April 30th, 2020

Anonymous asked:
describe or explain 3 or 4 of the 5: quebec, your favorite VST(s), soap and
how to use it, the last sandwich you ate, a random song from your library

oh, this is a rich ask, a bounty of words to type ... thank you for sending it ... i just recovered from
a two hour period spent very, very close to falling asleep. i walked to a convenience store & bought
two bottles of coffee, but instead of drinking them, i let this happen ... the point being ... that i
must shake the dust bunnies from my head, & do this ask justice

okay, so i only get four at the most ... one of these has to get the axe ...
i guess i'll have to make a careful decision about that ...

the last sandwich i ate

it was a tuna sandwich ... with a slice of cheese included. microwaved a little ... i go crazy for tuna sandwiches,
they are a food i feel like i could eat a blaggle blablillion of. with diced hard-boiled eggs in the tuna ... oh baby!

my favorite VST(s)

i've never really messed with vsts much at all. one that i have messed with is "chipspeech", by the company plogue. it
is probably best well known for being used a bunch of times on oneohtrix point never's "garden of delete". it is like
... vocaloid, i guess! you type in the lines you want it to sing, then each midi note it receives is the next syllable

the most interesting thing i did with it was about thirty-four minutes long. i titled it "crazy". it was a live recording
of ableton live, where i had arbitrarily typed the first several lines of "king of carrot flowers part 1" into chipspeech.
i put delay & an arpeggiator midi effect on it, & started holding down keys while messing with the arpeggiation parameters.
it sounded totally crazy! nothing like speech at all ... it was like distended syllables unfurling expansively into a weird
bleepy soundscape that you could almost tell was made of voices ... i could share it, but ... i would like to rehost it
somewhere first, because it is on a bandcamp page that i am not so comfortable with anymore

now, i stand at a crossroads ... do i talk about the soap? or, to rephrase ... will i do one or both of the ones where i
describe music? because those are going to mess with me ... subjective music description really gets me, & one of
these is about an album that is very potent for me ... so they would be challenging, but each one might have fun &
fruitful results, if i can produce meaningful descriptions of them!

ok ... here is my decision. i will try to describe "quebec", by ween ... & i will describe soap. because the one about the
random song ... well, i have soooo many songs & there's a lot of them that i haven't listened to, & i think it might end up
kind of underwhelming ... i could reshuffle until i get an okay one, but then that undermines the randomness, & ... it
could be fun if i got the right song! but ... i don't know ... i will save my energy for quebec ...

soap, & how to use it

soap ... it cleans things by attracting oils to one side of its molecular structure, & water to the other side
... all the gross oils & grime mix with it, & they don't slulch back out, so you wash it off your hands & it takes
all the filth & detritus with it ... it also disrupts the oily cell membranes of pathogenic microorganisms,
killing them! that is very wonderful ... i love soap & all it does for me

what you do is you pour a little soup on your hand, & rub your palms together, & on the back of your hands, &
thoroughly interlace your fingers. make sure the soap is really worked into all the creases of your hands!
then you turn on the warm water & hold your hands in the stream. perform the same motions, to wash all
the soap back off ... make sure there are no bubbles left on your hands ... yes! good job ...

The 2003 album Quebec, by Ween.

okay ... so ... i really hope that i can at least approximate the ways this album makes me feel, & that i won't
have to chalk it all up to an unbridgeable rift, just a subjective sensation in my head that no one else can
understand ...i hope it is possible ... i know that, in the end, the degree to which a sincere subjective
description of the album would end up being word salad, is invariably high. & that will always be
upsetting ... but i can still try my best to describe it coherently

i must confess though that a chunk of the album's emotional heft for me is probably owed to several occasions
where i listened to it during my trip to new york in 2017 ... & what better represents an unbridgeable
rift than the arbitrary pairings of stimuli that end up producing nostalgia ... ? none of you can ever
have those experiences! ... i don't think that is 100% of it though!!!

one highlight of that nostalgia, though, is ... when we were finally leaving new york in late august,
& it was a melancholy feeling (& i was kind of shellshocked & afraid of being stuck in a car with them
for hours again), & i happened to listen to "captain" as we were driving at night along an indistinguishable
stretch of highway ... it is kind of corny how directly analogous the lyrics are to the situation described,
"turn around & take me home", but ... yes ...

okay .. so ...
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i KNOW exactly how this album makes me feel, & it is completely unlike any other feeling, & i could try
to put it into words, but of course it'd only be a bunch of nebulous poetry & it wouldn't convey!!! it's
inevitable!!! it's futile!!! ohhhh!!!!! i could go through & describe a bunch of little things about the
songs & maybe try to gesture at how they contribute to the total feeling, i guess ... but it is all futile!!!
futile!!! frustrating, futile ... but i will still do that i guess

"it's gonna be a long night" is maybe my least favorite song, but i do quite like it ... there is something
about the very start of the song, that riff ... before it gets into the more silly & cantankerous instrumentation,
those first few seconds strike a really ... peculiar feeling ... the way they sound very frantic but like you're
outside of it, watching from a distance, it feels ... frendly ... ? safe ...?

