NOTES ON THOUGHTS: Upcoming site revisions, and my terrible upcoming album

03/08/26

A quick one (that may turn into a long one) before i head to the laundromat this morning. Currently listening to sun kil moon's ghosts of the great highway, of course a legend, and an album that has carried me through some of the most painful nights of my recent memory. There is a wawa about 10 miles down the road which i used to drive to specifically to cry in my car while listening to sun kil moon or jordaan mason. Haven't been in a long time. Very saccharine days, those were. Sadness has gone a bit out of style for me now, somehow; i got so fed up with it and with the stagnance of it that i had to give up listening to sad music for damn near 10 months; i was only listening to mid-century arabic classical music and audiobooks of orthodox monks' wisdoms til very recently. Which was nice. Abdel Halim Hafez and Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos are highlights of that era, if you're interested. This is a great tangent i'm starting off with but it's only to say i'm glad to be returning to the sound of an old friend's voice.

I came here to say that i have more plans!! Now that the beta version of athorn v1.0 is up and running, i wanted to document my plans for expansion. If anyone is reading, of course. On the music point, i kind of really want to re-implement the self-shuffling "radio" i used to have on the v0.9 homepage. Maybe a weekly music mix? Maybe some snippets of ambient field recordings and synth freestyles i've made? Both? Yeah, probably both.
There are three new "rooms" to be added as well (and of course, the sitemap will be revised to reflect this new layout). 1) A bedroom of course, where i'm thinking i'll have a blog or something specifically about music equipment, ideas, recording process, etc. I have an old friend who i met on neocities who gave me some fantastic ideas about tape looping, noise boxes, and circuit bending thru a page like this. And this is not to say i have amazing crazy ideas, but you know, for those who are inclined to be inspired, i would be honored to share what has inspired me.
2) A library where i want to compile and share every pdf i have. I collect a great deal of pdf books/publications about psychoanalysis, theology, philosophy, religious history, obscure and peculiar saints, numinous anomaly, and some music too. Some of these i've taken from behind institutional paywalls, others i've just come across on our beloved archive dot org. I've also invested money in a few physical books that are not available online, and i'm trying to figure out the most efficient and ethical way to share those too. It might just be via email request only. Honestly i'm kind of interested in starting an email academic book club, but then again, i'm a little bit allergic to that level of commitment (even now i'm stuck on page 20 of five different books bc my interest never stays in one place), so that might not work out. At least not in a formal way. We'll see.
3) A "shrine", but not exactly the kind of shrine that is typical to html websites; moreso the kind of shrine that is typical to the eastern corner of devout homes, or the hidden notebooks of the saccharine, or the unseen nests of birds. I have plans to be making more art, essentially.
Mobile optimization still needs to happen, and will indeed happen - i know many neocities folks are staunchly "desktop only" and i used to ride that train too but i think in my case it was due to a lack of skill moreso than an abundance of moral conviction, and i want my website to showcase a consistent increase in skill. I have no reason to gatekeep; in fact, i have motivations directly to the contrary. This of course is merely a reflection of my personal goals for my website; y'all can keep doing your thing.

Of course, there are plans for the upcoming album too, which i wanted to speak more about, since i said almost nothing about it in my first post. (Sorry that i'm so hideously verbose but this is how my brain works. I don't even expect this to be read.) As of right now, it's halfway done. There are (probably) 10-12 songs, and they're all in a generally indie folk format, with some outliers; the title will be "Our Good Death". It's an album about grief, loss, delusion, God, unintentional sin, intentional sin, the wonders of the nylon guitar. I regret calling it "my magnum opus" in the last post because, really, this is all very old material that i associate with a past long gone, and although it's inherently exciting to be recording a first album, it's mostly just sentiments and styles i want really badly to rid myself of. It will probably be the only folk album i write. Honestly, it will probably be the only lyrical album i write.
I have a very tortured relationship with lyrics in general; every lyric in this album has been re-written a minimum of two times, and i'm only okay with sharing that because i think their latent meanings are what make them rich. What they used to be that no one will ever know (that even i have forgotten) is heavily a part of the work's soul and creates a branching forest of meanings that makes a true singular origin completely obscured. It looks like an album about something - or someone - but it isn't. It's a disjointed collage of a period of time that, in itself, was not very linear or coherent. Its temporal disorganization is demonstrative of the mental environment of that period of time. And yet, i begrudgingly admit there is a manifest "plot". This is due to a natural human impulse to organize unrelated pieces into a coherent whole. However it should be made known to you, the reader of this psychobabble, that it was never my intention to write something linear or conventional (although, by intentional paradox, it is written in the style of a linear and conventional musical tradition).

If anyone is reading this, you can probably tell why it is i have a tortured relationship with lyrics, and it's because my style of organizing thought into language is inherently tortured. Words and meanings are extremely important to me - expressing a belief that is good and true and right is important to me - and yet words don't have the ability to describe truth; they multiply forever in their attempt to pinpoint a precise location and in doing so they unintentionally expand that point, only ever suggesting that there is no such thing as points. Many philosophers have said this - Derrida, Lacan, Kuhn, Wittgenstein - but you don't have to read all that cuz i'll tell it to you right here. No one has ever meant anything. And this is what makes trying to mean something beautiful - i daresay, it's what makes it meaningful. This is why i'm choosing to release an album full of lyrics i really dislike and no longer relate to. They are still paradoxically meaningful. And my next musical work will probably be instrumental because i don't want to bother saying things anymore.

Now i'm just full-on rambling but i'll round it out with some ideas on what it means to be an artist in general. I once believed that the most important thing about an artist is their beliefs (demonstrated by their actions and sentiments). Then, when it became absolutely maddening to attempt only enjoying Ethical Art (and when i also witnessed the insidious nature of this principle in local music communities of passionately misguided youths), i came to believe that the most important thing about an artist is That they believe in Something - whether or not that belief is agreeable. This has made my life a lot easier and more rational, and it has allowed me to see beauty, inspiration, and meaning in many things without needing to dichotomize them, which i believe is the correct way to perceive art. But i guess i'm approaching a period in life where i'm beyond even that; art is ideological and polarizing, and it also isn't. Art is also an anthropological document; a micro-history, an auto-cartography. Art is a form of communication. It is also a process of intrinsic refinement and exploration, a medium to teach oneself new things (often about oneself). To me, the pursuit to write an album is exactly the same thing as the pursuit to teach myself every maddening intricacy of the school of psychoanalysis, exactly the same thing as the pursuit to dissect the belief structure and underlying philosophy of every church sect throughout history, exactly the same thing as collecting old photos, exactly the same thing as praying for forgiveness. I am committing my life to the remembrance of what was lost. Psychoanalysis is, to me, the remembrance of the omnipotent object of infancy that was lost to inevitable maturity. Church is, to me, the remembrance of the oneness to God (and everything and everyone) that was lost to mortality. My art is the remembrance of the people and places i used to love, and the people and places i used to be. The only meaning there can ever be is the one that is personal, soul-bound. Everything you do and make has meaning because it's always inevitably passing into lostness. That's what my art is about and that's the only way i can rationalize it as worth sharing. And hopefully by sharing this, as convoluted and self-absorbed as it is, i can enrich the practice of remembrance of art, both mine and others.

Don't worry folks, there will be much more insane nonsense in the next post. Time to go do laundry.