Joe Hisaishi: Angel

One listen, and this one felt like it went by a lot faster than it did. Mostly switched off. Switched off more than usual, which was great. Not sure how well what I wrote represents the song, but I’m not fussed here. I think what I wrote mostly flows well. Mostly.

Joe Hisaishi’s (藤澤 守) “HANA-BI” is from Hana-Bi, the soundtrack for the Takeshi Kitano (北野 武) film, Hana-Bi.

I hope you enjoy.

Strings gentle descend, though perhaps oddly. They are almost smooth. They are rough, but they layer smoothly, and they stir as though dust before settling again. In here there was violence, perhaps. Soon they give way to new sound, something a bit more joyous.

This new space is more driven by beat, and the strings remain there, and there’s something here that’s more specifically urban. More distressed, tensile… and that tension teases before the whole song blooms.

Dramatic, flowing, and without being climactic, though feeling very much so, these sounds carry their steps, walking through a realisation. Shock, and perhaps horror comes forward, and with all the beauty and grace the background of violence can frame, the last note is held by strings before the song ends.

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Joe Hisaishi: HANA-BI

One listen.

I first heard the soundtrack this is from yesterday. Might’ve actually heard the song a while ago, but if I did I wasn’t paying it the attention I should have. Anyway, I heard the whole soundtrack yesterday, decided to write about one of the songs, then another, then another… you get the idea.

This bit of writing, I don’t know. I do like it a lot, but I’m not sure if I captured the song well.

Joe Hisaishi’s (藤澤 守) “HANA-BI” is from Hana-Bi, the soundtrack for the Takeshi Kitano (北野 武) film, Hana-Bi.

I hope you enjoy.

There’s a darkness and a conflict. Something weaves itself into a display, among a set of feelings. Feelings that are also hardening over as days move into days into days. Something stirs through the callousing, something stirs and rises, and asks questions. Is this all there is?

Almost a dancing upon a needle here, and getting heavy, and moving toward a conclusion most inevitable. One that could be seen as dire. There is hope to escape, but that hope fades away. Too old, perhaps, too far gone to see that change can be had. And within sterile halls and a within a world outside, some brief moments of joy penetrate a hardened exterior, but it doesn’t last long. A violent dance pulls back in and loss becomes another day. Loss ends up meaningless, and any spark of the hart was just another austere moment, shocking and colourful to the outside, and gray to those who take part.

But even so, there still is hope. The self is shaken, then sits still as the song ends.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1563: Complaining About the Weather

Oh bloody hell it is warm, and it stormed earlier, too. This is awful. This is unpleasant. This leaves me with no ideas, and a head full of sorrow… is what I’d like to proclaim, but the truth is I’m just getting on with the evening.

It has been a long day. A hot day. A day of tolerating heat, as it were, and as it is, really. Gotten through it. Always do. Just suffering now, or at least pretending that I’m suffering. It could be far worse. However, the humidity is awful.

It rained and the rain brought some cool with it, but I need it to cool down some more. I need it to cool down so I can be more functional. I need function in order to survive. Or something. I need more drama in my life, but I need more drama as less drama. It’s a weird space to be in, to be honest, but I am inhabiting it. It could be far worse, of course, but it does not make the thing any more pleasant. It does not make this place or space more inhabitable. Oh, whatever shall I do, other than survive and complain and survive some more?

There are ways out of this. I could simply move to another country. Not the most difficult thing to do in the world… except for all of the things that get in the way of moving to another country, of course. But other than those, absolute ease. Possibly one of the easiest things anyone can do, really. So that’s what I’ll do.

I’ll just somehow move to another country, be prosperous, thrive and become something more than I have ever been, and the success that will come my way will be so severe that there will be no telling who about what and how, or even why. And that’ll be that, so pass the cheque, mate.

But of course I don’t have the ability to do that right now. I need to sit here and sweat more and ruminate upon the sweat that I am sweating, and actually wonder if it is indeed sweat, or if it’s just condensation from the humidity forming upon my body. Upon my being. Finding its way to thrive upon me and cause me annoyance of the minor variety. That probably is the case, or probably isn’t. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to go to my totally ideal and imaginary place where none of this happens and I am almost invincible. Invincible and successful in ways that are so wild they are beyond everything, and so far beyond everything that everything beyond them is nothing to laugh about, let me tell you!

But of course, really I’m just gonna sit here and keep sweating as I don’t have much of a choice. Hoping it doesn’t rain much anymore as I need to keep a window open if I’m to keep some air flowing and cool this room.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:35:69

Not much to say here. Just a churning.