the lyrics have always made me picture a crazy muscly biker man who keeps obsessive tabs on public records of
real estate sales in his city, & literally any time someone moves to that city he immediately drives to their
house in a frenzy & storms in & just ... humorously ruins their life by being an intense crazy biker man
& compelling them to snort cocaine & stuff ...

i mean, that's kind of messed up, cocaine is very bad, it's just ... you know, how you can picture things with
a cartoonish veneer over them? ... or is that just a thought-terminating cliche that i'm using to brush over
how ... i'm deriving humor from something, but finding myself not entirely comfortable with it? ... or am i
just exhibiting too much sensitivity & really it's okay ... ? the act of forsaking the humor constitutes
either slashing through my cognitive dissonance, or being too touchy, i don't know which ... you're
watching sporadic & confused introspection happen right in front of you in realtime, everyone ...

the album as a whole has a noticeable recurring song structure where they open
with very strongly tone-defining lyrical sections, then go into these more
atmospheric & production-heavy passages, then back to a lyrical section ...

the production & songwriting in this song also contribute to the overall
unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

"zoloft" ... i like .. the garbled lyrics that are ironic relative to the rest of them, & i love the things
those voices are saying out of context ... as for all of the other songs, the production & songwriting
also contribute to the overall unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

"transdermal celebration" ... the lyrics are incredible & they feel like a reprise of themes in "polka
dot tail", from the mollusk ... maybe other songs that i'm forgetting about ... i feel like they were
both primarily written by ... the same person, but i could not tell you if it was dean or gene

it is like a beautiful, terrifying, overwhelming feeling of awareness of your mortality, insignificance*,
& your place in the cycle of life as a single organism ... the themes of mutation give off this harrowing
feeling, where it all goes beyond just being lost to generations of humans ... this person gets to see
across the breadth of time & realize that not even their sense of belonging to a species is real, they
see all of the species change in ways that scare them because they feel aware that they're just a particular
confluence of genomes, subject to change ... but as a person, they're attached to the things that make them
what they are ... all of the things we feel grounded by are constructions, nothing is permanent ...

*i personally think that deriving nothing but feelings of insignificance, from one's acknowledgment of
things like massive time scales, is unnecessarily pessimistic. but you get what i'm driving at ...

my favorite line in the song makes me feel very emotional, & i feel like it perfectly encapsulates
this feeling ...the last line in the last verse. "but where is the mutation that once told me it
was safe? i can't find him" ... the production & songwriting also contribute to the overall
unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

"among his tribe" oh my gawd everything about the song is so soft also the production & songwriting
contribute to the overall unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

"so many people in the neighborhood" feels so ... red & bulbous & rounded like a big melting gumdrop
... i love ... vague theme of ... domestic paranoia ... the production & songwriting also contribute
to the overall unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

"tried & true" ... okay i really love this song & also need to point out how ... this song is
played almost completely straight & has no jokes in it, except ... except ... in each chorus,
he says ... "could you smell my whole life" ... but pauses between "whole" & "life" ... so that
... it seems to double as a crass joke about anuses ... the way there is a single joke that
contrasts with the rest of the song in this way & it is formed solely out of the timing between
two words ... this makes me feel ... indescribable things ... the production & songwriting also
contribute to the overall unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

i love ... higher pitched singing in "happy colored marbles" a bunch i love that singing ... i
feel like im running out of endurance for this, i want to just post this answer ... maybe i should
take a break & come back ... also the production & songwriting of this song contribute to the
overall unique good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

"chocolate town" is a definite emotional high point, it reallllly makes me feel a certain way ...
it is another point where the loose themes of travel maybe also have cornily direct analogy for me
with the experience of going to new york ... but here there's way less direct lyrical comparison to
make, so it makes me feel sillier, grasping at straws ...but hey, my emotions have decided that the
song is emotional! whatever! that's just how it is! ... the production & songwriting also contribute
to the overall unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

i really like "the fucked jam" as a second occurrence of the joke in 'molly", from the
pod ... i really like the funny thing that these songs do ... the production & songwriting also
contribute to the overall unique & good feeling of the album in a frustratingly indescribable way

the end of "the argus" is so gorgeous ...

okay, i think that's all i want to type ... oh you meant the place in canada!!!
quebec is a predominantly french-speaking province in eastern canada with two
vibrant cities in its south, connected by the chemin du roy highway along th

May 23rd, 2020

Anonymous asked:
quebec soap vst anon. i did mean the album but i thought it would
have been funny if you just described the city :P this one's more
experiential... out of 3 or 4 of the 5, describe or explain: writing*,
observing insect behaviour**, a fear of heights, growth, choosing a
palette. *by choice: include lyrics **by choice: include bees

okay, let's see ... all of these feel more abstract, so i kind of filed this
ask away in my head for a while, until i felt more up to trying to answer it ...

i'm going to choose writing, fear of heights, growth, & choosing a palette

writing

your question seems to be implying preexisting works of writing, but i'm going
with the activity of writing! writing is very fun & good & ... oh, what's the
word ... releasing? relieving? expressing things, getting them out ...

