Out in the Field

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

When I took this photo, I was thinking of isolation; of a quiet loneliness. Not sure how well that came through, but I feel it’s there.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. Brian of Bushboy’s World hosts the next one, and he has chosen the theme of “On the Roof”.

This challenge is open to all, and I recommend joining in. If want to, check out more information about it here, and include the tag “monochrome-madness” when you share your photo. If you’d prefer not to join in, then at the least check out Leanne’s photography, and what other people submit.

I hope you enjoy.

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Final: Untitled 2 (It Comes to Us All)

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

I was thinking more about what the sounds were doing than anything else, but I didn’t get much into it. Got a bit stuck on the pattern, but it was interesting to me, so… yeah.

Final’s “Untitled” is from It Comes to Us All. The album’s tracks are untitled,  and this is the second on the album.

As a side note, here’s a review of the album that I wrote a few years ago.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Growing from silence, a melodic distort moving through noise, being sanded back and drawn from whilst it remains unchanging. Something seems to hover on over, then fall back. More distortion, more noise, and finding a melodic rest of sorts.

A little bit of space comes in before everything starts pressing in again. Noise smears and presses, and it’s as though moving through processes. Moving through moments and places and scenes, and growth and routines.

A little bit of space comes in again, and gradually everything starts pressing in once more. Patterns in the melody, in the fragility of it all. Sound pressing against, pressing in, through a blur and continuing on to wherever is next. Continuing on, always fragmenting, always fraying and disintegrating and losing nothing along the way.

Moments of clarity almost swallowed before pushing back, only to come close to being swallowed over and over. And continually pushing back, pushing against, or rather pushing through until finally getting there and fading away into silence at the song’s end.

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Final: ENATKWBY 2

Posted on March 19, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

Once I wrote the first few words, I was set on one track. I think it paid off as, whilst a few bits are quite rough, I think that this reads well enough. The song is very open to interpretation, and when I think about it, it could also be about an infant, or general young child calling out.

Final’s “ENATKWBY 2” is from EXPECT NOTHING AND THE KINGDOM WILL BE YOURS. As a side note, here’s a review I wrote about the album.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Some hulking, massive thing calls out as though a horn through a deep fog. It calls out, and lowers and rumbles, lonely, searching and isolated. It bellows long, and with melancholy.

It walks and searches, and its calls change shape. They remain the same calls, but they change and transform, and they grow deep and distorted and frayed. Almost a weakening, or a gradual giving up. A gradual hope giving way to despair.

The space, normally silent and still, is cut through only by the calling out and searching. A search across an empty space, once subtly vibrant with life, now stilled. It could be stilled by this thing searching for a connection and searching for something, its character misunderstood. It could be stilled by the area having had the life leave it and gradually becoming quieter.

Lingering and hoping for something to be revealed, and maybe it is. Maybe this thing has found something. Maybe it has been following something this whole time, gradually getting closer to it, but still too far away.

This thing starts moving away from the space. It moves through a deep fog, becoming less visible, though it was already difficult to completely discern. It moves into a rising veil of noise covering the space, and moving everything into quiet static at the song’s end.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1582: Thinking About Thinking

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

I was going to try and write something about the space and design of this office, but I don’t have anything that I can run with that I feel will work. I want things to work, but I’ve got nothing. So now I’m thinking about how I think about things.

I remember a while ago writing a thing about a tower, and I don’t think it went anywhere. I don’t remember it going anywhere, at least. At this point in time it does not matter, however. But maybe it does. Maybe if I were to read over everything I’ve written, I’d better understand how I think about things and why I think about things. Maybe it’d help me develop a better understanding of everything. I don’t know if I would, but I do wonder. Wondering is what I do a lot of and it seems to be what I’m best at doing. At least sometimes, anyway.

So I’m wondering about how I think about things. I’m thinking about how I think about things. Why did I write those two sentences in the way I wrote them, and in that particular order? How do I go about constructing a sentence that I feel makes sense? How do I go about putting words together in an order that follows conventions that have been set out? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think about that enough, and perhaps I should think about it more often.

Maybe if I did that, I’d have a better understanding of how I can go about improving my writing. That would be awesome. But maybe I wouldn’t, and maybe I quite like my rough ways of going through things. Maybe I like the mess that I create, and maybe I don’t want to change that. I fear that I’d get too into the editing of things and that’d cause issues, as I’d start restructuring everything and then it’d lead to something actually worth the time spent reading. Why would I want to inflict that onto people? Why would I want to inflict that upon myself?

Maybe I don’t want to inflict anything.

