Right now I am feeling as if millions of thoughts and feelings were flowing in a chaotic way within myself, allowing to see just a little crack of so much light I cannot glimpse, of so much truth I cannot embrace, of so much beauty I cannot stand... And it's only up to me to bring back every lived experience to the right place they belong, bringing back together the pieces of a broken time which are part of the perfect equation between reality and imperfection.
I
don’t exactly know how the idea behind this song was conceived. I
vaguely remember that I wrote the verse in Spanish first and left it
piled among a thousand other ideas without getting any further
developing, a chaotic mix of words that would end up written down on
pieces of paper trying to make sense in vain. That was in 2010 and
just one year had passed since I had gone through my first psychotic
episode, so it was not a very happy moment in my life. I would
usually get drunk alone at a very small and gloomy apartment while I
was supposed to be attending classes at the cinema school. All I
could think about was music but I was not fully conscious, I just
felt impotent on my skin, so I would simply abandon myself into
resignation as though no other thing could get me a sight of relief.
Fortunately,
years later I changed direction and decided to give making music a try
and that was one of the first and most important steps in the scaling
of my healing process. Little by little, all those disordered ideas
started to make sense and I found opportunities where others would only
see a dead end. I quit smoking and my voice started to become
powerful. I discarded everything or everyone that would not support
me in following my dreams or allowing me to advance in my journey,
getting rid of the burden of envy and ignorance. I had to lose it all
but I found my peace in return. Because that’s what this song is
about. That is who I am.
This
song is about the loss of willingness. But what is willingness,
anyway? The way I see it, sometimes people confuse having willingness
with keeping on going no matter whether other people get hurt along
the way. I think it is important for us to acknowledge that our
actions affect our mental health inevitably because we are in this
together. Nothing pure in me means, ironically, I’m nothing without
you, but just like the last line of the lyrics says: “That’s the
purest thing in me”. I’d rather hurt myself, metaphorically, than
be ruthless and act like everyone else, desperate to trample on
each other. Nothing pure in me is about knowing that being sensitive
and vulnerable does not equate to weakness. It makes you feel things
deeper, it makes you feel alive. Knowing that having principles and
ethics does not necessarily mean being unrealistic but, actually,
quite the opposite. It denotes emotional intelligence. And above all,
knowing that being kind does not make you a fool, it turns you into a
better human being. Kindness is the new wisdom.
Production
I knew the instrumentation for this song needed to be minimalist and
delicate and that’s how the idea of the piano as the main
conductor came to me. Those notes mimicking the melody of the verse
along the song are like sharpened touches of sound that almost feel
like ice or snow. I really like the concept and progression of the chords
in this song. For the bridge and the chorus, I was highly inspired by
the score of the Pan’s Labyrinth movie, an instrumental
music piece called Lullaby,
which is stunningly beautiful and shares this delicateness with my
song. I’m very proud of the vocals too, except for the falsetto in
the last note of the song and the “when I’m stuck down THERE”
line that gets united with the following one, lyrically speaking.
Aside from that, I think that
these may be one of the best vocals I’ve ever recorded for a song.
