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d-criss-news · 4 years

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Quibi might seem like the Wild West to creators. When it comes to new media, the creators who step to the front to make untested content have to build the rule book themselves. That is just what Darren Criss did with his new Quibi show, Royalties, as a creator, songwriter, and actor. Criss, known for The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Glee, Elsie Fest and several Broadway roles, debuted the ten-episode first season earlier this month.

The show follows two songwriters as they try to churn out a new hit song every week under hilarious parameters. Criss stars alongside Kether Donahue while the supporting cast boasts all-star talent including John Stamos, Georgia King, and Tony Revolori and guest stars Mark Hamill, Julianne Hough, Jennifer Coolidge, Lil Rel Howery, Rufus Wainwright, Jackie Tohn, Jordan Fisher, Bonnie McKee, and Sabrina Carpenter. The series is directed by veteran comedy director, Amy Heckerling. Each episode release is accompanied by a full music video for the comedy song contained in the episode. These include surprising earworms such as ‘Mighty as Kong,’ where Hamill sings about King Kong’s private parts.

Royalties started out as a proof of concept. Criss and his friends and co-collaborators, Matt and Nick Lang, who founded StarKid Productions with Criss, started with a ten-minute episode which would later become the basis for Episode Seven of the series. Criss was flexible about how to make the concept into a project and Quibi was interested. “We were given an opportunity to make something. It’s the way that I've always preferred to operate, especially with my collaborators from StarKid,” Criss explains. “We’ve always done it first and asked questions later. We just like making things as opposed to pitching what it could be, just make it and see if people like it and then go from there.”

Criss had wanted to make Royalties for a long time. While the show is a zany comedy, many moments feel personal, stemming from Criss’s own work as a songwriter. “My life is divided between a pretty involved career as a musician and songwriting and producing music,” Criss says. “And then the acting side, which sometimes gets connected, but it's often put in a separate box. It has way more exposure just by the nature of what it is. While the [music] side, which has equal involvement in my life, is more behind the scenes.”

Quibi has received a lot of press in the last few months. The streaming app is dedicated to short-form content. Most episodes of Quibi shows fall between seven and ten minutes and feature two different aspect ratios, vertical and horizontal. For showrunners and directors, many of the constraints of the platform are brand new. That didn’t scare Criss. “For guys like me, and I guess artists in general, my brain is kind of all over the place,” Criss says. “Time constraints and other necessities truly are the mother of invention.”

For him, working in the short format wasn’t a hindrance. “I really liked the idea of the short form thing. I think our show is strong enough to be able to exist in whatever medium we were sort of assigned to do,” he says. “You only have seven-ish minutes to tell a story. So you really start to eliminate anything that is not in service of a story or a joke. It's a good exercise. It's that classic thing about killing your darlings. You have to really make sure to focus in on what matters.”

Long time fans of StarKid will immediately see its influence on Royalties. “StarKid is a huge bedrock of my background as a creative,” Criss says. The Langs are a big part of that. “I mean, this whole thing [Royalties] was created and built and bred by me and my two buddies. We've been making stuff for years together,” he says of the Lang brothers. “I was never going to make this show without the Lang brothers; they were always going to be who I wanted. And for StarKid fans that really know our company, the whole show is littered with a lot of StarKid performers. That was always going to happen.”

As a creator, Criss felt like Quibi made sense as a platform. “They are a creator-based company that really just want to support their creatives,” he explains. “They're not a studio, they are an acquisition company, they're a platform. So their business model was appealing.”

While the show was a labor of love, its production tested the ever-busy Criss. “I pride myself on multitasking,” he says. “I was definitely the most tested I'd ever been as a multitasker; I always say I'm crazy, but I'm not insane.” Part of the issue was the production of Royalties overlapped with Criss’s work on the Netflix Original Hollywood in which he is an actor and executive producer. Production got crazy for Criss with days that included mornings on the set of Hollywood then rushing over to the Valley to shoot music videos and changing facial hair back and forth for costumes. “There was a point where I was in post-production for Royalties editing music videos in a sprinter van that was on set of where I was shooting Hollywood,” he recalls. “I would be shooting a scene on Hollywood, and then I would go into the van and edit for however many minutes and then go back to shooting a scene.”

Even with all the crazy scheduling, he admits, “It was, a pretty insane old time. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it.” For Royalties, time was always against the team. “I want to say we had less than 10 days to prep a show that we had to shoot within just a few weeks, a show that we hadn't even gotten fully cast yet, a show that I had to write 10 songs in 10 days to get those produced.” On top of that, they were learning a new platform. “You can look at it as it's very scary because you have no sort of guiding North Star,” he says. “but on the other hand, it's cool because anything goes. We said ‘let's do our best and do what we like and then figure it out later which is my consistent ethos with creating things.”

