19. Kether to Malkuth

The first release of 2023 is "Kether to Malkuth," a tribute to David Bowie's 1976 "Station to Station" album (my version, like the original, is a short LP, almost an EP, really, but it is listed as the former on Apple Music, as with Bowie's original "LP"), taking its title and overall conceptual frame from a lyric that comes from the title song, and which is in reference to the metaphorical "stations" of the Kabbalah, a form of mystical Judaism that Bowie was interested in at the time, as much as he was interested also in Aleister Crowley's "Black Magic" (indeed, another lyric of the Bowie song references Crowley, if one is keen enough to catch it; you know, those sure, nasty-white stains...), freezing his urine whilst binging on milk, and hopelessly addicted to another white-as-milk substance: cocaine.

Why this album? Why a tribute now?

As I was teaching my university course on Bowie last December (late 2022), one day during class I had a sudden realization (perhaps it wasn't quite at the level of "epiphany," but...):

The original "Station to Station" album was released on January 23, 1976. If I started recording my version during that month, I could finish a tribute in time for its anniversary the following month, i.e. by January 23, 2023.

And so, I decided then and there that I would eventually do at least one or two songs in time for its anniversary in 2023. 

I had been wanting to do some sort of version of the title track for a long time, in fact, and, although I'd done many, many Bowie covers before, even full cover albums -- including "I'm a Blackstar!," an LP of mine that includes every song off of the "Blackstar" LP, all drastically reinterpreted as electronica, apart from the acoustic "Dollar Days" -- I had never done any songs from the seminal "Station to Station" album but very much wanted to, especially the title track.

"I'm a Blackstar" LP jacket (2018)

I eventually ended up selecting, arranging, and recording three out of the seven total songs from the original LP, utterly reinterpreting the title track (the original is around 10 minutes long, mine over 22...), which I arranged for piano, electric guitar, a bit of drums in the opening section, the lengthy middle section going completely "dark ambient" before returning to some vocals at the end. 

Music video for "Kether to Malkuth" (short version)

Music video for "Da'at"

Next, I tackled "Word On a Wing," a sort of soulful, almost ballad-like song in the original version that is also a cry for help to a (presumably Christian) God (Bowie offers a prayer to his "Lord" in the lyric, unlike the more Buddhist strains of his song from the '60s, "Silly Boy Blue," which he wrote as a tribute to his Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chime Rinpoche, and again different from "Seven Years In Tibet," which he would record in 1997 for the alternative drum & bass-laden "Earthling" album). For me, "Word On a Wing" has always been one of the most emotional and, if not totally transparent (Bowie never was, intentionally, totally transparent about anything!), then at least more open and vulnerable moments on an otherwise mostly icy album, and I wanted to do my own version of it. 

Music video for "Word On a Wing (Thus Spake the Lord)"

Another track from the "Station to Station" album I've always liked very much, and one I'd always felt Bowie's vocal performance to be quite "emotive" rather than "icy," like the previous song, is "Wild Is the Wind," a song that was itself actually a cover song for Bowie (I believe his version was influenced by Nina Simone's version, a cover, again, of the original song, which was composed by Dimitry Tiomkin and Ned Washington and performed by yet another artist...), not his song originally at all, so my purely acoustic arrangement, backed only by the sound of sampled wind and literally played "live" with the classical guitar whilst sitting on the floor of my apartment room one evening, should be thought of as a cover of a cover, rather than purely as another of my "David Bowie covers," just as Bowie's version was not based on the original version, either, presumably, but on Simone's interpretation of it.*

* As an aside, this whole thing also got me to thinking that the Bowie cover of "Wild Is the Wind" is in some ways a bit like my own versions of "Hallelujah" have been -- originally inspired, as they were, to a large degree, by Jeff Buckley's interpretation of the Leonard Cohen song, itself covered by John Cale. Cale's version was, from what I understand, the version that Buckley himself apparently first heard before he discovered the Cohen original, and so he must also have heard it before he had arranged the song in his own style, recording it for his seminal "Grace" LP. Buckley's much more emotive, romantic solo version, ironically, is now perhaps as famous (if not more famous?) than the original Cohen version itself, or at least in some circles it is. 

