete body of work and the surviving sketches for the Tenth Symphony, generating hundreds of musical variations each day from which Werzowa selected the most plausible continuations. The result was two complete movements of more than 20 minutes each. When the team challenged an audience of experts to determine where Beethoven's phrases ended and where the AI extrapolation began, they could not.

AIVA, the Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist, has similarly completed an unfinished Dvořák piano composition in E minor, and various projects have tackled Schubert's “Unfinished” Symphony. In each case, the technical achievement was impressive, but the cultural stakes were comparatively low. Classical music has a long tradition of scholarly completions; Deryck Cooke's performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, for example, has been in concert repertoire since the 1960s. The idea that someone other than the original composer might finish an unfinished symphony is not alien to that world.

Popular music is different. The connection between artist and audience is more personal, more identity-driven, more commercially charged. When a rock or pop artist's unfinished recordings become candidates for technological resurrection, the questions multiply. Whose vault gets opened next? What constitutes sufficient source material for a legitimate completion? If the Beatles' approach represents the gold standard, with surviving collaborators overseeing the process, what happens when there are no surviving collaborators? What happens when the estate holders have financial incentives that may not align with artistic ones?

The music catalogue acquisition market offers a sobering context. According to MIDiA Research, the value of music catalogue acquisitions since 2010 has reached at least 6.5 billion dollars in publicly disclosed transactions alone. Prince's estate sold nearly 50 per cent of rights to his name, likeness, masters, and publishing to Primary Wave. Michael Jackson's estate cashed out his 50 per cent stake in Sony/ATV for 750 million dollars in 2016. When a catalogue is worth hundreds of millions, the financial pressure to generate new revenue from it is enormous. An AI-completed “new” track from a deceased superstar represents a potential commercial event of the first order.

The Dark Mirror of Unauthorised Resurrection

If “Now and Then” represents the careful, consensual end of the spectrum, the opposite extreme is already flourishing. In April 2024, during his feud with Kendrick Lamar, Drake released “Taylor Made Freestyle,” a track featuring AI-synthesised vocals of the late Tupac Shakur. The response from Tupac's estate was swift and furious. Howard King, the estate's attorney, sent a cease-and-desist letter calling Drake's use “a flagrant violation of Tupac's publicity and the estate's legal rights” and “a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time.” King added that “the Estate would never have given its approval for this use.” Drake removed the track within days. The irony was not lost on observers: Drake's own label had previously taken down “Heart on My Sleeve,” a 2023 track by an anonymous creator that used AI to clone the voices of Drake and the Weeknd without permission.

By 2025, the problem had moved far beyond individual celebrity disputes. An investigation by 404 Media found that AI-generated tracks were being uploaded to the official Spotify profiles of deceased musicians without any permission from their estates. Blaze Foley, a Texas folk singer who died in 1989, had a synthetic song called “Together” appear on his verified Spotify page, uploaded via TikTok's SoundOn distribution platform. Grammy-winning songwriter Guy Clark, who died in 2016, had an AI-generated song placed under his name. The electro-pop artist Sophie, who died in 2021, and Uncle Tupelo, the former band of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, were similarly targeted.

The mechanism is disturbingly simple. Independent distribution services like DistroKid, TuneCore, and SoundOn serve as intermediaries between artists and streaming platforms. Spotify relies on these “trusted” distributors to provide accurate metadata but does not independently verify whether an artist is alive, whether the submitter has rights to the name, or whether the music is genuine. Anyone with access to AI music generation tools like Suno or Udio can create a plausible imitation of a real artist in seconds and upload it through these distribution channels. The fake track then appears alongside the artist's legitimate catalogue, indistinguishable to casual listeners.

Spotify has said it removed 75 million “spammy” tracks in a single year and launched a tool for artists to report mismatched releases. But the company has no system for tagging or labelling AI-generated music and has not disclosed how it identifies such content. The scale of the problem is significant: Deezer has reported that 18 per cent of all music uploaded to streaming platforms is fully AI-generated.

