23. "Triad 2023"

The album completed, I almost immediately started sharing news about it on my SNS feeds, setting the date for the LP's release to, can you guess? February 26, 2023, the date of my upcoming 50th birthday. I put it up for pre-order on BandCamp, submitted it for approval to my new (since last year) distributor, and shared the full-length version of the long improv, without splitting it into two halves, which I had, as briefly mentioned earlier, entitled "A Memento Mori," via my YouTube page, with a photo of my feet (i.e. dark shoes) in front of a wooden board, taken at a local park and, like the cover of the LP, converted to a stark black and white.

From this point, the new album ready to go, with around a month's wait until the official release date (not that anyone was anxiously awaiting it, other than me, but in my own mind there was still a fair amount of time left in front of me before it became available to the public), I started recalling some of the older recordings I'd done with "Sunny" c. 2019/2020, both before and during the first year of the pandemic. I had released two LPs of our material previously, in 2020, and started listening again to both of them via Apple Music, which then led to me revisiting some of the other recordings we'd done that either had never been released or were, at the time, not currently in any sort of circulation via streaming services. I had previously created, via a playlist on my computer, a compilation of songs we'd recorded which I quite liked; I'd even made cover art for it and popped it onto my BandCamp page temporarily. It was 2x-LP length, and I'd considered at one time taking down the shorter LPs I'd initially released via streaming services with my first distributor and replacing them with this newer compilation, now with my new distributor, though in the end I never did. 

Anyway, to make a long story shorter, in addition this year to eventually having compiled three new thematically-consistent compilations of our songs from the past (and eventually releasing them with my new distributor), I ended up also having the urge to play around some more with one of my solo songs that I'd recorded in the summer of 2020 during my "Covidian-blues" period; that is, when locking myself down in my new apartment (such a good boy, right? Actually, I was terrified of the virus, afraid it would infect my lungs, being born an asthmatic...). The piece was called "Self Control," which was my translation for the Japanese word jishuku (自粛), "self-discipline," or "self-restraint," and which was used frequently during the pandemic to reference "staying at home" and keeping social distance from others whenever it was necessary to be in public. 

I'd done a version of "Self Control" featuring Sunny's electric guitar, which I had rather heavily effectorized, using lots of distortion in order to turn it into a sort of noisy drone, and I wanted to use this version to create an updated version now. I searched for the original file to this song, which I'd recorded nearly three years prior on a different computer, in LOGIC, but did not have it, so, as I was about to give up on the idea of doing any remix or new version, I recalled that I still had the piano and vocal-less "backing track" (thanks to iCloud!) I'd used in late 2020 to perform the song live (which in fact I had done, though only once). Locating this, I put it into my LOGIC interface and recorded a brand new vocal atop it, with lyrics now sung in "past tense," updated for the present, and leaving off the piano part entirely, drawing Sunny's effectorized guitar right up in front of the mix.

This is all rather important to how the second part of my pre-50 birthday "triad" of LPs came about (I didn't want to call it a "triptych" or a "trilogy," in order to avoid making it sound too "Berlin Bowie-ish") because, when I was working on the "updated" version of the song, I thought that, if I made a loop of Sunny's "dirty distorted" guitar, it would create a cool backing/ambient wash from which I might construct a new atmospheric track... And, indeed, it did! I started playing around with this, and this then led, in turn, to wanting to do more with Sunny's older guitar recordings. One thing led to another led to another, and so on... 

I had had the vocal line to my last improvised collaboration with Sunny from late 2020 (appearing on "Hope," released in early '21), "Is Happiness a Verb?," in my head a lot at the time for some reason, and suddenly wanted to do something new with the original recording we'd made: a remix, perhaps, or a newly-arranged version...? As I was searching for the original file in LOGIC, although I never found it, I instead discovered a couple of other folders full of files of just the guitar improvs and solos that Sunny had sent me to be used for our various and intense collaborations between '19 and '20... And so, gleefully layering them, then playing around with them in LOGIC with the attitude of a child who makes multiple castles in his sandbox before first demolishing them before rebuilding them once again, I ended up with two new extended experimental pieces, to which I also added a new improvised spoken word part. These became "What Is the Body?" parts 1 and 2, and would be included on the new LP, eventually (the second part of this "triad" I am now discussing). I also eventually would record a third part. But, well, now I'm (once again!) getting just a little bit ahead of myself...

