THE SHORT VERSION: I had almost no time to really do anything productive this weekend, and yet:
- Played five minutes of Bloodborne, hated it, am never playing another ‘Souls game ever again.
- Finished Greg Sestero’s The Disaster Artist; kinda makes me want to hate-watch The Room again, which doesn’t necessarily make it a successful memoir? It’s OK.
- Recorded two new music things yesterday, one of which I think came from a dream (it’s not bad, but my recording isn’t great), the other of which is an idea I’ve been thinking about for around 13 years (and have already recorded twice – once in 2001, and again somewhere between 2003-2006), and which I’m VERY VERY EXCITED ABOUT and want everyone to hear, even though it’s not done yet.
THE LONG VERSION:
Long-time readers of the site may have noticed that I’m not really writing very much about games these days. There are several reasons for this. The most obvious is that I’ve been super-focused on writing music, and so that’s taken up a great deal of my available brain-space. There’s also not a whole hell of a lot going on right now in terms of new games that have caught my interest – I mean, there’s a few indie titles that I was enjoying and want to eventually get back to (especially Ori and the Blind Forest), but, again, any and all free time is being focused on music right now.
But there’s also shit like this, which literally makes me nauseous. It is mind-boggling to me that we’ve gotten to the point where there’s a convenient and commonly-known name for this activity (“swatting”), and yet somehow the idea that someone wanted to make it even worse is just sickening. The videogame community at large has been a toxic cesspool for years, and anyone who’s been on the internet since last August is probably sick to death of crap like Gamergate and whatnot, but this sort of “prank” is going to get somebody killed soon, and it makes me want to have nothing to do with a hobby I’ve loved since I was 6 years old. I’ve thought about getting into streaming, but the idea that a SWAT team could storm my apartment and hold shotguns to my 2-year-old’s face because some bored teenager thought it would be hilarious makes my blood boil.
So given how angry and upset I am over the state of gaming culture, you can probably imagine why I was not really in the mood for something like Bloodborne. I did give it an earnest go. I created a character, made my way down the steps of that darkened house, came across a creature, realized I didn’t have any weapons but decided to attack anyway, had a pretty good run at the beastie before getting destroyed, woke up in the courtyard of a weird ghostly manor, resurrected back to the house, saw the beastie, and before I could even press a button I was suddenly killed, and then as I waited 45 seconds for the game to finish taking me back to that ghost manor, I realized that life is too short to be needlessly frustrated by something that I’m not even really sure I’m going to enjoy.
What I have been enjoying lately is making music. I’ve recorded more music over the last 2 months than in the previous 8 years combined. I’m reconnecting with a part of myself that I’d more or less put on the shelf after my last band broke up in 2007, and it’s a wonderful, empowering feeling. I’m really excited by the stuff I’m recording now, whether it’s brand-new or something 20 years old that I’m re-purposing. Even though I’ve still got a long way to go before this album is finished, I’m feeling as energized and motivated as I ever have before. Shit, I’ve even got 6 potential album covers ready to go and I don’t even have any song titles yet.
I really want to share this stuff with you all; it’s killing me that I have to keep it hidden away. (As a matter of fact, right this very minute I’m listening to a thing I recorded late last night and it’s all I can do to keep myself from attaching it to this post.) It’s for the best, of course – anything you could hear right now is still very early and unfinished, and I’d rather you hear what you’re meant to hear, and there’s some cool stuff that’s going to happen when this thing is finally ready to go which I can’t talk about just yet. But I’m in a really good place as far as music is concerned, and that’s putting the rest of my life in a really good place, and I feel like I’m becoming a whole person again, and that’s maybe the best news of all.
Shouts From The Couch 
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