discover.

I am made by my times… I am a creation of now shaken with the cracks and crevices… I'm not giving up easy… I will not fold… I don't have much but what I have is gold... 

(Sorry… I am sorry… )

I want me… I want it all… I want sensational… Irresistible… This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive… Living… Blessed… I understand… Collapse into now…

You seem to be

a perfect memory of the future

reminding me how life is meant to be ...

~ P   S   B

strains of herodotus.

I probably should not post this cos it was thought up and recorded in a day. Sunday morning this simple totally basic pathetic arpeggio in my head so sat down at the Bechstein for a bit. Played. I don't know I liked it totally basic all pathetic. Looped it to itself. Then to some strings. Banged the ending on the piano. Some change to B chromatic then to end on E♭ minor. Quick mastered the 2-track but very rough. As always just an idea. Just an idea that conveys nothing or so I think. If anything this is less messy than the other song I am working on which is totally jumbled and crazy right now in my head. And the dozens of others some enormous cacophony I cannot quiet down. I still hear it looping. I hear a voice singing rising with the music to some total crescendo lyrics scrawled ink in a notebook lying on top of the Bechstein its ebony scratched and worn. I hear the enormous E♭ minor chord. I hear a louder orchestra than Logic or some digital domain can contain. I cannot get this out of my head but must go to sleep. For now.

We gaze beyond the veils

beyond the seas beyond the stars

we seek to find the light

to find the way to hold what is ours

beyond our sorrows beyond our pains

to prove in time our finite loss yields infinite gains

like histories before us we strain

we strain

we strain

we strain

we strain

...

An MP3 file is linked here. Cheers. Goodnight.

per aspera ad astra.

Less ambiguous but still ambiguous. Still working the idea out in my head but some of it laid out now in Logic oddly enough a very heavy sound whereas when I first heard it in my head it was just piano and then slowly grew to have orchestrated synths but maybe this is just another version or a different version overdriven arpeggiated guitars and all and who knows what will become of it. Or maybe start with a quiet piano low in the tenor section as always rising rising rising to an enormous crescendo to what I have recorded an orchestra and a band playing furiously a voice rising higher and higher above it all to come to a crashing ending where the song is all in C♯-minor but right at the enormous end a three-note progression then ... the B major sustained held out (with perhaps an intermittent G♯-sharp minor) until a triple-forte crash of the big C♯-minor chord and a decay of them all. I will have to cull through books and such to find lyrics for what is going through my head but will get there. Will get there. Just a piece for now ~

we have held the sword of Damocles

known the fortune it perceives and now must finally repreve

we cannot translate we must proceed ad astra

we must proceed ad astra

ad astra

another day.

2 a.m. last night playing piano some progression or another out of nowhere that I really fell for and played for a bit then recorded today just the idea started in Logic do not think this will go anywhere but I like it all the same and it is surprisingly simple (instrumentation will be light–I just put a slight tremolo on the piano lines) and I have no idea just a working title for now (based on Julian's suggestion when I asked him for a song title of A Black Day cos he thought it sounded minor and dark – despite the fact there are at least as many major chords in the progression as minor but maybe he's picking up on the overall feel to which I jokingly responded everything I write is slightly minor and heavy and dark) but lyrics to go with the chords might be something like but never will be these cos these are scrawled out way too fast to myself really nothing and so not worth posting but will continue to work on it all though I know it ends with the line

and I will wait for it I will wait for it

as the last low chord on the piano resonates and fades away

the old ways.

The thundering waves are calling me home, home to you
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you
On a dark new year's night on the west coast of Clare
I hear your voice singing
Your eyes danced the song your hands played the tune
T'was a vision before me
We left the music behind and the dance carried on
As we stole away to the seashore
We smelt the brine, felt the wind in our hair with sadness you paused
Suddenly I knew that you'd have to go
Your world was not mine, your eyes told me so
Yet it was there I felt the crossroads of time
And I wondered why?
As we cast our gaze on the tumbling sea a vision came o'er me
Of thundering hooves and beating wings in clouds above
As you turned to go I heard you call out my name
You were like a bird in a cage, spreading its wings to fly
"The old ways are lost" you sang as you flew and I wondered why?
The thundering waves are calling me home, home to you
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you ....

against the grain.

Finally getting a handle on Logic's Arpeggiator (which is apparently not nearly as intuitive as Ableton's and some other DAWs – and although I haven't used Live, I must say Logic's is sort of a pain in the arse) but from some forum posts it looks like its output can in fact be recorded to a separate MIDI track albeit only with a bit of a workaround in the Environment (rather than being forced to bounce tracks down in realtime instead of offline). Anyways, the Arp is incredible and listening to some demos online makes one realize how often this tool is used (the first thing that came to mind was the synth intro to Muse's Bliss).