Around the same time, I also started becoming interested again in my own past solo recordings from that same "Covidian" year of 2020, which were really the "dark ages" for me... I revisited my seminal,* darkly-depressive work "Untitled" one day, and soon began playing around with the original files, running them in reverse, speeding them up, slowing them down, layering them, too, in different ways. 

* Note that, to me, the "Untitled" LP truly is "seminal"! I still consider it one of my most interesting, albeit scariest-sounding, solo albums from around this period in my musical development. It was a transitional LP to be sure, but my music would never again sound quite as it had before I'd made this LP once I'd crossed this particular threshold, both in terms of sound, concept, and also compositional technique (or, rather, perhaps it was more my "way of thinking about" composition than it was any sort of specific "technique," since much of the LP was in fact improvised "on-the-spot," as it were, particularly the vocal parts). There were a couple of other things I recorded in late '20 that would chronologically fall between this LP and the somewhat more hopeful Tetralogy that would be the focus of my musical activities in '21, beginning with the "Hope" LP. Nonetheless, in my mind, the albums "Untitled" and "Hope" are inextricably linked, almost as though the latter had followed directly after the former, even though, in fact, many of the songs on "Hope" were actually developments of tracks that had been recorded after the Untitled album in late '20, also after I had moved into my new apartment and was living alone during semi-lockdown, so this is obviously not the case. I think that maybe I have this feeling that they are so strongly interconnected because "There Is a Light," the final track of "Untitled," and the opening track of the "Hope" LP both deal lyrically with finding "light," alternately "hope," despite my having possessed at the time only a rather limited ability to view the world in this way; I still had viewed it through a very dark glass, indeed. (And yes, I am meaning here to indirectly reference Bergman's film, if not also the Biblical expression from which Bergman took his cue, for it does very much apply to my state of mind at the time I made both of these recordings.)

One more thing I'd like to add (this is a footnote, after all, albeit an important one, as are all footnotes, generally!) is that I also feel that the Untitled album somehow possesses the strange ability to both bridge and -- at least partially -- to explain (i.e. in both musical and conceptual terms) the gap/transition that occurred between much of the darker electronic work I'd done between 2017-2019 and Tetralogy in 2021. Something radical had shifted with the creation of "Untitled," an album I made when I was, literally, "in transition," moving away from my former partner of the last few years, my former place of residence as well (and this included many of my possessions, which I ended up relinquishing, all but a few pieces of my furniture, which I had been using for several years prior to my move to Tokyo and whilst living in Fukuoka, such as my bed, refrigerator, etc.), moving away from the security of having steady teaching work (Covid had slashed more than half of my classes at the time, hence more than half of my income as well), unsure as to what I should do next, scared of the virus, scared of everything, perhaps most especially scared of myself, and very much lingering somewhere between "hell and purgatory" at the time of the creation of this dark work, which was itself created in less than a week total... In any case, this mysterious "something" that the album possesses is something that even I cannot precisely put my finger on, not even now, despite there being a fair amount of distance between "it" and "me" (i.e. the "me" of the here and the now, the "me" that is today writing these sentences), though certainly it may be, at least in part, because it marked (in my mind) the start of the "Covid era," what I would come to refer to as "Covidian times," and so also the start of my own "falling down," i.e. the break-up and the move and the horrible depression, self-blame, etc., that followed the split, and so, by extension, it must then also have marked the beginning of my recovery from “falling down,” which is, of course, itself a good thing, or ultimately it turned out to be so (since I survived it and became more able to endure adversity and to stop beating myself up over things so much, as well as to become much more independent in my way of thinking). Perhaps, if I try and take a much broader view of this work in context of “the world outside,” I might also add that the LP marks the end of what had been our (collective) "age of innocence," i.e. our = the world's, in the sense that Covid was, for many, the beginning of the end of trusting our governments, our media sources, our pharmaceutical companies, and so on and so forth.