Legislative Scaffolding in Progress

The legal landscape is evolving rapidly, though it has not yet caught up with the technology. Tennessee's ELVIS Act (Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act), signed into law by Governor Bill Lee on 21 March 2024, was the first enacted legislation in the United States specifically designed to protect musicians from unauthorised AI voice cloning. The bill passed both chambers of the Tennessee legislature unanimously, reflecting the state's deep ties to its music industry, which supports more than 60,000 jobs and contributes 5.8 billion dollars to the national GDP.

The ELVIS Act grants individuals rights over their voice “regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice of the individual” and imposes liability on technology providers, not merely end users. It protects both living and deceased individuals from digital exploitation. California has pursued similar measures, updating its long-established right-of-publicity laws to explicitly cover AI-based infringements.

At the federal level, the No AI FRAUD Act would establish a national right in an individual's likeness and voice, while the NO FAKES Act would create liability for the production or distribution of unauthorised AI-generated digital replicas in audiovisual works or sound recordings. Neither had been enacted as of early 2026, leaving protection largely dependent on a patchwork of state laws.

These measures address the most egregious abuses: outright voice cloning, unauthorised deepfakes, fraudulent streaming uploads. What they do not address is the murkier territory that “Now and Then” occupies. When surviving collaborators and authorised estates use emerging technology to complete an unfinished work, existing legal frameworks generally permit the activity. The question is not legality but legitimacy, and that is a cultural judgement rather than a statutory one.

Commercial Gravity and the Erosion of Restraint

The commercial incentives pushing towards more AI-assisted posthumous completions are substantial and growing. Every major record label sits on vaults of unreleased material by deceased artists. Prince alone left behind an estimated 8,000 unreleased songs in his vault at Paisley Park at the time of his death in 2016, enough material, by some estimates, for his estate to release an album a year for a century. The potential to transform these recordings into finished, releasable tracks using the same techniques applied to “Now and Then” represents an enormous financial opportunity.

The restraint shown in the Beatles' case was enabled by several unusual factors. McCartney and Starr are independently wealthy and had no financial need to release the song. The Beatles' catalogue was already one of the most commercially successful in music history, meaning marginal revenue from one additional single was not a decisive factor. The surviving principals had genuine personal connections to the material and the deceased artists. And the public narrative, “the last Beatles song,” had a built-in emotional arc that encouraged care rather than exploitation.

Remove any of these factors and the calculus shifts. An estate managed by distant relatives or corporate entities, a catalogue whose value depends on generating new releases, a fanbase hungry for any scrap of unreleased material: these conditions are ripe for a less restrained approach. The technology that separated Lennon's voice from a cassette hum can just as easily be applied to bootleg recordings, rehearsal tapes, isolated vocal takes, and fragmentary demos by any artist whose voice can be used as training data for source separation algorithms.

The question is not whether this will happen but how quickly commercial pressure will override the curatorial care that characterised “Now and Then.” The Grammy win accelerates this timeline. When the music industry's most prestigious institution rewards an AI-assisted posthumous completion, it sends an unmistakable signal to every label, estate, and producer with access to a deceased artist's unreleased recordings: this is not merely acceptable, it is excellent. It wins awards. It reaches number one.

The Living and the Dead

There is a deeper discomfort at work, one that transcends the specifics of the Beatles or any individual artist. The history of posthumous releases is littered with cautionary tales. After Michael Jackson's death in 2009, his estate released the album Michael in 2010, which sparked fierce controversy when Jackson's own family members claimed that three tracks featured vocals by an impersonator rather than by Jackson himself. After more than a decade of fan protest and legal action, the disputed songs were eventually removed from streaming platforms. His estate later released Xscape in 2014, taking greater care to preserve Jackson's authentic vocal performances, but the earlier debacle had already demonstrated how readily commercial interests could override questions of authenticity. After Prince's death in 2016, the management of his vault became a matter of intense legal and familial dispute, with his estate passing through intestacy laws in the absence of a will.

AI does not create these tensions. It amplifies them. When the technological barrier to finishing an unfinished song drops to near zero, the only remaining barriers are ethical, legal, and cultural. And history suggests that ethical and cultural barriers erode faster than legal ones when significant money is at stake.

Paul McCartney himself framed his decision in terms of imagined consent. “Is it something we shouldn't do?” he told interviewers. “Every time I thought, like that, I thought, 'wait a minute. Let's say I had a chance to ask John. Hey John, would you like us to finish this last song of yours?' I'm telling you, I know the answer would have been 'yeah.'”