Written at home.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 241: What a Day

What a day. Where it goes, I don’t know. Where I go, I don’t know. I know I don’t know, but do I know that I know that I don’t know? I do know.

Anyway, I’m wrecked. Slept well, absolutely tired. More tired than I am less tired. The balance is not there. Everything is out of whack. What do from here? Where go? I could get off this seat, but I am comfortable. Do I want to ruin that comfort? The answer is, unsurprisingly, I don’t know.

This is not worth thinking about. This is not worth pondering. This is so not worth everything so hard that I’m not even gonna bother, and you need to know that because all that you aren’t. Neither am I, and it’s a wonderful way to be. However, say that, perhaps, this is not the case and thus I have to ruin comfort due to some sort of convoluted and weak explanation. What do I do then? Well, the answer is, surprisingly, a surprising one. However, it is yet to be determined.

The answer is so yet to be determined that I cannot justify trying to determine it now, for it is a waste of everyone’s time. You see, as everything transcends the silliness that I am putting forward, the world will collapse in on itself if I try to do things too soon, and if I don’t do them soon enough, then I don’t know which way everything will flow. Therefore, I need to keep on writing and distracting so as to buy time before an answer can be divined from the divining bundt cake of… yeah. The divining bundt cake of yeah. That’s what we’ll go with.

What has my life become?

So anyway, I think that there is plenty of time for pondering from this position of comfort. I need to keep on pondering and pretending that I know what I am doing. Am I to not, then the fruits of my labour will never be considered piquant to the mind, and that’s not something I’m willing to say no to. Therefore, I will keep crapping on about whatever and I will crap on about nothing whenever. However, once the answer is ready; once all is ready to be revealed, only then will I stop and allow it to be determined. At that juncture in time, everything will be as it should be and I will be ready to do the thing and then once the thing is done, I guess I’ll go back to being comfortable.

What if that never returns? What if going through all this rambling senselessness ends up creating a situation where I can never return to what was? What then do I do? I know not. It is too early in life to know, and if I don’t know that, then surely… something… else will happen. Or it won’t. Who knows. Who cares.

Well, I guess I care, or rather, I should care. There is a lot of care that I should care, really. I should care about the preparation, but I can only prepare so much, for I also need to distract. I also need to make sure that I am looking after myself, and all of these things take time. They take time and they create issues and complications and I don’t like that. I don’t like having to deal with the complications of my machinations, but I don’t have the kind of money that would allow me to hire someone to just deal with those for me, and so therefore I need to do it myself.

Maybe I can just clone myself or something. Spawn my clone and then the problem is solved. But maybe I’d need another clone…

How many clones am I going to need at the end of all of this? How many clones will I need to create in order to ensure that the work is not overloading me? I think three, at most. Maybe a fourth so as to make sure that the announcement of the determining is done with a bit of energy, but I’m sure my clones will lack the energy I also lack. It is possible that the energy I have will then be shared with the others and therefore, maybe it’d just be easier for me to not go down that path. Besides which, I’m not a cloneologist. I am not well versed in the art of cloneology. It could take far more time than I’d like, and so therefore maybe it’s just better that I get on with trying to deal with the things one at a time.

I don’t even know what it is that I’m trying to do anymore. I’ve written myself into a hole and I am desperately trying to get out. The hole is too big, however, and so if someone throws me a rope or ladder, or flies a helicopter down and then lifts me out and takes me to breakfast, that’d be great. That’d be fantastic.

Could have a nice conversation over a good cuppa. Really indulge myself whilst talking about how I got to where I was, and hopefully not bore the other person. Hopefully make sure that they are invested in my story. They will hear of how I got to where I did, but they won’t know why and neither will I, for that would have been lost in the winds of time. Forgotten, blown away, forever lost and never found. And that is the way that these things should go sometimes, because it’s rarely about the destination and more about the journey, unless the destination is somewhere important that you need to go to. If you need to go somewhere important, you want to make sure that the journey is mundane. Unless the destination is really boring. If it is, then who is to say how the journey should be? Could be anything, really. Possibly fantastic. However, that is yet to be determined.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:27:66

Really silly bit of writing that doesn’t go much of anywhere, but I do like this kind of writing. Just nonsense.

Written in Killara.

 

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One Thousand Word Challenge 240: A Series of Thoughts from a Friday

Alright here we go. Racing against the clock once more. Beating the life out of my keyboard. Treating it awfully. Need to treat it better. Need to write faster.

