HEART STATION

Just now, the friend who was helping me out with my mash-ups for ~12 weeks~ sent me his finished copy of the first release, Lose My Dirrt.

He’s by far, a lot more talented and experienced (You might know him from his work as Ahtka-chan) in this area than me, so I’m sure you’d enjoy his edit a lot more!

I’m still completely unmotivated to create any mash-ups, but my two best friends (That you read about previously) and I and I are planning on going on Stickam and chatting with you guys live! As soon as we have the schedule, I’ll announce it here! It’s probably going to be around mid-August, so I hope to see you there!

Until then, I wanna see everyone jamming to Ahtka-chan’s unofficial release, Lose My Dirrt! (This is way too bittersweet for me)

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This week, the special post featured on HEART STATION was ~3~ My Life Without, and I wrote about my two best friends, Sofy and Cary, and Sofy, being the cute girl that she is, commented saying:

And she took pictures of the post on her wall to share with us and it looks so cute! She also left me a little note that I think is the best! It basically sums up my whole post into just a few words that say it all about our friendship!

Now HEART STATION is taped to her wall and her wall is taped to HEART STATION! I feel honored that she did this! Thank you, Bobes!

But the best part is the note. Is that the cutest note ever or what? Sofy’s handwriting is so the cutest ever. It made my day!

If you also have a post of mine taped to your wall or anything else, be sure to let me know so I can put it up here as well! It’s my pleasure!

Is it just me or does that tape frame totally bring out my post’s font? It looks great on Sofy’s wall! From the picture it looks like glass.

Thank you Bobes for doing something so sweet! Love you too! You can Cary are the best friends a boy could ask for!

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When you’re as extreme as I am, there will be a very clear division between things you like and things you don’t, material or not, and when you love excess as much as I do, you get a very big list of things you can’t live without. I think that even the slightest of changes would change my life completely because I’m so drawn to detail, the list is huge, but some of these things I can’t live without are:

Music: It does sound very corny, but music is one of the things I can’t live without. I love music ever since I was 0 years old. I think this came from my mother, who comes from a very musical family. As a matter of fact, she was on her way of recording her first album, but she was unable to complete her debut and left that dream aside, but after I was born, every party she threw had karaoke and she always had the best time singing. I already had some CDs before I moved to Campinas (I was 2 when that happened). They were usually the soundtracks of shows like Bananas de Pijamas or Eliana but I had a lot of fun with them. My mom still has footage of me as a naked little baby singing with my little microphone to the karaoke machine. I don’t know what grade I got for that performance, but any grade is too high for a naked singing baby. I’m still so embarrassed by that tape. My love for music only grew, and even though I can’t write music, I make up for it with my poetry and playing the piano. Not only can’t I picture my life without music but also the world without it. We’d be missing out on such a beautiful, different connection. I’d be a very different Alvy, especially because I don’t identify myself with many forms of art, but I identify myself completely with music.

My Memories: One of the things I love to do the most is reminisce and share inside jokes with people I know and spend time with. It’s so sweet to share moments of joy and sadness with others and my memories are so precious because they made me who I am today. My life without my memories would be empty and sad because I’d be missing out on the future if I don’t have a past. I love the feeling that looking back leaves me with and there aren’t enough words to express this. I don’t know how things would be if my memories started afresh. It could be something good or something really bad, but I don’t want to give up on something so precious. You’re all a part of this and I wouldn’t want to leave any of you behind.

I guess music and memories are sort of connected because of what they represent to me, but there’s one more thing that means the world to me and that if I didn’t have it, my life wouldn’t even be my life to begin with:

The People I Love and Care About: If there’s one feeling better than any other, it’s that of having someone there for you 24/7, supporting you and guiding you. I’m so lucky to have so many people I care about in my life! This year I got to meet people over the internet and make a connection with them and this is so special to me. I think I can scare some people I meet over the internet with how much I care about them, but it’s how I am and when I like someone, I don’t hide it. It’s not embarrassing if I like to spend time with someone. The list of my little lover boys and girls is huge, so if I was to live without them, I’d be so different, and I love where I’m at now, so I wouldn’t want to lose that. I love all my BFFs and BvFFs (Best virtual friends forever [As made famous by Adonias Junior])

These 3 things are certainly connected in a way, and one thing I can’t live without, from everything I said, are my connections, be it through a friendship, through a song, through my memories. I wouldn’t be myself without this, and even though the list of things I can’t live without is pretty large and I can’t think of everything, I think the 3 items above are the most important ones.