So the next song I am trying to assemble (of course before actually finishing any of the others that I have started) is actually the first song I wrote for this project long before I knew it was going to be a cohesive thing something it seems like maybe three years ago. It was sort of my response to Suede's Trash and/or Chemistry Between Us (or perhaps both) and trying to capture some essence or other that I could not seem to grasp. I sort of cannot believe I have held onto this song and this idea for this long.

there in a space somewhere in time

the light that held the scene

i knew the end you saw the cost

holding on to what soon would be lost but for now

i held your gaze you held my hand

and we knew we stood against the grain

silently stand slowly we fade

held to face the strain that would tear us away

why can't we stay?

it seemed to stretch to end the day

cast off to find a way

i had in mind this look in your eyes

when we lay stretched towards the sun

distilled through the blinds frozen in time

left to chance left to be everything now lost so it seemed

hold out your hand turn back the time

to when we fell against the grain

silently stand slowly we fade

eclipsed by Fate that forced the strain to fade away

the farther we come the harder we fall

only to fade away

why couldn't I say?

I will no doubt rework the lyrics but that is what I had scrawled in a notebook pieced together over a few years. Three-fourths of the way through the song it stops abruptly, then arpeggios – first on the guitar (distorted and sustained), then the bass joining it and finally the thundering piano before the drums re-enter at twice the tempo the vocals rising above everything to repeat the chorus and it crashes and crashes and crashes through to an enormous ending, fading out the same way it faded in – an arpeggiated piano line sustained then fades away ...

substance.

So after building that template I have begun to populate it with, well, an actual song that I sort of came up with the other night and have been going over in my head for a few days now. I started with a simple drum line – hi hat, then added the kick, then the snare and looped them all (for now). On top of that a pretty simple guitar line for now with some nice effects (namely, a fairly distorted sound routed through the Guitar Amp Pro plug-in and some tremelo). For a little more substance (albeit somewhat thin at the moment) I layered in a synth, then a bass line and an arpeggiated piano riff in the upper register. I am just looping the twenty bars I have right now, thinking of other things to add while I am stuck in my living room for the time being with an eighty-eight key controller and Logic.

In time I notice my intentions fail

and science turns its gaze to mine and I have no explanation why

this time it seems to close its hand and I drown

in fear of space I cannot define you here

on my mind

escape velocity [recorded].

Well, finally, just the idea of it. Hammered away on the Bechstein, then back to the keyboard (still need an interface and a pair of mics to record the piano for real) to lay it out. Know exactly what I want to say but unable yet to really say it. Julian came by wondering what I was up to, so I showed him around Logic a bit – creating objects, sends and effects. Editing a few mis-played notes. Adjusting levels and so on. He looked at me and said when I get everything together it is going to be awesome. I guess I am on the right track.

The more I listen to the playback and play it myself (different still every time as I have yet to really nail down how exactly it goes) and the more I read about the Apollo missions and the Voyager missions I get this enormous sense of optimism that cannot be contained and I want to find a way to put that into lyrics for music that is huge and larger than almost anything I have ever written trying to make the analogy to our ever-so-short-lived quest – triumphs and tragedies and all – to reach the stars. The idea of hope beckons with this image in my mind of an enormous Saturn V rocket – a triumph of the humankind – lifting off and in an instant out of sight, hurtling away from Earth and everything we know out into a vastness we cannot comprehend, but with so much promise and mystery.

I have tried in the past (feebly at best) to describe places here on Earth through which I have traveled and become a part of if even short-lived, but it is that much more difficult I am finding to write about experiences I cannot imagine – of looking back at this tiny world on which we find ourselves for now from an unimaginable distance in some attempt to understand our fragility, our isolation and loneliness, our dependence on one another, our need to respect all that we have. It is quite simple to say, on one hand, how this fascination of mine with the stars and my zealousness to study them and the sciences to which they relate has given me this notion that we can indeed overcome our odds and prove our potential to all those generations before us and all those yet to come. Impossible on the other to find a way to say how.

Maybe I should just leave it at that for now. Try to get some sleep. Think about it some more. Maybe one day I will be able to write what I want to say.

time stands still.

