Monthly Archives: November 2013

__Vergence

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I was having a bit of a discussion with my girlfriend about the Zelda timelines. She now has the unspeakable pleasure of trying out the new Zelda game called A Link Between Worlds. She can’t express enough how happy she is that Link is once again left-handed. Apparently, this installment takes place after the events in A Link to the Past have transpired. There’s a whole other version of Hyrule that Link can now explore called Lorule. From how she’s described it so far, I immediately recalled to mind the Twilight Realm from Twilight Princess. Those who have played each game will have to forgive my ignorance on that part since I haven’t seen Lorule for myself yet.

Anyways. Timelines. That’s what this is about.

We’ve all wondered about how things would be different if things were, well, different. What if the JFK or Abraham Lincoln assassinations were prevented, if the process of colonizing the new world were handled much, much differently, if Rome never fell, if the impact from the meteor that wiped out most of the dinosaurs was much less severe (or never occurred at all), if our crush from 8th grade actually liked us back instead of the idiot they ended up dating instead, that sort of thing?

In this case, even though the Twilight Realm apparently lacked a triforce of its own, what if they were one-and-the-same place, only within different timelines? As my girlfriend put it, the Twilight Realm could, perhaps, be Lorule in an alternate timeline where the hero of time fails his quest and the triforce is taken. Nintendo would have to go to some lengths to back that up (also likely pissing off a lot of devoted fans in the process), but still, it’s not inconceivable to pull off.

Then, I was watching my friend play Call of Duty Ghosts. She actually gave the campaign mode a try. I know, right? Who does that?? (secretly, all of us first person shooter fans do at one time or another, but it’s more fun to be hypocritical). Anyways, the opening bits… How incredibly Red Dawn-like. Mind you, it’s probably unfair to say that. Just about any story nowadays that involves America crumbling at the hands of some new attack by one random (targeted), foreign power or other has the unfair disadvantage of being likened unto one of the biggest box office remakes on that very same thematic basis in recent memory, (that being Red Dawn, in case I wasn’t clear). Doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the first or if it won’t be the last because, for now, it’s the definitive point of reference.
More importantly, whether it be Red Dawn, COD Ghosts, or any other WWIII/apocalyptic tale, it always involves events which play on our ability to envision it actually happening. Like, for real. Some of us might not have much of a hard time imagining what being an elf or dwarf hunting an orc party halfway across Middle Earth might be like, but when it comes to events which could very well take place in our own actual backyards at any moment, well… It makes for a far less imaginative exercise than it does a drill rehearsal.
But no matter, because in both Red Dawn and COD Ghosts, as well as a myriad of others, those events simply have not happened. You can throw a “yet” at the end of that if you want to or not, but the point is that it’s far from inconceivable that they perhaps could happen.
Now here’s where I come in. As an adherent to my own bastardized take on the Multiple Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics and, by extension, parallel universes, I’m already convinced that such events have already taken place. In fact, they’re happening right now. Continually, even. If there are an infinite number of universes within a larger multiverse structure within which alternate timelines might exist (and to be clear, there might not be) then, in theory, events such as those shown in Red Dawn are happening an infinite number of times. Endlessly. All of the time.
Equally true is that another requirement of the premise of infinite universes is that there would also be an infinite number of timelines where everything is made out of candy, and others where trees sound like Quagmire from Family Guy when they communicate with one another, and still others where gravity worked in reverse yet nothing appeared to be even remotely different (owing, of course, to the divine providence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as administered by his noodly appendages, hallelujah). All things, regardless of how improbable, are possible.
For a good example of this, consider the “technical” explanation of the Infinite Improbability Drive in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or simply enjoy some lul-filled goodness here.

I have no difficulty seeing how any given choice we could make or any fork in the road could eventually lead to the kind of resulting, diverging timelines that could spell the difference between the rise or fall of entire empires, given enough time, but what about converging timelines? Why is it that, once separated from a possible outcome that failed to be, we can never visit (any of) the resulting parallel universe(s) that came into existence at that exact moment?

