Sometimes it’s about the humans

Life is about the journey, not the destination, right? This is the journey of the creative process.

When I heard the Japanese song META from Calla Soiled, I was inspired to write English lyrics from what it inspired me. It blends, in a bladed way, a lot of different ideas from the music world; vocaloid, glitch, pop… It has this Japanese sensibility, and a crazy approach that is “meta”. I wanted my lyrics to capture all of these feelings. In a way, I think it says all there is to say, that I’ve ever learned.

My partner in crime, Flora Lin, wrote a song called “Simplify”. While it started from a thematic constraint that set up her writing, I found a line to be quite touching:

“The less they know, the more they shout
You wish you could stay in the dark”

I realized that it is another take on life, that corresponds to another point in time. Another lens through which we see things. From there, I wanted to express each of the lenses that I went through life, which became the songs “Light”, “Torment”, and “Second Wind”.

To illustrate the album, Simplify suggested the idea of a line that would be needlessly complicated, but carry some inner simple beauty. That defined the process of using traditional Chinese painting blended with digital glitching techniques. The two feel diametrically opposed; Chinese painting is entirely dependent on the medium, and the best results come from a harmony between movement, the brush, the ink and the paper. Any stroke is final, there isn’t really a way to hide mistakes. In digital, there is no medium to speak of, so possibilities always remain infinite. But this lack of constraint also means it can be self-limiting, as it does not require the same discipline. With this project I could try to do it unrestricted. I struggled to achieve some of the results I wanted, but I had to accept my current limits in order to finish it.

I used to care a lot about “not being pretentious”. Despite my own “.art” domain, I avoid discussions about art because of dreadful and profoundly stupid debates from school time. We live in a mental prison built by people around us. Humans have a natural tendency to internalize the rules that are imposed on them. This is what schooling is. A singer-songwriter album is more authentic than a pop album. Poetry, because it is the work of either poets, a handful of humans, or something that comes directly from a muse. The ideas interfere with your own expression. The remembrance of the pain inflicted for not saying the right thing invisibly causes you to pull your arms away from writing what you originally intended.

To be able to write this, I had to throw all these ideas away. My words get lost into the noise, my lines waver away. I don’t really care anymore. I feel I am seeing the borders of my current lens, but cannot fully conceptualize the form of what should be its successor.

I am grateful that George Alexander and Flora agreed to make songs out of my words. The connection we make with others, and the shared experience of our collaboration, is something that I will always cherish.

I think this work captures well where I am now, and the endless quest for the meaning of life (fitting for a pythonista). I hope others will find meaning in it.

You can find the release on bandcamp now!

Note: technically it’s an EP (Extended Play) rather than a full length album (LP, or Long Play), and the terms could be switched for anyone familiar with the term.

Another note: writing alternate lyrics to a song makes it fail the strict definition of a cover (which can be registered following a standard process), so I’m very grateful to Calla Soiled for allowing us to do this derivative work.

Another another note: this appears as a guest post on Flora’s blog.