McCartney may well be right. But the logic of imagined consent is infinitely extensible. Anyone close to a deceased artist can claim to know what that artist would have wanted. The closer the relationship, the more credible the claim, but it remains fundamentally untestable. And as the distance between the deceased artist and the people making decisions about their legacy grows, from bandmates to widows to children to grandchildren to corporate entities holding catalogue rights, the claim of imagined consent becomes progressively thinner.

What Comes After the Last Beatles Song

“Now and Then” is a beautiful, melancholy record. It sounds like the Beatles, because in every meaningful sense it is the Beatles. Lennon's voice is his own. Harrison's guitar is his own. McCartney and Starr played their parts with the skill and sensitivity of men who spent their formative years making music together. The machine learning software that made it possible did not create anything; it revealed what was already there but hidden.

And yet the song exists because living people decided it should, using capabilities that did not exist when the dead had any say in the matter. That is the irreducible fact at the centre of this story, and it will only become more significant as the technology improves, as the vaults open wider, and as the commercial logic of the music industry seeks new revenue from old recordings.

So is this a fundamentally new category of creative act? In one sense, yes. No previous generation of musicians had access to tools that could extract a voice from a degraded cassette with such fidelity, making collaboration across decades and beyond death a technical reality rather than a metaphor. But in another sense, the answer is less comforting. The power to decide what the dead would have wanted has always belonged to the living. AI does not redistribute that power; it supercharges it. The careful restraint of the Beatles' approach deserves recognition and respect. It also deserves to be understood for what it is: a best-case scenario, executed by people with the resources, the relationships, and the cultural authority to do it well. The next case may not look like this. The case after that almost certainly will not. The technology that gave us one last Beatles song will not stop there. The question is whether the industry, the legal system, and the culture can build frameworks of care and consent that match the capabilities of the machines. On current evidence, the machines are moving faster.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

There comes a moment in a person’s life when the ground beneath them shifts so suddenly and so violently that they realize nothing will ever be quite the same again. For many, that moment arrives with a phone call, a doctor’s pause, or an unexpected conversation where the word cancer enters the room like an uninvited guest who does not knock, does not speak politely, and does not care about the time of day or the state of your heart. When that word settles into the air, the world feels as if it has been sliced cleanly into a before and an after, and everything that once felt predictable becomes wrapped in a mist of questions you never thought you would have to ask. Yet beneath that moment, beneath the shock and the fear and the tidal wave of wondering what comes next, there is another truth stirring quietly in the soul, a truth many people do not recognize until they are forced into a valley they never wanted to enter. It is the awareness that God’s presence, though often ignored in the brightest seasons of our lives, becomes heartbreakingly real in the shadows. And even though cancer tries to pull you into a darkness that feels unfamiliar and frightening, there is a deeper light that steps into that space with you, refusing to leave, refusing to weaken, and refusing to let the valley become your grave.

When people think about suffering, they often imagine it as a thief that steals from you without mercy, and in many ways that can be true. Suffering interrupts plans, unravels routines, and exposes emotions that were buried under years of normal life. But there is another side to suffering that very few people talk about, and it is a side that only those who have walked through real pain ever learn to understand. Suffering, especially the kind that comes with a diagnosis that shakes the foundation of your existence, has a strange way of sharpening your vision. Suddenly the things that once felt urgent no longer matter in the same way. The things that once irritated you start to feel small. The people you love become more precious. The moments you used to rush past become holy. And in that shift, in that transformation of perspective, you begin to see God in places where you never noticed Him before. You find Him in the stillness of early mornings when you wake up and realize you’ve been given one more day. You find Him in the way someone looks at you with concern and love woven into the same expression. You find Him in the smile of a nurse who takes your hand right before a procedure. And you find Him in the quiet strength that appears in your chest at the exact moment you expected to collapse. This awakening does not erase the pain, but it does something far more mysterious. It reveals the God who never left you.