Can you imagine the decoherence? Overlayed, or rather, enmeshed within the fabric of the reality that is presently happening, there suddenly appeared a secondary reality, playing along at the very same time. It might look like two movies playing on the same tv at the same time if the one on top was set to half transparency, but how would one function within it an environment like that if it couldn’t just be turned off when it got too confusing?

Say that someone approaches you and asks you a question in both, only, in one version, they ask you one thing, and in the other, they ask you something completely different? If you’re experiencing both at the same time, how would you respond? Would your response be appropriate for both, or might you also happen to see yourself responding in a different manner along side the self you happen to be fully self-awareness of? (The whole self version 1, self version 1.1, self version 1.2, etc. thing is a whole other nutshell to crack into another time).

And that’s just considering two timelines intertwined. Imagining being able to perceive of thousands simultaneously (and knowing that even that amount is on the pathetically low end of godhood relative to a truly infinite number).

Anyways, for an idea of what I envision for the characters in Elyen, navigating between parallel universes, filtering between realities, and converging or diverging between timeline events is absolutely and ridiculously mundane for them. It’s more a matter of practicality, in the same way that tools are useful for serving a functional requirement or meeting some inherent need.

Think of it this way: In a certain light, the fact that we humans drive cars to get to and from work would be considered the working of immensely powerful magic in the eyes of certain primitive societies. Yet it ain’t no thing to us, really. By the same token, perhaps a sufficiently advanced version of ourselves might have access to the means to traverse the (or a) multiverse (who’s to say there can only be one multiverse, hmm?) and yet regard it as being equally normal and unexciting. Boring, even.

Perhaps a civilization like that, if it might be called a civilization at all, would be glad to have a consciousness that consists of a single, unstoppable “now”, an unknown future, and an unchangeable past. In all likelihood, they’d regard such quaint notions as an absurd oversimplification, perhaps even a blatant fallacy when compared to the real truth of the matter of time, but so what? For all we know, they could envy the bliss that comes with our potentially remarkable ignorance.

Over Committing

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At this point, I feel almost perfectly well adjusted for the level of online social involvement I’ve come to take on lately. My Youtube Channel went from having a dozen or so views a couple weeks ago without much change in the better part of the last two years to now having over a hundred, most of that accumulated within a period of two days not long ago. Similarly, the latest content I submitted to ReverbNation (same as the most recent material uploaded to Youtube) has apparently netted me a 7th place ranking in a local folk top ten chart, though I have no idea why. I honestly don’t see how the recordings I’ve entered come even close to the quality, calibre and level of talent presented by and featured in songs submitted by other local artists, but here we are.

I haven’t had a twitter account for more than a week, and already a handful of people (>1 a day joining so far) have started following. Some are interested facebook friends, but a few more are complete internet strangers.

Then there’s this wordpress blog. Already, perfect strangers have happened upon this lowly page and lent their support in kind little ways, and I very much appreciate it. It is my hope to see these efforts continue to reach an ever-widening readership/fan base (the latter in terms of the musical endeavours), and for the scaffolding for the over-arching project, Elyen, to start coming together.

I want to have more than just idle thoughts and words to share. I want to set your imaginations on fire. [Edit: in a joyful way that could be wholesomely inspiring]

In good time. For now, thank you to those who have shown an interest in these infancy stages of my development as a writer and artist. As always, I will be sure to keep you updated the moment any new written or musical content is ready to share. In the meantime, I’m bracing myself for an expansion and the efforts involved in committing to greater responsibilities in the social arena.

Addendum: Apparently, I dropped down to the number 8 slot on the RN local folk chart upon my last check lol Go listen!(?) Like!(?) Fan me!(?)     …too early? lol yeah, probably. I’ll try again down the road when I have something more substantial worth cheering on. Cheers 🙂

Guilt Complex

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It was wonderful waking up to the sight of snow drifting down in button-sized composites of delicate flakes and frozen nodes just outside my window this morning. Couldn’t help staring for awhile at the soothing work nature was making of the increasingly whitening backdrop. An evolving canvas or tapestry affected by the forces of chaos applied to our most precious, life-dependent substance at lesser thermal energy levels than there were even just a week ago.

It got me thinking. Why do we live our lives as though snow is an inconvenience? What is it about our day to day lives, so removed from the natural order of things, that causes us to stress and fret once a good bit of snow gets dropped on us?