But there’s one friendship that if I were to live without, I’d be unrecognizable, this friendship is with two people that have been with me since the beginning and far before that. We became best friends when we were 8 and have been inseparable ever since:

My BFFs: Cary + Sofy

I have no idea how my life would be without my best friends since 3rd grade, Carytelio and Sofymaia. I love it how we always find a way to keep our friendship fresh and discover more and more about each other in the process. I honestly don’t know the recipe to our friendship, and I don’t think there is one and that’s what’s so great about it! It’s all fun and in the moment.

We’ve been through so much already, and the time we spent at Bertioga together is my favorite. I wasn’t going to the trip to begin with, but Sofy and Cary made it happen for me and I’m so glad they did. The bus ride was awesome, because I brought some DVDs and we got to watch The Grudge and scared everybody out for the remainder of the trip, but the best part of the trip had to be the canoe.

The people who were taking care of us for the trip planned a canoe ride for us, and Cary, Sofy and I were less than happy about that. Just getting in the canoe already freaked us out. But the three of us were happily getting the hang of it, only one of us (I don’t remember if it was Sofy or Cary), was having difficulties with their area of the canoe (Since each area has a different function) and had to switch with the other. I was scared to death, because they were standing up on that thin canoe trying to balance themselves onto the other’s seat. But they made it without throwing us into the crab-full, muddy water. Through the ride, we kept canoeing into these little spots of land that were unevenly distributed through the watery area and it was less than pleasant. Because we had no experience with canoes, we would occasionally throw water on each other by accident, and after some time, that got really old and annoying, so I fought back by throwing water on purpose at the girl behind me, and the girl behind me threw it at the girl behind her, who threw it back at me. Cary, Sofy and I started to have this huge water fight that not only left us behind, but also soaking wet, angry and nearly crying because we were being so stupid and silly.

We picked ourselves up and moved on. The other people in our class decided they’d just throw themselves in the muddy water and throw mud around like it was gold. We backed away immediately after we were threatened by them and their menacing muddy hands. After that, we took a different path, back to where we started. We thought it was over and were celebrating and hugging and kissing each other, but then our teacher was like “Where are you going?” and we begged her to leave, but she told us to follow her canoe, which was basically a boat, so she had nothing to complain about.

Through the rest of the ride, we complained about how our hands hurt, how we were wet and tired, and how we didn’t care about where we were going anyway. Finally we stopped, rested, and had to return to the area where we came from to leave. Cary, Sofy and I were really happy about that and drew our last strengths to canoe our way back. That’s when we were heading to another one of the little uneven spots of land. Since I was in front of them, I was screaming like crazy

Sofy! Back off! Back off, Sofy! We’re approaching a little island!

But Sofy wasn’t able to switch the position of the canoe and as we drew nearer, I could see this really big branch of a tree, filled with crabs and spiders right in front of me. I threw myself back at the canoe, getting my hair full of dirty water and shouting at Cary and Sofy to get me away from there while I stared onto that branch that was now on top of me, full of crawling crabs. In the process, a bunch of crabs and spiders fell on our canoe and we had to go back all the way with them in there.

At the end of the ride, the whole class was waiting like half an hour for us to catch up. Cary was traumatized with all the critters in the canoe, and so was I.

This is just one of the many anecdotes that make our friendship so amazing. I would never live through this type of thing without them, and they make my life brighter than ever! I love the time we spend together and it’ll never end because a friendship like the one we share is too strong to be divided by anything. I love my little Cary and my little Sofy and my life without them would be boring, awful and I’d go through the whole world looking for them again!

Y’all put the B-F-F on BFF!

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HEART STATION is like my own radioactively active laboratory. Anything can come out from just a simple thought that sparked in my mind, from musical reviews to poetry to updates about how I’ve been feeling. Every now and then, something goes wrong and different things start to show up, usually raw and unthought of by me before, just something new I was trying out. I believe that these results are what make HEART STATION what it is today. These posts are chemically wrong and probably one in a million, but it certainly brought them to the Top 5!

HEART STATION’s Top 5
1. Cardcaptor Sakura [Season 3] (Over 6,000 views)
2. Melrose Bickerstaff (Over 3,500 views)
3. Onion-Tou (Over 2,200 views)
4. Geisha, A Life (Over 1,900 views)
5. KODA KUMI LIVE TOUR 2008 ~Kingdom~ (Over 1,300 views)

I don’t like Top 5s because sometimes they show a bit too much of what others want to see and not what I want them to. None of these posts say anything about me, but show a lot of the faces of HEART STATION, which is amazing, because I love to know that people have interest in the different categories HEART STATION is split into. Some of the things I write here are really personal and I’d love to show a different side of me to you. These bipolar, radioactively unstable results are my favorites and the ones I have the most fun with, and when someone comes up to me and tells me that I did a great job on these posts, it makes my day. I feel so satisfied that I got to connect to someone else utilizing nothing but my own feelings.