I’m also racing music at the moment. Not much time left, can do it, might do it. Will see if actually do do it. No idea. No way to tell as of yet. Just need to keep on writing.

I think that, in a lot of ways I am lucky that I can sit here and write whilst trying to finish writing before a couple of songs finish. I am lucky that I get to sit here and do this. There are plenty who aren’t and I have to wonder as to how much better things would be if we just looked after each other and didn’t blame people for circumstances beyond their control. Things would be great, wouldn’t they?

Or maybe they wouldn’t because someone would be slightly less rich than they were before. Who could really carry the burden of that kind of horror? The world may never know.

Sometimes I have thoughts that are worth writing down, but by the time I get to a point where I can, they have floated away. They have left me. I am left thoughtless, and I have become a husk. A shell. A receptacle of nothingness. That isn’t the best way to be, of course, but there are also worse ways to be. I’m not complaining.

I can see a body of water. It is small and it is still, but it is also large. There is a lot of water in it, but its body is small. It takes up not much space, but it also does. It is heavy and light and all sorts of things, and there are plenty of ways to approach it. It is still, or at least it appears still enough. Maybe it’s not still at all, and it is just where I am sitting that makes it look still.

Plants gently sway in the breeze. They move back and forth, lazily. They move slowly and they do not change. They keep on going on their cycle, some moving faster than others, but most are lazy. And there is variance in them. There is variance in how they appear, the kind of leaves they have, everything. But they sway as they sway, and breeze is suggested, Breeze is there, but it doesn’t seem to be there at all. It is almost as though all is quiet and everything is held in a spot, just going through the last bits of shaking before they stop entirely.

I wonder to the effect a desk can have on old injuries. I wonder how a desk might cause things to flare up, settle down… all of those things. I wonder about the shape of the next desk that I will claim as mine, and if it will be the right kind of height that I need, and if that all really matters. Surely the chair is more important, but the desk has to play a part in it all.

There are various sounds, and few of them are insects. There is music playing from my speakers, and there is the sound of water flowing somewhere nearby, but other than that, almost all is silent. Almost all is quiet. I don’t know what to make of it, but I’m sure that if I stepped outside, I’d hear some things. In here, it seems that there is no motion outside. Or rather, the movement and density of insect populations are both things that are quite low, and this saddens me as there’s so much out there worth seeing. There is so much out there worth hearing, and getting more greenery and habitat established should lead to more insect activity. It should lead to a richer world. So why aren’t we doing enough about it?

Clouds have consumed the sky, and indeed the sky is a mix of whites and grays, and it seems to almost be flattened depth. It seems to just be a thick wall covering everything, enclosing everything, trapping things in, keeping things out. It seems to have everything stop there, and nothing exists beyond it, and it moves, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t change and it continually changes, and everything goes on as it was and will be, and that’s how it is. That’s how it has to be.

There is a bright light coming in from outside into this room, and it is bright but it is dull. The shadows it creates are soft, seemingly vague at the edges. Spread out and focused at the same time. Everything in this space feels more homely, more relaxed, and perhaps quaint. Small. Lacking in the fantastic, and that’s nice. That’s nice to have right now, and it’s nice to see how the light is creating these pockets of shadow, almost like islands. Ideas of shapes creating new forms.

I hope that sooner, rather than later, we turn ourselves around. I hope that something comes out of all of this and we start appreciating nature more often than we do, and I hope that we take better care of ourselves and also each other. No one needs all the money in the world, and I doubt anyone needs to be richer than anyone else. It’s a shame to see how indifferent we are to each other. No one gets out alive, and no one deserves to be treated like shit. If we considered each other more and if we considered the environment more, then I’m sure things would genuinely improve, because maybe we’d be more willing to take action and stop defending people doing awful things out there. Maybe we’d actually get somewhere and show that, yes, we can be a strong society that does look after each other and works toward a better tomorrow. But who knows these days. Who knows how things will change in the coming years.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:11:47

This one I wrote yesterday, and it was written whilst incredibly tired. Not a good way to be as it made this bit of writing a struggle. There was no aim, but I had to think hard about what I was doing and that wasn’t good.

Written in Killara.

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Yasunori Mitsuda & Millenial Fair: Creid

One listen.

This is another song I’ve had queued up for a while but dragged my feet on writing about, and I don’t know why, to be honest. Was easy enough to write about… for the most part. The song makes use of uilleann pipes and I thought a lot about how to describe them and what they were doing. I ended up not doing so as thinking about how to was taking too much time and so instead I went elsewhere with the writing.