The path to better writing is one paved with grave consequences, and I don’t think I have it in me to think about the way I write things. The way I think about things. The way I put thought into words that can be read. I don’t feel it is a safe and responsible thing to create a situation where people know what I’m on about. I don’t want to create something that could get out of hand and thus lead to some sort of success as people finally have an idea of what I’ve been going on about as I chose to create a situation where my writing made sense and led to something vaguely poignant, thus creating a situation where I have reached into their minds and their hearts in a way that affects them.

Rather keep the mess and overall senselessness.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:34:19

This started serious and became a silly bit of writing over time. It probably doesn’t work, but I don’t care. It was fun to write.

Written at work.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 254: Things Thinging

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

You know those times when you do the thing and the thing you do is the thing you do? Yeah. It’s one of those days. A day of things thinging and I’m here embracing it all. Or embracing nothing.

I’m not sure as to what I should be doing, but that’s oaky. I can kill some time. I can kill a lot of time, actually. I should be doing more productive things but I’m not, so here I sit. I sit and I get to sit whilst being tired. It’s a wonderful time.

There’s still a sense of time slipping away. I feel as though I am losing it, and I feel as though I should be moving. As though I should be movie. I feel as though I should be looking beyond the concrete and glass and all the structure that I feel is so relentlessly cold and devouring, and I should be in a grand, open emptiness. As though I should be experiencing something out there, and weeping freely, and feeling something. I feel happy, but I feel as though I’m a spectator to my happiness. I don’t feel as though I am genuinely experiencing it.

I feel that, perhaps, I am too detached from what I desire. Too distant, too far removed. I’m yearning for something familiar and away from the city, but I’m a little bit bound at the moment. I can’t go much of anywhere, so I need to tough it out and hold on. I need to wait. Bide my time. Squirrel away my money.

I feel a great sadness for what is happening in the world, but I feel detached from that sadness. I feel as though I should actually be feeling it, but it’s not part of me. It’s kept away by something I don’t know. Or something I’m not familiar with. I’m peeling away from myself, maybe. I don’t know.

IS this all there is to life? Just all this suffering being witnessed from a distance? All this pain spread out and increasing constantly, and feeling powerless to do much of anything about it? Who decided that all the suffering and misery in the world was a fair trade to what we consider a functioning, modern society? Who said that this was the right way to be about things? I want to yell at them. I want to cry and yell at them, because this is just not right. Nor is it just.

Sometimes I feel like I’m someone who just looks out a window and longs for more. Sometimes I feel as though that’s all I can do. I know I can do more, but there’s so much all the time and it’s paralysing. I’m told that there’s opportunity out there, and I’m glad I get to work where I work. I’m glad I get to have the experiences that I have, but I feel lost and adrift, aimlessly floating through a space that’s continually reshaped, preventing me from getting some sort of necessary traction.

I go there and things have changed, so I try to go back to where I was but I can’t as there’s no open route anymore. I look around and it’s all a thick fog consuming everything, and then when it lifts all that is around me is a decayed, graying husk of a landscape. It’s one pockmarked with cold structure that is heavy and creates a terrible weight for the planet to bear.

People amble about to wherever they are heading and it all feels incredibly aimless. It feels as though all this moving toward locations to sit for a while in order to move out of them to get to another location and being paid money for this does not seem like how life should be lived. I have to wonder why we have collectively decided that this is the best course of action for everyone to take in order to live a life. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel human. We keep doing it.

Maybe things will change sooner rather than later. Maybe our hands will be forced when it comes to change. I can only wonder about what lies ahead and where thigs go. All I can do is sit here and hope for the best, or rather that’s what I feel is all I can do.

The biggest issues are that too many people are willing to give up, and not enough people are willing to show how we can do more without having to try and be monumental about it all. At least, that’s what I think the two biggest issues are. There are probably plenty who would disagree with me, and that’s fine. I don’t mind, to be honest. I’ve other things that I want to worry about.

Ultimately though, I want to feel connected to where I am again. I want to feel some sort of realness to this all, and I know it’s real, but it doesn’t feel real. Out there, beyond the city, beyond the suburbs is what feels real to me. Being among the sound of nature and away from the sound of people. Feeling something, experiencing something. Getting things done and doing things among a cleaner air, and seeing massive, overwhelming spaces that make me feel small and appreciative of the world we live in. That is what I want to be around.

I think that it’s sometimes quite difficult to function in a way that people see as healthy. I think it’s difficult to keep on going through days of smearing activity. Things blending into a big swirl of nothingness that makes no sense and has no real rhyme or reason. Of course these things do make sense, but it all feels so lifeless and soulless to me, and I need to feed my soul. I need to feel a sense of attachment that I cannot readily feel right now.

I don’t want to feel like I’m detached from my feelings.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 14:15:39

This one felt like it took a long time to write, and I think it’s due to how heavy I got whilst writing it. It’s just a rather sad bit of writing.

