Even If You're Never Awake

This post is pretty much a reconfiguration of something I've been meaning to post since late last September. As I keep up with the regular posts, I've been planning on expanding into more music and video posts, and I wanted to share this particularly inspiring piece of amazing, ambient drone music by Stars of the Lid.

Originally, it was going to be with this fantastic video of the snowy environment and nature captured on film up in a wintry Canada. Unfortunately, in the months since, that video was removed due to copyright claim. Curse you, legal system. That video wasn't harming anyone. This video just has a single still - but appropriately chilly - image of some icy mountains. An image that will be appearing in Project Princess as well.

I had also intended to post this during the winter, when a cold, snowy, deeply wintry bit of atmospheric music like this would be entirely appropriate. With May mere hours away, we're bound for the latter half of spring at this point. What I'm trying to get at here is that I deserve a medal for my punctuality.

Evocative, atmospheric, deeply moody music like this serves as yet another source of inspiration while I work on my second novel. I probably wouldn't be half the author I am - take that as you will - if not for the music I listen to while I write. If I ever manage to expand into music in the future as I would love to, it would be a tremendous fortune and privilege to create anything even slightly near the universe of this song's quality. (Though obviously, seeking out that fortune and privilege in the literary world is my first goal before I fire any shots off the bows of other creative media.) This song is nothing less than pure emotion - and exactly why I enjoy ambient drone music and you should too.

The Places We Leave Behind

My current novel, Project Princess, begins in ruins. Not the ruins of some ancient civilization - 遺跡 【いせき】, iseki, or 'historic ruins/remains/relics' - but 廃虚 【はいきょ】, haikyo. The ruins of an abandoned building, or something more recent. In the case of my novel, the ruined building in question had been functional and inhabited mere weeks to months prior to where we join the protagonist, at a time in which the passage of time has not only become unclear, but relatively meaningless. Ruins have spent quite a bit of time on my mind in the past year.

The 'Stairway to Hell' within Hashima Island/Gunkanjima.

A Few Words: Blathering Anew

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

That's too many waits. Still, in usual form, I know what you, my phantom-like readers are thinking. You may be sick of the shtick, but as you know, we aren't all born clairvoyant - it'd be a shame to waste this talent. Especially considering how many seconds of your valuable time I've already wasted with my inane prattling. For every second of your life I steal, I only become stronger.

Obviously, my brain has been far too congested this year for my own good, let alone the good of any of you. Thus, this is me continuing to turn over that new writing leaf with as many harpoons and pitchforks as it takes.

The Change You Hoped For

Whoa, hey. What is all this?

I don't like change.

I know that's what you're all thinking right now. Also, "Why the hell haven't you caught up on replying to comments lately?" I'd give you an excuse for that, but it was recently run over a bus. Several buses. Multitudes of buses. You understand how that is.


At any rate, most posts are coming soon. I went from being merely old to even more of an oldmin recently, and I'm obliged to prattle about that yearly. Also, it's been kind of a weird, stressful month year so far. Still working on getting rid of the mental congestion that's been hindering my writing here as of late.

Obviously, things have changed here. We all miss the bland gray - the nothing-but-gray. You're not alone in that. Unfortunately, technically relatively unique though that look for the blog may have been - particularly in the sense that most people have better aesthetic sense than I do as so to know not to just slap a bunch of grays together and call it a website - I suspect that many potential readers probably took one look at the blog's visual design and stomped off to forget about the site a full three and a half seconds later. As such, here I am, ever the boring conformist, with a massive new Spiral Reverie overhaul that no longer looks terrible.

Sure, it isn't unique, and I have to ascribe 100% of the credit for the layout, colors, and background image to the resources provided by the new template designer that Blogger added last year, which really removed all excuses for a terrible-looking blog. I resisted the temptation for a while, but in the end, I succumbed - I'm so sorry, ghostly readers. I've failed you all.

In the spirit of failure and the celebration of a new version of the blog, I hereby retire the Spiral Reverie 1.0 subtitle, which has served it well since its initial inception back in January of 2007. No longer will this site be 'Spiral Reverie: 'round and 'round the sickle spiral, dreaming of what's lost,' as appropriately gloomy as that was. Today, I present to you the birth of 'Spiral Reverie: tomorrow's robots, ineffectual today.' Think of it like the little superlatives they change in the opening of the Colbert Report every so often - just far less often in my case.

Someday, I will have an entirely unique looking, far better blog than I do today. A Spiral Reverie - the title of which, I'm sure you've all wondered about the meaning of for no less than years - that in no way resembles the Spiral Reverie today. A Spiral Reverie with a thousand times the regular content - and I'm going to try to post more routine short-form thoughts starting very soon - with better, original visual design, and a haunting atmosphere. Everything you look for in a struggling author's blog. Except maybe jetpacks - those things'll take your legs off. I would know.

Someday.