Yasunori Mitsuda & Millenial Fair’s (光田 康典 & ミレニアル・フェア) “Creid” is from Creid. The album is an arranged soundtrack based on music from Xenogears.

I hope you enjoy.

The whisperings of sound are gently present. It’s not long before choral voices come into the present, into the space and continue that expression of gentleness. Of calm, of cradling, and they rise and fall, then stop. Then they come back, lower a little, descend before rising up in what feels like some sort of light reverence.

It’s a flow and a journey. It’s expression, and those sounds that were whispers are coming a little more forward, becoming a little more prominent, and they sing and shine, and then everything stops.

New sounds come in, playing harsh and joyous and gentle, and some of the familiar returns, and soon percussion plays rough and plays it gently. Sound calls out across the landscape, across the wonder of the space, and those vocals return. Strong threads weaving their way through everything, harmonising, almost becoming textural sound whilst a slow flight, a light joy comes through.

A shadow, a coldness appears for a brief moment, but the joy of innocence, of youth playing, of the grandness of the land and the ocean, and the world, and how small we are comes through, and that shadow is just a part of life, and it’s all so light, and almost dreamy, and it all floats on until whispering is all that’s left, drifting as though thoughts and reflections at the song’s end.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 239: Anxiety Ramble

So I realised something and I’m going to stay vague about it because who knows what will happen, but I figure that if it’s going to pan out the way I expect it to pan out, better to let it happen than announce it and then pat myself on the back for a job well done and walk away and all that.

But I realised something and I’m going to attempt whatever that realisation is, and if I succeed, well, I succeed. Then I can pat myself on the back for a job well done and walk away and all that.

But anyway, yeah. Had a realisation and it’s achievable, and if it’s achievable, then I can do it. If I succeed, happy days. Only one way to find out and all that, so I’m gonna try and find out. Hopefully I will. Hopefully I will find out and then realise that, yes, I can get something completed… beyond the small of everything, that is.

But you know, life is full of realisations and all that, and I am a machine of generating realisations. A relisation machine if you will. Everyone is, really. And we are all so much more, and… that’s all I have, really.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end of this space. I’ve been thinking a lot about the amount of work I need to put in in order to catch up on everything, and I know I can do it. I don’t know if I will, but I know that it can be done. Need to spend less time procrastinating if I am to do so, of course. There is a lot of stuff I need to do and catch up on if I want to make sure that everything is neat and tidy come the fifteenth anniversary. I think I can do it. I know I can do it. I don’t know if I will do it.

I wonder about the journey taken to get to this point, and I’m a little scared of letting go, but it needs to be done. I need to let go and move on with my life. I need to direct myself elsewhere, because this takes too much time and there isn’t enough of it in the day… you get the idea.

Right now I’m feeling anxious about it as it’s getting closer. I want everything to be nice and neat by the time I’m done, but I don’t think that’ll happen. There’s so much here to check and go through. I’ve created my own bloat and I don’t want to sink within it. I want to stay ahead of the growing pile. I can do that, at least.

But yeah; I feel anxious about it. Such a big part of my life is going to stop, and so much of my experience suddenly left behind. But it’ll remain here for a while, at least. It’ll remain here and sit as a testament to bloat and mess and ugliness, and all the things that fall between it all, and that’ll be that. I’ll get on with my life.

It’s strange though. The times I’ve stopped writing for a few days, I haven’t missed it and I keep going only because I’ll be wrapping it all up. I know that I will miss it, however, because it’s become so insidiously routine. It has become so heavily part of my life and it will remain that way for a little under two months at this point, and then I’ll have much more time on my hands.

I think part of the reason why I’m anxious is suddenly having more time. I’ll still be busy, but I’ll be less so, and I feel a need to be productive. I feel a need to keep creating and doing stuff. Having more time to do so in a way that I feel is genuinely more productive is, I think, a good thing. But I guess not having the standard routine I’ve had for so many years now is scary. But it’ll be better. It’ll be healthier for me, and that’s a good thing, at least.

Obviously I’m scared of letting go, even if I want to. It’s so much time and pain sunk into this place, and a lot of joy too. It’s one of the few constants I’ve had since I started it, and it’s uncomfortable saying goodbye to it, but I’m still going to. I’m going to do so and make this change, and I’ll have as much of it tidied up as I can before I do. But it’s going to be tough.