Sure, some of us love this season, sometimes specifically for the snow itself. But more than a few of us find all the added bulky layers that we’re required to wear to maintain our warmth outdoors to be obnoxiously cumbersome. Hazardous driving conditions also raise more than a few drivers’ blood pressures this time of year. Getting to and from work via delayed transit services plagued by traffic congestion adjusting for the influx of snow on the roads is also a sore point for many commuters. My personal pet peeve is arriving at my destination after a good long walk with snow caked on my coats that I can’t ever fully shake off, knowing it will melt while I’m preoccupied, and that I’ll likely be wearing damp layers for the return trip home.

Big deal.

No, there’s something strangely off about the fact that this is a recurring natural phenomenon that we seem to be so ill adjusted for. And, more often than not, our attitudes about it tend to suck as well. I don’t know what ought to be different, but perhaps this time of year would be much more enjoyable if there wasn’t so much stress over getting to and from work. Heck, what if taking a routine “snow day” off from work was encouraged, even here in Canada? [or especially because of being here in Canada. Why couldn’t it be a normal and even celebrated part of our culture?]

Just a thought. One might have nothing to do with the other, though I am inclined to believe that a more laissez-faire social work ethic and attitude is healthier for those doing the work. Makes me wonder if life in general would be improved in a similar way.

Don’t get me wrong, as it is, it’s good that we have regulations and standards and expectations. Work place safety practices in the last few decades, for example, have prevented an immense number of unnecessary workplace related injuries from occurring in the first place.

However good regulation (and however detrimental deregulation) may be for the way things are now, I am inclined to believe that a more preferable society is one that never needed regulating in the first place.

I’m thinking of society and culture less driven by consumerism and material possession. What would that change? Less demand for stuff and things = less production, less maintenance, less servicing = less resource extraction and less environmental destruction.

What would we be filling our time up with instead? What other pursuits would be shaping our values if not the accruement of wealth, power and material possession? Who knows, but I’m willing to bet that, whatever they are, they’ll be a lot more natural and spontaneous and a whole heck of a lot less dependent on the enforcement and coercion of top-down regulations.

But how can I possibly cry out against materialism and consumerism? Isn’t the roof over my head, which I did not construct, nor did I inherit from the efforts of family members in the past who did, a product of materialism itself? Granted, one created out of supposed necessity, but still… the materials had to be produced. To do so, they had to be source fed from natural resources. All kinds of them.

This is no surprise in and of itself, but in the name of sustainability, can every single member of the human population, divided up into some reasonable grouping number (three residents, in the case for where I live) per dwelling, be afforded the same kind of housing accommodations that I enjoy without bleeding the planet dry of one resource or another used in the making of this home? Or without leaving an irreversible, critical collective footprint on the planet, be it carbon, toxins, sheer physical presence, or other means?

If the answer is no, then I concede that I have what I have at the expense of others never being able to enjoy the same. And not even just others now, but more so for future generations.

There are many who live in far nicer homes. If my level of housing luxury is not sustainable for everyone to have, then all the more so for those who have it even better. But perhaps I am much higher up in the luxurity of housing arrangements than I imagine that I am, so maybe there is far more onus on me to make changes before expecting to see it happen elsewhere first. Something for me to think about.

Or what about my laptop? Spent ~$400 to buy it, which was all of my banked vacation payout plus most of a paycheck two summers ago. Without it, and computers I’ve owned before it, I wouldn’t have met my girlfriend. I wouldn’t have a youtube channel. I wouldn’t have a way to find out about things mainstream news outlets don’t like to report about. I wouldn’t have ready access to excellent wallpapers on demand (mainly Earthporn, though that’s probably what real life is for, in more ways than one).

How much of my laptop was made from recycled parts? The tv in the living room that I’m sitting in, what about it? The coffee table, the sofa and arm chair, my guitar, all the dvds and video games, all of it. The fact that, collectively, my roommates and I own all of that which we do doesn’t seem like any big deal. It seems normal, heck perhaps even sub-par by the standards of more than a few neighbours we cross paths with from time to time.