i've always been kind of afraid of it, though ... even writing in private makes
me nervous, because i have trouble being private! this is actually what i typed
about on my phone last night, when i fell asleep without hitting the submit button.
the post said ...

it's so hard for me to be private ... i try quietly, privately writing about
something, in my moleskine notebook, that would make me have a heart
attack if i went into even the barest specifics here ... but i still feel this
need to say "i wrote about something that'd give me a heart attack if i
good night

it's like sometimes i need at least one person to know about every little thing i
do ... if i create anything, i'll always have that repressed desire to share it,
even if the explicit purpose of creating it is having a private space ...

but why is writing so scary? well, as an example, i think i've gotten over almost all
of my conversational anxiety. i don't fear becoming hated over the course of a conversation
too much. but that's because i feel like i've figured out the rules regarding conversations ...

with writing, there very explicitly are no rules! my persistent fear that i am actually repugnantly
detached & different from the entire rest of humanity is free to flourish into nervous fractals ...
& the less concrete & grounded a piece of writing is, the more abstract it is, the more liberties it
takes ... the worse it gets, the more pretentious & despicable & terrible i feel ... i think it's going
to kind of hurt to share this poem(?) i'm including with my new album, but i'm making myself do it ...

also, it's ... scary because i know there's nothing i could write that wouldn't have at least one person
in the world who would hate me for writing it, & i don't want them to see it ... or what if ... what if i
tipped the scales & wrote something that, factually, just factually, a majority of people would negatively
respond to ... ? even people who like me, even people i'm close with, even, even, aaahhh ...

this is just a reality you have to face about literally anything you ever express as a person, but ... for
writing in particular, it scares me ... i guess because writing is simultaneously so dynamic & so nonspecific

if i draw something, it's very dynamic, there's infinite possibilities on even a little ms paint canvas ...
but it sort of feels less dynamic than writing, because i have to rely on visual techniques to create it, even
if they're very basic. while with writing, i ... i have to rely on writing techniques, sure, but there's less
skill in the actual formation of letters. it feels like a totally level playing field, i can write anything i
want, & i feel like it leaves me with more room to naively prove that i'm juvenile & awful ...

i'm always afraid of toeing the line between the acceptably
egoistic nature of art & the repugnantly egotistical nature of art

also, a drawing is open to interpretation, like writing, but ... i can look at it & know exactly what i've
indisputably made ... words just feel like they can change so much more stochastically in other people's heads
once you've said them ... engaging with people in an artistic way, visually, feels safer to me than doing it
verbally, because words feel like a more direct connection to people's minds, that's what they're for ...

i feel bad for unloading nothing but fear here ...
but ... yes, these are my first impressions.
i think writing is good, though

a fear of heights

i think i do have a fear of heights ... i'm more afraid of
large bodies of water, but heights are pretty freaky ...

what exactly are people talking about when they say "a fear of heights", really ... ? not having a fear
of heights seems to me like an exception to the rule. a very standardized exception, but ... gosh, heights are
a very fundamental way that physical harm can be done to people! who wants to fall off a cliff & die? not me!
it seems like an instinctive fear that many people make a point of putting aside, of taming ... which is good!
if you can be safe in a high location, & not feel afraid of it, then you're a freer person!

growth

[i'm typing this one right now! i might add to the other sections, too ... i saved the post here
because i'm afraid of my laptop crashing & wiping all of this ... i guess this post itself is
experiencing growth, hehe. now i have to leave this placeholder text in, because i made a little joke in it]
(okay, i think the post is complete now ...)

growth, growth ... this is probably the richest of these topics. so big that i might end up not
having that much to say, unless i really spend a while mining myself for thoughts on growth ...

suffice to say, growth is just fantastic! getting older really is wonderful, aging is wonderful, it's so
exciting to see the previously unimaginable transformations you can go through in the course of a lifetime ...
it's easy to nihilistically portray a very minimized significance to everyone's lives, but from many
peoples' point of view they must get to go through this endless adventure of reevaluating the world &
themselves, in ways & through modes of thinking that did exist before them, but all of which they get
to discover, all of it gets to feel so alien to them! things just keep opening up & opening up, even
if it doesn't always feel like it ... even if you're very alone, it can be so rewarding to watch
yourself shift & change in response to what stimuli you have ... as long as you have faith that all
of that stimuli can be incorporated into positive transformation in some way! for a long time i expected
myself to never meaningfully grow, but i didn't realize i was in a prologue, i didn't realize all of the
things i disliked so much were pieces being set in place, & then, unexpectedly, i started growing!
i love growth, i love growth

choosing a palette

choosing a palette is great ... juxtaposing shades of different colors is
so expressive & fun! the possibilities are exponentially endless ...

lately i've been putting a lot of thought into what color my blog is! i've been slightly changing
it every once in a while. i've been deriving each color by finding shades that mean something to
me, & slightly lightning or darkening them by degrees that mean something to me ... or i mix them
by putting panes of shades over each other in an image editor & tweaking the opacity until i get
the balance i want ... then i might use that as the base for a new shade, etc.