My own versions of "Hallelujah," by the bye, have evolved a lot over the years the more I've performed and rearranged the song for acoustic, and the way that I perform the cover these days sounds more like "me" than it does Buckley, I think, though in fact I'm not even really sure if my earlier versions had sounded much like his arrangement either. (I originally strummed the chords with a pick, rather than doing the arpeggios emphasized in Buckley's version, but the [vocal] long tone at the end and my style of singing overall were definitely heavily Buckley-influenced from my first attempt at recording the song c. 2018...) In any case, the point here is that everyone has his or her influences, and that cover versions, or even covers of covers, sometimes get mistaken for originals, especially when they are done by people who are as (or more) famous than the songwriter or songwriters who wrote and/or performed the original song is (or was). In this sense, then, my versions of "Hallelujah" are not really a part of this conversation, per se, since few people are even aware of their existence, but I wanted to say something about it/them anyway as a part of the larger discussion about covers of covers, which started with my referencing Bowie's version of "Wild Is the Wind"!

Music video for "Hallelujah 2022" (filmed by Takuya Mizukami - in Fukuoka)

I simultaneously filmed every song from the "Kether to Malkuth" project as I was recording it/them at home, in separate parts (i.e. first keyboard, then vocals, etc.), and these were later edited to make a series of three music videos. All recordings for this album were, as usual, done at home, here in my small apartment room, and all in LOGIC, with the exception of "Wild Is the Wind," which, though recorded at my place, where I dimmed the lights and put lit candles on the floor for the video I would film, sitting on the floor and strumming my classical guitar whilst singing it live, in real-time... The track was a direct recording via my iPhone, positioned strategically on its stand, meaning that the sound came directly from the phone's mic (as in the video), though I later mixed/mastered the entire thing in LOGIC, adding the wind samples as backing for atmosphere and a decent amount of reverb to the guitar/vocals, which were all, due to the way it was recorded, on "one track," so that the guitar and vocal parts could not be mixed separately. (Actually, I have done many recordings this way before, as when I've recorded/mixed/released live acoustic things first created as videos in my room, but for most "studio LPs" that are acoustic, I tend to favor recording guitar/vocals separately.)

Music video for "Wild Is the Wind"

The other two tracks on the short LP (can I say "short LP," which is a bit like saying "Short Long-Play"?), which are primarily keyboard-centric, apart from some electric guitar I played during the first part of the lengthy "Kether to Malkuth" (my reinterpreted version of "Station to Station," to reiterate), were all done in LOGIC, with each part recorded separately via USB/MIDI. This was of course "by necessity" anyway, since I couldn't perform all of the parts myself simultaneously, as if I were a "one-man band" -- I'm not that dexterous, nor do I have as many arms as the Goddess Sarasvati (or Kali...)! The vocals, then, were recorded via the standard USB mic I always use for such recordings in LOGIC, connected directly via the computer to the LOGIC recording interface. The piano part for "Word On a Wing," the second of the three tracks here, was almost entirely improvised atop the synth part I had first improvised and laid down, and much of the vocals, too, ended up improvised in terms of melody/tone/style, though I started by singing the original lyrics, albeit ultimately deviating from them many times as I loosely interpreted the original atop my synth/piano improv and created my own unique (I think) tribute to Bowie's 1976 masterpiece.

14. "The World Was Not the Same" + compilations...

The last "new" LP I completed in 2022 was a double-length release including both newer tracks and rearranged things I'd done, entitled "The World Was Not the Same," the title my adaptation of a quote from Oppenheimer's famous speech about the development of the Atomic bomb. (As an aside, this year Hollywood has been advertising their version of the story, directed by Christopher Nolan, the Batman guy, but this was before I even knew about the existence of the film version, and so, of course, I had not and, at the time of writing this, have not yet seen the film. If anything, I remembered the audio from Ryuichi Sakamoto's 1999 opera called "Life," where he used the Oppenheimer sample in a cut-up fashion during one part of the musical, which I saw performed live in Osaka during that year, the same year I had just gotten myself married before starting graduate school.) 

The LP consists primarily of remixes of past work I'd rediscovered on the hard drive of my old laptop and some newer things too, including a new acoustic version of Bowie's "Lazarus," a new cover/radical reinterpretation of "Heat" from "The Next Day," with a few verses of "Heathen" thrown in for good measure, some in-studio "live" recordings, including a drum solo with electronic backing tracks, and a new version of "Inner States of Mind," with improvised guitar; it includes a couple of dark ambient soundscapes as well, the longest of which has at its center a lengthy spoken word sample taken from a talk I did for my YouTube channel about pain and the body. (I discuss this release in detail in my 2022 documentary "Evolution.") 