But the vast majority of all that we have came to be through material manufacturing plants and factories, and the majority of the materials they used to do so came from virgin natural resources. So, to do the maths, if everyone on the planet owned the same amount of the same things as I do… we’d be screwed.

I hope I’m wrong about those last two statements, but I doubt that I am.

In a way, I should be morbidly grateful for the obscenely poor in the most under-developed, high population countries of the world. But that strikes me as an awful thing to be thankful for, innit? Others suffering and held down so that I might enjoy my level of comforts? That’s wrong on so many levels.

I want to experience more than just guilt. Guilt is a terrible, toxic, and more importantly, a wasted emotion. Guilt helps to change little or nothing. Guilt might lead to obligation, and obligation easily leads to resentment. I want to experience a genuine change of heart. I want to awaken to the belief that it is more desirable to live in a home that causes virtually no more harm to the environment than a bird’s nest or bee’s hive does (at best), or a beaver’s dam does (at worst).

There are Earthships, Hobbit/low-impact woodland homes, and then there’s these guys here I’m curious about now too:

http://sourceable.net/eco-friendly-homes-amongst-trees/
[Images no longer visible at this link, but are visible here:
https://mymodernmet.com/konrad-wojcik-primeval-symbiosis-single-pole-house/%5D

I want to fall right in love with something like this. More importantly, I want to believe that it wouldn’t just be some half baked fantasy. I want to believe that there’s a real opportunity to change what I’m doing, how I’m living, going from the environmental impact I’m currently making to one that might actually give back for once. I want to feel proud of the way I live.

Infectious Ideas

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So, as part of the thematic foundation for The Story I am working on, I keep rolling over the ideas of death, life, reincarnation and other various afterlife-related thoughts. Here’s the thing: Elyen, the story, focuses very heavily on multiple universes. That’s key. Couple that with my fascination for:

1) anything to do with FTL phenomena,

2) the impending technological Singularity/birth of smarter-than-human AI,

3) quantum computing,

4) evolution,

5) chaos/entropy vs order and control, and

6) the relative nature of time/eternal vs temporal phenomena

[Edit: 7) the wonder of biology]

…and we get an incredibly rich mixture of concepts from out of which can emerge any number of plausible philosophies, including those along the death-is-only-the-beginning line of reasoning.

To give a type of example — and just to be clear, as abstract, pseudo-technical and intellectual-sounding as these concepts and my particular take on them (including the following example) may sound, I have absolutely zero factual proof that any of what I have to conjecture is actually valid — think about the following event:

You’re walking down the street, on the sidewalk of course, and you come up to an intersection. It’s a busy and bustling city, so there are traffic lights and such to direct the flow of vehicles and pedestrians safely in turns. You wait for your right to proceed across the street. Once the light changes, you begin to do so. Suddenly, a vehicle approaches heading directly towards you from your left side on, moving dangerously fast and showing no signs of stopping.

In any number of universes, you could be distracted at that moment. You could be listening to your ipod with the headphone volume cranked up. You could have initiated your crossing a few seconds earlier or later (depending on your proclivity towards j-walking or not paying attention right away when the light changes, for example). Others could be crossing with you, walking faster or slower. Road conditions might be slippery. The exact conditions could have been anything. This is just one time that you happen to find yourself crossing one particular street out of potentially hundreds, maybe even thousands of times crossing the very same street.

What happens? Theoretically, everything. But only one possible outcome will ever actually be realized by you, personally. What that is remains utterly unknown until it happens. Obviously, certain possibilities appear to be incredibly more probable than others, but there’s still always a statistical chance of experiencing a fluke. More to the point, let me ask you something: Have you ever had a close call? Ever find yourself in a situation very much like this? Nearly struck by a vehicle who’s driver failed to slow down and come to a stop or swerve out of your path as you were about to cross? Ever actually been struck in a situation like that?

Ever die from a collision like that? Or at all?

What kind of question is that? I’ll tell you. In my view, I actually do seriously question how life and death works sometimes. I do believe death can visit us all, perhaps at any moment if it’s our time, but I do also acknowledge that I could be wrong about that. Yes, I see the graveyards filled with the bodies of those for whom death has inescapably brought about the end of their physical lives. Many countless people who once lived no longer do, but I don’t believe that things are nearly as cut and dry as they may appear to be.