To accompany the first track I'd made during this experiment, a sort of sound collage incorporating two different tracks from the Untitled LP (the opener and closer, respectively), I created what might be called a sort of "video mashup" from the same two music videos I'd self-shot and edited originally for those same two tracks from the Untitled album. In this year's version, I put the images side-by-side in split-screen mode, run in reverse, the speed adjusted to fit the new mashup track, which I entitled "Thereisalightinadarkdarkroom" (the original tracks I had used to create this new, dark sound-tapestry, were "Room" and "There Is a Light"). I also did a rearranged/reinterpreted, slightly slowed-down mix of "2masks," now clocking in at over 20 minutes (the original version was also rather long, at 15 minutes, but they are definitely rather distinct from each other), retitling it "Death Does Not Become You." The loop of Sunny's guitar I'd used from "Self Control" eventually became a sprawling dark-ambient/noise piece called "Dark Currents" that ran for around 30 minutes. I kept experimenting, eventually melding together elements of "Phantom," from the recently-recorded version on "022623," with other things, ending up with yet another 30 minute-long dark ambient soundscape, and so on. At first I had what I thought was an LP and an EP, then it became two LPs, and then, having the idea to combine all of them, I ended up with a 2x-length very experimental LP I entitled, "Without Beginning or End."* Although it is only 9 tracks in total, the LP runs for over 2.5 hours.

* And the title of this essay, obviously, makes reference to this, yet the two are not, either, equivalent to each other, obviously, nor should they be thought to refer to each other per se, and also no work, be it an album or an essay, can actually ever be complete in any definitive sense anyway…)

Thus, "022623," though not yet released, was now also not only not my latest LP, but the newer double-length LP, being highly experimental and mostly electronic, stood and stands in almost complete contrast to the mostly-acoustic "022623," though both gave nods to my musical (and, by extension, personal) past, while also looking ahead to whatever the future might bring.

To preface what I intend to be a relatively brief explanation (two paragraphs!) of the inception and creation of the third part of this triangular triad, let me just say that I hadn't initially planned on doing a "triad" of albums at all. (Then again, this is not an untypical pattern for me, as I hadn't planned on doing a tetralogy in '21, nor on the"Six Symphonies" -- plus one -- I finished last year either, but...) Honestly, I hadn't even planned on the "Without Beginning or End" LP in the first place, a 2.5 hour-long "double LP" which I amazingly ended up finishing prior to my 50th birthday anniversary (it started, as I said, as two or three separate projects utilizing both previously used and also unused material from the vaults...a complete experiment!). So, the LP just sort of "happened," as so often is the case when I get into experimenting with sounds and playing around with stuff, old and/or new, in LOGIC. (Let me add that my saying this is not "ego" or prideful boasting, as some people sometimes have wrongly, and also quite rashly, assumed in the past. I consider music as "play," which is maybe why I am able to make so much new stuff so quickly, and also perhaps since it is not my "day job" and I am not working for anyone but me -- in other words, there is no financial or commercial or contractual reason or reasons I have for doing it, hence no pressure or rules to which I must conform, either. This is the best formula for making "good art" I think, regardless of popularity and/or other monetary considerations.)

About "Abstrackt Distracktions" (paragraph 1)

Sooo0 then...as an extension of my recent experiments with taking older tracks and running them at different speeds, layering multiple tracks atop one another, with or without additional effectors, etc., to create new things, I attempted the same with my "classic" electronic track "Black Nail." Actually, I played with three different versions of the modest-length track, running 2021's remixed version at high speed in reverse (Blknailskin), then taking a piano-only version from 2018's "Always" LP and combining it with part of another track I'd done for the 2021 Tetralogy, in which I had spontaneously sung part of the song between a spoken word section, then grafting the introduction to my piano/vocal version of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt" onto the end of it (Blknailhurt). I also decided to remaster (for sound) a mashup I'd done late in the previous year of a remixed version my "producer" from the label I was briefly on had done for me/his label's EP, with elements of two of his other remixes of my songs layered in palimpsestic fashion (Blknailkaos). Then, there was also "Blknailnoize," which is an excerpt of a noisy remix I'd created in 2019, combined with some acoustic guitar elements which comes in a bit at the end. The latter three of these ended up scattered throughout the final LP ("Blknailskin" was completed later, to be included on the "Triad" compilation that is now available via BandCamp, as a sort of b-side/bonus track, and more recently I further morphed it into something new for my This Dark Shroud 2023 LP, "Vanity"). 