As I explained in one of the first posts I wrote for this blog, the
Spanish singer Ainhoa, who won an important reality talent show back
in 2003, is one of the main reasons why I started to become
interested, not only in being a singer and having that unconscious
desire in my heart but in writing songs and learning more about the
whole creative process behind the making of an album. I admire her
not only as a singer but also as the amazing songwriter she is. If I
had to choose a limited number of songs for the soundtrack of my
life, probably some of hers such as Lo Bueno Queda, A veces,
and No Hay Lugar would end up being included in there. So,
despite the fact that the album Mi Tiempo Roto contains only 3
of her compositions since it was made under the impositions of a
record company that wouldn’t allow her to add more of her original
songs, I’m still going to recommend it for it’s one of my
favorites due to a significant variety of reasons. First of all and
following the entire writing aspect, the lyrics of this album are
amazing. She only wrote 3 original songs but she adapted from English
the rest of them except for one, Cristales Rotos, which was
specifically written in Spanish, so despite the fact that Ainhoa
didn’t actively participate in the creation of the melodies, it is
noticeable that her imprint in the messages of the lyrics is still
very present. This album is really vindictive and has a lot of social
criticism, which I personally enjoy very much in music. You can find
anthems against homophobia or domestic violence in songs like Cuando
Existe El Amor and Dame Una Razón respectively. There’s
also a song about trash TV and some odes to the passing of time and
certain nostalgia feeling for childhood, filled with positive and
even philosophical messages about fighting for your dreams and
believing that everything happens for a reason. Musically speaking,
the album is very rocker and has lots of guitar solos accompanying
the rather pop melodies that somehow remind a little of a combination
of The Cranberries and Avril Lavigne; and Ainhoa’s voice sounds
much better than in the album she recorded previously so, generally
speaking, I think that this is not only one of her best albums but
one of the best well-crafted productions in the Spanish rocker female
scene of that time.
Favorite
songs: Tengo que Aprender, Mi Oportunidad, Siempre
Amanece, Cuando Existe El Amor, A veces, Cristales
Rotos, and En Silencio.
I remember having mixed feelings and thoughts about this movie when I
first watched it. I had seen other Tim Burton films before such
as Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands,
so I was familiar with that peculiar
gothic aesthetic
and imprint on his works,
but I wasn’t expecting it
to be mixed with other rather
realistic and
dramatic scenes, which gave
the movie a deeper and
more serious tone
that wasn’t usually
so
present in other of his films
so,
despite liking the movie in general terms, especially
the fantasy parts, I could not really appreciate that
duality in
the universe of the movie. Later, when I watched it
again for a project for the cinema school, I enjoyed it much more and
understood that is actually this
unusual combination of
fiction and fact that makes
this particular piece of art
so unique.
Based
on Daniel Wallace’s novel, the script navigates
through the past and present with
two apparently diverged points of view represented by the
relationship between a father and his son. On one hand, the father
seems to have created a world
full of fantasy in order to escape the illness that is consuming his
last days on the earth; on the other hand, the son is not capable of
believing his father’s stories and holds resentment against him
because of this, and, as the
narrative
goes on, we learn that they both need to
acknowledge something from each other.
The
story is presented like a collection of tales that is a tale in
itself. These little tales, which represent the father’s point of
view, are greatly
recreated thanks to
the distinctive Tim Burton’s touch
and his creativity and
capacity of forming unique
images and aesthetics. The
job done by the artistic
direction department is
amazing here. I personally
love the part with
the haunted woods and the giant spiders. But, once again, the
dramatic and realistic scenes, representing the son’s perspective,
are needed in order to create that contrast and
antithesis. An
especial mention should be
made to the performances
given by the actors in their respective roles. I
particularly enjoyed the bathtub scene a lot with Jessica Lange and
Albert Finney’s wonderful portrayals of their characters.
No
other song thatA Movie Called Life
could have fit in
better with the images of this movie. Even the title makes honors the thesis and the
ending of the film. It seemed appropriate to me that, although some
parts of the lyrics are very personal and specific about my life, the
childish and naive spirit of the melodywould adequately match the
themes and metaphors of Big Fishframes.
THESIS
It
is clear to me that the main message of the movie is about not
creating walls that limit our knowledge about reality and this is
validated in the ending scene when we learn that all the
stories that the father used to tell his son were actually true. It’s
about letting go and believing everything is possible. It’s a
beautiful metaphor standing for the infinite possibilities that
storytelling and art can give us as a way of mirroring ourselves. There is more
than meets the eye and we have a long way to go still.
“I’ve been waiting for so long that my innocence has now become a
good reason to fight for this world”
The
idea of worlds within worlds has always fascinated me. I don’t know
why exactly but it’s something that has captivated me ever since I
was a child. This idea can also be applied to the concept of movies
and the magic behind the process of making them. That blurry line
that gets hard to distinguish between fact and fiction and the
infinite possibilities that this offers as a cathartic mirror. The
movie within a movie topic not only remains one of my favorites
today still but connects deeply with my philosophy and understanding
of living. Life is like a beautiful big movie and we are all the
protagonists of our own story.