"Inside" music video (self-shot)

"Ashes (of the Past)" music video

"Heat[hen]" music video (Bowie tribute combining "Heat" and "Heathen")

[Read a rather thorough review of the LP here.]

Between the time I released the above "Symphonies" series and this final 2x-length LP last year, I also released a number of compilations, remixes, and so on, as I had indicated earlier, including a large swathe of material from previous years. One such compilation, which featured a new mix/version of "Contaminated," for which I recorded a new electric guitar part, a new piano part, as well as a completely new vocal recording (with slightly-altered lyrics), was entitled "Past Life." The compilation LP also included a new mix of "Chaos" (a remix of the electronic version that was used in the original 2018 video), "The Dial Is in the Bathroom," and "Red Signals" from the Laughing Moon project (originally recorded back in 2017, with J and T from that project on bass and guitar, respectively). I also decided to include an acoustic song I'd written and recorded in 2018 on the compilation, a song called "The Ties That Bind," a sort of love song, albeit lyrically a precarious and uncertain one. For the version included on "Past Life," I added a new vocal line atop the one I'd previously recorded, making it, in essence, a duet between my current and former selves. Further, I made videos for some of these tracks, most notably for the new version of "Contaminated," which shows the PLA in action, in the air and on the ground, juxtaposed with footage from Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan earlier in the year.

"The Dial Is in the Bathroom" 2022 Ecdysis Mix (from "Past Life" LP)

"Contaminated" 2022 version (audio)

"Red Signals" (w/Laughing Moon c. 2017) - 2022 Mix

Another compilation I released, after sifting through many hours of vault material and deciding on a suitable track listing, and it took me quite a bit longer to settle on than I'd initially anticipated, was the "Reincarnations" two part series (released separately as "Reincarnations" and "Reincarnations II"), a total of 30 tracks in total. There were also two Bowie tribute LPs: The first featured a brand new recording of “Five Years” -- presented in three mixes: one the full version, with both vocals and acoustic kit that I’d recorded at my friend’s studio, one drumless, and one instrumental, with only backing vocals -- as well as a number of other covers I had done in previous years, including some Bowie Berlin-era instrumentals, as well as new or different mixes of things I’d recorded for the “I’m a Blackstar” LP, along with a new cover of “Sunday,” from 2002’s “Heathen” LP. The second tribute LP was a compilation of all of the other leftover Bowie covers I had done but not published, starting chronologically with “Space Oddity” from ‘69 and moving through to the final track, “Where Are We Now?” from 2013’s “The Next Day.”

Further, there would be more (original) compilations to follow, right up to the very end of 2022, such as "In the Meadow," a collection of songs that included a new ambient mix of my original "electronica ballad" from 2018, "Only Three," a piano/vocal-only solo "cover" version of a friend's (Sunny's) song I'd re-entitled "Upside Down," (the original version had been called "Blackbird," which I'd thought might confuse listeners into expecting a cover of The Beatles' classic song, which this was certainly not), as well as a handful of other "vaults tracks" I had still wanted to release that hadn't been included on either "Reincarnations" or "Past Life." On the final day of the year, December 31, I also released a mostly instrumental/dark ambient collection entitled "The Day Before," which featured one new instrumental track (the title track) and other things I'd done that were mostly from previous years. The compilation also included one very recent track -- "Omicron," from 2022's "The Way Out Is In" -- here for the first time appearing alongside its even darker cousin, "Covid," from 2020's "Untitled" album. I also last year recorded a new version of “Hallelujah” and “Forget Her,” a Jeff Buckley original, and released them, along with an earlier recording of “Hallelujah” and some other Buckley covers, on an EP marking 25 years since his death-by-drowning in 1997.

(RIP Jeff Buckley: 1966-1997)

12. Ukraine, "Infinity," and a Dark Planet 

(or, "What is the truth of you and I?")

Well, and so, 2022 continues...

