i should have known better than to think she would give up so easily.
just because we think we see something, doesn’t mean it’s there. this, the latest lesson, and it pops in my temporal lobes like a fat tick under a baseball bat.
i’m sitting here pre-coffee, only ten minutes out of bed, checking email. splice writes to tell me someone has used one of my sounds in a song. i go to see. it is not the best thing i’ve ever heard, but it has potential. hah. i’m sure many say that of my efforts. stars, sometimes… really… i need coffee.
ok. anyway. i listen and i can’t decide why on earth they included a piece by me. it doesn’t fit. it has nothing to do with the theme.
this is me, searching for the pattern. hold on, boys, it’s going to be a bumpy night. even though i just woke up. you’ll see.
so i’m sitting there, thinking… looking at the tracks used:
– twt-intro (my silly attempt at something)
– a thousand miles vanessa
– solar you drums x2
– little drums
– mercy strings
– flute at d
– flute at c
now… here’s where it gets weird.
i mute all the other tracks and listen to the only one that is longer than the rest (stands out as weird in the mix because it effectively ruins the mix by being longer than the apparently intended song length). it is someone doing a very good job of playing and mixing everything except the vocal tracks to the song ‘a thousand miles’ by er… whomever it is originally by.
i’m looking for a pattern. some way to understand how my track got in there and why.
i see nothing. not only is my piece completely the wrong tempo and sounds to go with the effort, the effort doesn’t appear to make any sense as the outcome has no cohesion, it’s just a bunch of tracks thrown together.
unless….
whomever put them together put them together for a reason other than how they sound.
ok. let’s look at the track names.
intro a thousand miles solar you little drums mercy strings flute
well, my mind can come up with a lot from that. but not much that makes sense in relation to why my track is there.
ok… let’s try a combination of theme and titles.
well, that eliminates ‘intro’, ‘little’, ‘drums’, ‘strings’, and ‘flute’, because they don’t deal with someone being or going a thousand miles. ‘you’ gets to stay because the song ‘a thousand miles’ is about someone telling someone else they “would walk a thousand miles just to see you, just to hold you, tonight”.
‘mercy’ may or may not belong. hrm.
at this point, i return and view the profile. new member. a they didn’t bother with their birth year, but they did change the default birthdate. they’re a cancer. hmm.
i know two cancers. one of whom has been at Splice before.
this person did five songs/mixes yesterday. most fairly upbeat and demonstrate better skill than is shown in this one. this heavily underscores the guess that the purpose/meaning lays in what was mixed, not in the resulting sounds.
which takes me back to the words.
hah. i skipped right by ‘solar’, didn’t i? assume it belongs/stays. not only that, it has already become the core/crux around which it all turns… the thing that gives it meaning… after all, ‘solar you’ is who? who would that be?
a fenix maybe?
which would mean that ‘intro’ wasn’t used because it fit, it was only used as the means by which to get me to look. Splice always emails you when someone uses your stuff. of course, no guarantee that you’ll come look… so if this was deliberate, it also implies someone who knows me well enough to know that i will come look, because i support CC and whenever someone makes use of anything i’ve done, i make a point of listening, rating, and if i really liked it, commenting.
i also make a point of welcoming those who appear new. figure it’s part of being a good community member.
i feel like freaking columbo. or an idiot. at this point, i’m standing outside my own mind, laughing at myself.
i could continue to regale you with all of this, brick by slow brick pointing it out as i see it until i’m sure you see it, too.
but that’s kind of the point.
just because i see it doesn’t mean it’s there.
and just because i can outline it until you can see it doesn’t mean it’s there.
and just because there are seemingly overwhelming pointers to a specific conclusion doesn’t mean it is the correct one.
and just because i cannot see any other conclusion doesn’t mean it fails to exist.
all i’m really saying in any of this is that the things that would bring me to conclude as i do are still here, inside me. i still make them important. i still remember them. i still notice them when i see them in the world around me.
and i can still think someone capable of using them to reach out to me when i know good and well that there is nothing in or of them that will ever reach out to me again.
honestly? sometimes i think i am insane. i used to call it insanely hopeful. but i know better now.
all the work i’ve done. all the effort i’ve made. all the time that has gone by. all the silence. and still, i work this hard to think it possible… create stupidly convoluted theories just to sustain it as possible.
am willing to be insane just so it remains possible.
no. no. that’s not true. which is why i sit here and baldly set this out like this. force myself to look at it. don’t care that i squirm. look, damn you. look at what you’re doing.
me talking to myself now. excuse us a bit. this might get kind of … well… you know.
i put this here to remind myself — two things really — one, that i have got to stop doing this to myself and two, that maybe they just picked the fucking sound because they liked it. sheesh.
then i have to go back to Splice and be who i want to be rather than who i am. maybe if i fake it long enough, i’ll eventually make it to being that… before someone notices the difference.
sigh.