SONGWRITING
Based
on this idealized belief, I decided to write a song about my
particular experience in how I’ve always perceived and decoded the
world around me. A song that would tell the story of my life from a
rather naive and innocent perspective, but showing still all the
baggage and learning behind each lesson in the journey.
Both
melody and lyrics were highly inspired by the song American Pie,
which has a
similar structure
in terms of story-telling. In
the lyrics of
my song, I speak about my childhood in the first verse and then about
my teenage years in the second one, emphasizing the change I
experienced when I found out I was gay and how this affected me
negatively because of all the bullying situation in high school,
going from a happy state into a darker
one overnight. Then, the bridges areself-references about my
fears and flaws, but also about my strengths and hopes. The choruses
are meant to be contradictory and ironic, just like life in itself,
and, finally, there’s kind
of an epilogue, or
an outro, summarizing
the spirit and message of the song: never give up on fighting because
this life is worth living.
I’m
surprised by how positive and happy, even childish. the
melody ended up being. That’s not usually me! When
I start humming a melody, in order to create a song, this tends to be
melancholic and sad, but for this particular song, the melody was
very joyful. I don’t really know why that happened, I think I was
forcing myself a little to do something different or there might even
exist a part of me that is happier than I’ve always thought, who
knows!Either
way, it remains one of my favorite songs as a songwriter, precisely for
being different than usual, and, hopefully, maybe I get to write more
positive songs in the future.
PRODUCTION
Little
changes were made in
the production for this song since it’s meant to have rather
acoustic and minimalist instrumentation. Still, the demo was simpler
and the producer added new textures and arpeggios that gave the song
the character it needed. What I
really like about the
production, in this case, is
the vocals we recorded. Four months had passed since I quit
smoking and this was getting noticeable, not only for my voice but
for my self-esteem. I’d say that
thesearesome of the best vocals I’ve
ever recorded and one of the best productions from that era.
Definitely one of my favorite songs from the album The
Ascending, both as production
and composition.
This needs to stop. People need to stop
believing that a small amount of hurting is ok since everyone should be capable
of bearing it by themselves. People need to stop trying to manipulate those supposedly
considered weaker for no other reason than being different than this majority
that gathers against them. People need to start taking responsibility for their
acts of disrespect and accept that there are consequences for them.
Eye for an eye and every man for himself. This just
needs to stop. The subject matter here is not about each person’s capacity of enduring
inflicted pain or past trauma, but their strength to embrace it and be kinder
to the other people around. I’m just sick of people saying that craziness starts
mainly with everyone’s inner conflicts and not with the bad influence they’ve
been exposed to. We are not supposed to be strong enough to take other people’s
shit, we are supposed to break and cry and wonder why this happens. Why do we
keep on hurting each other knowing that it’s wrong? Why can’t we just try
harder to avoid other people’s suffering? Why are we so blind to not see that
this affects us all inevitably?
This is not an individual issue, it is communitarian.
I wrote, recorded, and produced this song specifically for this tribute video. I watched the movie on a rainy day back in April this year, during the whole covid19 quarantine situation here in Spain, and I really enjoyed watching it so I decided that, as an experiment, I would write a song related only to the story and the characters of the film, a song written with the only purpose of making this tribute video and trying a different songwriting method.
I started composing the introductory arpeggio with the guitar and then continued the rest with the DAW on my computer. I created the instrumental track first and later added the melody and the lyrics. As a curious fact about this different way of making the song, I could mention that I don't actually know the chords I used for the chorus, since I wrote the arpeggio of that part trying something completely different, and I wanted to use different chords than the ones I'm used to adding in most of my songs. I usually play G and D for the choruses in my songs, so this time I randomly started to write different notes in the arpeggio and tried to make them fit in with the rest of the parts.
