2814:2814スカイライン

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.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

2814: 我愛你

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.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Elephant Gym: Ocean in the Night (Orchestra Version)

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.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1581: Fresh Day

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.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares: Pora Sotunda

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.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One Thousand Word Challenge 253: Rambling About Wondering

It’s a little cold and that’s okay. Starting this bit of writing with that particular wording probably isn’t okay, but it being a little cold is.

It’s a quiet day. It’s another day spent chipping away at whatever and hoping for the best and all of that fun stuff. Sitting here at lunch, falling in line, going through the motions. Going through the processes. I’m getting there. I’m getting to the end of it, or I’m not getting to the end of it. I don’t even know what “it” is, in this context. Maybe it’s just a reference to life. Who knows. I don’t, I just threw it in there.

I’m thinking about nothing, or rather, I’m thinking about not much in particular. Just the process of writing and being alive and all that. In a few hours I’ll take off, head on home, go and rest. I’ll be good. I’ll be fine. I’ll even be a little bit exhausted. This is a good way to be. Or it’s not. It’s just what it is, really.

Sometimes I feel like I’m forcing myself far more than I should. I don’t know if I am, but sometimes I feel I am. I’m trying to do something rather silly, really. I’m trying to get through words and sentences and I’m trying to create a really big mess, and I’m good at doing that but it’s also really tiring. It’s strenuous work, doing all this going on about whatever, but it is a form of work. It’s a form of process.

When I think these things, I don’t really know what it is that I’m thinking, I guess. I guess I’m thinking about getting to the end and hoping that there’s something that comes forward among it all. I guess I’m hoping to be able to say that I’ve done what I set out to do, but I don’t know if I am really hoping for that. I do know that I still enjoy writing, even if it is a struggle in places.

I’m wondering about when the last time I made an observation was, and not just one where I start talking about looking after each other and the environment, which both I think are important, don’t get me wrong, but rather, something that means something, even if it’s really mundane. I wonder about this, and I wonder if, perhaps, I’ve nothing left to offer, or if I ever had anything to offer at all.

I can remember a time when I was a bit more chipper than I am now. Things were different, I was in a different position in life and I was younger. Now I’m not as young as I was then and I still am chipper sometimes, but I am also very much elsewhere. I’m looking inward to try and go outward, if that makes sense. It probably does but I think it doesn’t, but I also hope it does.

Layers.

So… yeah. Sitting here, trying to live my life. Feeling isolated, feeling alone. Wondering about myself. I have to do a lot of hard thinking. I have to think about where I went wrong, or if I did indeed go wrong at all. I have to think about a lot of things. What do I offer to the world? What do I offer to my community? Am I actually a good person? Do I think I’m good? I don’t know, I just think that I’m trying. Probably better to think that I’m trying and then try and keep trying rather than think I’m a good person and be an asshole. I hope.

I do wonder at what point I tapped out and ran out of things to say. I wonder if I’ve ever had any relevance to anyone, and I know I have, but here I mean strictly in terms of writing. I don’t know if I have or have no, and I can only wonder more. But at the same time, does it matter? Does it matter if I have been relevant to someone? Does it matter if someone has ready my writing and felt something? In a way it probably does, but if I’m writing for the enjoyment of writing, then it shouldn’t.

I’ve published so much of this rambling, so surely it must mean that I’ve wanted it read. I’ve put it out there and people have been able to look at what I put out there, or rather put here. They’ve a choice to engage, and if they have, then maybe they have gotten something out of it all, and that probably does matter to me. Up until a point, anyway.

Perhaps a lot of us yearn for some sort of validation external to us more than we let on, and maybe I do. I have to admit that much. I’ve spent a lot of time not thinking or feeling like I’ve wanted it, but right now, I think I could be wrong in that thinking. Perhaps wrong is not the way to describe it. Perhaps it should more be that I was unaware in my thinking.

Maybe it’s due to how close to the end of this blog everything is that has me wondering more about this stuff. It probably is. That and a bit of a low set of feelings coming in. But I do wonder and I keep wondering. What can I say about all of this? What can I do about all of this? This is a towering work of messy thoughts and messy use of words. That’s… all there is to it, but it still means something to me. At the very least I can accept that. But I don’t know if any of it was worth it or not… at least to someone who isn’t me.

I know that Ewe has read a lot of this stuff and that’s something I’m happy about. It means something to someone else, at least, so maybe it’s all worth it.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:16:68

Good speed. Writing is a bit of a mess, but it’s how everything was coming out.

Written at work.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1580: Life on Hold

Here I am, sitting on hold. Sitting and waiting, trying to get things sorted. This looks like it’ll be a short hold, but it could also be a long hold. Seems like it’s a holding day. Or time. Or whatever.

What I get to listen to is “Opus No. 1”, and so not much has changed there. It still exists. It still floats around. I still get to hear it. What a piece of music. So heavily ingrained in a culture and style and way of dong things, and so often not thought of. Now I get to live with it. I get to experience it as I’m living my life on hold. It goes on forever and loops around. It’s broken up into bits and pieces and never allowed to finish. Its spell is disrupted by a voice that repeats the same thing every time and everything is circular. Nothing finishes. Nothing gets to go far.