About "Abstrackt Distractions" (paragraph 2)

The LP also included one of my recorded live-at-home recordings, done in one take, a lengthy medley where I am talking/playing at turns, a little like I had done for the "022623" medley, yet this medley is almost completely different, not to mention that it was in fact this time a completely off-the-cuff improvisation, filmed with the iPhone as a video recording, the sound later extracted, tweaked in LOGIC, and added to the new (previously unplanned-for) LP. The date of the recording for this track is "022023," six days before my 50th birthday, and I put the date in the title. Another "dated" track (the final one I recorded that ended up on the LP) came literally 48 hours before my birthday, on the eve/morning of Feb. 24, which also happened to be the very anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine (though certainly not an occasion which called for any sort of celebration, as the term might seem to imply). This particular improvisation was recorded in LOGIC, with true separation of all audio elements, and I later added some electronic backing -- which was actually the Ukraine piece from exactly one year prior, run in reverse. It consists mostly of spoken word atop some very abstract guitar and additional organic sounds, and in it I talk about the ongoing war, the plummeting economy, and some other things around health and aging as well. 

The title track, too, consisted of a long improv, and again it included some electronic samples plucked from my own backcatalog, with some added beats and a spoken word track taken from a recent talk I'd done for my YouTube page blended into the mix. This improv I entitled "An Abstrackt Distracktion," the LP itself becoming"Abstrackt Distracktions" (plural), and then, just days before my 50th birthday and the release of "0226" (the title quickly adjusted to read "022623," literally two days before publication), I got the second and third parts of the now-completed series into my distributor's online distribution system post-haste, quickly adding numbers to their respective titles to denote that they were a sequence (01., 02., 03). And then, and then, and then...days later, all three of the LPs, including the long-running double, were released in rapid succession, one per day, right up until the very end of the month of February this year.

Did anyone notice this?

 

Well, now at least you, dear reader, know.

10. Finding the Light (2021)

This hopefulness, for me and you...

--Hope ('21)

2021: The "Covid Years" (Part II)

By the end of 2021, I will complete what becomes my "Tetralogy," a series of four LPs about my experiences not only of being alive during the era of the pandemic, of bar and restaurant and livehouse shut-downs, "social distancing" (which, for me, literally meant staying away from people almost entirely most of the time; apart, that is, from when I was able to start teaching face-to-face again, post 2x vaccination in the fall of '21, and also to visit my daughter for the first time since February of 2020, when I had seen her for one single, wonderful afternoon in Fukuoka), obsessive hand washing and masking, the Tokyo Olympics fiasco during the deadly "Delta" variant outbreak in the summer of '21 (I barely left my apartment all summer, except to do food shopping for myself or to take long walks after sundown...or to go into the studio a single train stop away from my home alone, my head and belly often filled with beer, to play my guitar or to practice the keys and/or to film "live-in-studio" videos I would later edit alone in my apartment room, tweaking the sound in LOGIC, something that kept me active musically, not to mention more or less sane...), and also my ongoing personal struggle to recover from a break-up that was by now (i.e. by then) only anymore/any-more "alive" in my own head and imagination, yet it still possessed me. I was struggling to understand what "love" was, what "attachment" was, what "loneliness" was, and why I still had so many negative and self-defeating thoughts going round and round inside my skull, especially regarding the breakup, but also just in general. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had been having such negative thoughts all of my life. 

I needed to do something about this. It was quite literally, in some sense, a matter of life or death for me, I felt.

(I am getting a bit closer. Day by day, month by month. But certainly not yet there. Not quite, not quite...not yet.)

In any case, "Tetralogy," as I came to call it, with a capital T, was not initially planned as a tetralogy ("tetra" meaning "four," by the bye, in case that was unclear), nor even as a series with any sequel or sequels, at least not yet at the time I had just completed the first of the four LPs, "Hope," in early 2021. This LP ended up including some collaborations, all done "remotely" via the computer, including one track with Sunny on guitar that I had solicited an improv for toward the very end of 2020 (which became "Is Happiness a Verb?"), and another featuring my friend and former collaborator’s reed-flute (this was used for the third and final part of a three-part song cycle I entitled "Mental Ward," which I had created between 2020-21; the version on the "Hope" LP is subtitled "Breathe"). 

The title track of the album, which has itself since become for me, in many ways, a song as important as a part of my catalogue as songs from previous years such as "Chaos" or "Want," or even "Black Nail," appeared in two versions on the LP as “bookends”: the first was vocals backed by some dark ambient atmospherics, the second completely a cappella. Later in '21, I would do other arrangements of it, a remix with tabla/beats subtitled "Pray for India," and also versions on which I improvised on guitar whilst singing it in a freer, more improvisatory style than on the original. Another significant piece included on the "Hope" LP was a long dark-ambient instrumental entitled "Exodus," for which I also edited a video that includes animation from a former collaborator, blended with some film clips taken from the open source digital online market that added, I had thought, some context and a more "story-like" feel than just the abstract animations alone would have provided.