Most people assume courage is loud. They imagine warriors with raised voices and determined faces. But if there is anything those who walk through cancer understand, it is that true courage often looks nothing like that. True courage is quiet. True courage trembles. True courage breathes slowly through fear that sits heavy on the lungs. True courage shows up to appointments you wish you could cancel. True courage lets tears fall freely without shame. True courage admits when you feel tired and asks God for help when you would rather stand tall. The world may celebrate the victories it can see, but heaven celebrates the victories that happen in the invisible places of the heart, and the courage rising inside someone battling cancer is one of the most sacred forms of courage the world will ever witness. It is the courage that chooses to believe that hope still has a place in this story. It is the courage that stands in the middle of unanswered questions and whispers, God, stay close. And the beauty of this kind of courage is that God does not respond by demanding perfection; He responds by drawing you deeper into His presence, as if He has been waiting for this moment to reveal how faithfully He has been carrying you all along.

What many people do not realize until they face mortal uncertainty is how much their identity has been shaped by things that never truly defined them. Cancer has a way of stripping away everything superficial. It strips away the illusion that we are in control of every outcome. It strips away the roles we perform for the approval of others. It strips away the excuses we make to avoid confronting our own soul. And in that place of raw honesty, where everything unnecessary has been peeled back, something remarkable begins to happen. You discover that your identity was never rooted in your career, your accomplishments, your plans, or your ability to keep your life neatly arranged. Your identity has always been rooted in the God who formed you in secret and breathed His own life into you. Cancer tries to rename people. It tries to reduce their existence to a medical file, a chart full of numbers, a list of appointments and medications. But God has never called you by those names. God calls you beloved. God calls you chosen. God calls you His. And there is nothing on earth, including cancer, that can rewrite the name God placed on your life before you ever took your first breath.

Every person facing cancer learns something about faith that cannot be learned any other way. You learn that faith is not always painted in bold colors. It is not always confident or loud or filled with declarative sentences that sound heroic. Sometimes faith is a quiet whisper spoken through shaking lips. Sometimes faith is a soft breath that says, Lord, I am afraid, but I still trust You. Sometimes faith is a hand gripping a blanket in the middle of the night while you pray for the strength to face tomorrow. Sometimes faith is simply the choice not to quit. These moments of fragile faith are not signs of weakness; they are the very moments when heaven holds you more tightly than you can imagine. They are the moments when God bends low, gathers your tears like precious jewels, and says, I will be your strength when you have none left. And even though it may not feel like it, every small act of faith, every quiet surrender, every whispered prayer becomes part of your testimony, forming a spiritual resilience that shines like a lantern in the darkness.

There is a truth few people speak aloud, yet almost everyone in a deep battle eventually discovers. God is closest in the places where we feel most undone. He is closest when the room is dim, when the scans are uncertain, when the pain is real, and when the fear feels like it is wrapping around your ribs. God does not stand at a distance watching to see how strong you will be. He comes all the way into the valley. He sits on the edge of your bed. He places His peace over your thoughts like a warm blanket. He whispers into your soul that you are not alone. This is the kind of intimacy with God that cannot be learned through comfort. It is the kind of intimacy that only emerges when a person walks through fire and discovers that not even the flames can touch the presence of the One who walks beside them. And once you have felt God in the valley, you will carry that awareness for the rest of your life. You will never again mistake His silence for absence, because you will know what it feels like to be held by Him in your most vulnerable moments.

For many people, cancer becomes a teacher they never sought, but one that leaves behind truths they carry forever. It teaches you how precious time really is. It teaches you how deeply other people matter. It teaches you that small moments deserve more attention than you ever gave them before. It teaches you that love has the power to steady trembling hands and calm anxious thoughts. It teaches you that your soul is far stronger than your body ever was. And perhaps most importantly, it teaches you that hope is not a delicate flower that dies under pressure. Hope is a stubborn, unyielding force that refuses to be extinguished, even in the darkest places. It is the light that flickers when everything else feels lost. It is the warmth that remains when the night tries to swallow your strength. It is the quiet insistence that your story is not over. And it is the voice of God, echoing through your soul, reminding you again and again that He carries the final word, not fear, not cancer, not suffering, but Him.

