wyrdwind

Chiaroscuro

.

I suppose

They’ll tell you she went with grace

Some gauze-gleam daughter of a cursed fate

Accepted that diagnosis, offered herself up as sacrifice

That his love alone was monstrous

Just a boy mad with grief

Riding hard with a stolen sword, a dead girl, and half a plan

Across terrain green as it is black as it is vast

As if cloven by giants

Down a dire stone bridge, domino peninsula vertebrate

This chasm or the next, it was always a one way trip

From the moment they met, the blade a radiant compass

But only in the hand of singular purpose

You find your person, you make a choice, and keep on making it

This chasm or the next

The Shrine of Worship in the Forbidden Lands

The largest flotsam of an ancient civilization

In defiance of natural law, vaulted ceilings thred with pillars

Smote cylindrical audio jack meant to plug into God

She looked so small on that altar

Where by that blade be made to answer

Who?

Dormin

Or so it’s called, voice a scatter of fachs in surround sound

Come home to roost

Sixteen idols for sixteen colossi, imprisoned fragments

So mighty the Spirit, so misunderstood, such solitude

An entire religious order composed in counterpoint

Bade every soul turn its gaze away

And so her resurrection would come at a price

Inflation’s a helluva thing, freedom for a single life

All sixteen set to perish, titans of stone and blood and magic

A child’s wildest imaginings in dead silence

There’s no soundtrack in this game, no mobs or NPCs

Just folly after folly after boss fight he initiates

Wander made his choice sixteen times for sixteen shades

The toll a ghost economy takes, energy must go somewhere

It cannot unexist

He bore the marks of intimate acquaintance

This exclusion zone formerly populated by low formants

I suppose

They’ll tell you the closer he got

The more fitful Mono’s slumber

That she begged him turn back from karmic debt incurred

Those mute creatures were peaceful until directly challenged

Innocent

Led to slaughter purely by circumstance

Named a danger simply for their scale

For all their tectonic gentleness

But a deal was a deal

He was a boy with a sword

And she was his person

The shadows consumed him

And a horned beast he became

His eyes cold embers, blue as the grave

Lord Emon mustered his men, because according to scripture

Black means evil, horns are bad, and life is not death

Either side of a blade’s edge

He cast the sword into a pool so sacred

It slit a slipstream wide open

And saw the corruption drained

The antidote to bloodshed

Well it’s tears

Fully felt

But before Dormin was banished

Mono woke

Abandoned in a cathedral of shattered egregores

They blew the bridge on their way out

Because their order didn’t want to play dolls with her

Wander had been reborn an infant

With horns

I suppose

They’ll ask why he did what he did

What possessed him, foul obsession

It must have been a sickness, it didn’t make sense

For the love of a cursed girl from childhood

Who did not consent to her fate

Were he blind or wide awake

Fully cognizant in the dead silence

Just one thing defies all laws and doctrine

For even creatures born to perfect darkness

Exhibit tropism

Love is magic

And they call this evil when a woman commands it

At the apex of the Shrine of Worship, a forest

There is a Secret Garden, its fruits poison to man

How many times he’d have to play through, live it down

To build the grip strength, find his footing

Repay the karmic debt

To reach her arms again, as a man

Knocked out of tandem

The high road and the low road rarely intersect

Mono raised that child alone

And were the silence a heavy thing, or but feathers

Oh but to have known your soul’s resonance chamber even once

In the biblical sense

I bet

She could tell a story

Got real good at keeping herself company

Did she have to give her one true love away?

You know, Dormin

Is Nimrod spelled backwards, perhaps

Because he thought to touch Heaven

In the wrong direction

And as for its low-high voice, that spectral twin-tone

The acoustic shadow cast by a dramatic contralto

Caught in an uncanny valley

Horizon to horizon in a soloist section

Who never could blend, legato liminal plain as day

Had Mono ever spoken we’d find

She sounds just the same

.

@~^~

I watched my brother play Shadow of the Colossus once many years ago and had Big Feelings about it, but just kinda pocketed those observations and impression sketches for later. My subconscious tends to incessantly mull stuff over and roll it around under the rug until all of a sudden I wake up one morning and it’s like HEY remember this? And also these things. Hit send. Then there’s me at like 2 or 3 in the am furiously tapping out a new piece until I can settle down and finish my sleep. And that’s assuming several more pieces weren’t sparked in the frenzy.

I think what did it this time is the random smattering of songs I scrounged up on YouTube, bonking all over the place like a drunk bumblebee. Wicked Game – Geoff Castellucci; Lovely – Jingxuan; Scarborough Fair – Tina Guo; The Unquiet Grave – Trobar de Morte; The Witching Hour – Kerli; UMAI – Shireen; Feel Like Falling – Digital Daggers; Still Here (acoustic) – Digital Daggers; Love You to Death – Starset; Point Of No Return (acoustic) – Starset; Wherever Forever Is – Dax Riggs; Kicks (acoustic) – Au/Ra; Outsiders (acoustic) – Au/Ra; Ghost (acoustic) – Au/Ra. Really, all of her acoustic stuff is fucking gorgeous, it really gives the emotion in her voice room to breathe. Idk who’s on the strings and keys but bless him.

I really can’t say enough about my love for instrumentals, acoustic arrangement, and fingerstyle. If you’re ever out there wondering if maybe you’re going too hard with all the whimsy fiddly bits, I assure you, I immediately caught every single sound on that track like a cat rubbing its cheeks all over your dirty work boots after a long day with an open mouth. Every tap, knock, scratch, tremor, bend, scuff, breath, swallow, vowel shape, texture, whatever man. I caught that guy tinkling out a two second callback to a song you did five albums ago with ten other louder things in the foreground. I caught those little car sounds like the haze after you’ve been in a wreck and also the key jingle. If your punky theater kid screamer out front pulls some 80s and sounds identical to Micheal Jackson for the span of exactly one word, it will not escape my notice or appreciation. I will pointedly wait until I am in a quiet house with my best sound system to play your latest song. I will literally clear my evening like it is a date or I’m some bougie old man who has like 1000 skeletons in his closet sitting in his study with a glass of something full bodied and expensive. Actually, you should know, I will refuse actual dates and shut suitors down specifically because I prefer an excellent selection and my own thoughts. 10/10 return on investment.

I like music a normal amount. Point is, whatever you do, it’s never for nothing. This is a woman who religiously attends a YouTube channel just because it’s some nighttime Japanese diner street food man whatever doing his job a cappella in the pitch black splashed by fluorescence and LEDs like Charon on the River Styx with distant short burst speech like REM sleep flutter through the wall of a placenta. I’m always listening.