"Hope" (filmed by Akiko Honda)

"Exodus" (with animation by Takeo Udagawa)

In any case, as time went on, and as I began to play the acoustic more and more, both at home and in the studio, I also decided to rerecord some of my earlier songs, remixing electronic pieces from the past (in some cases ending up with, essentially, completely new compositions), and I found that I was able to use the guitar as an improvisational instrument and even as a percussive one, tapping out rhythms on the body and so forth. I also started doing my first "talk series" at home in the summer of '21, in which I discussed, alone in my room in front of my iPhone camera, perched on a plastic iPhone stand, first, the LPs in this new series (my first-ever talk, which was in English, is a discussion of the first two LPs I'd until then completed as part of the cycle, "Hope" and "The Sun Is Coming"), my thoughts on the pandemic and the vaccines that were soon to be in all of our arms, the politics of the Olympics, etc., and then, over time, broadening the range of subjects to include other things as well, such as loneliness vs. aloneness, Japanese culture, Buddhism, Stoicism, philosophy and literature, and so on... Further, while some of these talks were presented in English, I also decided to record some of the talks in Japanese, primarily targeting a Japanese audience, the first of which focused on why I came to Japan in the first place and about what I love, as well as what I definitely did not love (such as the senpai-kohai problem, etc.), about my chosen home.

"What Had You Done" (home performance)

 

"Plagued" (with video footage from Takuya Mizukami)

2021 was, if nothing else, for me, (yet!) a(nother) year of transformation, quite as I (spontaneously, and improvisatorially) sang on the title track of the first in the series from Tetralogy, "Hope":

This year, you see, it's a year of change

It's a year of making things turn

Toward the light...

Did things eventually turn "toward the light"? Well, for me, in a sense, yes. For the world, well, maybe not. (In terms of Covid, the answer would have to be: yes and yes. But today, we have even more serious issues to concern ourselves with, unfortunately. And also, as I revise this text right now [May 28], the news is saying that Covid has been making a comeback in China lately, and that the WHO is preparing for another possible pandemic? Hmm... I hope this is just hyperbole, a way to get people to watch more news, rather than a serious concern we all need to be having now?)

I could spend a lot more time on Tetralogy here, but I've spoken about it at length in my talk series many times before (particularly the series from '21), so I will move onward, forward, focusing my energy now on 2022 up through to the present.

View my talk on "Covid & Music" (a discussion of the first two LPs of the Tetralogy, i.e. "Hope" and "The Sun Is Coming," the "Plagued" EP, which was eventually incorporated into the third LP of the Tetralogy, i.e. "The Answer Is Inside," and a bit about 2020's "Untitled") below.

 9. Covid-19/Personal hell begins (2020)

Well you sit here in this room

Waiting for nothing...

--Room ('20)

2020: The "Covid Years" (Part I)

After finding two part-time teaching jobs, I endure a loss of work and income due to Covid-19 (one of my two jobs becomes impossible to continue, albeit temporarily, with no online teaching option at the time) as, in March of 2020, the virus becomes an issue, the government recommending (and then more-or-less requiring) that its citizens not travel for long distances by train, to work from home, to stay at home, and to do what is called, in Japanese, jishuku (自粛), self-control, or self-discipline. Do it not only for yourself, but do it for those around you who are maybe not as young or robust as you are as well!!! The virus is a killer, they say.

Perhaps even worse yet, for me, and on a more personal level...

Within months, what I had feared would happen more than anything else finally arrives. Or maybe it is what I had anticipated would happen, and/or had created (and/or worsened and/or expedited) to some extent by my overreacting, not shutting my mouth when I should maybe just have kept it shut, agreed even when I did not or could not agree, or at least had I not resisted things, not openly disagreed, and/or if I had been able to endure the most unpleasant of moments together, swallowed down my pride, put the expectations I had had aside and the doubts and the suspicions, and maybe had I also stayed completely sober, stayed calm, even if/when the other party was unable to, and also (etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.)...

But then, one night, indeed, the shit did finally hit the fan. Hit it hard.

Boom...

Snap... 

Break/broke/broken...

Like the fragile branch of the tree on which accumulated snow suddenly becomes too heavy for it to endure the weight any longer

The straw that broke the camel's back...

And, of course: the stressful, bitter break-up, the insults, the accusations too...