Written at work.

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2814:２８１４スカイライン

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen for this one, and it was much the same as last in some ways. I did spend a lot of time thinking about what I was hearing, which wasn’t good, but I do think what I wrote represents the song quite well.

2814’s “２８１４スカイライン” is from 2814.

I hope you enjoy.

—

A light percussion plays a gentle pattern, and something swirly spirals out from behind it. It spirals and comes forward, and within it more sound reveals itself. The percussion remains steady, unyielding, and it doesn’t need to do much more.

The sounds spiraling continue their flow, and they reveal themselves very slowly. They flow as though a fresh exposure, and within them some tension. Some foreboding comes forward, and from them structures rise and rise further, and keep on looking and reaching further still. Towering, smooth, shimmery, and as though experiencing a memory for something yet to happen.

A future comes forward, a grandness, and a discomfort among this sterility. But it’s all wonderful and cool and sleek, and it speaks of the idea of a better tomorrow, even if only in terms of aesthesis.

Buzzing shoots across the great space here and there, among curls and curvatures. something has taken off and is flying away and toward, and it’s all some sort of imposing structure and design, all woozy, spreading out and spreading forward, and toward and away, and it goes on and on, and it seems reachable through clear plastics and glasses, keeping it all out of reach, but appreciable still.

The sounds seem to heave and rise, and rise a little more. They are heaving and dragging mass with them the best they can; a congealed mass gaining more, then shrinking, diminishing to a single point compressing, minimising and getting smaller and more compressed, and somehow disappearing, then the song ends.

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2814: 我愛你

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen, and this one I just went in and knocked out. There was one particular part where I got stuck and started to think a bit, but thankfully it wasn’t as long as it felt and I got back on track.

There was another point where I started wondering if this song is about sex or not, and some of that came through. The piece is interesting in that it is – at least to me – quite open to interpretation, so it might just be about anything, really.

2814’s “我愛你” is from 2814.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Something aethereal, something haunted. It reaches forward. It reaches through vagueness, and it keeps reaching and calling, but it cannot get past the veil. Percussion falls in drops, and a voice moans, or calls out. And disappears. And something rubbery and squeaky now falls down a window. It falls in drips, and it soon is smothered by the warbling, wavering scene. An image that does not maintain its structure and keeps on changing.

Voice calls out, percussion rains down, and more structured percussion comes in on a polished beam of brightness. Everything moves forward as it is expected to, and the sounds shift and change as they need to. They move in a slow procession and a scene of brightness, and a bassy sound heaves and halts in a steady motion.

In and out brightness moves, bright and multiplied and spread out across the space. It relaxes, but it does not feel relaxed, and it when the bass disappears it’s almost as though everything is being shrunk down into a cassette. The percussion disappears and these loops are left yearning, hoping for something to let them free, moving in and out of passion, trying to touch it and experience the romance of it all, but only ever being able to get an impression. Only ever able to experience a facsimile of what they desire.

The percussion and bass return, heaving, striking out, thumping and thudding, moving with precision, moving with a looseness. Loose and proceeding, loose and precise and filthy among the swirl of ambiguity. The cold fug spreading through a darkly blue space, filled with noise and clarity in equal measure, and continuing ever onward.

Sounds fade away and voice moans, warbling away into nothingness. Familiarity returns in a melancholic moment of rest,  found in a connective moment. Bits of sound come out here and there among the loop, lost among the waves. Lost among the familiarity of sound and expression, and everything peel back and fades away, leaving only impression, leaving noise whilst sound moans percussion drips on down, and leaving nothing at the song’s end.

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Elephant Gym: Ocean in the Night (Orchestra Version)

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

Just went in, wrote whatever. Did my best to not think and knocked it out. Don’t know how it reads, but it felt good to write.

Elephant Gym’s “Ocean in the Night” is from two releases. The one I wrote about, the orchestra version, is from World. The original version is from Balance.

I hope you enjoy.

—

A plinking fades in, along with a warm and gently melody. When the vocals commence some sound pulls away. Guitar is there, melodic and light. Bits and pieces of other sound here and the vocals float along, soft and aloft. And then the percussion comes in.

The percussion itself is nice and structured and framing, or underpinning, and from it sounds pull away and disappear, or rather, diminish. Then everything energises and starts rising. The vocals rise too, and they rise and reach and sound climactic. Guitar rages on its own for a moment before everything returns and gently lowers.

In this new section there’s a little melancholy among the gentleness of everything, and it sort of comes to a momentary thinking point before coming to a little dance. A fascination with the fanciness of it all, and there’s this joy and innocence in the sounds as they all move around carefully, keeping their structure and keeping their sense of fun.