Russia invaded Ukraine two days before my 49th birthday. I was in my room, already planning that evening to record a lengthy ambient improvisation for keys and acoustic. I switched on the news via YouTube as I was setting up my instruments and arranging my recording equipment, listened in terror as the invasion was announced and confirmed in various ways, and this became the theme for that evening's improv, which I finally decided to entitle, after recording it, "Nobody Wins: Pray For Ukraine" (later shortening it to simply "Pray for Ukraine"). It is a 30-minute, rather nightmarish soundtrack to a war that had just begun, and which continues to this very day, affecting all of us, everywhere in the world (to put things mildly). I also did a video for it, which one of my acquaintances afterwards said to me, quite bluntly, "It rubbed me the wrong way," apparently because I myself appear in the video alongside images of the victims, rather than due to its raw violence and terrifying imagery. I hired some professional writers to do short reviews online for me (in English, and one in French), both of the track and for its video as well, as I wanted to try promoting it a bit online this time around, and all of the reviewers commented on the fact that it was an uncomfortable listen (and, in the case of the video review, a "difficult viewing experience" as well). At any rate, this composition is to me a rather important chapter in my "book of compositions," however short or minor a chapter it may seem to some. This year (2023), in fact, I revisited the 30 minute-long composition in various ways, some more obvious, some less so... I will come around to this again later.

In 2022, I followed "The Way Out Is In" and the Ukraine EP with two LPs. These were:

1. "Infinity for Beginners," which featured the new "classical guitar" recording of "One Touch," some things I'd recorded in the rehearsal studio, including a raw, improvised drum solo and a new, heavily-strummed all-acoustic version of "Want," with vocals later recorded and effectorized at home, and...

2. "Dark Planet," the latter dealing, yet again, with my mental/psychological/spiritual recovery from the breakup/move of early summer 2020. Even after "The Way Out Is In," the memories of the past were still poking me over and over, reminding me that I was still under a dark spell that had been cast some years prior; I hadn't yet made a complete recovery, hadn't yet made peace with myself, hadn't yet escaped the demons I was fighting internally, the battle I had waged with myself, and so I decided that this LP would be my definitive "final statement" on the subject. I badly wanted to distance myself from the past, but the emotions were still partially alive within me, refused to be ignored, and so, I felt, I had no choice but to release/relinquish them via song/sound. This, in any case, was my intention and decision at the time, the deal I had made with myself, and thus "Dark Planet" came into being.

Music as therapy, music as transformation, music as exorcistic ritual: out with the old, in with the new

(Because music is my mistress...)

or in with "good luck," out with the "demons," as Japanese mothers chant with their kids during the Setsubun holiday 

(Because music is my bride...)

whilst throwing handfuls of dried beans at Dad, who wears a demon mask and endures the hard pellets for the love of his family 

(Well, I love her more than life...)

for at least a minute or two before unmasking himself and joining them at the dining table for a nice meal Mom has worked hard to prepare (or purchased at the supermarket) for them all

(She touches me so deep inside)

My approach to this LP ("Dark Planet") was, rather than writing sappy or depressing or angry songs about relationships and whatnot, instead to fill the collection not only with my originals, some of which were alternative mixes/versions of things from albums I had done in the recent past (i.e. the year before), reframed and recontextualized for the then-present moment and concept of the then-new album, but also with my versions of songs by other artists. In this case, the first was a song originally by Jeff Buckley called "You and I," the version included on "My Sweetheart, the Drunk" (there is another song/demo he had also entitled "You and I" included on other compilations, one that is more melodic, played on the guitar, and with completely different lyrics, so I mention the specific version so as not to confuse the reader). The "Sweetheart" demo version was rather minimal, sans guitar, Buckley's voice soaring over a dark drone; he'd never had the chance to release or, presumably, complete the arrangement during his brief time on this earth, but it was included on the 2x LP of demos for his planned second LP that his mother had posthumously overseen the release of, approximately one year after her son Jeffrey tragically died in a drowning accident on May 29, 2017. (This posthumous release, as an aside, had its 25th anniversary very recently.) The cover version I included on the "Dark Planet" LP had actually been recorded (by me) the year prior, and I had originally considered including it on the second part/LP of my 2021 Tetralogy, "The Sun Is Coming," but I'd ultimately decided to leave it off, due to potential copyright issues and also because I ultimately preferred to have another new original song on the LP instead (which ended up being the track "Inner States [of Mind]," by the bye). 

The other covers I included on the Dark Planet LP alongside my own originals/remixes were both pieces that had been written and performed by the artist IAMX, a moniker used by singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/electronica wizard Christopher (Chris) Corner, whose music I had discovered in 2021 and had quickly grown very fond of. (My piano arrangement of"Wildest Wind," the original version appearing as the final track of the excellent "Metanoia" LP by IAMX, can also be found on the third part of my Tetralogy, and, as mentioned earlier, my version of "Tears Cried," arranged as a dark piano ballad, appeared on "The Way Out Is In" as well.) 