Alvy’s Top 5
1. Skin
2. ♡
3. Bipolar Electric Discharge
4. One Life And A Persona Intruder
5. Defective Synchrony

Of course, everything I write comes from the bottom of my heart and I love writing about pop culture just as much as anything else, but I just wanted my Top 5 to be more personal and I’d love for you to get to know me more through posts that I thought a lot about and that I loved to publish as a part of HEART STATION. My poetry, for example, it all comes from me, this time I haven’t faked anything I felt. Maybe what’s expressed through the poems is a magnified version of what I was truly feeling, but that’s why I got to put the words together and become satisfied with it! I love to hear that people connect to it and I hope to continue writing things relatable to you!

There are always memories that you hold dear in your heart and look back to whenever things are changing and you need something solid to hold on to. HEART STATION is a place where I can treasure all that, and these posts that make me look back are the best!

Nostalgia Top 5
1. Utada @ Sephora [Part 2]
2. Alice The Great
3. The Trinity
4. The Ghetto Girls
5. Paraty

HEART STATION contains my memories from 7th through 9th grade, and believe it or not, a boy goes through a lot in 2 years. Especially when that boy seems to breathe and transpire drama, even if there’s none around. My time in middle school has been the sweetest, most amazing ever and I loved to share them so I remember how amazing my friends and each of you are. My way of writing, how personal and raw it was is really endearing to me and reminds of me of the good… no, not good, my loves. The amazing, incredible, beyond-words times of The Trinity! Now we’re a legion, it seems, and as much as I love all the contact I have with others, I miss that close bond I shared between myself and my 2 amazing friends, Sofy and Cary. We had each other’s backs 24/7, no backstabbing, no hate! This is what people fight for their whole lives, and just as simple, revolted 7th graders, we knew exactly what we wanted and found it in each other. I love that!

It was through The Trinity that we began On Our Way. The Trinity plus another person so dear to us, our eternal teacher for life and the classroom, Baby C!

Baby T + Baby C

The one person who started our lives as blog-writers is our teacher, Gina Coggio (aka Baby C . . . to me), the sweetest, most thoughtful and cutest teacher to ever come into a classroom. She had authority over us with no effort, just for being the patient, amazing and friendly teacher she is! On Our Way began because she served as inspiration to us through her own blog, A Year Here, A Year There, ever so charismatic and humorous.

For 2 amazing years, Baby C had been our teacher. She taught us English and History in 7th grade and took care of us during Advisory for 8th grade, but then left for New York. There were many highs and very few lows in our relationship with her and that’s what made her so incredible! The only times she needed to be stern with us was because of the confusion that some of our writing might’ve caused in the past, but if it weren’t for her, we’d probably be committing these mistakes now, which is even worse, so I’m so thankful for her and her open heart.

We miss Baby C a lot now that she’s in New York, but maybe she’ll stop by for a visit and make even more treasured memories about this pocket-sized, giant-hearted teacher! I owe all of this to Baby C, because if it weren’t for her, I would never have experienced this life as a blog-writer that I love so much, so I can’t thank her enough!

Another person I’d like to thank along with Baby C is our very own Baby T, who, unfortunately, is no longer with us, but I’m sure she’s in pumpkin paradise watching over everyone with her crown of pumpkin royalty. Baby T (Baby C’s mom) fought a really difficult battle against cancer, but none of it was spent suffering, since she had so much support and love coming from all over the world! She was truly a sweet lady with a huge heart and who served as inspiration to everyone! She and Baby C will always have a special place in my heart for serving as inspiration to me in so many levels, they’re truly really special, beautiful, and just beyond words! They’re certainly a part of The Best Of HS.

I’d like to know what you think is the best of HEART STATION, what brought you to it and what you like the most about it!

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Like everything big in my life, HEART STATION started with a fight. Initially, I shared a blog with my best friends, Cary and Sofy because we loved to read our teacher’s (Baby C) blog and wanted to share our own thoughts and stories that same way. That’s when On Our Way was created. We were three 7th graders with really strong personalities and a bit too polar for our own good. Blog-writing became a trend, and eventually, another student decided to name his blog On My Way, and knowing he was going to get on our nerves, he tried to keep it a secret. When we found out, hell broke loose in On Our Way, and the teacher who got us into blog-writing had to talk to all the students involved in this mess. We had gone so far into exposing ourselves and getting out of control that we were discouraged from blog-writing. It didn’t seem right anymore. Even though we felt ashamed for what we had done, we all got passed that and went our separate ways, in separate times and separate blogs.