You begin to realize slowly, sometimes painfully, sometimes beautifully, that this journey is shaping you into someone new, someone deeper, someone more awake to the presence of God than you ever were before. You learn to cherish the gentle moments. You learn to listen to your spirit with more compassion. You learn that vulnerability is not a weakness but a doorway to intimacy with God and with others. You learn that tears are not signs of failure but expressions of a heart that still believes, still hopes, still loves. And you learn that courage is something God grows in you one breath at a time. This kind of transformation is not something you would have chosen, but it is something that God will use in ways you cannot yet see. Your story is being written in ink that does not wash away. Your battle is not a sign of God’s absence; it is a canvas where His faithfulness is being painted stroke by stroke. And even though you may feel tired, worn, or overwhelmed, there is a quiet miracle already unfolding within you.

There is something sacred that happens when you begin to see your own life through a different lens, one shaped not by fear but by divine perspective. People often assume that when you face something as terrifying and unpredictable as cancer, your sense of purpose shrinks alongside the uncertainty of your future. Yet the opposite is often true. In many ways, your purpose expands. You begin to understand the weight and value of your life in a way you never could when everything felt ordinary. Your story becomes larger, not smaller. Even the quietest moments take on a new depth. Sitting beside a window becomes a conversation between your soul and the world God created. Hearing someone laugh becomes a kind of music you never realized you needed. Feeling the presence of someone who loves you turns into a reminder that love was always God’s greatest invention, and somehow it becomes even more powerful when life feels fragile. This is what happens when God meets you in the valley. He does not simply walk with you; He reshapes your understanding of yourself until you begin to see that you are far more loved, far more supported, and far more resilient than you ever imagined.

As the days unfold, you begin to learn that life cannot be measured in years alone. Life is measured in meaning, in depth, in connection, in the way your spirit responds to both joy and suffering. Cancer has a way of reintroducing you to yourself, inviting you to rediscover the parts of your soul that were always there but buried under the noise of busy days. Suddenly, conversations become more genuine. Gratitude stretches into corners of your life you overlooked before. You begin to realize that even the difficult days hold beauty because they reveal your own humanity and the vastness of God’s compassion toward you. You start to notice details you never saw, like the way light spills across a room, or the peace that settles into your heart when you pray, or the quiet courage that rises in you when your body feels weak but your spirit feels steady. This awareness does not make the battle easy, but it makes the journey meaningful. And when meaning grows, hope grows alongside it, like a vine reaching toward the light no matter how many shadows surround it.

There will always be people who try to make sense of suffering through explanations or theories, but explanations rarely bring comfort. What brings comfort is presence. What brings comfort is being held. What brings comfort is remembering that God does not meet you in the storm with a clipboard and a list of spiritual tests. God meets you with compassion shaped like a hand on your shoulder. God meets you with peace that flows gently into the spaces where fear tries to settle. God meets you with assurance that nothing about your life is random or forgotten. The truth that emerges in seasons like this, the truth that takes root in the deepest part of your soul, is that spiritual growth often happens in places you would never choose. The valley becomes a classroom where God teaches you not through lessons but through love, not through lectures but through His presence, not through pressure but through His nearness. And once you taste that nearness, once you feel His presence surrounding you even in uncertainty, you begin to understand that the valley is not just a place of suffering. It is a place of holy encounter.

Over time you also learn something else that becomes a wellspring of strength. You learn that you are not alone in the way you thought you were. People show up in unexpected ways. Someone prays for you without telling you. Someone brings you a meal without asking for credit. Someone sends a message at the exact moment you needed encouragement. Someone sits with you in silence, knowing that silence sometimes speaks louder than words. Through all of this, you begin to see that God’s love often arrives through human hands. And this realization changes you. It humbles you. It strengthens you. It reminds you that your life carries more value than you ever gave it credit for. You are not a burden. You are not an interruption. You are not someone others endure. You are someone others love fiercely. And sometimes, the love surrounding you becomes part of the healing God brings, not only to your body but to your heart.

In this season you also discover that God’s strength is not something He offers from afar. His strength becomes the very air you breathe. It becomes the calm that settles into your bones on the days when fear tries to rise. It becomes the courage that lifts your chin when you feel small. It becomes the foundation beneath your steps when you wake up not knowing what the day will bring. God’s strength is not something fragile or temporary. It is steady, ancient, unwavering, and always present. And when you begin to walk with that strength beneath you, the fear that once felt suffocating begins to lose some of its power. Fear still whispers, but it cannot dominate you the way it once did, because the presence of God has become louder. The presence of God has become the story surrounding your story. And when His presence becomes your atmosphere, even the hardest battles become places where miracles grow.