In the case of the first song I covered, "North Star," one of my favorite electronic-style IAMX songs, I didn't change the lyrics very much at all, though I did tweak them in some subtle ways; however, I did completely redo the arrangement for acoustic guitar, using mainly arpeggios. The original IAMX version, of which there are a number of different mixes, is a cool, rather beat-heavy electro-industrial dance track, but my version is quiet, with understated, mostly softly-intoned vocals ("Northstar, I want you to...guide me home..."). In the first mix I included on the LP, I added some electronic ambience/quiet noise in the background, and, during the bridge, I also added a few minimal electronic beats, while the second version I created, coming at the end of the album, is presented "as-is," with nothing added to the raw guitar/vocals. Both audio files were actually taken from the "soundtrack" to a video a frequent collaborator at the time, a photographer and videographer by profession who also happened to live in my neighborhood, had shot of me performing the song after having just arranged it for guitar, so the guitar/vocals weren't recorded with proper separation in LOGIC, making it more difficult to mix properly. However, I liked the live, spontaneous feel of this version, and so decided to use the audio for both mixes, despite the flaws inherent in the original sound file.

There is one thing I must explain a bit before moving to a discussion of the second cover I did for this LP. To be frank, though I love the music of IAMX, I am not always crazy about Corner's at-times rather narcissistic, over-the-top/over-sexed lyrics. I can easily accept the makeup and the costumes and so on -- as a longtime fan of glam-days David Bowie, etc., this is not only totally fine by me, as a part of persona and performance, it is also not in the least shocking or objectionable -- and the S&M stuff is all right, too... I mean, each to his/her own; LGBT, all of it, is OK with me, though I myself have never been involved in that world, nor do I have any aspirations to become involved in it. (I have had more than enough trouble dealing with hetero, monogamous, non-S&M-style relationships as it is, thank you!). However, in the case of Corner's lyrics, I admittedly do sometimes grow rather fatigued by the sexual "master-and-servant" type stuff over and over again. (I imagine that even Depeche Mode has moved on from this sort of lyric by now? Their latest LP is entitled "Memento Mori," after all, though I beat them to that title by at least seven years with my song of the same title, written in early 2016.) Yes, sex and sexuality are important parts of life, to be certain, but I am no longer a teen, and so I no longer think about it 24/7, nor would I care to write or sing song lyrics that are obsessed with physical pleasure and/or the psychological turmoil that so often comes with it. (Corner is around the same age as I, by the bye, having been born in 1974, only one year later than me; he is a Halloween Jack, I "a lad insane"...)

Anyway, the second IAMX cover I included on the "Dark Planet" album was my rerecorded version of Corner's somewhat lyrically-sleazy ballad "Mercy." By rerecorded, I mean that I had previously done a "live take" version on my Ibanez acoustic, performed outdoors seated on a bench on a sunny, and also somewhat windy, day, filmed it with my iPhone on a portable stand, and put the tweaked audio version of it on an LP entitled "Live Acoustic." The version for the "Dark Planet" LP, however, was recorded "properly" via LOGIC, in my room, with guitar and voice done separately, though my voice had been, for whatever reason, a bit hoarse at the time; this hoarseness had stubbornly lasted for a few weeks, as I recall, though I could not figure out why, as I hadn't abused my voice or throat in the least, nor had I been battling a cold or Covid or any such either. In any case, my way of singing it was a bit different from the previously-recorded "live" version, where my voice had been a bit stronger and clearer. Perhaps the slight huskiness fit the song's theme, my head voice appropriately "cracked" and "broken"...

Corner had released two versions of "Mercy" over the years on official IAMX LPs: one electronic with beats (the "original" version, from an early LP), and another version (some years later) on an acoustic-centric LP that was, of course, performed acoustically, but still rather rhythmical in nature. My arrangement takes its cue from the latter version -- at the time I'd preferred an acoustic arrangement over a purely electronic one, thought the latter would have been easy enough for me to do in LOGIC with synth and drum programming/loops/samples, etc. This, however, was not what I wanted; rather, I needed "Mercy" to be raw and emotional, and so I started by first adapting the chords on the guitar... I made my recording of the song even more intensely rhythmical than the acoustic IAMX versions I'd heard were, both studio and live, not only by tapping on the body of the guitar, as Corner initially does in his versions to create a rhythmical "loop," but also by striking the neck and frets to create shimmering harmonics, a style I had begun developing and experimenting with a lot around this time, and which has by now become my default style of playing the acoustic. That is: rhythmically, whilst utilizing harmonics, neck/body tapping, and all "sans pick."