As a result, the chorus does not have the same entity as in some of my other songs, when the notes and the voice go higher, but I still like the fact that is more distinctive than usual and maybe it's not always necessary to make the voice and the melody go higher in order to create a powerful chorus. Sometimes less is more. And even though I may consider the song a little repetitive from a structure perspective, I still like the mystic atmosphere that's imprinted in the singing melody and I really enjoyed trying something different this time.
I feel like I’m trapped in between two worlds, the world we all know and conceive as the real one and a whole different dimension that remains unknown to our senses but yet we all perceive. I don’t know what exactly led me to walk this uncertain path but I do know how I got here… and it was all in me, ever since the beginning I felt something different about reality as if something was off and I couldn’t do anything but to wait and be taken wherever this so-called perception would want to.
But even without knowing anything about what following this path would mean, I chose to stay in it for a simple reason: I loathed reality and, especially, the people in it. And this hasn’t changed for a single day of my life. It’s not that I want everything to be perfect in some unrealistic way but still can’t help feeling threatened by this lack of empathy we’ve been experiencing until today as a human race. Too much violence and obliviousness about it. I feel as though we had failed. I’d like to believe that something can be done about it or that, maybe, this is part of the evolution process.
Maybe we need to learn to dance in the dark, maybe we need to get lost in order to be found. It’s hard to tell feeling this numbness and pain in my heart. Yet I refuse to keep on blaming myself for other people’s behavior cause no one’s capable of carrying the weight of the whole world on their shoulders. If we all have the power of choice and we all can make the same mistakes, then maybe I should give myself a break from not being perfect. If I’ve been trapped in between two worlds for too long and it’s only up to me to differentiate one world from another I choose to do it. If I once was brave enough to choose to get lost in the dark I can be brave enough now to get out of it.
This is not the end of me, not the end of who I am, of who I choose to be. This is not the end because I now know I can choose to be myself, cause I don’t need to be like you, or like them, I just wanna be me, the one who’s never given up though having been and walked through the worst of hells.
The one who’s never hurt a soul on purpose and if has accidentally, is repented. The one who refuses any type of violence, whether it is the obvious one or the unnoticed. The one who knows that something is wrong with people who simply accept that nothing can be done about it. The one who actually believes that we have the power of changing the world with only the little details.
If my only crime has been caring about other people's emotions, I can live with that. If my biggest mistake is believing that everything is possible, you can call me crazy. If being myself is what I do wrong, then I would rather not be right.
They say fear is the opposite of love. They say craziness is the fear of ourselves. They say we are all different and equal at the same time.
If The Cranberries were my teenage years, I’d say that the band that is currently taking most of my listening to music time is Garbage.I was already a big fan before but it’s now that I am becoming more selective that I can really appreciate their music better. I love their electronic sound and I think that Shirley’s voice is proof that there’s no need to possess a big vocal range or an extremely powerful voice to make it sound beautiful and full of emotion at the same time. I love how her voice sounds when it’s whispered, she’s great at doing that! I also love the spirit of their songwriting, a little pessimistic and generally dark but it is understood that it has to be this way in order to prove that, as they say, it’s always darkest right before the down, and this is what makes it so realistic and full of truth indeed or, at least, It feels much more coherent to me this way. I think that the song Even Though Our Love Is Doomed describes pretty good this thing I’m trying to explain in their philosophy. Their last album, Strange Little Birds, is amazing and one of their best albums and contains some of my favorite songs of their entire career, such as Sometimes, Blackout, or Night Drive Loneliness, to name just a few. I would also like to recommend the song No Horses, which was individually released a year later than this album came out and which I have used to make one of my tribute videos, in this case for The Handmaid’s Tale, a tv show that has completely captivated me for its amazing cinematography and script.
Favorite songs: Sometimes, Blackout, Night Drive Loneliness, Even Though Our Love Is Doomed, So We Can StayAlive, and Amends.