And then it hit me. I had come up with the melody of the verses for this song years ago but it had a very dour lyrical approach which I wanted to revisit and rewrite completely new but out of nowhere the melody hit me tonight and then as I went over it in my head I came up with the chorus which sent me rushing to the little corner in my living room to fire up my Mac and get this idea on tape (or, in this case, hard disk) before it escaped me for another couple of years. It is like everything driven by a very heavy, dense piano line and is a song as I hear it still in my head that builds and builds until it reaches the first chorus, then keeps that level but builds more upon the second chorus, then keeps that, then crescendos unbelievably with the third chorus and the end. This is incredible and a song that over the course of roughly fifteen minutes went from an age-old idea in my head to something of substantial worth that will be developed at all costs! Lyrics are lame at the moment but trying to wrap my head around what it is I want to write hopefully ambiguous of course and then will figure out how to write it. The idea is what I will fall asleep with in my head tonight, better that than this pounding music.

And time stands still

Must all be veiled? Unseen?

Where "and time stands still" starts out on the third of a C♯ minor, then rises to an E major then a B major then a G♯ minor with an enormous crescendo at "unseen" but rising still higher to end back on a C♯ minor an octave-and-a-half above and at least a few dynamic markings higher than where the phrase started and then an enormous ending and silence and in fact the whole song is hugely-intense and very heavy-sounding with quite phenomenal and enormously difficult guitar and piano lines. But regardless, it will be something else entirely to find someone who can sing this that I hear in my head.

obliquity of the ecliptic.

The axial tilt may equivalently be expressed in terms of the planet's orbital plane and a plane perpendicular to its axis. In our solar system, the Earth's orbital plane is known as the ecliptic, thus the Earth's axial tilt is officially called the obliquity of the ecliptic. The ecliptic is not a fixed quantity but changing over time in a cycle with a period of a hundred million years. It is a very slow effect known as nutation, but even at the level of accuracy at which astronomers work needs to be taken into account in daily calculations. The obliquity and the precession of the equinoxes are calculated from the same theory and are thus related to each other. Without one there would not be the other.

and as I stand here fixed in time
I spin around to mesmerize and hold my Fate
to stem the tide I choose to wait
a fixed point in space I have held and now release
towards the distant pale point of light I gravitate
as time stands still but all the while I cannot find
the orbit is lost and so anew I must create

There is of course an enormous piano the chords huge. It starts out with a full-blown orchestration the piano accompanying and the lyrics above (only partially scrawled out at the moment but close to the idea). The tempo is slow in common time each syllable held out nearly until the lyrics are over and then the tempo doubles and the piano begins furious arpeggiated triplets up and down the registers as the orchestra matches the tempo and then after several repetitions of the arpeggiated chord progression, the lyrics come back to reiterate the last point as the song crescendos beyond belief cymbals crashing the piano enormous and unbearable before ending in a furious wash of sound and samples. What is quite fun in Logic is to actually go into the sample editor and manipulate each individual note to tweak the overall performance as I will have to do on most of the bars I have recorded as they are somewhat sloppy but captured the idea for now. And yes I love the word 'furious' as it relates to music.

the one that got away.

And to think I was just about to head off to bed when this song came to me and so I rebooted my Mac and fired up Logic to figure out the chord progression and it is quite awesome in B♭minor and I quick scrawled down some lyrics that maybe I have used part of before I am not sure right now but I will look into it typing furiously after recording a few bits my playing horribly sloppy but just so it hasn't escaped me when I wake up tomorrow something like

I silently staggered under the stars

among the covers I tried to hide

until one day I woke up to find

you were the one that got away

and it starts out I think just an acoustic guitar strumming away somewhat furiously the time signature is 3/4 and the tempo is something like 140 bpm which is quite fast and I am becoming more used to the entirely different sensation of listening to my own playing while not playing so I can concentrate more on what was played but anyways that is at least how I have recorded it for now which I can change later if needed but it just builds and builds for most of the song these huge chords until the end when those lyrics come in and then overdriven far beyond clipping two guitars furious arpeggios on one the other furious chords the acoustic still strumming away a low bass line arpeggiated drums furious too cymbal crashes on the downbeat of every other bar (not sure about an enormous piano line yet but probably if anything sitting off in the mix arpeggios up high in the treble) until it just ends and the overdriven guitars are left to pan back and forth out of sync with each other until they are cut off by a mute to the master fader and that is that.

i fall away in c# minor.

