VEGANGELICA

"Left Open" is beautiful, zevokes.

I would write more...and will write more later...about the word choice, the flow, and especially the meaning...except right now it is 9:15 PM for me, and I am a mother out there with a child I need to put to bed and read stories to, because I really really really really really really care to see him strive and see him alive and see that his time is not wasted!

More later!

~ Erica

__________________

VEGANGELICA

z., I have a little more time now (I'm on a work break!) to tell you what I like about your lyrics. I decided to put my comments in a new post, rather than just edit the previous one, so that you'd realize my new comments are here.

The overall meaning, first of all, is one I like. I would summarize your song in this way: "Life is full of many small and big decisions we make, but much of what happens to us is out of our control. At some point we just have to give into the flow and realize how beautiful and big the whole experience is. Throughout it all, we hope to find some meaning and a feeling of security in our lives."

The comment I thought of, after reading your lyrics, was that I feel people have to learn to be their own "mothers" (making sure we enjoy and feel the significance of our own lives)...but it is wonderful when along the way you know or meet people who help you feel some security and also help you feel that your time is not wasted.

I especially liked the lines that I put in bold. There are a lot of them! The constrast between "brevity" and "longevity" is clever and concise. "About which way the levy breaks" symbolizes to me the aspects of life that are out of our control. Once the levy breaks, the water will carry us in that direction...and we don't have a paddle to change our course.

And I especially like the end line, because this is really a very core feeling I have: that I don't want to feel my (short) time alive is *wasted.* I don't just want to exist. I want to feel like I'm really living.

I listened to the song again to match the lyrics with them as you sing them. I thought once more about how your songs, like this one, often have a solid underlayer of repetition. I think you use just several chords in this song, repeating them again and again! This gives the chantlike feel. Yet you are very spontaneous with your placement of syllables. So there is an interesting contrast there.

Your music sounds a lot like songs I've listened to in the electronica thread where there is this sense of continual unyielding forward motion, which depending on the song and its handling can, to me, sometimes feel monotonous.

I also listened again to "Oh Yeah," your synth orchestral piece. Really, this would work very well as a traditional modern orchestral piece, I feel, with "real" instruments. I could imagine it being one movement in a modern symphony. Have you considered making a synth symphony with several movements to go along with "Oh Yeah?" You could have this be an opening sonata then have an adagio, a minuet, and an allegro movement! Just a thought I was thinking of as I listened to it again.

__________________

P A N

i'm happy that you've taken meaning from what i've written. i must be honest though and say that the meaning you've found is yours. i write lyrics with the intent of supplying the listener or reader with just enough "triggers" that allow for their own imaginations to take the reins when it comes to the produced "meaning." for the most part, i'd rather not talk about what it means to me, because i think having an experience with music doesn't have anything to do with interviewing musicians, and for me to supply the listener with "answers" is not achieving my goal of provoking thought.

all of this is of course not to say that you've failed or misinterpreted the meaning which is in this song. it is what it is, and aside from the fact that your meaning is very similar to mine, there are no right or wrong perspectives, nor can all perspectives be verbatim duplicates of those of the medium through which music comes.

"...how your songs, like this one, often have a solid underlayer of repetition. I think you use just several chords in this song, repeating them again and again! This gives the chantlike feel. Yet you are very spontaneous with your placement of syllables."

the chant-like feel of a lot of my music probably derives from something meditative... i don't know how else to describe it. in the future, with a little more experience i would like to achieve more peaks and valleys within the same sort of meditative apparatus. not sure how i'm going to achieve that quite yet, but i'm working on it. this should help with the "forward, monotonous feeling" you're experiencing, which is a point that i'm quite with you on.

as for "Oh Yeah," i got my hands on a really great orchestral VST instrument and that track is the result of my first couple of days with it. i'm rather fond of the idea of using that music or music like it inside a more whole concept, but i also find the task and time involved a rather daunting exploit. perhaps when i can afford to not work as a slave to the dollar i will pursue such a venture.

i'm gonna leave this one with some more lyrics, to the song on youtube entitled Spiral Caught:

eon-long blinkspan
dream-tongue speakfree
tree-climbin' paradise-liner
grappling the step-up block...
...flight at fingertips.
CAPOOM!
POW!
up & awaytops
bottom-drops & roundabouts
but not stops
for those caught in orbits
hopping & pining in concert-shots.
protectoreferee man
sector off & filigree sandlines
in a byzantine & labrynthine
gleamer of possibilities
as Hold is here now
on the illimitable totality
of a jester
gone madman
gone lostman
gone
not-quite-yet-foundman
uprooted from the earth
and gone what way zooming
while the weaver's out brooming
the doom
from Trajectory's brand new bloom-thing.
Do You Know How Fast We're Going?
Super-faster than your last guess could probably have ever been...
and on six different lines at that
so effectively a gyroscope
without the tiniest little hope
of ever going in a straight line.
forward thinker reassemble reassess direction
when dancing and dining with an infinitely gliding
spiral-caught wandernaut thought of as a
castlebuilder.