June 24th, 2020

Anonymous asked:
talk about 3 or 4 of the 5: being out in the rain, some few or
someone else's favorite something(s), your local fauna,
architecture as a conversation, how you like to listen to music

hi! you're back for round three! i like these asks. thank you for sending them. i
am going to put them on a dedicated page on my website soon. i will call it "prompts"

okay, hmm, let's see ... i choose ... being out in the rain, my local
fauna, architecture as a conversation, & how i like to listen to music

being out in the rain

being out in the rain ... it feels like an underrated & underappreciated
activity! by me, at least. i can't really speak on whether people all over
the world are over or under rating this random action, hehe ...

i do generally love the rain. but sometimes if it's raining i use that to justify
not going on recreational walks! that's just me buying into my own proclivity to
stay in & not do stuff. it's a proclivity that i must always do my best to fight ...

rain, of all things, shouldn't dissuade me from going out & walking around!
walking in the rain under an umbrella can be so tranquil & soothing & special

also, going out in the rain without an umbrella! that's certainly something
i do even less than going out with an umbrella. but it can be great!

it can be distressing to be outside & uncovered when it starts raining, if i'm not
planning to get all clammy & wet. but if i accept getting soaked in rain, i don't
have to be worried, & it can be very fun! or i can go outside while it's already
raining, having planned from the outset to be soaked in rain ...

i feel like people typically don't want to get unpredictably rained on, which is
fair, but maybe it creates a self-reinforcing mindset! maybe sometimes i feel
worried about getting caught in the rain less because i personally dislike it
& more because everyone i've seen in that situation has reacted with frustration

i guess one thing worth noting is that i'm a bit more neurotic about my hair these
days. i'm more prone to think of what might happen to it if it's suddenly wet ...
but i'm getting better at styling it, so it's not that bad! & besides, it can be
good for it, & pretty in its own right. i guess i might be sort of worried if i
was in a situation where i couldn't be home for a while, though ...

oh, also! in support of umbrellas: maybe going on a walk with an umbrella & having
the rain framed as an omnipresent antagonist that you're just barely safe from can
give the walk a different emotional character that has its own value

my local fauna

this one grabbed me because i immediately wanted to talk about the strangest animal that i
see from time to time: armadillos! i live Around the middle of the, United States, & prior
to finding an armadillo in my yard a year or two ago, i absolutely would not have guessed
that their range extends here! i don't see them very often at all. it's always thrilling

the way they run is dopey & cute, & sometimes they'll amble right up to me because being safe under
their shells has made them cocky little animals ... i never touch them, though! they carry leprosy.

what else, what else ...

skunks! there's a street near my house that gets a lot of skunks alongside it in the
spring & summer. i think skunks are very cute, aside from ... well, their whole deal.
but the way they walk & run is dopey & cute too. they hobble around awkwardly

it's always fun to see a skunk from twenty feet away or so. it's sort of intriguing to know that a
dumb little furry creature has a ranged defense mechanism that truly means i don't want to go anywhere
near it. it's not ferocious, but it commands whatever immediate area it's wandering in ... you don't
see many animals like that! it sort of has the quality of a fictional animal someone would come up with

sometimes i hear coyotes screaming to each other in the distance

possums! it's always fun to see a possum fleeing across a moonlit street

raccoons! i once rounded a corner by a dumpster during a night walk, & startled a raccoon that
was sitting on top of the trash pile. it leaped to the ground & scampered into the woods ...

a raccoon once got trapped in a dumpster at my dad's work.
he placed a beam in the dumpster that it used to climb out

groundhogs ... i've seen groundhogs, it's indisputable. i've seen them.
groundhogs are animals here too. yes. deer. last month four deer
watched me from about thirty feet away, off the side of a nature
trail. i like when they make noises with their mouths & it's hell.

i'm pretty sure a generation or two of foxes have lived in a grove on the other side of the field by my
house for the decade i've lived here ... i don't see them much, probably less than once a year. in the
early 2010s i'd see them watching me from a hill sometimes ... this part is very sad, but we're sort of
afraid that one might have gotten tica, my chihuahua. we're still hoping that the situation resolves

cardinals, bluejays, mockingbirds, mourning doves,
robins, hawks, woodpeckers, geese, cranes, owls ...
one night i was on a walk & as i looked up from my phone a huge owl
gracefully took off from a handrail in front of me. it was beautiful

i tend to save my notable omegle chats in text files. so i ran a search on the laptop in my
living room, & my hunch was right. both of the men who talked about owls ... they're the same
person. i met him precisely twice. in february 2019, then again in may 2020. he didn't remember
me the second time. but he happened to talk about the owl outside his window in both conversations

architecture as a conversation

oh hey, i know i've heard this before ... did you quote this from the end of a song on
poe's "haunted"? or maybe house of leaves. they are conceptually overlapping works, by
siblings ... house of leaves seems more likely to me, it's just that it's been nearly a
decade since i've read any of it, so i have trouble remembering how much it delves into this ...