Eventually, something beautiful begins to unfold inside you. You start to understand that hope is not just an emotional experience; it is a spiritual force that God Himself protects. Hope does not depend on circumstances. Hope does not evaporate when the journey becomes difficult. Hope is something God places inside your heart like a flame that cannot be extinguished, no matter how strong the winds of adversity blow. And there may be days when you feel that flame flicker, days when it feels small or fragile, days when you wonder if it is still burning at all. But here is the truth that God whispers into the deepest part of your spirit: hope does not go out because it does not depend on you to sustain it. Hope is sustained by Him. Hope is fueled by His promises. Hope is anchored in His faithfulness. And as long as God remains who He is, hope will never abandon you.

You also begin to see that your story has a reach far beyond what you imagine. Even on days when you feel tired or worn, your resilience speaks to someone else who needs courage for their own battles. Even your vulnerability becomes a source of light for someone who feels alone. God uses your story not because you are perfect but because you are willing to keep going. And in that willingness, in that sacred persistence, God writes something eternal. He writes compassion into your life that will touch others. He writes strength into your heart that will last long beyond this season. He writes wisdom into your soul that will allow you to comfort people one day with the same comfort He is giving you now. This is why your story is not shrinking. This is why your purpose is not diminishing. Your life is expanding, your soul is deepening, and your testimony is becoming richer with every step you take through this valley.

One day, whether soon or far from now, you will look back on this chapter and realize that God was shaping something in you that could not have been shaped any other way. You will see how He carried you, how He strengthened you, how He steadied you when you felt like collapsing, how He nourished your hope in moments when it felt too small to survive. And you will understand that even in the darkness, the light never left you. The light followed you. The light protected you. The light lived in you. Because the light was never your own; it was His. And as long as His light remains, your story will always move toward healing, toward redemption, toward transformation, and toward a future that still holds beauty you have not yet imagined.

At the end of it all, this becomes the truth that settles into your soul: you are not defined by cancer. You are defined by the God who loves you. You are defined by the purpose that still beats within your heart. You are defined by the hope that refuses to die. You are defined by the courage that grows in your spirit despite the weight of the journey. And you are defined by the light that walks beside you through every valley. Nothing can take that from you. Nothing can silence that truth. Nothing can remove God’s hand from your life. You are His, and because you are His, your story is still unfolding with meaning, depth, and divine intention. And through every breath, every moment, every step, God walks with you, holding you, lifting you, loving you, and surrounding you with a grace that never runs out.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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In Summary: * After a quiet but productive Friday that saw me catching up on little items I'd let slide for the past week, AND getting the A/C working in this joint again. Now I'm listening to the Princeton Tigers pregame show ahead of their men's basketball game tonight vs. the Harvard Crimson. After the game I'm planning to wrap up my night prayers and retire early.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 228.29 lbs. * bp= 142/84 (65)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:15 – 1 little cookie * 07:00 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 10:55 – beef chop suey, steamed rice * 16:05 – 1 fresh apple * 17:05 – cheese and crackers

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:30 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:10 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:35 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, and nap * 13:30 – Watch old game shows with Sylvia * 14:50 – listening to relaxing music * 17:50 – listening to the Princeton Tigers pregame show ahead of their men's basketball game tonight vs. the Harvard Crimson

Chess: * 09:45 – moved in all pending CC games

“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

—P.J. O'Rourke

I love this quote, because I've been that guy. I've been the guy who thinks he can save the world but who literally doesn't help his mom with the dishes when he visits. Thankfully, I've dramatically softened in my activism (appropriately discussed ever so briefly in a recipe but nowhere else on this blog), if it can even be called activism any more, and I did help my mom with the dishes during my most recent visit, although I'm sure I could have done more.

I interpret the statement like this: riding a “high horse” can be fun, and there really are important societal problems that ordinary people can help improve. That said, there are always more ordinary problems that need attention, and sometimes fixing those things goes further than protesting in the streets.

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