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“Just Like Water”

IG: @aidanmartinlive

Aidan Martin is a Pretoria native who is currently based in Cape Town. His music is can be described as a mix of Blues, Rock, Psychedelic and African style.

Weed Dealer “G.T.F.O”

IG: @weedxdealerofficial

Weed Dealer is a five piece alternative punk band from Johannesburg. You’ll find them on all major streaming platforms.

TSA

“Blessed”

IG: @tsanobodyelse

TSA is a Johannesburg rapper and songwriter. His music features “introspective storytelling on beats with live instrumentation, glitchy vocals samples, ear scraping synths and infectious drum patterns”.

The Secret Life of Geeks

Aaron Cloete

The word geek is one that has at times been used to shame or ridicule. People who have had a deep love for some aspect of popular, or unpopular, culture have been made to feel lesser due to that love. This has changed for the better in recent years due to the increased popularity and ubiquity of gaming culture within the popular sphere. The image of what it is to be a geek has evolved, and so the deeper question that should be asked is why people play games in such vast numbers. What is it about games that attract people?

The first and most obvious aspect of gaming that is attractive is escapism. Like any story-base or interactive media, gaming allows one to experience whole new worlds from the comfort of one’s own home. This helps people who find themselves in difficult positions, and who need to escape from some facet of their everyday lives to exist in a realm where their actions have a clear

PDBY Featured Artist: Isabelle Siaki

Kendra Connock

Second-year Speech and Language Therapy student, Isabelle Siaki, is a polymath. When she’s not busy with her studies, something which she genuinely enjoys due to the diverse range of people she interacts with on a daily basis, Isabelle occupies her time with all things creative. PDBY conducted an online interview with Isabelle to speak about her YouTube channel and her music.

Isabelle says her YouTube channel (isabellesiaki) was born out of curiosity (and a little bit of boredom) during a period in her life when “YouTubers were like gods”. She looks to social media platforms for ideas from fellow creators and takes direction from people who reach out to her, either personally or in a comment on a video. If all else fails, Isabelle Image: Provided

TRY @Home

Spreading Hope

Illustration: Madhuri Rambaran

Kendra Connock

Now that we are six weeks into our national lockdown, the novelty of lying on the couch all day has slowly worn off, and, having watched the entire Netflix catalogue, the need has arisen for new activities to occupy one’s free time. Between the three hours of governmentmandated exercise time and the commencement of online classes, there are hours in the day that are unaccounted for - hours which can be spent doing something for someone else. There is something each of us can do to make life a little bit better for someone around us. PDBY has a few suggestions for how you can spread hope to your fellow South Africans as we all face these troubling times together.

In late-April and early-May, the Hospice Palliative Care Association of South Africa ran a campaign called “Spreading Hope”, which called on people to write notes of encouragement to patients and carers in hospice facilities across the country. While the official campaign has ended, it remains a meaningful way to spend some of your free time. Reach out to a hospice facility or an old-age home near you and enquire if you can send letters to their residents and

and definite effect. Massive open-world role-playing games such as Skyrim and Pillars of Eternity have become popular, in part, for this exact reason. This idea of escapism could obviously, if taken to the extreme, be a very dangerous thing were it not for the clear benefits that gaming provides.

A 2014 study, by the American Psychological Association titled “The Benefits of Playing Video Games”, found that gaming could indeed have major cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social benefits. The study found that shooting games, such as the Halo series, tended to speed up reaction time and cognitive processing and puzzle games, such as Portal, provide boosts to engagement and motivation. Gaming, in general, is a great source of positive emotion, and multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft, improve social skills and promote prosocial behaviour. Despite the fact that this study was done on children, these same Image: Kamogelo Mogapi

relies on her own creativity and intuition by making videos that she would want to watch and that make her laugh. Isabelle’s YouTube channel is equal parts original songs with deeply personal lyrics and feel-good videos that are sure to bring a smile to your face (one of her latest videos shows Isabelle following a Bob Ross tutorial, using her own face as a canvas). While she is completely comfortable doing obscure things in her videos, there are some things Isabelle wouldn’t do - admitting that she’s “pretty embarrassed when it comes to public videos” and that she’s wary of doing anything for YouTube outside of her own house. For Isabelle, it’s never been about the numbers; she creates her content to make people laugh and because she genuinely loves to do so.