In any case, where my two versions of "Mercy" (two = "outdoor live" and "home studio" versions) perhaps diverge most radically from Corner's versions is, even more than in the arrangement itself, the rewrite I did of his S&M-style "confessional" lyrics. There was just no way I was going to be able to sing them as-is with any sort of true (to myself) emotion, or without feeling extremely awkward and unnatural about it, for that matter. I simply could not relate to the words Corner sang in the original, as much as I loved the song itself.

In the IAMX version, Corner sings about how (a/his) woman/girlfriend/mistress is his plaything, a "toybox," and he a slave to her sexy wonderfulness; about how she is his "lifeline" and he a mere "idiot" to her so-called "poetry," and so on. (Mercy, indeed...) In my less romanticized rendition/interpretation, there is a lot more hurt and anger and sadness and betrayal behind the wall of obsession and sexual enslavement that is at the center of the original's confessional lyrics, and, well...although I definitely didn't feel right singing Corner's lyrics whilst performing this song, even if only once or twice for a recording, and though I'd felt a strong urge, nay, a need to change them to fit the theme/s of my own work at the time, upon listening again to the rather bitter words I had myself rewritten for my version, a mutilation of the original "dripping-with-sex and lust" Master-Slave lyrics, I admittedly did not feel so wonderful about my lyrical mutation either. Perhaps this is why I have never been able to successfully perform this song live.

Well, enough said about this song, and about the IAMX covers on the LP.

Moving on... The "Dark Planet" LP also includes a number of longer originals, though all are variations of things I had released in other forms previously. Two are remixes of tracks from the second album in Tetralogy, another is an older electronic instrumental/spoken word piece I remixed from the original LOGIC file I had recently rediscovered and liked, entitled "Temporal States of Being" (I also created a rather surreal video for it, and the track was accepted for a COIL tribute anthology on which it eventually was also included); the last is a mostly-instrumental version of what had originally been my cover of the IAMX "Tear Garden," re-entitled "Tears Cried" in a rather stripped-down, lyric-less form. In the video I created for "Tears Cried," I decided to use open-source footage of rainstorms (in color), juxtaposed with some of the newsreel footage I had saved from the "Ukraine" project earlier in the year (the Ukraine shots were all converted to stark black and white), showing people crying at funerals for their friends and family members and so forth, casualties of the war... 

Indeed, the war dragging on and on, people suffering, dying, starving, and me, not wanting this album to be merely about my own "wounds," those petty little, rather selfishly-insignificant wounds, realizing finally, perhaps, at the deepest level of my being, that the wounds of the world were and would always be far larger and more vast than any personal problems or worries or emotional tics I would ever experience could hold or bear. 

Indeed.

Thinking about it now, and in hindsight, perhaps it was during this time, then, at which such realizations began to dawn on me full-on, to hammer even harder at my consciousness than previously (though I cannot say when or whether there was any single "instant" at which this significant realization hit me, at least not one that I can now pinpoint, nothing like the dramatic enlightenment the legendary Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Ch'an, or Zen, Buddhism in China is said to have had after nine long years of staring at a wall, or like when the diligent Brahmacharya who has meditated daily for years beside the great Ganga River intuits, in a sudden flash of realization, that the entire universe exists in each of the single grains of sand supporting him OmNamahShivaya). 

Yes...perhaps this was when my work and way of thinking about all the problems of the world finally began paving the way for my real realization (better late than never!), which is that the suffering I was causing myself over a failed relationship and an embellished, emotionally-driven/likely distorted backstory I had created to protect myself/my ego, a story that emphasized (in my mind) how badly I had been treated, how I had been lied to and deceived (whether or not intentional deception was involved, and, even if so, to what extent I had been deceived and/or "lied to" I will never know, nor was/is it relevant ultimately...), was really no more than a fleck of mental lint I had given too much attention to, and had thereby prolonged my own misery. I realized, to return to the "lint" metaphor, that I could simply brush it off of my shoulder (or neck, or whatever...) anytime I was ready to do so. In other words, it no longer mattered, since it was all in the past now, and didn't reflect the reality of my present moment in any way.

"The past is never past." (Faulkner)

"Present moment, wonderful moment." (Thich Nhat Hahn)

And so, eventually, when I was ready...

Video: Marc Lowe Discusses "Dark Planet" (May 2022)