The Song:
Do u have another life that u can only get to in your dreams? I do. But sometimes it spills over into waking reality... and I have to ask myself... what is real, really?
I wrote this song as I was first falling in love with someone, somewhere between the borders of asleep and awake. The parallels between us were uncanny: both musical, both geeks, both Aries, both dominant personalities but simultaneously shy, both hoarding massive caches of original material we were insecure about releasing... both bored of what had become our average existence. Together, if only in my mind, the magical things inside me bubbled up to the surface, fermented in hope and dreams, turning out an intoxicating elixir of possibility and desire.
We would communicate by leaving each other little notes on a .txt file in dropbox... that's the kind of nerd level we're talking about. And we'd record sound clips of us playing songs for each other... changing the file name over and over to reflect our thoughts but leave no trace. It seemed so fated. I believed unquestionably that if I just wrote a good enough song, we would be together.
I had just gotten my Juno 60 and Telemark set up in my studio with a comfortable cabling arrangement and established a basic work flow when I brought this song to life. This recording came from a flirtation of Roland with Analogue Solutions over Omnisphere. In a later version I replaced the digital patches with analog, but that version went up in flames. This one survived.
Music Video:
When I decided to make one music video a week, it cornered me into making quick decisions. I could take ten years and still not be 100% sure how I want something... if I'm trying to make it perfect... but locking myself down to a deadline made it so I had to think fast and there was no time to second guess anything.
For I Gotta Feeling, the line it's no surprise we're from another dimension made me think, oooh I should be an alien, since I really am anyway.... and I went for a look that combined the elongated heads of my Sirian progenitors with a sort of quintessential space age UFO flight suit. All available on Amazon for a decent price (although the space suit showed up smelling like another woman's perfume -- gotta love that return policy).
When I leaked the little tidbit on Facebook that I was filming this week's video with a prosthetic body part, I couldn't believe how hard some people begged to know WHAT that part was. Haha. I liked that. On a side note, having an enormous hairless head reminded me that I look good bald... and that it's been 11 years since I shaved my head.
I realize the prosthetic rubber head would have looked a lot more realistic if I knew how to do even a little special effects makeup, but who has time for that? In the future, tho.... I might try messing around with that kind of thing. For now, I just stuck it on like a rubber hat and did my make up with simple black eyebrows and silver star glitter. Works for me... but I can imagine how great it would be to have killer special effects skills.... or a team of professionals and a budget... first thing I'd do is make sure that head looked real.
The biggest star of this whole video from a production perspective was the green screen. That thing has become my new best friend. I was unsure what I would use behind me for a backdrop image at first... but I was just goofing around with ideas and recorded a take of myself singing close up to a blue light, and dropped a chromakey on it, accidentally, and all of a sudden BAM! I was in outer space. Thanks universe.
I wanted to give the impression of phase shifting from one frequency band of reality to another as I cut between outer space and the blue light... from there the video pretty much edited itself.
Artist Renderings:
My obsession with organic light leaks continues with a few cool moments probably no one but me will notice, like the flare of green off the silver face glitter... and the rainbows dancing in the reflective surface of the Nyborg and then bouncing off the facets of the labradorite ring. I could shoot an entire video of just light. In fact, maybe I will.
Synchronicities:
The Nyborg** (henceforth referred to by Aurora Elysium as "the shiny thing") just happened to show up in the post right as I was about to start filming, so what better way to honor the glory of Analogue Solutions than show it right the fuck off? Reminds me how magical life can be when you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Thank you, Tom Carpenter. You are a legend and a friend.
** the original Nyborg used in the recording burnt up in the fire. The Shiny Thing is Nyborg #2.
Fun facts:
The person I wrote this song for... is a magical person. There was a period of time when I would frequently astral project to them at night, and we often would feel the same way at the same time. One time we both had rocks hit our windshields and crack them, hundreds of miles apart on the same day, and we once went to drive thru's in completely different towns and had our lucky numbers show up as the total AND time of day on BOTH our receipts on the same afternoon. That's too much for mere coincidence. In the end tho... it didn't lead us to eternal happiness... but it did give us this song.
Favorite moment from this past week? The words of Isabella Starlight: "mommy can I please hear your new song again? it's really magical."
Why yes, Isabella, yes u can.
xx magic