It’s easy to end up living life on hold, and that’s something you want to desperately avoid as much as possible, but sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes it just happens and it all just goes on, and then you see that you start to age. You start to get older. All your friends are getting married and having kids or not having kids, and you’re there on the phone, waiting to be connected to someone. Waiting to get through so you can discuss whatever issue it is that needs to be fixed, but you need to get the right person as you’ve spent so much of your time on hold that you’re now on some sort of legacy product that you cannot be forced off of, but has been discontinued for whatever reason. But you can’t et through to anyone anyway as the lines are busy.

You try to go to sleep but you can’t, so you stay awake and soon your bags get so big that you can carry your groceries in them. Lethargy takes over, and energy seems to be something you once understood, and perhaps had a fondness for, but is something that was left behind long ago. Or rather, it left you behind as you’ve been a sedentary part of the furniture for far longer than you can remember. Time keeps ticking away and “Opus No. 1” is never allowed to finish as it gets interrupted by a voice that tells you that the lines are busy and someone will be with you soon, and then it starts again. Did it even get halfway? You’re not sure. Maybe it did, but you’re so used to hearing a snippet of it that you can’t even be sure if that’s the whole song or not. Maybe it is the whole song and anything beyond what you’ve heard on loop for decades is just a construction of your mind. A fabrication borne from a yearning for something more than this life you’re stuck in and can do little about; a life lived on hold.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:59:97

I wasn’t on hold for to long, thankfully. Got this bit of writing out of it and that makes me happy as this was fun to write.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1579: I Am the Clock

Alright, just trying to squeeze another spewing of thoughts in before I start work for the day, and there is not much to squeeze in at this juncture. Maybe I’ve juiced all the juice out of the fruit or something. Don’t now and I don’t need to know.

The barrel has been scraped. There is no bottom left. It’s just an open hole, and now the barrel is one of those beads, but larger. Much larger. you could fit it on a very thick rope, and that’d be neat. That’d be cool. Jewellery for a giant.

Still, there could be more that could be said about many different things. There could be plenty to spin and turn around and twist and do all of those things that we like to think that we do but don’t actually do, and so therefore… yeah. It all goes and goes it all does. And therefore, this is the way of doing things.

Anyway, where was I?

So yeah, a good few minutes before I start doing much of anything. A good few minutes to get into the gritty of the nitty and try to find the relation among the relation among all the other things that I throw out there. Surely there must be a thread of happiness among it all, and surely there must be a great big thread of sadness, too. So I race and I fight the clock. I battle the clock. I am the clock.

Oh god, I am the clock.

So anyway… yeah. Or nah. Or yeah nah nah yeah nah. Yeah. Yeah nah.

It’s in these situations where I must recognise the limitations of my excess, I feel, as I am incredibly limited and my excess is… well, it’s not astounding, let’s put it that way. But I keep going as I always have. I keep pushing on and fighting for a better load of bad, and I keep on contributing to the great deep pool of waste, and so on as life goes on. I think about what it all means and if I’ve meant anything at all, and the answer probably is a great big resounding no. However, I do think that I can find what it is that I want to find among it all, and that’s enough “deep” thinking for one day.

If anything, this is all a clear indicator that my thoughts have been a significant mess for a while, and no amount of throwing words together in undesirable orders will make much of anything in that regard different. Perhaps if I just wrote instead of continually spewing, things would be different. There’d be a body of work that was strong. I’m sure that when it comes to the end, I’ll look back at all of this and go “Yeah, I was pretty messed up and not handling it at all, despite what I think”. Either that or something along the lines of “It’s amazing how far one can go with boredom”.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:09:21

With this one I had a bit of time on my hands. I was waiting for things to happen so I could do things and had to wait. Threw myself into the writing and… yeah.

Written at work.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One Thousand Word Challenge 252: Underjoyed

Need to get in the zone and I need to think about what I’m putting forward. I’ve just taken a look at my drafts and the amount I have has gone up, and that’s not good. I need it to go down. I can get it down, but it’s going to take a lot of work.

There’s about a month left and now the stress is starting to set in. All the stress and pressure, and all the laziness I’ve expressed and exhibited, and I can get everything wrapped up in a month. I can, but it’s going to be tight. It’s going to be tough. But I can do it and I will do it… so long as I allow myself to do it.

No rest over the next month. No downtime. Just continual production. Continual creation. Continual expressing of nothing that needs to be expressed. That is what I will do. That is what I am good at doing. I will continue to do it and I will do it merrily and with some sort of jubilant resignation to the fact that I will probably have another meltdown before the end of it all. But I can do it and I will do it and I will get there.

I remember my time at university, studying. Studying, working a lot and maintaining a social life. It was tough. It was rough. It was not the most brilliant thing I have ever done, but that’s not saying much. I remember it being a slog. A real charge through frustration and annoyance and I was melting down quite a lot. Sitting there, being rough and coarse with the people around me. Eventually I got through it all, and to be honest I was relieved. Now I sometimes find myself thinking about going back. I probably won’t.