Isabelle’s videos give an inside look into the fun-loving and quirky person she is in real life while her music demonstrates how multi-dimensional she is as an artist. The same girl that makes viewers laugh is able to connect emotionally with listeners through her sweet voice and a musical style that is deeply personal. Each song is inspired by personal experience but relates to universal experiences such as love, loss, and confusion. Summed up in three words, Isabelle says her music is “sad, honest, and pretty”. She is always listening to new artists and music to prevent her own style from stagnating and always looking for ways to stretch her creative limits and break out of her comfort zone. Her biggest inspiration comes from fearless female artists, like Lorde and AURORA, who are raw and honest in their music and vocals. A standard question when interviewing a musician is “what’s one song you love that you wish you’d written?”, an artist’s answer to this question can tell a lot about their musical style and lyrical aspirations; Isabelle’s ‘one song’ is Even If It’s a Lie by Matt Maltese, which she says “hurts so good”.

Earlier this year, Isabelle’s EP For You became available on Apple Music and Spotify. The six songs which make up this EP carers, or simply write a care-letter to someone who needs it.

Another way to spread some hope is to follow the lead of thousands of people around the world who are placing drawings of rainbows in their windows, as to be seen by passersby. Add your own rainbow to the ever-increasing number across the world - it is a simple and safe way to bring a smile to someone’s face.

It’s pretty easy to feel powerless in times like these, but we each have some skill that could be helpful to someone else. Online activism platform, ForGood, has a wealth of opportunities to volunteer your time and skills to someone who might need them during this lockdown period. From business skills working with digital media, fundraising campaigns, and to helping create lessons for kids who are doing schoolwork online, ForGood gives people the opportunity to help out during this time of crisis, and you don’t even have to leave your house.

Whether you try one of these ideas, or you find your own way to help someone out, PDBY would like to encourage readers to offer a smile to a stranger or a friendly greeting to a supermarket worker. We will get through this together, and hold each other up while we do.

benefits apply to adults as well. Additionally, in a world where more and more stress is placed on people and where despair is bountiful, games provide hope. For example, Celeste is a game that follows a young girl overcoming a panic disorder, Bastion is about rebuilding oneself and moving past grief, and Stardew Valley encourages community engagement and corporate awareness. The list goes on and on. Games provide entertainment, of course, but they also provide mechanisms by which people are able to acknowledge problems - whether those problems are in the world around them or to do with their own mental health.

This is no truer than when one takes a look at tabletop roleplaying games. Using Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) as an example, there are hundreds of articles talking about how the game has impacted people’s lives. Communities have been built around the game and it has helped many people work through problems, like social anxiety disorder and even depression. Being the hero of one’s own story is massively empowering and engaging, and having others in a safe space where extremely sensitive topics can be dealt with care is quite healing.

Geeks around the world have experienced gaming as something that heals and that adds to rich interpersonal and internal relationships. The simplest way of describing what effect gaming has on people comes from Gary Gygax, co-creator of D&D, who simply says that “games give you a chance to excel”.

are a strong start for establishing Isabelle’s sound - vulnerability and emotion grounded in gentle instrumentals. Her clear voice is backed by layers of harmonies, all of which emphasise her mature and clever lyrics. The light instrumentals and the lilt of her voice gives Isabelle’s music a Billie Eilish-esque tone. If she could recommend one of her songs to someone who has never heard her music before, it would be Fade Away (the closing track of the EP), which she describes as a melancholic, nostalgic ‘young love’ ballad. This song sounds like the closing of a chapter, like the post-mortem examination of a relationship gone wrong. The soft refrain of “I know I’ll never be strong enough, You’ll go forget for the both of us” and other cleverly-crafted lyrics in this song, along with the gentle strumming and clarity of Isabelle’s voice, all make it easy to understand why she calls this song her personal favourite. The content of this EP would be right at home alongside artists like Lorde and Billie Eilish, the only difference is that this content is being made here on our shores. Isabelle reminds PDBY that the UP community can support artists like her by watching, listening, subscribing, and sharing.

Isabelle says she gets antsy when she’s not creating something and she loves challenging herself and learning new things; creativity makes her feel fulfilled and helps keep her balanced. The extra time afforded to her by the national lockdown has only enhanced her creativity, which she says is often hampered by the time constraints of varsity life. Isabelle has been making good use of the lockdown period to experiment in her creativity and make new music, which will be on its way to listeners soon.

For those wishing to embark on the same artistic journey Isabelle is on, her advice is simple: “Have fun with it! Remember: every like, every comment, every little part of your creative process is special”.