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Fear in a single word.

Change.

Change is frightening. Its  taking the everyday, the norm and just flipping that bitch out the window. Taking what you're used to and comfortable with and removing it. Its different, its new, its not what you're used to. On some level it sucks.

Change for me is coming and its coming in a gigantic way. I'm moving again about a week after this post.  New town, new bills, new friends. Everything I hold dear is going away for what I perceive as new and unknown. Its scary as hell.

At the same moment though, I'm looking forward to it. The adventure of an all new experience excites me. Who will I meet? What will I walk into? Where will I go after I get there? These are questions that can and will put off a large amount of people. I am not that type of person. I like the mystery of the new too much.  There's too much out in the world to stay idle in one place and not try to see everything I can.

Still, its Change and I will admit it frightens me too. Just not enough to stop me from making it. I will be afraid as the moment comes but I will keep my chin up and look at it for what it is. Something new and exciting that I would not have experienced had I not chosen to move again.

Music.

Music as inspiration is a good thing in most cases. Listening to to what you enjoy and having it spark a thought, an image, a train of thought to lead to anything is pretty great. Except when, at least I feel, that when the lyrics itself influences what you're thinking.

Pure instrumentals have a life of their own. Certain tones and inflections are practically programmed to respond to our minds in a certain way. Attached to lyrics they're practically writing themselves again in a way that isn't the way you've intended. Sad songs are sad. Happy are happy. Energetic are energetic. They almost write themselves.

As for writing, it can be a crutch and sometimes drift you off into somewhere you didn't want to be. As of this exact writing I have Awolnation playing in the background. I have just discovered them based of the song "Sail". I have the album playing and I do enjoy their efforts but not on the lyrical side. They're lyrics are good, don't get me wrong. I really enjoy them. When I hear words I think of what the singer wants me to think but when I want to be personally creative I can't help but absorb the singer's thoughts. I want my own, not his.

Years ago when I was in high school English, a teacher of mine asked the class to listen to a song and write what they thought. I remember it was a Metalllica instrumental. No words, just sound. Unfortunately I don't remember the song but I remember what came to me.

A soldier was running up a hill to claim it for his army. The tempo, bass and rhythm were intense and what I saw was solder storming a position. Moments later the whole song shifted to a much calmer and serene melody. Suddenly the soldier was home. He was on a porch, visiting Grandma, eating heartily and laughing with his family. A good moment. Soon after the intensity of the song came back. The same soldier was back on the hill, dying of a bullet wound. The moment of happiness was him reliving a happy moment upon realizing he was dying. He died surrounded by his brother in arms storming the same hill but living their own separate memories. All this came about by an instrumental without lyrics.

Music is glorious for ideas. It has and will inspire some pretty good and awesome material. As long as you don't focus on lyrics. Lyrics hold the story already. Forgo lyrics and a new universe of experiences will follow.

If you like to listen to music as you write like I often to, try to block out the words. Just the movement of the composition can influence a piece of work that can truly be called your own but remember where the inspiration came from if able.

Keep in mind that when writing, I could be completely fuck off wrong. That's the beauty of writing. My particular interpretation of writing could be so completely wrong from what you feel. If you hear the lyrics and see and feel something completely different from the artist's intended idea then by all means roll with it. I love that about creativity. One person's vision can and most likely will be different  from another's.

Music is once again, awesome. On one level I wish I was as awesome to come up with music. On another side I'm pretty glad I can experience from the listener side. From that side I can be motivated to come up with my own ideas and express them how I'm most capable. At this point in the blog, Awolnation is actually pretty blah. =/

The point in the end, grab your inspiration where ya can. Music helps tremendously and life itself is the best point of inspiration. Take it where it comes. Music still fucking rocks though.

To speak of nightmares.

Recently in my creative mind I have discovered what I feel is an oddity.

I have had nightmares before. Moments in the dead of night where I would wake trembling, sweating and generally fearing my normal day to day occurrences transformed into the surreal.  Regular fears given life, given form, given creepy as fuck smiles and grins. Lately that isn't the case.

Lately my nightmares have turned interactive. Akin to interactive horror movies. Its pretty legit in my mind. I fear, I run , I perceive the horror. Yet on a totally different level I'm taking notes and relishing in the predicament I happen to be in. Two examples follow and I honestly have to say I love both of  the experiences I have been privy to witness.

Experience 1.

I'm trapped in a house with a bunch of other extras. They're extras because I can't recall names or faces, they don't matter. I'm walking through a room with a 'patient' on a gurney with one of the extras by my side.  Suddenly a clown bursts forth form the 'patient's' chest.  On one side that's some fucked up shit. You shouldn't see that. On the other side, I loved it. Scared the crap outta me and I honestly woke up smiling. Who expects that crap? I didn't, thus it stuck with me.

Experience 2.

My companion and I, because every good story is never about 1 person, have cornered some fleshy/skeleton zombie thing in a barn about to cleanse it of evil before it takes a little girl's soul. I brand the horror with some kind of runic script and I'm about to relish victory when my accomplice who has remained nameless and faceless declares that it's not the evil I'm vanquishing that's the root of the problem but it's still alive brother which bursts into the unholy form of my nightmare. My accomplice and I run the fuck away and the dream/nightmare ends.