For now just a crude recording in Logic before I leave for a few days to come back to and work with. An old idea that I never really developed trying now not to make it too wholly tragic but tragic enough. Not sure where it will go but I like the chord progression quite a bit all of a sudden out of nowhere walking around house then rushing to piano quick before it escaped me a faster tempo than I recorded for sure. I love late night (preferably middle of the night) recording sessions cos the best stuff seems to happen late late at night though not sure why. I am in love with the idea that I can record anything I want whenever I want. What is terribly difficult actually is coming back to these ideas now because I have moved on with writing but I know I really cannot until this earlier stuff is totally developed and so somehow must figure a way to make sure it still works writing it now without making it sound like what I am writing now. The rising chords are fantastic.  The bass notes on the piano are heavy and enormous. The change to A major is incredible. It starts out with just this deep piano sound chords huge with lots of reverb at a slower tempo and possibly a different time signature then after an intro of I don't know forty or fifty bars the guitar comes in very very noisy with the drums and bass and furious arpeggios on the piano then the song really begins. Of course I see a photograph with this as well that I cannot capture at the moment so a lame screenshot and crude lyrics will have to do while I listen to the fifty-some bars I recorded cycling over and over and over.

your face your gaze your eyes have come to pass the time away

and I compare my stand my Fate with what I find in those I've known

my time has gone and I fall away I reach for you and empty sand and fall away

parthenon crumbling.

I re-figured out a song tonight that I had written a while back (in this case, written meaning came up with in my head, transposed to the piano without ever actually writing any of it out and then promptly forgetting the chord progression while only retaining the key – in this case, B-flat minor). The trick is the change from the inverted B-flat minor to the inverted D-flat major but the whole progression is quite good. In any case, scrawling half-thought-out lyrics except for the line at the end (which I came up with at least a year ago) ~

like granite in time and marble walls I will fall

I will fall

I will fall

I will fall

I will fall for you

Maybe limestone in time .... (and of course that is sung with a rising crescendo as the music gains momentum and dynamics until it nearly literally explodes the piano massive fortissimo arpeggios big fat chords the guitars insatiable chords and arpeggios the bass arpeggios fuzzy and distorted the drums just for lack of a better term insane and the singer above all how he falls over and over and over). And I will continue to work on lyrics tonight.

And I received Logic Pro on my front porch tonight. And I am about the most excited I have been in a very very long time. And there are two manuals each about the size of a phone book. And I will be bringing both of them with me to Phoenix to read on the aeroplane. And my uncle may sell me his dual 1.25GHz mirror drive G4 if anything to use as backup (Logic Pro 7 is coded so that it can actually perform distributed computing and use CPU strength from across a network not to mention it was written for the G4 CPUs though granted trying to do a 64-track mixdown with each channel having a bunch of effects going all at the same time and bouncing that down to stereo might be tough .... ). And once I transfer the contents of my current Quicksilver G4's hard drive onto the new RAID I will set up once it arrives in the next day or two along with maxing out the RAM capacity on the Quicksilver, I will do a clean install of 10.4.11 before installing Logic. And yes this is all quite exciting. And yes I still need a USB MIDI interface and a pair of decent mics. 

sitting on the moon.

[start transmission] message posted to lifeform carbon. send. receive. upload. e6. a posteriori. private lounge. extended. remixed. download mp3. repeat. [start break]

i am sitting on the moon watching planet blue, hello [break]
looking all around rotating without sound where are you? [break]
where are you? [break] i am sitting on the moon

where are you? [break] i am missing you

i came from very far a little unknown star, hello [break]
i don't know what to do it is so cold and blue without you where are you? [break]
where are you? [break] i am sitting on the moon

where are you? [break] i am missing you

[end break] boca junior remix. audio quality good. video useless. hide. listen. increase volume. repeat. [end transmission]

goodbye milky way.

Probably my favourite song of his, listening to this reminds me of this post about how young and foolish we as a human species really are. Here, it sounds like Michael Cretu (whose studio project is called Enigma) is saying – albeit in a much more somber way – what Sagan often writes about ~

Shall I go shall I stay?
A hundred-seven light years away
Many times so many doubts but no reason to talk about
Mission is over mission is done
I will miss you children of the sun
But it's time to go away ... goodbye Milky Way
For a better world without hate
Follow your heart believe in Fate
Only visions and the mind will guide you to the light
Mission is over mission is done
I will miss you children of the sun
But it's time to go away ... goodbye Milky Way
Mission is over mission is done
I will miss you children of the sun
I go home until someday I say goodbye ...

Goodbye Milky Way
[In five billion years the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way and a new, gigantic Cosmic world will be born]

It seems like when he says 'only visions of the mind will guide you to the light' – he is saying exactly what Sagan says. And Sagan's peaceful, optimistic approach to our perhaps doomed civilization is brought out with Cretu's 'for a better world without hate, follow your heart believe in Fate.' We need to look beyond our petty wants and selfishness to view how amazing everything around us really is and – in an even more holistic view – how insignificant but at the same time how absolutely incredible carbon-based life, this planet, the cosmos – really are.