That’s when I got started in my first solo blog, Heal Over. That’s exactly what it meant to me. It was basically a bridge between On Our Way and HEART STATION, just a healing phase. It contained many strong posts, a lot of stuff I wrote about myself and my thoughts through this stage. It came a time that I thought that Heal Over was becoming too anonymous for me and I was growing out of it. That’s when I dropped the healover.wordpress.com URL and created alvycunha.wordpress.com, removing that healing stage from the internet and focusing more on what I was becoming interested in.

The transition wasn’t so big at first, it was really subtle, just a new URL, nothing big. I continued writing the type of things I wrote about back in Heal Over, but ever since On Our Way, I began wandering into the world of J-Pop. It was shallow at first, only listening to Utada Hikaru lightly, as observed in my completely incorrect and inaccurate Hikaru Utada post back in On Our Way. That’s when I first wrote about J-Pop and by the time HEART STATION was brought up (Or Memoirs Of My Soul, its first of many titles), I was very much into the Japanese music scene and Japanese culture, far more than before. That’’s when the pop culture-oriented posts came about. These posts are what HEART STATION came to be known for, and focused less on my life.

For some time, American and Japanese pop culture came to be one of the focuses of my blog. This was heavily criticized by my friends and original readers because they were more interested in my life than when Utada’s new album is coming out or what I’m listening to. I was once told my blog was crappy and that that person was disappointed in me. I didn’t care, because my interests are a part of who I am and I was extremely satisfied with the maturity of my writing ever since that first blog I created with my friends. My writing became a lot less raw and MSN-like and more reflective of me.

When I figured out how to use Photoshop and make headers for myself, it was such a discovery. That’s basically when my blog began. I loved to make headers, change my blog’s title, even if it looked awful, my skills were evolving and I was always happy to give HEART STATION a new look. Here is a timeline of the many looks of HEART STATION:

It was like I was exploring more and more about what it means to be a blog-writer. On the later stages, I started to meet amazing people through my blog and now I have a branch to HEART STATION, called a²fiction, my very own (Neglected) review blog and I’m a member of Utada Brasil, which I love being a part of because it brought me so much joy since day 1! It feels like I know the members since forever and I love to spend time with them.

On HEART STATION’s first anniversary, I had nothing special done, but was ecstatic about my 10,000 views. On the day of its anniversary, HEART STATION had completed its rounded 10,000 views. I was motivated by this and the Japanese posts in HEART STATION bloomed profusely. I started covering anime, doramas, more singers. The 2nd year of HEART STATION began with the post on Tanabata Matsuri, which coincided with the anniversary. Through its ups and downs, HEART STATION moved on, and you guys continued commenting, reading and I continued to make friends. Now it’s a part of me, and no argument will take it away anymore. In one year, you guys multiplied the 10,000 views to over 4 times more, soon 5 times more, and that’s why I’d like to thank you so much for your patience, support and love! It means so much to have so many amazing people with me in this journey.

In two years, I got the chance to meet the idol I’ve admired for so long and wrote all about it here. This made HEART STATION the 65th top blog for the 30th of March and I got over 1,000 views that day. I’m so proud of this and so happy to have met so many amazing Hikki fans! We’re a really cute bunch we are. I hope many other opportunities like the Sephora events rise because I loved to experience it and it was the beginning of many things for me.

When I look back, and see that while I was writing, doing something that I love, I was building this relationship and connecting with people all around the world, who were witnessing my changes, my life with me, I can’t see myself not being a blog-writer, not being a member of Utada Brasil and not having lived through all the joys that HEART STATION has brought me. I love where I’m at today and I’m no longer the negative, shy boy from On Our Way. It’s like I’m a whole different person, and there’s nothing else to thank but the secret frequencies of HEART STATION, that brought you to me, and that brought me to myself.

There has been a change of plans in ~12 weeks~, and I haven’t gotten along with mash-ups at all. I guess I need more experience before I get them out for you, so the media section of HEART STATION is up for discussion until I figure out what I’m going to do better. I might go through with the mash-ups, but this week, I’d like to know what you would like to see or that you’d like for me to feature! Then I’d have a clearer view of what’s to come for these 12 weeks!

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