Following, of course: the anger, the regret/s, the confusion, the painful repetitions...

And then, later, and once again: the self-flagellation, the self-questioning, self-hatred, loneliness, and also fear...

Did she lie? Was I played like a fiddle? Were those comments he wrote on SNS just bravado, or proof itself of what I had suspected…

Running from the things that you don't understand

Running from the things that make you hurt...

-- Running (‘19)

Well, I moved out, "ran away"

Always running...

Ran from myself, only to find myself staring me straight in the face, once again, as before I had run...

Now, we are in our first-ever State of Emergency in Tokyo. It is early summer, 2020...

Wearing my mask, worried about everything and half-crazed, in a taxi with some clothes in my little travel suitcase-on-wheels and my computer in a box, off to a monthly rental room, all electric/gas included in the fee, a bed, a cheap desk, a single electric burner for cooking...

Not my home

Only a half year has passed since arriving in Tokyo full of hopes of finally starting a new chapter, the hope of finding a new, stable university job (or else some other, preferably creative job), if possible a long-term contract (this still, at the time of writing, has not happened), if not an opportunity for permanent employment (i.e. "tenure track," and this, too, has still not happened to date), coming to Tokyo together with my "partner," thinking that somehow it will just work out, that we can make it work out, things will somehow... Just, you know, somehow...

Wear your mask! 

Stay at home!

Keep social distance…

Will I ever find love again? Will I ever perform live again? Make friends again? Meet new people again?

Can I afford to pay my bills with such little work and so few opportunities during a pandemic?

My mental state now devolves rather drastically, and quickly, too. Very very fast. 

Frighteningly fast.

In the midst of my break up and moving myself into temporary housing, where I'd stayed, sleeping most days and eating very little, for over two months, I had managed to compose and record a rather dark LP, one of the darkest of my musical career to date. I entitle it, simply, "Untitled." Sunny ultimately contributes guitar to one of the tracks he takes an immediate liking to, what became the opener of the LP, a track called "Room," sending me his parts via file sharing to mix into the already-finished track, on which I had played piano (via Midi) and sang, accompanied by slow, menacing electronic beats and some synth noises. 

The LP "Untitled" is itself filled with long, dark pieces, and the pieces that make up the bulk of the album -- apart from "Room" and the closer, "There Is a Light," a more hopeful tone prevailing within its quiet string arrangement -- are rather abstract. The vocals and vocalizations are themselves fairly abstract as well, all lyrics on the album improvised on the spot, and I think most of the pieces on the LP do not come across so much as bona fide "songs" as they do soundtracks to someone's nightmare, perhaps everyone's nightmare at the time; in other words, it is the soundtrack to living in a time of uncertainty and fear during the first wave of COVID-19, the mysterious "Wuhan virus" that has infected the entire world.

"Covid" (with animation from Takeo Udagawa)

Two Masks and a Wish

When Will They Let Us Out To Play...?

-- Two Masks ('20)

Moving into my new apartment, finally, at the beginning of July '20, the apartment where I now still reside at the time of this writing, and having officially "broken up" with my ex...having also gotten all of my stuff out of her (now it was "hers," rather than "our") place (this after myself having moved into temporary housing twice before finally finding a place of my own to settle into, an exceedingly small but also rather clean room, with three gas burners for cooking, a nice bathtub, and double glass sliding doors leading to the balcony for extra insulation...), I recorded more Covid-themed work whilst struggling with the lingering aftereffects of the breakup, with depression and loneliness during the excessively hot, sweltering summer of '20, blasting the air conditioner nearly 24-7 that summer (I couldn't sleep without it; I would wake up every night sweating profusely and was forced, time and again, to put it back on in order to sleep at all). This was a time when every week, it seemed, there were more deaths reported, more warnings, more shut-downs, if not full "lockdowns" (these are not legal in Japan, though the government "suggested" staying at home as much as possible, over and over, and they continued to call for further restrictions, forcing businesses to close early and so forth)... 