i feel like it also might have come up in blue balliett's children's mystery novel "the
wright 3", in reference to frank lloyd wright's robie house? that's definitely been more
than a decade, though ... that trilogy, "chasing vermeer", "the wright 3" & "the calder
game", had a huge effect on me growing up. i really love those books a lot ...

anyway, this is an interesting topic. i'm not sure how much i have to say on it. i
have general feelings that i'm sure other people have expounded upon better than i
can ... not that that's going to stop me, hehe. that'd be a dumb cop-out. it's never
good to say "aw, other people have probably already said words & stuff at some point
in the whole course of human history so i might as well never try to talk about anything ever"

ok, so ... architecture can be a conversation like any other art form, of course! buildings are like
big sculptures! except we apply special aesthetic standards to the exteriors of buildings ... they have
more standard forms than sculptures, cuz of their utilitarian concerns ... those forms are more familiar
than the varied forms of sculptures, so there are strong notions of what buildings should generally look like ...

&, well ... i think about it more in terms of interior spaces of buildings than exterior. so i
feel like an important aspect is that they deal with like ... feelings around "places", that are
kind of primal ... & being in places, & the exciting act of making places as art. it's so easy to
imprint on the particular qualities of a physical space, & i've always felt excited & fascinated
by the notion of having control over those particular qualities ...

& of course, there's the plus that works of architecture function as basic shelter!

this is what tad danielewski says at the end of that song:

"Communication is not just words; communication is architecture.
Because, of course, it is quite obvious that a house which
would be built without the sense... without that desire for
communication, would not look the way your house looks today."

there's a lot you could say about this, really ... i don't think i have anything to say about the explicit
communicative intent of an architect. it's interesting, but it feels more abstract, it's not something
i feel like i know anything about ... i bet there are worthwhile things to read about it somewhere ...

hmm, here's something that's sort of unrelated. i was thinking about it a few
days ago. the topic of having a conversation with art is reminding me of it ...

all of the value of art comes from the act of it being witnessed by humans, right?
& you could consider "the total amount that this work has been enjoyed" to be an
extant metric for any work, even if it's an impossible metric to actually quantify ...

because of that, i believe that when you love a work of art, you're not just an outsider
to it, witnessing its pre-existing greatness. you're actively interacting with it, making
it factually better than it previously was! because it has now been loved more than it
could have been loved before you discovered it. more value has been generated

how i like to listen to music

it's funny, i hardly seem to think "i'd like to hear this song/album right
now, so i'll play it" anymore ... certainly i do that sometimes, but my
music-listening has been so ... regimented, sort of, for years now!

i still don't feel exploratory enough about new music, but ... music i already know? hoo boy.
i'm always composing lists of albums based on rules & stuff, & listening to those lists. it's like
everything has to get its fair share of attention. it's kind of a silly notion of: "i can't indulge that bias
of only listening to things i've decided i like, or things that i'm curious about! what about all the other stuff?!"

albums feel so valuable as little packaged experiences that i'd never
have otherwise, & i feel like i need to have all of those experiences ...

that's just selecting albums to listen to, though ... what about when the things are actually
playing? ok, well, if i am doing literally anything with my eyes, or talking to anyone, or
thinking too hard about anything, it usually steals nearly all of my attention away from the music.
it's so easy to miss an entire album if i'm not making it my primary activity! sometimes i've done
this with an album & then criminally filed it away as something i'd "listened to", leaving it a blind spot ...

so, when i want to really pay attention to music, i usually pace back &
forth in my room. i can't sit or lie in one spot, that feels purgatorial

usually, on the first listen of an album, the lack of knowledge of exactly what to expect leaves me
feeling like i am taking haphazard steps forward in a pitch-black room. so i often get almost nothing
out of my first listens. then the second listen is usually fine. then the third one is complete, & great!

December 7th, 2020

Anonymous asked:
hello, its me, prompts anon. the usual, feel free to respond to 3 or
4 out of the 5. todays prompts are: any of the past prompts, answered
or unanswered. the albums cerulean & obsidian. your favorite songs
and favorite albums. your past few weeks and past few months.
who you think i might be and who youve known me to be.

hi, prompts anon! i got lazy with your last ask & never answered it. but i'm gonna make up for all that,
here & now! i'm gonna answer all the ones in this ask & the last ask. i sort of thought my laziness had
spelled the end of the prompts anon saga, but here we are. speaking of the prompts anon saga,
there's a fun development in that at the end of this post. don't skip ahead, though! : )

making comics

making comics always feels rewarding, because i never force it & it's not something i find
myself idly doing. the only time i make them is when i get an idea that i am sure will
work exclusively as a comic, & will take practically no illustrative skill. i think that is
a very good sweet spot, when it has to be visual but the barest depiction of it is enough

i love the nuance that can go into the poses & faces of stick figures. it's
good to make cute or silly stick figures. or stick figures for whom in their
pixelated blankness you can read deep, wordless exasperation regarding pee

wee tam & the big huge

i think i answered an ask about this album once! then i made my answer an rym
review. the kind where you don't click the checkbox, so it shows up on your
profile but not the album page. i could just copy & paste stuff from
that, but why not see if i can't think of some new things to say?