A time or two, I have experienced a close call, as with the above example. In these moments, I feel a rush of fear and excitement, the tell tale fight-or-flight reactions brought about by a surge of adrenaline. Again, I have no proof of this, but I’ve come to suspect that there’s more, much more to that feeling than simple physical responses.

I believe in parallel universes, as stated already. In a vast number of those universes, I died. And in those brief moments, I believe that I’ve felt it. At least, other versions of me (including yours truly) did.

Here’s the thing: all matter can theoretically exist in a wave-particle duality. What we see around us are atoms and molecules that have been “collapsed”. As in, if a brick is a brick when we look at it now, it’s still going to be a brick if we look away, and still going to be a brick when we look back a short time later. There’s exceedingly little possibility that the brick might spontaneously become a puddle of water, or a small animal, or any other truly non-brick thing without some interacting conversion process affecting it first. The substance it’s made of is fixed, and once it is fixed, it won’t spontaneously unfix and refix as something else (presumably).

When it comes to the future, however, the unknown of events which are yet to be, it works kind of like this: In front of you is a picture. It’s really blurry. However, the longer you look at it for, the clearer it gets. If you look at the picture long enough, and if the clear picture is of something you recognize, then, in all likelihood, you will eventually identify it before long. However, while the picture is blurry and still of something as-of-yet unknown, it might as well be a blurry picture of anything.

So what if it really was a picture of anything? What if the blurry picture was a composite of thousands of differing, but perhaps similar, images, all morphed into one? However, as it becomes clearer, the number of pictures from which it is comprised begins to drop down from thousands, to hundreds, to tens, to a few, until eventually, finally, just one.

What if that is how the future works? Full of possibilities counter-weighted with probabilities, and as we near each successive, seemingly instantaneous moment, each new frame or slice of unfolding events, each new “now”, the picture unfolds revealing it’s singular clarity, but not without first having whittled down the possible other outcomes which might have been instead.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, in a multiverse where the unfolding events involve a street, a pedestrian, and a car failing to stop at their red light all brought together, the “pictures of the future” involve all the possibilities mentioned above (distraction, slippery conditions, loud music, etc.) and many, many more besides. However, the way that the entirety of the events actually plays out can only involve one fixed, final, irrevocable outcome for someone experiencing them.

Per universe.

My argument is that similar, nearby universes played out similar events and arrived at slightly — or perhaps greatly — differing outcomes. Perhaps countless numbers of them.

In any number of those outcomes, for those of us who are alive now and reading this and able to relate to the experience of a close call event like in the example above, is it really all that much of a stretch to believe that we’ve died in some of them? To press the point, the “closer the call” was (the more anxiety/fight-or-flight responses we felt, etc.), perhaps what really happened was that we felt the reverberations of our own deaths more acutely than in situations where the events leading to our deaths in other universes were much more remote.

I believe that universes abide by a proximity principle, and this may, perhaps, be one of the only ways we sub lightspeed-existent human beings have of interacting with other such otherwise unreachable places in the truly wide, fascinating and mysterious world that we may find ourselves in.

So, I’m not saying we’re all free to jump in front of cars, but I would hazard a guess that should a car strike us and kill us in one universe, we would instantaneously snap into awareness of ourselves in a universe where we did not die. This idea may rightfully be challenged by the idea of fate and whether or not we all, in fact, have our inescapable, predetermined time to die. At this time, I have no thoughts to weigh in on that matter, but I’m sure I’ll dream up something that seems sensible for the sake of The Story soon enough (I swear, I don’t purposely try to create alliteration in my phrases, but it does seem to happen a lot).

Also, it is an inescapable fact that universes in which we die, assuming they’re not also universes where it is routinely common to come back from being legally dead, are also universes in which we would leave behind loved ones. That’s never fun, for anyone involved. So, just to stress the point, don’t jump in front of cars. All I’m saying is, if it’s not your time (if there even is such a thing as “your time”), you won’t even realize how often you die on a regular basis in nearby universes anyways, so even if this idea infects you and blows your mind open a little, don’t fuss about it. Seriously. Why? ‘Cause you live in a universe where you’re too busy living, and that is honestly awesome. So go on, live and be, let whatever happens will happen. Just be sure look both ways when crossing the street.