I think I’m also worried about not being able to say bye to it all in the way that I want to. And I think that part of me is worried about saying bye to you, the readers, because some of you have stuck it out with me for a long time. Saying bye to you all is also going to be tough, because I appreciate the time you spend here, reading through all of my crappy writing. I appreciate the time taken, because you’re giving me your time and you’ve continued to do so.

I think I’m getting a little too emotional and stressed about the whole thing, so I should try and focus on what I can get done and get back on with the doing of the things. If I don’t do that, then I’m just spinning the wheels about how this is stressing me out and all that, and I could just get back to producing more rubbish. A more productive use of my time, really. Or maybe it isn’t. Who is to say, other than me. And someone else who can say, of course.

Well, those are my thoughts for today and now you have read them. Now you have experienced my thoughts on how I feel about closing an outlet for my work, and now I’m gonna end this ramble.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 14:19:72

Could’ve been faster and perhaps less anxious. How I was feeling at work when I wrote this yesterday though, so that’s what’s bound to come forward, really.

Written at work.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1562: Nonsense Writing

What a day. It comes in waves and phrases and forms and it shapes itself around itself, and it doesn’t even know that it does. It’s stuck on a loop of continuously moving out of itself whilst going back to the start that it drags into the present. It is a strip that moves through time, and it moves constantly, stretching and compressing along the way. It is itself and it returns to the start only to move slightly further away and then come back. There is no start anymore, and there never really was an end.

It goes on and on, and then it goes on some more and it never stops. It never relents. It is taunting my ears and teasing my eyes, and I look out a window as a cry for help, but all there are are ore windows. More windows that go on forever and ever, and even when there seems an end they just wrap back around and, lo and behold, nothing has changed. Everything has moved, but nothing has changed. Still, there is progress in time. There is progress in space. There is everything and nothing and it all comes together and creates thoughts that change.

Then thoughts change their shape and words, and things move in and out and cycle toward new eternities. The horizon of thoughts remains unobtainable and that’s the way it should be, and they come into combat with the day and the space and then there are more collisions. There are spreads of nothingness fighting spreads of everything, and nothing matters, and through all of that, perhaps some things matter. Perhaps a lot of things matter, and even though the day shapes itself around itself and moves in and out as it becomes an everlasting, changing static form, all those within it age as they move toward whatever lies next. Wherever the tomorrow leads. These are the issues at hand, but all I’ve got are issues.

To say that this is to say something would be stretching the truth, but sometimes it’s better to say nothing. Sometimes gibberish reaches in and reveals more than one would expect, and perhaps that’s the way things should be. Sometimes the masses of words and the masses of sentences that lead nowhere and do little else other than create surface imagery are better said than nothing at all, and I don’t know what it is that they would reveal, but it’s quite possible that they would reveal something. That they’d reveal anything at all. Who is to say at the end of the day, really? Not me, or maybe me. Maybe it’s up to me to say everything and nothing, and maybe it’s up to me to keep spawning senseless, lacking work. Maybe only I can do that, but I need to find a way to escape the loop in which
I am trapped. Or perhaps I just need to accept it and start getting on with what remains of my day.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:37:16

Not the best, not the worst. Just had a cascading mess of thoughts, decided to blurt them out as horribly as possible.

Written at work.

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A Poem About Worms and Birds

I was reading a book this morning, and when I saw a line of poetry in it that mentioned a worm, this started forming in my mind. It’s mainly inspired by a literal interpretation of “The early bird gets the worm” and, even though this doesn’t say much of anything and could be longer, I’m happy to leave it as just these two lines. Besides which, you could probably pull some depth of meaning out of it if determined enough.

I hope you enjoy.

The busy worm starts its day
The tired bird starts its night

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Whytwo: Apart

One listen.

I heard this song a few days ago and figured I could write about it, and I did, but I struggled. I thought too much and tried to tease things out instead of letting the writing happen. I did capture the song, but this could be so much better.

Whytwo’s “Apart” is from Ghost.

I hope you enjoy.

Something faint, vague, faded. Something in a distance, slowly coming forward. Could be sentimental. Something underneath it, like bass, seems to hum and pulse, and shift, and more sound comes in. More sound becomes prominent, and there’s something cold and warm here.

It’s sentimental, hopelessly pleasant. Pleasing to the ear, in hums and wisps and pulses and long beams of sound, and it becomes less cold. Becomes brighter, bigger and smaller at the same time. It continues on, continuing on a track. On a journey. Going somewhere, changing slowly, but following the same form, and soon it starts fading away.

A moment passed by, a moment disappearing, being moved away from. Moved away from, moving elsewhere, seeing it disappear in the distance as the song ends.

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