the lyrics to "puppies", "you get brighter", & "maya" have really resonated
with me for a long time. "music is so much less than that you are"

"don't imagine that the pretty flower can sing a song when the sun makes its
sap to rise. one by one the chorus swells, til it's a mighty noise. are you sure
that it's not a silence?" this year the lyrics to "douglas traherne harding,"
"ducks on a pond," & "lordly nightshade" really grew on me too

did you know that shortly after this album, the incredible string band became
scientologists? & it actually had a creative effect on their music? & it coincided
with a gradual decline in the critical reception of their albums? goofy

what tea do i like?

my favorite tea is definitely blueberry. i like peppermint too. & earl grey, & peach. i had
peppermint tea in new york. i once had a pack of ginkgo biloba tea. i think i spuriously
ordered it from the internet because i read it helps with mental acuity, & that interested
me because i thought i was going insane. it tasted funny. i'd call it a "grandma taste," but
among whatever else i would call "grandma tastes," it was far from the most palatable

there's gotta be more tea flavors that i like! let me dig up my ancient
spreadsheet that i made to keep track of what flavors of tea i had
tried mixed with each other ... green! black cherry! raspberry!

my least favorite is cinnamon apple spice. i can hardly stand it. i once mixed it
with bengal spice & that was by far the worst combination i ever tried, i actually
couldn't make myself drink it. i think i actually mixed it with cola to try to
make it bearable? & it didn't work. so i spitefully poured it down the sink

things that are no longer in my room

my dad once bought me a huge framed poster of a guy fawkes mask for my birthday. no further
explanation needed! it's still technically in my room, just stuffed under my bed. let me dig
it out so i can remember what it says. [digging out break] it says "freedom forever"

uhhh gosh i'm really struggling to think of anything else. does my room just endlessly accumulate
trinkets like a black hole? around april i lit a scented candle & listened to a nurse with wound
song, & it's a very nice memory that i like a lot. it was "rock n roll station lost bottle mix."
that candle ran out, so it's not in here anymore. i want another scented candle ... my
room had this like metaphysical coziness to it then that it sort of lacks now, i
guess because spending all my time in here was still a fresh new thing

when the hallway flooded we had to temporarily put a fake christmas tree in my room. maybe you
remember that! i took a selfie with the tree in the background. that's not in here anymore

uhh ... a framed picture of me as a baby in front of an american flag. a framed
poster advertising me as a seven-year-old comedian opening at a small show for
chris ingle of a band called band never shout never, which now has a wikipedia
page. me being a seven-year-old comedian was a whole thing that my dad
orchestrated for a while, i've probably talked about it on here a few times

a few hours ago i mercifully escorted a brown recluse
spider out of my room. so that's not in my room anymore

i bought a guy

i bought a string puppet on ebay! he's a bootleg noddy puppet. i like to look for good pictures of toys on
ebay, & at first he was just a picture i used as my icon for a while. during that time i named him "silly."
eventually i realized, hey! i got this icon off ebay! i could actually buy this puppet i've grown so familiar
with as my icon! i got really fixated on that. so i did buy him. i really do regret it a bit, it was like
sixty dollars. i feel stupid & reckless for throwing that much money at a puppet. i felt real bad for
a while after i placed the order, a very weird, chasmic, disproportionate sense of regret & dread. but
it passed. so umm yes it was dumb & too expensive but it's a silly interesting artifact to have at least

the albums cerulean & obsidian

i need to listen to cerulean more! & i haven't even heard romaplasm. yes though obsidian is one
of my favorite albums! the lyrics are despondent, vulnerable, cruel, fearful, desirous, regretful,
cruel ... the production is so physical. clattery, crunchy, crackly. the simultaneous slickness
& dreariness is like watching the rain from a very cozy modern vehicle, or a coffee shop

the abrupt sidetrack into ambiance with steam & clacking rocks in "no eyes", then a burst of
noise that's mixed like a boa constrictor made of igneous rock wrapping around your head ...
wow! the part in "no past lives" where the droning synthesizers briefly detune a little!
cool! "no past lives" makes me picture something like a thunderstorm in fast-forward

my favorite songs & favorite albums

i'm gonna go down my favorite songs playlist & type quips when they
come. this is going to be twenty times longer than the other sections

"you" reminds me of the musician orangy, i think someone who knew him showed me the
song indirectly. (that person might"ve also shown me "then it happened"). & i think
i once saw a comment on his music that compared one of his songs to bibio

the lady who showed me "i'm god" really liked "you." she was
cruel & manipulative. thanks for showing me "i'm god" though! ok

my old friend max who i fell out of contact with showed me "lawn knives" in 2014. i was enamored
with it for a long time. it wouldn't be until 2017 that i'd listen to the rest of bodysongs & discover
one of my favorite albums ever. he showed me "sunny day" too that one's sooo happy! &
"here's the thing"! & "deep deep"! & "air war"! & "my sweet prince"! &
"domestic life"! & placebo's "running up that hill" cover!