Another sort of lowering of things before the sounds all pick up and rise and rise and rise some more. The sounds gain their liveliness and their push, and it’s almost like skimming across a surface, but everything still feels gentle. And it gets to a point where a moment is held on and things seem beautiful, or at least trying to force beauty. And there’s layers and textures, and everything is vivid and lively and calm, and it’s a pleasant place to be.

It all builds and pushes and keeps going before finding the last few notes to emphasise just before the song ends.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1581: Fresh Day

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

The start of it all. The smell of a fresh day, coming out of the rain. Things curling around things. An expression finding a dawn hurled upon a grey sigh. Twisted, turning, finding words scrambling to get to the surface, but never quite getting there.

Everything twists and everything inverts. Where the stars lie are beyond the visible reach. Beyond what welcomes us into a warm state. Beyond the diminishing of the night. It all fades away and never seems to; it just disappears, and the day comes and the day is here.

People get around, walking here and there. They come into an old space and they fill the space with sound. The sound of their voices, the sound of their shuffling. The sound of their waking up in order to complete a task. To fulfill an obligation. To attend learning, or meetings, or many other things out there that they may need to get involved in. And it continues on.

The morning is young and innocent. It is a child that doesn’t need cradling or comfort. It comes here and it presents itself to you, and to everyone. It removes a veil cast across a vast space, and it looks toward the tomorrow. It learns quickly. It learns rapidly. It was born knowing that it, too shall pass. Its time is limited, and the many people running about, moving in throbbing crowds, moving to wherever they must, do not notice. Change is routine, and this has happened before, and it will happen again.

Rain implies itself. It does not fall, and it hangs there. It hangs in the sky, waiting. Waiting to change the shape of the day, waiting to press into the sides, to confirm, to transfer. To move mood and frame everything with a context, and it comes and goes as it needs.

A fresh day, a young day, and already getting toward an older day. Moving toward that inevitable change, toward what lies ahead. Changing the landscape, passing time, turning and turning as time passes and denotes various shifts. The day is young now, and it grows. It grows and eventually it withers away, and it shares a process it has shared with the night for far longer than we’ll ever know. We can only guess.

The day lives through people, the people live through the day. Everything becomes an exchange and offering, and it is dictated by how the day is and how people interact with it and each other, and every day is the same, but what people get out of it changes. Everything shifts and turns and becomes something new and old from varying perspectives and angles, but right now everything is young. Everything is young and youthful, and youth brings sound and presence and activity. Youth carries upon it a fresh growth, and the gathering of experience, and with the gathering of experience the day will gain its fill and subsume it before it disappears into past, as it always does.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:12:02

This one I slowed down on quite a bit. I started thinking about what I was writing and how I was writing it, and that resulted in a mess of words thrown together haphazardly.

Written at work.

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Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares: Pora Sotunda

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

I had a fair bit of concern doing this as I was worried about wandering into misrepresentation. I didn’t want to do something like say “deep spirituality ethnic sounds”. Admittedly that’s a bit dramatic, but to me it seems that a lot of non-English music is often portrayed as being more spiritual, cosmic, or lazily classified as “ethnic” when it better described as folk music, and that’s not something I want to be contributing to.

My understanding when it comes to Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (aka The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices) is that it was initially rooted in ethnomusicological research and exploration, and became something beyond that. If that’s not the case, then please let me know.

When it came to writing this, I think I was influenced a bit by a sense of scene in terms of where I’ve been when I’ve been listening to the song. That didn’t come through too much, however, and I feel that my concerns around covering the song might’ve made my writing a bit more hesitant than I’d have liked. Good to have the concern, but best to work with it.

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’ “Pora Sotunda” is from BooCheeMish.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Voices in harmony repeating a phrase as gentle percussion plays along, enhancing the rhythm. Another voice takes lead, draws long, follows a line. The choir steps back, and eventually another voice comes in, a little more hushed, and only for a moment.

A voice rises up in bits, allowing space and calling out, and then it holds the floor. The percussion returns, as does the chorus, and it all seems to descend and follow lines of terrain and geography, flowing into a valley and spilling out with all the added instrumentation forming a sort of cradle… maybe. It’s all there and everything supports everything.

There’s something touching about this. Something that feels like being held, being understood. Being comforted in a way that’s difficult to replicate.

It all moves to one voice and minimal instrumentation once more. Brief flourishes as the voice makes a little journey. The choir returns, repeating phrase like a chant, and another voice comes in, and they all seem to waft around, move like something vague, slowly moving, moving with the air, moving with the space. Moving around and curling around, moving inward, coming closer, before all comes to a close at the song’s end.

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