[Edit: There’s much about these notions that have bothered me to think about in the years since initially musing about them. One example is the case of serious injuries. At what point can/does/should transference to a different, safer, but highly similar universe happen? I have no answers, only hopeful ideals]

Making Waves

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In an earlier post, I offered up my uncertainty about certainty itself. I love ideas, learning, unlearning, relearning, and asking questions. It’s a big part of what makes me tick these days.

Growing up in a Christian home, there were a number of dogmatic principles that I essentially swallowed hook, line and sinker, no questions asked. How could I? I wasn’t raised to even be aware of the possibility of having a choice in the matter. I had to discover that for myself many years later than I might have ideally liked.

Anyways, in my own way, I essentially took a 180 degree turn in my personal beliefs in my early 20’s. If science couldn’t back a claim up, it no longer held water for me. If two claims competed in terms of their scientific validity, it was my observation that the one not in favour of spirituality was the more sound of the two. Further more, if science gave any kind of ammunition with which one so thoroughly disillusioned and pissed off with traditional Christianity as I had become could use against claims disseminated within the modern church, I would aim to use such rather militantly.

I described myself as predominantly atheist at most, agnostic at least, and there was no lack of “science” with which to draw from in order to substantiate that position.

These days, I identify far more closely with agnosticism and vague, skeptical-but-open-minded spirituality. The reason is that failure of science to disprove negatives amuses me. Straight up. As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t conclusively prove that leprechauns don’t exist, then, as immeasurably improbable though it may be, I hold the view that it’s possible that they just might, in fact, exist.

I don’t throw much weight behind views of that nature, but I can’t get rid of them. To do so, in my view, would be to become utterly close minded to all of the unknown possibilities which may, in fact, be true, however unlikely though it may seem.

The other thing is that my faith in science is likewise never safe from questioning and scrutiny either. By definition, I accept that science is supposed be a grand quest for truth using our best, verifiable and agreed upon methods, but that science is also, by definition, constantly at the mercy of its own evolutionary processes. As new findings emerge, old models used for explaining the world as best as we can are replaced in favour of ones that better succeed at doing so.

In case it isn’t clear, the logical extreme of that premiss must include the possibility that, any given day now, we could wake up to the knowledge of new findings in the field of one such branch of scientific inquiry or other which can, conceivably, completely undo EVERYTHING we thought we ever knew about anything provided it ultimately led to a more thorough, accurate and truthful explanation and interpretation of the world in which we actually live.

2 + 2 = 5, apart from semantic and metacognitive issues, is one such possible change. Again, it’s almost inconceivably improbable that science would ever be responsible for something as seemingly absurd as that, but never impossible.

More likely, we’ll simply discover that we were wrong about the way certain fundamental forces actually work, perhaps having confused certain effects with their causes, as a classic example.

For a lengthier but far better explanation of what I’m driving at, check out the following video. The speaker’s name is Rupert Sheldrake. He was invited to speak at a TEDx convention not too long ago. Shortly thereafter, his video was removed from the site’s archives. Just watch, and you’ll soon understand why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0waMBY3qEA4

The Learning Curve

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I struggle with motivation and time management issues, as well as following through on projects that I get started on and then just end up leaving on the back burner. They’re my biggest personal roadblock, I think. I’m also pretty sure that I’m not supposed to focus on them, per se, but I’m intrigued by it more because I see it all as a vague, collective, dramatic arch nemesis than I do an actual obstruction to personal development.

Maybe I’m not taking the issue seriously enough. I had a recently-misplaced binder full of over a decade’s worth of half finished songs attesting to my proclivity towards starting things and not finishing them.

Sometimes, I really do give a task my best effort, but I still come up just shy of completing it in a manner I would consider to be successful. That almost happened yesterday. In my last update, I was discussing the challenges I faced with trying to make a simple lyric video; just black slides with white words transitioning to the pace of background music. Shouldn’t be that hard. It wasn’t until almost 3 am before I finally had a product I could upload to youtube. Here it is if anyone’s interested, by the way:

http://youtu.be/l2OaojOT7pg

No fancy embedded video player or other sophisticated multimedia content to view here. You’ll have to check it out for yourself.

