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.
