...

This album probably wins the gold medal of my Audio Special Olympics. I had a lot of broken bones while throwing this together. It has a darkness I've not been willing to replicate for some time. Part of it sampled a snuff film from Brazil; someone burning alive in a prison cell. A friend of mine from Brazil was sending me stuff... I thought that his Silk Sonic cover was really funny so I sampled it. I was thinking about what it felt like to zone in covered in blood and helpless. Plus it made me think of Brazil so I threw a sample I'm pretty sure I found on YouTube of this guy burning alive in a Brazil prison. I think if I were going to try and find it again I'd probably dig around the Plagued Moth videos in my watch history but that's too obsessive for my tastes right now. I haven't really watched him in a while. It seemed like he was getting way too preoccupied with his insecurities to have me take him serious as he was handling some serious stuff. I wish the best for his diabetic kid though. He's got a heart in there if you look past all the edgy "antichrist" persona stuff.

I think that a lot of the stuff on there isn't healthy for me to listen to. The last time I heard it all the way through was easily over a month ago, my roommate thought I was making people worried. I see it as like a capstone to all the albums I made in '22 - the first of which I still haven't released by now. It all started that year with a big sad theatrical vaporwave instrumental project in January. It's all made with the MIDI guitar I did basically everything in February '22 on. (The guitar broke by the way, it won't charge or turn on. I think it's some kind of lithium battery thing...) After that I thought about giving that same kind of treatment to the first guitar chords I'd think of to sum up the vibes of a day, just slowing it all down to let it all soak in. It became a kind of audio diary... I only drank bathtub water out of a single styrofoam cup when I was at home, all month. The cup's long gone by now. It got thrown out when my younger sibling took over my room after I landed in the hospital. Coming out of February into March I felt starving for structure so I thought I'd animate something.

I had this hypothetical where I laid prone on my longboard downhill, recorded that, rotoscoped my recording like I was flying Superman, then threw all that onto some public stock footage site. In my head it would've been like "flying through the aether". Like I'd be putting my flight in the hands of artists. Embodying an art medium to express with, as a symbol for flight. That was the idea at least, but in practice I accidentally picked a busy night to bomb a hill at 3AM. My friend David and I were logging off of Rainbow Six Siege, PVE shenanigans. I went to two different hills with my tripod, camera, and longboard. I turned down the first one... I probably wouldn't have gotten hit there. Quiet neighborhood, slight incline. I was wondering if I'd even get enough momentum. Second hill, I thought I'd try doing a steep turn at the end where I'd roll into a side street. Probably wouldn't have been possible in retrospect, I'd only ever done that turn standing up. I was racing to get it over with. It was getting really cold and I wasn't wearing much. I found out... and that shit was funny. To me at least.

Big red truck just beams right down on me, and I'm gauging how fast I can get out of the way of headlights by my muscle memory for crossing streets and not going forwards on them. WHAM! Six feet trail of blood, I lost a whole artery. Truck keeps on driving like it was nothing. I'm trying to figure out what happened, looking at the ground, and I'm making zombie noises when I try to pick myself up. That's weird. Well shit, I guess I'm about to die. At least my last words are going to be on record - so I think. What last words can't you fuck up with? Love, sure why not. "I love you all!", and then I think to myself that includes the truck. Fuck it. "I love you all!", so I sit there and wait what feels like 20 minutes. A lady was trying to help me and begging me to not try to move. I was apologizing for startling her. I didn't mean to give a grisly sight to some random stranger after all... Someone watching all that might think it's some kind of profound repentance at death's door... but frankly I don't think I've done a bad thing. My morality is incompatible with good and bad actions.

Fuck it. I got myself started, so here's how I love everybody. A free will agent acting as themselves and not circumstance isn't doing anything for a reason. Reason is circumstance, whether it's mental pathways built up over time like muscles in the arm or simply having something to gain or lose. Take away all of those things, give a clean slate, and all good and bad just melts away. Doing something with no reason to do it... I'm compelled to see that as involving some degree of love. But love would be circumstantial if it were a reason the action is done for itself, paradoxical even, so I've come to see it as this essence within us all that drives us to have souls that act within this world. If I build a sand castle to build a sand castle then it could be said it was made BY love. It's like the foundation of free will. Like if you love a person then you are fully present in your intention whether there's things to gain or lose. You can still do something randomly and happen to get a reward for it... or a punishment. In this sense "We were made to be." is the antithesis of Love. Aaaanyways...

...I spent a long time in the hospital. I think I got discharged in May. From there I recorded with a laptop, an SM57, a bluetooth speaker, Audacity, and an R2R I dug up for FL Studio 20. Some of it wasn't FL, I don't really remember what it was called. L something? It sucked. I programmed loops and I recorded them on my bluetooth speaker so I could cohese the sound of my laptop mic in my living room with the space of my living room. Every tiny little thing called for the utmost attention to detail, where I placed my hand would decide whether or not I'd feel sharp pain. I was on a lot of opiates. Dilaudid pills, gabapentin, asprin... Just enough to distract for a couple of hours. My favorite come-up song for opiates while I was in the hospital was Mojo Pin by Jeff Buckley. I feel like if I listened to Grace again I'd probably get HPPD for my opioid receptors. Anyways... after I recorded the thing I wanted nothing to do with it. It took me a year to sit down and accept it for what it was. Like best case it'd be "the best thing I never want to hear again". There's a place for that, somewhere.

Anyways I have no idea which name it's officially under. It's just hosted on my YouTube channel right now. I've been procrastinating on that kind of decision for a long time...