If you could look deep inside my eyes you’d see a tear that doesn’t wanna hide
SONGWRITING
I wrote this song when I was 14 years old, back in my high school days. I remember vividly a black folder that I would carry around in my rucksack and in which I usually kept diverse artistic paintings, lyrics, and such. Some of those lyrics were part of songs written by myself and one of them was this Runaway From The Mask, which was originally abbreviated in the title as The Mask. As can be expected, I wasn’t very fluent in English back then, but I already liked to write songs in English, inspired by my favorite artists and, for this particular song, I remember being highly inspired by the band Evanescence and one of their songs, Everybody’s Fool, from their debut album, Fallen, in which a reference to a mask is made.
Extraordinary experiences were not necessary to let the imagination go, a single word could effortlessly serve as a fountain of inspiration to get into a whole new dimension, and that mask was somehow a clear metaphor for the situation I was living in high school and how impotent it was having to hide my real sexuality in order to survive all the bullying situation. But, although that mask symbolized a concrete struggle during a particular time in my life, I realized later that this metaphor could be applied to any other aspects of our relationships with other people as a society or even to our relationships with the outside and the universe as individuals, and that’s something I had very present when rewriting the song for the production of the album so that the message would be more universal.
But what the song really expresses is how difficult being highly sensitive can be and how it can become difficult sometimes when facing the violence that rules the world nowadays still. People tend to associate being sensitive with being weak but I think it’s the opposite thing actually. Being sensitive means being alive, it’s about feelings and feelings are, despite what many may believe, what moves the world, so I feel proud to say that the message of this song strongly represents the way I am.
PRODUCTION
The demo was pretty different in the beginning. There was a piano arpeggio that sounded like a lullaby and a rocker electric guitar arpeggio in the choruses that ended out for the final production. The instrumental in the verses was basically formed by a pad reproducing the corresponding chords, so the producer has made a great work for those parts, creating beautiful and more complex guitar arpeggios. I personally like the “weird sounds” in some parts, it gives the song a certain mysterious aura that is clearly required for this type of lyrics and melody. I may not like the electric guitars being so present in some parts of the song but I’m generally happy with the final result of the production.
I have to say that, except for two particular moments, I am also pretty content with the result of the vocals in this song. I really feel that I am improving in this terrain. Besides, I’ve quit smoking for 3 months now already and I feel much better and really notice a change when singing thanks to that fact.
Two nights ago, it randomly occurred to me that Straight In Circles Upside Down, one of the songs from the other album, Faith In Chaos, would perfectly match the main concept of the movie The Matrix and I thought that it would be really cool to do another tribute video, so I decided to watch the movie carefully again so that I could do a better job having all the images fresh in my mind for the editing, and I realized that I had never paid enough attention to how great the movie was actually. I had seen it before but I think that now I’ve officially become a fan. I was aware of how amazing and clever the idea behind the script was, but I didn’t remember how creative technically was. The visual language, with all the transitions and visual effects, is very original, I really love it, and it has that science fiction nineties movie vibe that makes me nostalgic, from when visual effects were rather artisan instead of digital. I can see now why this movie was so pioneer and innovative back then, both script and direction are brilliant. I’m really glad to have rediscovered this piece of cult!
It’s been very easy to make the tribute video this time. Usually, when making a tribute video, I follow the frames of the movie chronologically and try to make them fit in with the song, and sometimes it feels as if maybe it’d be better to select the images randomly, but this time they have perfectly matched the structure of the lyrics of the song with the chronological system. I really love the final result and I feel as if the song, which is one of my favorites from the Faith In Chaos album, would have been specifically written for the movie. Phrases like Disconnect your perception or Bit by bit you’ll find a way to start over new are clear proof of this.
THESIS
I think it’s hard to determine the thesis for this movie. I guess I should watch the sequels to adequately figure out what the main message is. There’s no doubt about the philosophical background of the idea and the concept of perception plays here a very important role. I think the movie wants to tell us about how unknown our brain remains today still and how mysterious its connections can be, so there’s a long way to go ahead and we gotta keep on advancing so that we get to figure out what this is all about.
It is more that remains unknown than what we have already acknowledged.