I’ve been writing my own songs for over half the time that I’ve been alive for now, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that that talent now best epitomizes my vice when it comes to motivation and willingness to follow through. At this point in my life, I know that the song in the video linked above could, and in fact should, sound many times better than it actually does, and I don’t just mean in the production value (though perhaps I should have procured the resources to boost that aspect of recording and producing a long time ago as well). I know my voice, and I know when I half ass things. This was one of those times.

To further add to the example, the visual aspect of the lyric video is also crap, and I know it, but I’d never made one before and I kept running into unexpected snags at every turn. I’m trying to level with myself as to whether that’s just me making excuses, or if that was legitimately the truth of the matter. I’m biased in favour of the latter. In any case, the point was that, after two days of toying around with different approaches on and off, I almost didn’t complete the project, and had I not, in all likelihood, I would have lost interest by now. It would have become just one more effort never getting finished, published and shared on a long list of many.

I figured enough was enough. Just do it. If it’s hard, complicated, troublesome, then figure it out. There’s FAQs and troubleshooting guides and help forums everywhere these days. There’s no reason why I should accept failure at this point.

So, with any luck, and now after having learned a thing or two to help expedite future endeavors, the world may yet see more musical output from yours truly. Might not sound like much to get excited about now, but if the trend continues, it’ll amount to something worth while someday. [edit: I want that hope back]

My Girlfriend Thinks I’m Pretty

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I missed submitting something yesterday, here or elsewhere (yes, I have fingers in other pies). The main goal for yesterday was to submit a lyric video. I’ve never done a lyric video before. Seemed simple enough, though, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I recorded a song in one take, just voice and guitar, and saved it as an mp3 file. Then I tried to use no less than three free video editing software applications available in Ubuntu’s repositories to create a simple uploadable-to-youtube mp4 or avi file. None of them seemed to be able to generate and edit slides, so I started making my own jpeg images using Gimp, hoping that the transition and timing process involved in editing imported graphical content was fairly straight forward. It wasn’t.

I feared I would have to resort to Powerpoint. Truthfully, now that I’m looking back on everything, I don’t know why I didn’t just start there. Not having it, I almost went through the hassle of installing Wine so that I can use a pirated version of Windows Powerpoint. Thankfully, before it was too late, I came to realize that the Libre Office Suite that comes with Ubuntu already has a PP knock off [edit: LibreOffice deserves waaaaay more credit than that] called Presentation/Impress (name depending, for some probably simple but as of yet unknown reason I’m too lazy too look into).

Not that the project is quite finished yet, but in a few short minutes, I was able to successfully accomplish infinitely more than I was able to in the previous 5 hours of attempted work. I had to leave to attend a social function (RPG game night, highlight of the week if you must know) before I got to the time editing portion, and I didn’t get home till late, so no dice for finishing up yesterday. As for today, I’ve been lazy and largely unproductive for the most part up until pretty much just now.

Anyways, with any luck, I’ll have a new video posted to my youtube account within the hour. Two if I hit an unexpected snag. If so, I’ll append a link below. If not, I’ll probably talk about why not in a subsequent post. Cross that bridge when I come to it I guess.

A Little Everyday

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I’ve been struggling to get into a routine. I haven’t needed to set an alarm for when to be up in the morning for almost a full year now, so, naturally, I don’t usually end up waking up until it’s nearly noon. Likewise, I don’t usually get to sleep until after midnight, so it balances out a little, but still. Couple that with the fact that every time my girlfriend, who has nearly polar opposite sleeping habits from mine (in the sense that I at least have some), comes to visit me from out of town (which is just about every weekend), any sleeping and waking routine I do begin to establish throughout the week is instantly abandoned. I very much enjoy having her over each and every time, but the short era that existed between us meeting and me figuring out that I didn’t have to wait for her to wake up before I could as well was a puzzling time for me (in case it isn’t obvious, I’m still figuring out how this whole relationship thing works).