And in saying 'doomed,' I suppose I mean only in the sense of what the song mentions at the end – how eventually and inevitably the sun will explode and the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies will collide. But maybe, just maybe – as Sagan thinks and I like to believe – by that time we'll have long since learned how to overcome our shortsightedness and gained unfound wisdom which would then allow us to move on to other galaxies and to other suns and to other planets even more spectacular and incredible than the one upon which we find ourselves here at this moment.

final exploration of space.

I was overwhelmed with this song that was in my head that I started writing a few months ago. I knew all of the chords (the key of D-flat major) and the idea of it but never all of the lyrics.

I imagine leaving the lyrics speak for themselves metaphors and all but will quickly say I think there is a quality and sereneness to being alone, and not to be so cynical as to say or think indefinitely but at least for a moment where I think humbly that is an important component to defining if at least to ourselves who we are and just why we are here all the while a pair of spacecraft are hurtling through interstellar space soon too distant for even the lightspeed of radio waves programmed to find a hint of life without promises or guarantees and in all likelihood destined to wander forever alone through a vast empty space but always, always with the intent of finding something ... someone.

I have traveled four billion miles to find I'm alone
I sit silent and stare through time
and darkness only I can know
through all these miles I've tried to find a way to say
I have seen a glimpse through time
drawn to know the strains
as light reflects and bends the line
I'm crushed against the grain
through all these miles I've tried to radio back home
from where I am I find the strength to finally say I'm alone

It is just piano and a synth (actually, an orchestra but performed live would be multiple samplers and a tone generator accompanying the piano) that I cannot really describe, but with a deep low-end that subsists the piano in all its elegance simple someone or something on a path of discovery the final sampled chords immense and crushing sustained for many, many bars the piano long having faded out until a final mute of them all.

last night on earth.

For whatever reason, trying before going to bed to nail the idea of a song from two years ago and figured out from my head it's in the key of C# minor (I think – either that or I just wrote something else which could totally be the case .... ) and jotting down quick lyrics ~

silence again brings us closer all the same

close your eyes feel the weight of my hands sustain

turn back the time if only we could stand again and stay

here in my head you in my arms unrestrained

starving.

Lyrics from an old journal full of random lists of songs that I compiled for mix tapes (oh, sorry, playlists – but back then they were still mix tapes) from days when I was pretty heavily ensconced in Suede and songs like Trash and Saturday Night and Beautiful Ones and the like and even though this doesn't really fit now I still like the idea because it's very Brit pop ~

through the glitter and the glam

we imitate the obscene in boardrooms and ballrooms

standbys spreading to be seen

in our Ken Coles and Calvins we walk through the scene

strutting and swerving like machines transfixed and glued to the screens

and one night far beyond our control we break down

break down to the sound of the strobes

and we will be starving and we will be pretty and we will be lonely

but all things considered

nothing too sickly cos we will be out there

through the fuzz and the noise

our designs can be read fearless and loathesome we tread

fanning out flames stick to what's said

in six-inch stilettos and surburbia drawl we fire off

fire off and shake down to the sound of the strobes

and we will be starving and we will be pretty and we will be lonely

but all things considered

nothing too sickly cos we will be out there

out and about there

we see pretty boys and lonely girls dancing a tragic scheme

in between

something obscene

blue and green

lighting up

lighting up and breaking down to the tragic sounds

and we will be starving and we will be pretty and we will be lonely

but all things considered

nothing too sickly cos we will be out there

we will be starving

decay.

For some reason knowing I must backtrack and pick up pieces where I've left them be, find time to write from notes a year or two old because before the metaphors of space and Andromeda and Voyagers and galaxies I know there was something else that I've wanted to write and so in the dark at the piano this rhythm just seems to work perfectly and surprisingly I find it easy to jot down notes to go with this in C major where I hear an enormous grand piano and a guitar with a very strange delayed effect not at all unlike the sound of a Leslie speaker  that reverbs and cycles and reverbs and cycles in harmony with the piano and maybe underneath it all a low sample (or electric bass indistinguishable) and then the piano ends and the low sample fades but the guitar reverbs and cycles and reverbs and cycles and I walk away all the while this voice in my head only partly saying ~

I have tried to find a way

to start to say that I have tried to know the pain

to know the scene that you portray

the smile the lines designed to say

how I have felt for all this time the same

and I'm surprised that here I find it says again

that time has passed away and lost in space I cannot say

why it too cannot pass away

no matter your gaze your pose your stand

I've felt this way I've crushed the sand

and know it has to be this way

impossible to decay

Maybe some day I'll have a chance to go through old pictures and scan and crop and convert and post something here that fits the idea but for the time being it's just this everything in my head and now this old, crumpled notebook scribbled to death (and too I guess this blog).