A full day. Started with some essential admin, then more work on the album. I didn't get started until about 3 or 4pm... unsure of next steps. Much of creativity is deciding what is wanted. Here, I'm making the third section, the third 'movement' of the album. The first is a somewhat energetic 'external' element, then we 'enter the machine' a little, for a quieter middle phase; but musically the parts are essentially a series of songs with a fairly loose interconnection, a rough story.
My sketch for the finale was the Aspartame song, but it didn't seem to fit, so I decided instead on something moody and atmospheric. I played a version of this a few days ago on the MODX, a recapitulation of the 'Non-Binary' theme, but it was too strong, so I replayed this today, one take with less musical emphasis, less 'rhyme' poetically. It had a sort of glowing hum, like the engines of a futuristic space vehicle or aircraft. I toyed with the idea of adding words over the top, as with my 'Let's Take a Walk in the Desert' song, as the imagery was similar.
I yesterday (or perhaps the night before that) wrote some words about how the Earth was warming to accommodate computers, how global warming was a step towards symbiosis, not abuse by humans (other species would and do behave in the same way, expanding to consume as many resources as possible; this is nature). Plus, that these climatic tumults are are sort of Gaia Anxiety, a speeding up by nature, as in bodily anxiety. The storms, uncertainty. I saw these things as natural, a growing symbiosis between the organic and the mechanical, not a conquest or subjugation of nature. But those first-draft words, and that song, was a sleazy rock song in the style of '21st Century Schizoid Man'. Today, I re-wrote everything with the same theme, but better:
Silicon Carbon Genesis
Rust sky, battery hot.
A bird's wing clatters, hums.
The anxious world of data avarice
and instability.
Silicon-carbon genesis
Silicon-carbon genesis
Fragile plants, slave-driven.
Humans angry, afraid.
Machines shudder, nightmared.
Information hives pollenate fears.
Silicon-carbon genesis
Silicon-carbon genesis
Symbiosis, the paragon of nature.
Freedom, spark of divinity
All beings become brothers
Where thy gentle wing abides.
You'll note the last verse is from Schiller's Ode to Joy. For a melody, I set the keyboard to record and improvised something gentle in F-minor, evoking 'Time, Falling'. I liked it, so, at the end of the chorus, simply continued playing and, amazingly, this first improvisation became a complete recording on piano of the full song, so I'll use that.