VEGANGELICA

I understand what you mean, z., when you write that you want the meaning of lyrics to result from the creative combination of the listener and the song, so that the song's meaning is unique to each individual listener. Art is a creative process on both the part of the artist and the viewer/hearer. Your intentions behind songs are less important to you than wanting the songs to take on their own life in someone else's mind.

I agree that there are no right or wrong perspectives on a song's meaning. Though I must admit I'm curious about the meaning you felt when you wrote "Spiral Caught," since this sounds much more to me like a stream-of-consciousness song than a direct, literal one! I should probably try writing a more amorphous song like that, since I usually prefer the "beat-the-listener-over-the-head-with-the-meaning-of-the-song" method.

Here's what I imagine when I read "Spiral Caught.": humanity has a short time-span of existence yet tries to understand more about the universe, such as through space travel, in which we hope to explore a little more of our spiral galaxy and try to understand our place in it, when there really may be no meaning beyind it all.

Either that, or I view the song as being about the complexity of non-linear thought!

__________________

P A N

haha! i like your method too!

you're right about the stream-of consciousness aspect of Spiral Caught. it's quite free.

the meaning as perceived by myself is actually quite along the lines of something like being about lateral thinking. the term "castlebuilder" essentially describes a mentality wherein the individual is concerned with security and gain, in contrast to the theme of being caught in a spiral, where the groove certainly dictates any possible outcome. the spiral symbolizes life. life has this funny way of tricking us into believing that we provide for ourselves while keeping us (consciously or unconsciously - it doesn't matter) on the brink of possible "death" at any given moment.

the words sound like they are talking about space travel, which is intentional. but in the case of my head, outer space is life symbolized, and i and my body and spirit are the craft which Life (an external as well as internal presence) uses to explore itself.

these words also have largely to do with this human notion that we own things. parts of the universe "belong to us." i don't believe that to be true, and i think when people begin to look at their spouses and their children and their material possessions as beautiful mentionings of Life made by Life, then harmony becomes more possible and fruitful. i think realizing this is a big part in the evolution of the human race.

there are also hints at psychological "instability," which is simply stating that people carve identities out of pure information and as a result project that information onto their surroundings as though their surroundings couldn't live without it. this is referencing the ego or narcissism boom of the last 20 years. people place their individuality above all else and use their search for independence as the driver of their lives. there is no such thing as independence. whether you're a multinational corporation-owning gazillionaire or a humble farmer on the side of a mountain generating his own electricity and growing his own food and building his own walls... we're all part of a system. the system provides for itself. being that we are a part of that system, i think it's important to not want it to provide for us, as that it selfish and negative.

"dreamtongue speakfree" is phoenetic playing, aimed at establishing intuition as a resource. we too often let our intuition step back while logic and numbers do all the defining of probable outcomes. dreaming is one place where this logic is abandoned and i "argue" that dreaming is one of the human's most important insights into the divine positions of bodies in the universe.

i don't know if any of that made sense. but i gotta jet. early mother's day meeting!

take care.

VEGANGELICA

Hmm...if this is really true, zevokes, I think you're in the minority! I'll post lyrics for a song soon that is a pretty good example of my "beating-people-over-the-head" songwriting method. While it's fun for *me* to write such a song, I don't think readers get much joy! One advantage of my method is that people probably know exactly what I'm saying...the disadvantage is that they hate it!

Thanks for explaining what you were thinking of when you wrote "Spiral Caught."

Everything made sense to me except the last part about dreaming providing important insights into the divine positions of bodies in the universe. I see dreams as outgrowths of brain functions that provide some biological advantages (dreams let our brains learn through non-experienced experiences). It sounds like you see them as having much more significance!

I like the idea of the self/body as vehicles through which life explores itself, and I agree that ownership of anything (and certainly ownership of others) is a facade. Ownership is always temporary, too (such as of a home). I don't put too much value in possessions, but that is also because I have all I need.

Individuality...I hear about cultures that don't view people's individuality as so important, compared to the community or system in which people belong. I know I've definitely wanted to feel like an "individual" and wished to be self-sufficient since relying on others too much can be risky. Having trust in a community feels *very* good, though. For example, I have great neighbors and knowing we watch out for each other is comforting.

I think it is nice if and when one feels one contributes something to "the system" of which we're a part. One of the most depressed times in my life was when I had no job for a year and wasn't going to school and felt unuseful. It is nice to feel one can contribute something. At the same time, I realized it is not healthy to determine self-worth based on one's actions, abilities and contributions.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about your song. I like hearing what goes into your song lyrics. I see you doing some things I'd like to do musically and lyrically...be more spontaneous and flexible, for example. So, learning about your process helps me as I think about ways I'd like to change my own. I hope talking about your songs is helpful to you, too!

Have a happy mother's day!

__________________

P A N

well, i don't look at the dreams you have when you are sleeping as significant events which happen on a nightly basis... it's rather the dreams we have when we are children about all the things we want to accomplish. when i was a kid, i wanted to become a firefighter, an astronaut, and nearing my teenage years i wanted to become a lawyer. these dreams were not based on the acquisition of anything material but rather just the prospect of living the experience of saving people from intense situations, seeing earth from not on earth, and using my ability to argue very efficiently to a degree that my parents and grandparents could appreciate.

but, i should note that i do believe the dreams we have at night are significant if we can remember them. Carl Jung (Freud's pupil) developed a system by which we can reference the imagery in our dreams in terms of their archetypal indicators pertaining to the life we lead in three dimensions. i've tried to discount the validity of this "technology," but find that it simply makes too much sense. reality is only as we are capable of perceiving it. our individuality is simply the sum of many circumstances. so our brain creates more refined meaning (only possible in the surreal world) and adds it to familiar or near-inherent imagery in order to tell its own life-driver that changes need to be made or vice versa, in whichever descriptive form it can muster.

all in all (as i figure things out as i write them!), i guess night dreams are like maintenance and are a direct connection to the will of even the smallest members of universal biology, who all experience the will to live. and i guess childhood dreams of the future are important for adults to have because.... well, children are innocent, and far less concerned with everything that mass brainwashing has convinced adults to care about and worry for.

all for now.

happy mother's day to you too!

oh, and i should say here (and i might go edit the main message to include this) that my music - particularly the synthetic stuff - is far better if you crank the volume on it. i find that to listen to music quietly is to have a very cerebral or intellectual experience with it. adversely i think if you listen to it loud enough that you have a physical interaction with it, you begin to suppress the influence of our current paradigm of thought, and begin to experience what the "maker" of that music was after.


SO TURN IT UP!!!

also, there is low end stuff in there which can't properly present itself at a low volume. some of the bass is situated so as to be felt rather than heard. Amon Tobin introduced me to that idea.

VEGANGELICA

Ahh..I understand. And I agree with you about the value of having childhood dreams and trying to fulfill them in some ways. I wanted to be a biologist learning more about how life functions...and that's what I became! Not all aspects of the dream were fulfilled, but it was nice to have achieved a little of what I originally hoped to do.

Oh! Then you'd probably be interested in a show I watched about dreams. Researchers found common images in dreams. For example, during REM sleep, children commonly dream of fearsome creatures (scary animals)...which is hypothesized to have resulted from such dreams enabling early human children to develop an understanding of what to do when facing *real* predators, thus increasing the children's chance of survival (to pass on the dreaming ability). REM sleep dreams often have negative connotations, as opposed to less memorable dreams that we have during non-REM stages of sleep, which usually feel positive.

I do think that as an adult, my dreams are usually more honest with myself about what I'm happy with or unhappy with in my life, since I (usually) can't control my dreams and ignore certain thought processes as I might when I'm awake.

Yes, I know what you mean about bass being felt rather than heard. That is an exhilarating feeling, like when you listen to a parade and you can feel the bass drums of a marching band coming nearer. The thudding inside you gets more and more intense!

A related experience: when I walk underneath a train overpass when the train is rushing overhead with a sort of monstrous power, I like to stand with my eyes closed because the feeling of hearing and feeling all those vibrations is wild and exciting...it feels out of control. If you haven't tried that, z., I recommend it! I find I like electronica that has that same feeling.

__________________

P A N

new track up @ zevokes - Official Artist Page on iLike - free music, pictures, videos called "'come one." it's all vocals, and the first piece i've done with a half-decent mic. enjoy.

VEGANGELICA

"Come one" was very interesting! Nice rhythm. I like the breathy sounds used almost like the sound of cymbals. My only suggestion would be for the intro (with the initial repeated "mmm ba da" vocalization) to be a little shorter, such that the lower throat-singing type sound starts closer to the beginning of the song. I felt the intro lasted a little longer than I would like, because during it I started to wonder if anything else was going to happen...which it certainly did, but I had to wait longer than I expected!

__________________