i first heard "small car big wheels" on a memorable day where i tried to retrieve an umbrella i left
in a cab. i went to their office, which was in a very weird, haunting apartment complex. the suite
ominously turned out to be empty. it turned out they'd moved a few buildings over, the google
listing hadn't updated. i went over & met the owner of the company & shook his hand.
they had a very skeletal setup, tons of stacked cases of bottled water & the owners'
kids playing in the other room. i didn't get my umbrella back

then i took an extremely overcast dreary cab ride to the coffee shop, sat by a warm lamp, & heard small
car big wheels on the p.a. i desperately recorded the last twenty seconds on my phone & posted it on
tumblr, asking if anyone could identify it. someone shazam'd it for me. thanks! i wish the rest of
the album was as good. but it's like twenty times better than whatever the second best song is

"sir bodsworth rugglesby iii" is also better than most of the other songs on its album to an insane degree.
it's so loopy & dopey & cartoon & silly. it feels kind of like a ween song. my friend nik showed it to me
when he played the album during our album listening. for a long time i didn't notice the little jingle
bells melody at the end of "the beekeeper's daughter." i don't have much music taste crossover with
my brother but he really liked "pork roll egg & cheese" the first time he overheard me listening to it

i can't listen to "wool in the wash" without remembering an old post that i doubt anyone remembers but
i'm disproportionately embarrassed of it? it just never quite goes away. i posted the song & said i
liked the usage of pan flutes in it. but there are no pan flutes? i don't know why i said that. it
was like i had earnestly tricked myself into thinking there were pan flutes in it. why?

"eros & apollo" makes me fifteen in a van on gravel in an alleyway at night. "flashing lights" makes me
nine in a mall. "it's unanimous" has an extremely good dr777-esque music video. "ignorance is bliss" has
a fan-made flash music video from the mid-2000s. it nested in my brain until 2019 when i realized
how freaking good the song is. "stray here with you" has an absurdly good music video too!

the synths that come in a few minutes into "meme generator" make me feel something indescribable it's
like tragic austerity but that makes it sound sadder than it really is, there's maybe silliness in it too

when i was playing music during the drive to the state park with dawn & ezra for my birthday in
2019, i played "wondering" & everyone, just purely coincidentally, happened to stop talking. i got
all quietly nervous & guilty, as if something terrible had happened in one of their lives with the
song playing, or something like that, making it very inconvenient that i happened to pick it.
everything was actually ok, & the reason i felt that way was that in my last experience of
a prolonged car ride with two people i got very accustomed to everything being friendly
& casual until i tripped over a very innocuous topic or joke that made everything stop
dead in its tracks, the atmosphere completely changed & everything was bad for a while

when we were driving around the city that the state park is in, dawn played "everybody
wants to be famous." it was my first exposure to it. it's a very distinct memory because
the rental car had a good stereo & the bass in that album is so unique & good

i once showed "o superman" to the mean lady from before & it made her
cry. it's probably made me cry before too. when love is gooone : (

i once had a really good time walking around in the woods near a nature trail listening to "the
frolic." everything felt bright & golden. the repetition of the guitar & the slow, patient way
he delivers the lines, it felt like everything was frozen in amber & if i just kept walking
around listening to that song then i would never die & the sun would never expand

"chocolate town" makes me want to cry in a way i can't begin to describe. the demo version from
caesar hits me in its own way too. "roy g biv" is a children's song about the order of the colors
that can make me emotional in the same way as cows eating grass. "you'll never see a unicorn.
but you'll see a rainbow. & inside every rainbow is the spectrum of light." i reviewed "here
comes science!" too, i expressed how by writing songs that were so cheerful while
explaining things in such flat educational terms, it seemed to accidentally
communicate a very affecting naturalistic love for everything

"small red boy" & "wrinklecarver" are next to each
other because both of them can make me want to scream

i have a lot of feelings about "transdermal celebration" but i already talked about
quebec in an earlier prompt. i'll reiterate that it's like. sublimity. seeing that
nothing is really concrete. being fearfully & beautifully overwhelmed by that.
peering a million years into the future, humanity itself is unrecognizable. you're
a permutation of dna like everything else. the human genome changing slowly

"dayzed inn daydreams" feels like a stillborn fetus who is now a spirit temporarily
aware of the experience of reincarnation, accepting the brief flash-in-the-pan
life they just experienced in a very humble way & waiting to be reborn

the snare in "do your best" is like a 1:1 audio translation of the experience of staring at white streetlights.
it's like. brain: off. instant entrancement. i fall asleep to it a lot. sometimes i fall asleep to "push the
sky away." there was a week or so that i would lie in bed muttering the lyrics to "black ship in the
underworld" a lot. another very good snare is the one near the end of "changeling." i love
when it just won't stop hitting. i wish it'd go on for like thirty seconds. it's so airy. like
staring off the side of a big bridge at distant lights behind a treeline at night

the strings in "cloudbusting" feel so quaint & harmless. i feel like them. the
bad plus' cover of "comfortably numb" makes me want to cry i think it's
far better than the original maybe just 'cause it lets me extract the
emotions without them feeling boomer-smeared haha. clay
showed me "shing kee" a few months ago thank you!!!!!