The reason why I mention this is that getting through all of that was much tougher than what I am about to do. This will still be tough. This is still going to take a lot of work, but I can do it. But do I want to do it?

I think the answer is no. I think that a big part of me either wants to stop right now, or just wants to continue with this space. But I can’t. I can’t for my own health and general function. It has gotten in the way of so many things in my life, or rather I have let it get in the way of so many things in my life. It has probably served as a coping mechanism for far more things than I care to even think of. Probably. I don’t know. I have so many thoughts and none of them go in many  directions, but I keep having them. The same things circling around, swirling, trying to take precedence and getting that focus for a brief moment before being flung away by whatever is forcing its way in more than whatever else is forcing its way in. And so on and so forth, and it continues on and I just deal with it all the best that I can.

I think, also, I just feel tired. Twelve months of loss and pain and misery and all that, and I’m still standing which is great. I’m still going strong. I still grieve and I still hurt, but I’m getting through it all. The rolling of the coasting has been pretty severe, but I’ve survived and I’ve kept going, so what does it all matter how severe it has been? But it does matter, and so does this and so does everything else that I do, even if it doesn’t matter. In some way it does. In some way it all does.

So I’m sitting here and I’m trying to make the most of the time that I am fortunate to have. I’m trying to make the most of what I have and how I have it, and I’m getting there. I’m getting through everything and that’s great. I just need to keep on going. Need to keep on working through everything and powering through. I can get there. I always make it in the end. I’ll make it to the end of this end, too, and then I’ll be done. I’ll move on and spread my wings by spreading myself further. Thinning myself out and going in too many directions at once. It’ll be fantastic.

I’ll burn out harder than anyone else has ever burned out before me. They will then see that there are no limits to the stress and misery one can inflict upon themselves, and then who will get the last laugh? Then who will be the one standing at the end of it all, going “Well, you told you so”? I don’t know who it will be, but I will say to them “I told me so?”, and then there will be some confusion and a bit of arguing and all those fun things. All those things that keep the spirit and the soul moving in tandem, and I’ll be underjoyed. A great way to be.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, beating myself over the head with pain and misery, and then misery and pain.

But more seriously, I think I can get everything nicely wrapped up, if a bit messily. I don’t think it will happen and I’m worried about the continual piling on more things that I’m doing to myself, but so long as I keep going and stick to a notion of a plan, I am sure that I will get there. I am sure that I’ll get through whatever it is that I need to get through, and I’m sure that I’ll get to the end of this all and I’ll be okay. I’ll feel some relief.

I am worried about letting go as much as I’m worried about reneging and continuing. I’m sure I will let go, but who knows with these things.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:10:47

Decent speed, serious writing. Nothing about this one sticks out much to me, and maybe it’s due to being just an anxiety writing, I guess.

Written at work.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1578: The Game of Waiting

So now I am playing the game of waiting, though it’s not a game so much as it is just waiting. Spending time, killing time, waiting for anything to happen. Waiting for the wheels to flip and the tables to sink, and waiting for the stone to turn gray, washed of its mineral elements… though I guess that if it were, that would mean it would also probably have disintegrated. Look, just imagine a rock that had colour to it and the colour has been washed away by millennia of rain, and it’s still a rock in rock form rather than a fine grainy thing that has probably been blown and scattered by the wind so as to be subsumed by the earth once more, slowly cycled down and further broken down, then eventually, after however long, brought back to the surface in a different configuration to how it once was. Just imagine that.

So anyway, I am waiting. I’m trying to find the time to kill the time, but there is very little that I can do. I am stuck here, waiting. I can hear the low hum of air conditioning, and it seems pervasive in a way. It is pervasive, but it’s just background noise. Continuous, adding everything and adding nothing. The sound is as much furniture in this space as the chair I am currently sitting on.

There’s a stillness and quiet, though it’s office quiet. The sound of chatter before outside silence. The pressing of keys and the clicking of a mouse. The clock moves rapidly and moves at a set pace, and nothing changes as everything changes. Everything keeps moving and nothing moves, and everything is as it was five minutes ago, and will never be the same as it was five minutes ago.

It’s all stillness. All frozen in time. The oxygen atoms hang in space, hardly disturbed. My eyes move from keyboard to screen to keyboard to screen, making sure that I am typing what I want to type. Everything flows and folds, and everything remains as it once was.

I think I might be bored.

I wonder how things will progress from here. There are a few hours left in the day, but there aren’t many hours left in the day. Everything seems against itself, but nothing moves and nothing changes. A small fridge sticks out, the clock moves, I sit here. I sit here and I think about the space, and I continue to wait. I continue to bide my time, hoping for change, finding none. Finding it all, but not the change that I am after. I am after things that involve progress, and the change that comes is not the progress I am after. And it’s all here and all the same, and I get older and find myself slipping away into a grand nothingness, and that’s fine by me. I’m still tethered to this seat, and once action happens, I’ll be back in the room to get started.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:01:60

This one was a bit more fun to write than the one prior, and I think that’s good. A little bit of removing the weight of sadness.

Written at work.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment