"Unearth the hidden melodies from oak and string and ink."
"Tell me about your music making process. How did you approach this endeavor? What was the hardest part about making your game?"
And you're back in time in a small home saturated with the scent of seasonings. A cushiony, warm Black woman cooks nonchalantly at a stove, smiling as she stirs the pot, while you wrestle with one of the greatest quandaries a child philosopher could face: where is middle C on this piano? You give up. She doesn't have to turn around to know. “It's right under the brand name, honey.” Right there in front of your eyes, under your nose, a snake that bites you again and again. You press the note of your origin to begin the summoning.
Surrounding you is the sense of a mystic prologue; finding your identity before you venture out into the world. Understanding your place, your beginning, and recognizing that placement in the universe. There's a before and after you and before and after that.
It's a spell. But you won't realize that until 2024.
And you're back to a small, cozy office. To your side, a clean fish tank gurgles, water babies blowing bubbles at you in mockery. There are no waves in their world yet you feel rocked while sitting still, at the mercy of the storm threatening to capsize the boat you do not steer. Your mother, on the couch in the back, flinches as discord overwhelms the room. It's heavy, it's harsh, it's happening forever until it isn't. Until the tall, gentle giant, dipped in chocolate, rescues us, righting the ship in real time and guiding us safely finally through the storm. At rest, he turns slowly to the child philosopher sitting on the bench with him, and looks down from centuries of wisdom passed and speaks slowly, softly: "You know what you have to do." And the child knowing, admonished, nods. You gather your craft and vacate the sanctuary with your head down.
He could always tell when we didn't practice, you think aeons later. It motivates you to rewatch this video, and this one, and this one until that sacred knowledge is tattooed onto your brain. This is the way of The Craft. Learn your tools. Know your place. Sift through the sonic wreckage with your hands. Unearth the hidden melodies from oak and string and ink. It's time and labor and patience but as we grow older a new instrument enters our tool chest: intent. When you're younger you have all this power to create and create and create like the reckless God you are. But you lose that over the years to the management of the mundane. You look back and think how easy it seemed to output and how easy it was for it to slip away or be left unfinished, unwritten and meaningless without a conclusion.
And then you're back to an auditorium in a high school busy with activity and people who know you as the oddball, class clown, most likely gay. You wave as you wait your turn in line. Before you, a girl takes the room on an acoustic rollercoaster ride that none of you requested and you caution your body: don't do that. Remember the Craft, your training, practicing as late as that morning waiting for the bus as you attempted to enchant the birds in the air.
It's your turn now. You can't look at anybody. Your friends smile and raise their thumbs and crossed fingers and in return you blow kisses. The fluffy white woman who breathes heavily whilst reading romance novels begins the accompaniment and you sing the first note. It resonates. Conversation dips only for three seconds. You've done it! However briefly. Then you are given the next Labor: singing a capella.
You've been waiting for this. Biding your time fathoms down within your soul where the eye of the leviathan opens. “The trouble with schools is, they always try to teach the wrong lesson. Believe me I've been kicked out enough of them to know…nothing matters but knowing nothing matters. It's just life…”
And you've been dancing through it all since, playing the accompaniment, rehearsing for solos in secret and solitude. But now you take the next step above and over the pit, the orchestra beneath you. You even have a wand - that's your intent. With less power but more focus. Wisdom dictates how you'll go about casting as a true acolyte, surgically shaping figures, writing in air. Constructing a ship, but in a bottle, swapping out brute force for dexterity.
You find C. Then go back to A.
And then back to a tiny apartment with high ceilings and even higher hopes as you strike at a molten idea with two hammers. You only have one, the other is a French man you've hired as your partner. You sing, he transcribes. You suggest, he counters. You lead with notes, he follows with chords. Together and yet thousands of miles apart you weave your second song together. The first was a joy but this? A revelation. You both have our safety gear on, the shower of sparks reflect, illuminating your helmets as you weld a symphony into being. And…? Success! The result is glorious. So much so that you're crying because you didn't know this was in you too. And he's touched because he's witnessing the ascendance of a sonic witch. “Bien fait mon frère! See? You ARE a musician.”
Which is a high you never come back down from. You recline there on your new perch. Lonely but aloft and reconsider what the title “writer” means and how heinously minimizing it is to constrict that to just words in a specific format. Achingly, wrongfully finite. “Expand it, love,” you say to yourself. “It's all The Craft.” A boulder gives way in your soul and a flow comes just then. Not a wall of sound but a babbling brook. Hungry, curious, steady. You've never understood the term “stream of consciousness” more than you do now. Its strong cool washing over everything.
And then you're back at a table in a restaurant in summer during the heat as a newly minted transcestor reveals a colossal piece of your identity. She's pouring over you praise for patience and reads a spell of her own to bless you for the rest of your days.
“I think of you when I think of grace,” she reads because she writes her own potions “I watched a Black comedian deliver a set on the idea of a rose in the concrete. Everyone looks at that and goes “Oh! You made it! Look at that beautiful symbol of resilience. Yada yada. But here's the thing…the rose doesn't belong there. It belongs in a rose bed with other roses. What happened to it is a mistake. It's now isolated. An extremophile clinging to life and the pursuit of happiness…”
Well she didn't say it all like that but it was very close. This next quote is verbatim. She looks up, makes eye contact and casts:
“I think you are like that rose in the concrete. You don't belong there. You belong with other roses in a bed receiving the proper care and attention you deserve and I'm so sorry that this world is treating you like a problem when it should be the opposite.”
Boom. Now comes the rush of water, the sound and the fury, the tsunami.
What splendidly gorgeous devastation.
It could crush you in an instant this tidal wave of emotion.
And…you let it.
Find C, ground yourself.
Wand in hand, you conduct and slash right down the middle parting the seas. On either side of this path, you marvel at the vivid memories on one side and the vague, vast shapes of the unknown on the other.
At the end is the coda to your sonic self-portrait. Written about, for, and by you. This is how you sound to yourself and it's whimsical, haunting, slightly ethereal, and endlessly melodramatic. You've never been prouder. This euphoric realization reshapes the nature of the beast you're taming. And the best part is you haven’t played a keyboard since you were 16. Picking it up again in a brand new way, using some of the most marvelous tools the internet has to offer (for free!).
This is the process for creating your game, unlike anything you've done previously, it started with a spell. The music had to come first and then everything else afterwards. At present you present your collection of talismans to exhibit online to the friendly and the unknown but all are welcomed.
You tell your audience that you always compose for piano first because that was your first love language. Next time you'll cover the more practical elements, the business behind it all, the game design doc, the learning process, etc.
Creating music was the true tribulation, not the code or the planning. It was this:
The Craft.
Thank you for reading. Pardon the AI art, think of it as a placeholder until I make enough money to pay an artist to do this full time. Please enjoy the soundtrack to Man in a Dress beginning with the signature song:
A Rose in the Concrete.
