L. Rosenblum

Born the daughter of a well respected Rabbi and his wife on February 12 of 1985, the third and last child of the Rosenblum family, Livyana came into the world quietly and without much fan fare. She would make up for it in her later years. Her upbringing was relatively 'normal' by most standards in Hoboken, New Jersey; home of Frank Sinatra, baseball and the coined term “hobo”, which stems from the town's history in its train transport and the vagabonds that used them to hitch rides across the country. Whether or not that last piece of historical fact had much to do with her seemingly predestined wanderlust, Liv still wonders about regularly, whenever the itch to find her way onto the nearest highway out of town surges up in her. A plight of her fears in the realm of relationships and the constant worry over the state of just how conditional the love in her life is or a natural curiosity and ache for new places to inhabit in some attempt to find the meaning of belonging. Although she's always carried on the appearance of being aware of herself and who she is, unabashed by stumbles and falls, the truth is Liv is perpetually trying to figure out what she's doing with herself and what any of it means in the grand scheme of things.

Attending private and Hebrew school until the age of eighteen, participating in holidays and community functions, no one would have dared to guess that Liv doubted her faith or that she would turn her back so definitively on the orthodox lifestyle in which she'd been raised. Although older sister, Grace, had sensed it quietly bubbling up inside the baby of the family, her best efforts at warning Liv to take heed had failed. While both her brother and sister had left for university right after high school graduation, Liv chose not to. Instead, she opted for moving into an apartment with friends; having saved allowances, birthday and holiday money since her early childhood in a bank account her parents had opened for her at her request, she had more than enough money to fund herself without the help of her parents or employment for some time. Naturally this caused an uproar with her parents who fought vehemently to keep her home and on the path they'd worked so hard to lay out for her since birth. It was to no avail. Insatiable in her need to explore a life outside of strict self restraint and guilt, she left home and moved into a two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with a group of other recent graduates.

A couple of years spent temping and odd-jobbing where she could, when she was finally signed on as a model for Muse Inc., she'd done everything from dog-walking to administrative work. The new found career in modeling had come about with a stereotypical scenario in which an agent spotted her at a McDonald's, suggested she stop by the agency and within hours she'd signed a contract and had her first set of photos taken. It wasn't a career she'd ever considered or had planned for, like many of the girls she'd come to know over the next few years. It wasn't really the sort of thing she took all too seriously, either, and several occasions during her time with Muse she had been reminded of her disposability in hopes of keeping her reckless behavior and lack of responsibility in check. The world that accompanied the modeling gig had been a polar extreme to the one she'd grown up in and she all too willingly fell into the black hole of wild abandon, sex, drugs, and money. Although she had no qualms about reaping the benefits of the lifestyle; free narcotics, free clothes and the opportunity to travel when the job called for it, Liv wasn't exactly proud of being a model. It was exactly the sort of thing she'd mock, actually: getting paid for vanity and selling herself to an industry that went against her very ideals for women. Needless to say the occupation that funded her lifestyle was usually left out of conversation and her friends, for the most part, had no idea.

Shortly after her twenty fourth birthday, a week after she'd been released from her contract with Muse, Liv took a break to run from the first hit of failure to follow her latest fling cross country with his indie band on their first, self-funded tour. Myspace had done wonders in helping them gain a following outside of the tri-state area. Unfortunately, being cooped up in a van and cheap motels with seven other people, including someone she was sleeping with, birthed more conflict than either of two could've predicted. Especially when his narcissism and jealousy had only increased the further they moved away from the east coast. By the time they'd worked their way back through New York, Liv had been through enough arguments, door slams, and objects thrown to know she no longer wanted this failed attempt at a normal relationship. Their final fight was over his claim that Liv hadn't been paying enough attention during his show when he dedicated a song to her. It quickly turned into a screaming match and after his fist went through a wall, she'd gathered her belongings from the van and took the offer of a newly formed friend from the venue, to stay with her.

Her intention had never been to actually stay upstate. The plan had been to get up the next morning and buy herself a bus ticket home or hitch her way back, but she never got that far. It was too easy to fall in love with Irvington once she'd taken the time to explore it and fall into the ease of crashing with a cousin who'd moved there years prior. A rocky family life in Jersey and shady roommates in Brooklyn didn't really leave much to be missed. The disappointment her family had expressed along with the looming success of her siblings was cause enough to find a new excuse to not make it to the unbearable family gatherings where she was forced to endure her brother's incessant talk about his jewelry business, his gorgeous wife and three beautiful children or her sister's updates on her graduate studies at NYU, well on her way to a Ph.D. In comparison Livyana might as well have been a bum on the street. A destined hobo. That was, of course, until her father fell ill in the Summer of 2011. Livyana dropped everything and moved back in with her parents, but it lasted the duration of her father's recovery before she was back to the place she now called home. Since, she's managed to work on repairing her relationship with her father who refused to speak to her for years and has made strides to fall into some kind of line with the world's expectations of her, no one should hold their breath, though.