Ideally, what I’d like is to be up when people normally get up. During the week, I wake up briefly to the sound of my roommates getting ready to head to work, but it isn’t until another REM cycle or two come and go before I’m finally good to get up myself. Setting an alarm almost never works unless I need to be up for something related to “responsibilities” or some such thing, ’cause if I wake up for even a moment before it goes off, I will do so utterly convinced that the wise decision to make at that time is to switch my alarm off before it goes off. Every. Goddamn. Time.

And then, by the time I am up, showered and fed, it’s basically noon, and well, I probably haven’t checked facebook yet. Shouldn’t take long. Naturally, it’s takes up the majority of all my free time for the day. I almost never have fewer than 7 or 8 tabs open at any given time, and if I do, I quickly replenish my browser with as many new ones as the more interesting posts on my facebook newsfeed so generously provide. I read constantly. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but if my ambition is to become a writer, I need to allocate at least some of the time spent reading towards writing instead. Therein lies my greatest dilemma as of late, hence this blog. No more excuses. Between here, Wattpad and my own documents, there’s no excuse for not getting at least a little bit of writing accomplished each and every day, starting yesterday.

Scaffolding

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This is just scaffolding.

The prototype was designed and released almost a decade ago, without much deliberation. I was in my late teens. At that time, the work was entitled Ecco of Legends. The first draft sputtered it’s way off of dad’s old dotmatrix printer, consuming some twenty-odd pages all reamed together, briefly circulated around the family for positive-by-default review before being pulled apart, hole-punched and stowed away in an old high school binder for all but the briefest moments ever since.

Deliberation has been something of a roadblock ever since. The first draft had the benefit of passion without fear. Now, I keep second guessing myself. Too much of a perfectionist. It hasn’t been all bad, though. Sure, The Story’s been put on the back burner way more often than not since its inception, but it’s seldom been stagnant. It’s been evolving, almost constantly.

At this stage, I don’t expect anyone who might chance upon this blog to care, and that’s fine, but a day might soon come where knowing a bit about The Story’s background might be of some interest. The predominant details of The Story’s evolution involve the name and thematic changes that have transpired over the years. As mentioned, it was originally called Ecco of Legends. Why “Ecco”? Honestly, I have no idea. I know that, at that time, I knew that “ecco” meant “here is” in Italian. I also knew of the Sega game called Ecco. I could never get far into it, but I liked it. The idea of sending out a sonar call, holding it long enough for it to bounce back all the way from the edge of the screen to Ecco’s sensory of their environment, resulting in a map for the player. I can appreciate that it was probably influential.

Originally, the first draft was presented in first person perspective. Worse, the main character was named after myself. Soon thereafter, I changed the main protagonist’s name to “Ecco”, but already after The Story had been named. Not entirely sure why I went that route. Still makes no sense to me to say “[Person’s name] of Legends“, none whatsoever. Regardless, the name for the protagonist stuck, even if The Story abandoned it’s original title.

Since then, it’s been redesigned from a vaguely third person/sometimes omni perspective point of view, allowing for a healthier degree of separation between myself and the character(s). Thematically, The Story’s origins were founded on a juvenile outlook on charismatic Christian theology from within the belief system itself. That has long since been shed. In fact, there is now a high degree of moral ambiguity intended to be expressed by the time the final draft is ready to go to print (still a fairly long ways off) [edit: later feelings have me wanting to go a wholly wholesome route, just not seeing the clearest way to do so]. As for working titles, the first change was from Ecco of Legends to The Eden Project, then to Star of Eden, then finally now to the present title, Elyen. I’m very fond of the present title, so I don’t expect any future changes to occur.

The original game plan was a simple “good vs evil” template involving angels and demons, with humans in the middle in a fictional, quasi-high tech, quasi-medieval world that was somehow tied to and vaguely co-influenced by the real world. Now, it’s more about imaginative adventure, psychological poking and prodding, philosophical thought-provocation, and general dilemma-driven conflict.

In summary, The Story, aka Elyen has been a very long time in the making. As mentioned, this blog is just an attempt to establish some scaffolding to perhaps help the process along by giving me a side related creative outlet to express and shape new ideas and old into satisfying and exciting forms which I hope will serve to strengthen and expedite the writing process for Elyen.