I could not perform live, I could not meet people, nor could I "make new friends" in Tokyo. I had, at the time, only been living in Tokyo for less than a year, and was craving some sort of social interaction and stimulation, but it was then impossible. I also could not find much work apart from the few part-time classes I had and was conducting online via Zoom at one university... It wasn't enough income. I drank too much, buying beer at the convenience store or supermarket in my neighborhood, sometimes wine or harder liquor as well, and drinking it alone whilst rather depressed in my apartment room. I vented my frustration and anxiety and fears about contracting and maybe even dying of Covid via SNS; I repeatedly pissed off some people I had considered good friends, realized also that some other people I'd thought were close friends were not actually my friends after all, realized, too, that I myself had acted rather toxic in many instances, pushing people away, and, gradually, as the year progressed, I began "working on myself" more and more, chipping away at my assumptions little by little, tried, as much as and whenever possible, to take a step or two back from myself, as it were; I listened to many, many talks by people much wiser than myself online, to Indian gurus (especially to Sadhguru and to Krishnamurthi, RIP) and to Buddhist monks (the Dalai Lama, some Japanese Zen teachers), started recalling some of the things I'd learned from my studies in Buddhism and Daoism, not so much as a graduate student approaching it academically, but more from the meditative and contemplative side of things, as well as the concepts of, in Sanscrit, shunyata, or "emptiness," and of, in the Japanese language, as frequently encountered in Zen parlance, mujo (無常), or "impermanence," and applying what I could to my at-the-time rather perverted (in the sense of twisted, or distorted) thought patterns, in order to better recognize the mind traps I had been setting for myself for so long now. I embraced Stoic philosophy, tried online therapy for a bit, took long walks daily (mostly at night, since the daytime was too hot, and sometimes for two or even three hours, with music of some sort always in my ears), eventually stopped taking all medications I'd previously taken for depression (the medications had had some rather nasty side-effects, including having gained a bit of weight around the waist for the first time in my life, though I am generally slender of build, experiencing thinning hair, and a host of other awful side effects, too, some of which would last for a very long time thereafter and cause me a great deal of physical, as well as mental, suffering, though I won't go into the details here)... 

And so, slowly, as 2021 approaches, I begin gradually, bit by bit, to start "finding the light," the light which I had sung about on the final track of the "Untitled" LP.

There is a light

On the other side

What lies beyond

All your worries

And all your fears...

--There Is a Light ('20)

The light was there, must be there, somewhere, if only I would persist in my search for it, unwaveringly seek it out...

I would find it.

I had to.

My life, literally, depended on it.

Starting in the summer of the same year, I also took part in a collaboration -- creating an EP together and performing at two year-end live shows together -- with a guy I was supposed to have collaborated with live before the pandemic had hit full-force, at which time our planned performance together had been, much to my disappointment, canceled, a State of Emergency declared for Tokyo, with all of the livehouses temporarily shut down. I was, as I explained above, in a very bad mental state by this time, and it was no doubt quite obvious to anyone who was reading my SNS feed that I was now alone in my small, sweltering apartment all of the time and "not doing very well" either. Not good at all...

And so, one day, this acquaintance I'd only met once or twice at events before the pandemic started contacted me via Messenger and asked me if I'd like to collaborate with him remotely, to which I readily agreed. He sent me some audio files of himself improvising what I considered rather "acid-jazz-esque"; they reminded me of John Zorn recordings I had once upon a time heard. The instrument he was playing was not a regular saxophone, but, rather, what he termed a "reed-sax," consisting as it did of the body of a Western-style flute with a saxophone mouthpiece on it, an idea he himself had apparently come up with. The name we took for our project was Lower Than God, a combination of "Lowe" from my last name, and "Goda," from his (stage) name. I took the chaotic, improvised samples he'd sent me and shaped them into instrumental, electronica tracks. Adding lots of fast beats, mixing and layering and effectorizing the samples I was given to work with, I also added my own piano parts, some samples (for instance, one piece features the voice of Donald Trump speaking about how all Americans had the “right” to choose not to wear masks in public during the pandemic, as "Americans must be allowed their freedoms"), noise elements, and so on. The final track was quiet, almost ambient, with sampled nature sounds in the background, he now playing a standard, breathy flute, along with my improvised piano flourishes, bathed in reverb, and some subtle jazzy beat loops I added. This track remains my favorite on the EP.

Although we had gone into the studio a few times and also twice performed live together in late 2020, along with some rather heavy Covid restrictions -- everyone wearing masks, disinfecting their hands frequently, having their temperatures taken at the door, etc. -- after 2020 we never collaborated on this project together again. However, I used some of the recordings he'd sent me to use for the initial EP (there were still quite a few from which to choose left over in the folder) to arrange new abstract instrumental and/or spoken word pieces that ended up on some of my own solo releases the following year.