I wake up at the end of both of these and legitimately smiled. They were both frightening in terms of my psyche presenting visuals to fuck me over yet I saw really good story elements in them. I have yet to have a nightmare/dream that has had a plot twist in it. That was simply amazing.  In example 1 I saw what should have been frightening but yet found the scare informative. What I'm afraid of can  be someone else's  fear and that can relate them to me. Relating to the audience is a good thing in most cases. Touching people through writing is truly a work of art and a bit of being psychic, to paraphrase the great Stephen King.

It has come to mind that at the moment my nightmares are what they are. They're interactive horror movies. I may run, hide, fight  and generally experience every emotion that horror brings to the table there is a part of me that is taking notes, studying my reactions and what the evil looks like so I can write it out later for some other audience to experience that same thing.

By they way, that clown looked awesome as hell in my mind. A clown bursting through a person's chests is fucking frightening to a lot of people. To me, it was an eye opener. I try to bring it back quite often but the clown in question has gone on vacation. Oh well. I'm sure plenty of other creeps, oddities, and  malcontents will pop up in my dreams to take note of and learn from. I honestly can't wait till my next 'nightmare'.

You have got to be @*(^%$# me.

I like to feel that I'm different in that I've given up T.V. I don't watch a thing. I was watching Game of Thrones but I bought the books and have blazed past the show already and will watch the series when its over. My replacement for T.V. has arrived in the form of live streams. I frequent Twitch.tv, the irony there is not lost to me, for my eyeball grabbing layabout entertainment of choice.

Twitch is mostly about gaming. Hundreds of people playing hundreds of different titles that sometimes thousands of people watch with the streamer. Its interactive T.V. Really cool but not the subject of the post unfortunately. Among the various channel selections are ads. You can't avoid ads, they're part of life now. One ad in particular has been trying to jump down my throat with its every passing moment. The ad was for Scarlet Blade. I killed it like the plague it was turning into whenever it arose. That was the case until I got curious as I am wont to do.

Holy fuck sticks. A quick Google search followed by Youtube videos and I developed a shame for humanity I wasn't aware of I could feel.

Scarlet Blade is a free MMO from overseas. It was imported to the states because America has done some stupid shit in its game development days, it at least had to modesty to pull back a bit. Scarlet Blade does no such thing. It looked at the line and drove over it going 90 mph playing Cherry Pie by Warrant.

Scarlet Blade is about tits essentially. All of the playable classes are females. All of them make Barbie think she's fat and needs liposuction. I watched a character creation video. I will not link it because I'm already ashamed to admit that. In it were some of the skimpiest "beginner" customizations I have ever seen. Strippers. . .I mean Exotic Dancers, would be embarrassed by this. I've seen more modesty in Renaissance Era paintings. Aphrodite herself would look down from Olympus and tell the girls to put some clothes on.

Granted, I didn't get much farther than the initial "Holy shit. Her tits are literally bigger than her head!?" visuals to delve much deeper into it. I'm sure somewhere back in time a great great great grandmother of mine suddenly feels disappointment in her family and doesn't know quite why. Sorry, great great great grandmother, curiosity got the better of me.

Like all of my close personal friends would do after this discovery, I will share it with them. If I'm going to embarrassed, so must they. I can't wait.

A bit ghoulish.

A number of years ago I had visited Hawaii. It was very nice. Sun a plenty, a constant cool breeze and the occasional sprinkle of rain to add to the cooling atmosphere. As said before, it was pretty nice.

While I was there I visited Pearl Harbor. There's a lot of propped up information to read about what happened but visually there isn't much aside from the ocean and and the view of the working docks from the tourist side. What struck me as odd was the amount of foreign tourists. Japan is pretty close to Hawaii in terms of travel and Japanese tourists frequently travel for their vacation.  What was odd was that the country that was the cause of the memorial in the first place comes and visits and takes picture while on vacation. On the opposite end of the spectrum American tourists do the same thing to Hiroshima.

It struck me as ghoulish how people in general travel to monuments of wartime horror on their leisurely travels to visit. I get the need to remember the past as not to repeat it in the future. It still strikes  me as odd if a bit ghoulish. Granted, if I get the chance to visit Japan I will take the opportunity to visit Hiroshima and it's memorials and I will feel ghoulish all the while.

Lost in the wagon trains.

"Fell off the wagon." The term for doing something and then suddenly dropping it. Its mostly used in negative contexts. Alcoholics fall off the wagon after long terms of sobriety. Same with any addiction really. I'm going to use it terms of writing this blog. I started it with  many an intention and fell off the wagon.

I wouldn't really say 'fell off the wagon' is really appropriate though. Its more like the wagon parked itself in a terminal. I looked around at other wagons and jumped out of my current to explore the others. After driving way too far in another wagon I was forced to hop out again and walk the long road back. And here I am, back to the wagon I started on. Let's hope I can buckle myself in better this time.