you can't imagine how much a part of my being "the ghosts are greedy" became three years ago. i adore
the abrupt transition in the first verse of "oh! you pretty things" from cozy domestic sweetness to
nightmarish apocalyptic imagery. umm. len's cover of "kids in america." i've made like seven
posts about this song for some reason. i'm sick of repeating it! i'll add that it is very
different from their other music, to a comical extent. a guy named aaron showed
me "summer on a solitary beach" & "a little at a time" recently. they're both
very great, i'm addicted to the latter. htathtanakxkxkssthaanskxs

i got into david bowie for two reasons. the first is that i heard midge ure's cover of "the man who
sold the world" & thought that was david bowie. the second is that i listened to "diamond dolls"
by chipmunks on 16 speed & thought they were saying "diamond dogs." so i was like. oh this
must be that bowie song. it's very nice. i'd like to hear more music by the guy who wrote this!

"happy colored marbles" is so cute i love when the ween with the high voice does the high voice.
my neighbor jimi once told me that he really likes the first justice album. except "stress," he can't
stand that song. i first heard "aquarium" on the loading screen when joining a darkrp server.
did you know the freaky aliens in the music video for DyE's "Fantasy" are a metaphor for

i played "dear betty baby" while we cooked hot dogs in the dark at the state park. the bluetooth speaker
was hanging from a shepherd's hook. i own the bluetooth speaker now. its volume buttons are a big plus
sign above a big minus sign. the minus sign is vertical. dawn said they had to cover the buttons in
sharpie because they resembled a cross & their roommate couldn't handle seeing crosses

"i choose you" & "stay by me" are songs i found by their being sampled by vaervaf. those vaervaf songs are
themselves two of my favorite songs ... i took skidtooth & weaveknee off my favorite albums list, scrubbed
my queue of songs from them, & unlisted the songs & albums i uploaded to youtube. just for myself,
because i'm sick of having my life minorly intersect with that guy's! i needed to express that to
myself symbolically. "endangered edison" & "amen break & friends" are just too beautiful though

once i was putting strawberry cream cheese spread on a bagel & i started thinking about the lyrics to
"all waters" & almost cried. i love when kate bush shrieks "I LOVE LIFE" in "pulling out the pin,"
that makes me emotional. i'm in love with the drastic change-up at 1:56 in "fly trapped in a jar."
dawn showed me "damn good times" they said it reminded them of me csause ive got ants in
my pants & i'm gonna dance! i first heard "enjoy the silence" in a mall, i was really drawn
to it because i thought his normal voice sounded like the second portion of eccojam a3. i
first heard "who could win a rabbit" in ... everymanhybrid, a slender man youtube series

i love the weird character portrait in "the electrocutioner," it's like it takes place in a setting
where the execution of criminals is a flashy public spectacle & the beloved spunky lady appointed
to carry it out is this lady? then there's a really affecting vignette where she goes home & is
just lonely & depressed. "prayer to god" is also an in-character song. it ironically portrays
an incredibly bitter, entitled man. i really like it. mmuppet face "tiny paws buyry un the dirt"!

i m running out of energy. "we dont control the controls" while i wait for the school bus ninth
grade. "ruined lives" second 0pn song i ever heard first is "sleep dealer" in a weird ms paint shrek
animation called shrekz day off sad. i love the game Off. ween molly purposefully annoying
& keeps pretending the song is over then it starts again funny i love it & they do it in
"the fucked jam" entire playlist bookended by songs from silverwilkinson by bibio

i have a text file of songs that i am considering adding to the playlist but
haven't decided on yet. here are the songs that are currently in the text file:

ariel pink - alisa
the corrs - dreams
owl city - good time
sun araw - out of town
ween - ambrosia parsley
justice - tthhee ppaarrttyy
radiohead - karma police
gigi d'agostino - the riddle
alex cameron - she's mine
danny brown - ain't it funny
justin bieber - eenie meenie
sacred tapestry - transmigration
ryuichi sakamoto - disintegration
nick cave & the bad seeds - i need you
david byrne & brian eno - strange overtones
the flaming lips - ego tripping at the gates of hell

bye

my past few weeks & past few months

the semester is over for me. i'm having trouble remembering much. i lost a dog & gained a dog. i
started existing mostly in my room. i released two albums. i found a lot of good music. i sort
of completely overhauled myself-expression. i put a lot of work into kind of centralizing &
standardizing my online presence. & kind of existing online a lot less, inversely. this year
has been weird. pivotal. anxious euphoria. euphoric anxiety. i feel so much more sane

prompts anon's identity

oh, you're casey! no doubt about it : ) i've known for months. you mentioned in one
of your letters a while back about how your brother said a performance space is way
different without all the people? then you obliquely mentioned it in an ask! hi casey