//------------------------------// // Blending Things // Story: The Things Tavi Says // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// Only in the dead of night can I feel this. This... This poetic prison. There is no night... no stars... No floor... no walls... No inside or outside or the dust in between. There is only me, these glowing instrument panels, and a ribboning matrix of music samples. I fumble between them, spinning in my chair, jotting down notes, hitting time stamps... ...and slowly, agonizingly threading together the pieces of a work of art from the inside out. Not just any work of art... but one that I've delayed—that I've put off for nearly a decade. This is the missing part of me. The bridge in between the blue and magenta. A platform so expansive and frightening that my only recourse was to leap from it when I was only halfway across. Only now, while spanning it, one note and recording at a time, do I realize just how treacherous is the abyss that looms beneath. The mind-numbing horror of failure... of ennui... of disinterest and apathy and all the other detritus of an artist burnt to a crisp by her own passionate pursuits. I'm most horrified when I linger... when I pause... when I stop to ponder on what I'm doing and why I've decided to do it so late. So the only solution is to not stop. Ever. Instead, I keep going. I keep sampling. I keep mixing. Rolling myself through each disc. Dipping into the sonic archives of the past. Shaking hooves with Cyan... nuzzling her close... then dissecting her so that the entrails spell something magical across a desert floor. And somewhere... at some point... ...a melody forms. Bit by bit... Ballad by ballad... ... I am constructing a chorus of captured sounds. Mutated and massacred as they may be, they make symphony through new sonic serenades. A half-note here... a stretched harmony there... a mix of auditory clutter in between... then bathed over with a vocal vaseline to make everything smooth, glossy to the ear canal. And the colors... Goddess Celestia... The blue stretches, curves, rises and dips. I find myself painting a canvas against the black borders of DJ Capricorn's studio. I don't need a canvas. Cyan Sings voice is the canvas, constantly morphing, changing. I throw myself naked into this experiment, keeping everything natural, primal, simple. I constantly feel the urge to throw in electronic samples from outside the source material and each time I refuse. All I implement is the sound of Cyan's voice—sometimes layered on top of itself—and the instrumental bits I've stolen from the various ballads. For a backbeat, I utilize samples of piano plonks and drum snares directly from the original album. But, for the most part, it's Cyan's voice dominating through and through, utilizing her high peaks and her bass exhales at key moments. So far, the evolving tracks resemble an out-of-this-world acapella project, only with trippy electroswing elements thrown in between. But that's just me giving an elementary description. Each ensemble blends together like new age trance, rising and falling, morphing from one movement to another. I wonder if maybe I'm going a bit too far, but then I tell myself that there's plenty of opportunity for changes. If nothing else, I should be pursuing each impulse I have to experiment. So I do just that, plunging deep into the sonic mirth, causing bigger splashes across the walls of liquid vibration around me. I find the colors blending, the noises turning more complex, the heartbeat spiking with each reoccurring playthrough. I must be doing something right... or something wrong. Perhaps that's just me being natural. When was the last time I was natural? Cyan Sings... ... maybe it's funny... maybe it's sad... ... ...that when I mix your voice with my magenta mind... ... ... ... ...it almost comes out violet in the end? And that's when I feel something that I haven't felt in weeks. I feel like I'm home. It nauseates me as much as it liberates me. I feel like I'm going to die doing this. So I do it more.