Despite the stress of production, the final result doesn’t show it. The show is nothing if not endearing. “I think there's no faster way to people's hearts, then the sort of party trick of music and song,” Criss explains. “You can really get into people's hearts and minds through music in a way that just you can't do any other way. I think the close second to that is humor. So when you can combine the two I think you just have kind of like a super cocktail of endearment ability… Music and comedy are inextricably linked.”

For both longtime fans of Criss’s work and early adopters to Quibi, Royalties serves as an example of what a dedicated and close-knit team can create.

#darren criss #forbes #royalties #royalties press #press #june 2020

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virtuissimo · 6 years

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Ghost Quartet Analysis: The Astronomer

I wrote these several months ago and only now did it occur to me to post them. This first one is on The Astronomer

This is an explication of the song The Astronomer (Side 2 Track 1 of Ghost Quartet), which in this case means that I’m going line by line and coming up with detailed possible meanings for each line. I left out a couple possible meanings for the sake of cohesion and brevity. The Astronomer is a song that kind of stands apart from the other timelines. Although it resides quite comfortably within the “rose red and pearl white” storyline (and a little awkwardly in the Usher storyline as Starchild’s father), it does not actually link to any plot events or directly reference anything within the story. It’s role in the story is essentially nothing more than character + theme development, but the way it develops those themes seems important to me when put in the context of the musical’s larger thematic structure. In any case, let’s get into it:

“I am not a priest

I am not a monk.”

Before he even introduces himself, the astronomer finds it of the utmost important to distance himself from religion. More than an astronomer, more than a scientist, he is NOT someone who is spiritual. That is a key part of his identity. That is my preferred interpretation of it, but it could also be a statement of humility (e.g. “I’m no spiritual leader”).

This also has a nice irony when Dave as the astronomer is also the guy playing piano in Monk. He’s distancing himself from monks, but in another life he played piano before two monks (Thelonius and Scheherazade) seeking guidance.

“I don’t go to church much

But when I do I stand and I sing loud”

This gives a sense of his personality, but it also casts some unreliability on him as his own narrator. On one hand, he is the type of guy who despite only showing up to church on christmas and easter, stands and sings with more authority and without reservation. On the other hand, despite not being a priest or a monk (i.e., not someone who is spiritual), he still sometimes does go to church. That means that he DOES actually get something out of going to church, whether it be family or community, or a little bit of clarity when he is confused. We don’t know why or when he goes to church, but he does sometimes go, and although he has never rejected spirituality at this point in the song it still begs some questions about his relationship with it.

“I am the astronomer

And when I look through my telescope

I am certain of the universe

And I am filled with wonder from the stars”

Right after his more official self-introduction, we get a better sense of who he is. The astronomer is a “seeing is believing” type of guy. He may or may not think he has learned all there is to learn (implied by “I am certain of the universe”), he feels that he understands things. To me, his certainty in the universe comes across as shortsighted and arrogant, but when wrapped up in his wonder of the stars it is more of a comfort than declaration of importance. He finds solace in the perceptual constancy of astronomy. Below the arrogance is an innocent fascination with the world. He has learned all that he has about the stars because he genuinely loves it. This line contrasts with the rest so far because despite being a Facts And Figures type of guy, this line also overlays it with artistic romanticism.

“And I never saw anything I couldn’t blame on my mind

So I don’t believe in ghosts”

Right when you hear it, this line SOUNDS important. First off, it really reinforces his nature as a science man. He has never seen or otherwise been presented with evidence of ghosts, therefore he doesn’t believe in them. It also means that the only way for him to believe in ghosts is to be directly presented with evidence that he “couldn’t blame on his mind.”

The other thing this implies is that he HAS seen some evidence of ghosts, but he blamed it on his mind. This is the first real suggestion of the Astronomer’s denial in the song. Even if he sees something, it doesn’t automatically mean he’s going to believe it. He is trying to maintain that scientific objectivity, eliminating all other possibilities before coming to a conclusion despite what he may feel.

“But I like to sing, I like to sing

And when i hear the call to prayer

Coming through the speakers of the mosque”

These lines are mostly setup for the next stretch of imagery. However, it’s huge in contributing to our view of how the Astronomer thinks. Firstly, it adds another layer to the earlier line, “I don’t go to church much/but when I do I stand and I sing loud.” The Astronomer likes to sing, and that may be the reason he goes to church in the first place. However, this bit also adds to that by showing that he is not strictly a “church” man. If you look at it one way, and in the lines following it, he is paying respect to a beautiful experience that is, to my knowledge, unique to Islam. In another way, this expands the world view that he has, it paints his experience of spirituality as something that isn’t strictly Christian, i.e., spirituality in and of itself is a universal experience. And while he appreciates it, he doesn’t necessarily associate it with himself.

All this talk of Islam and mosques also tangentially incorporates the Scheherezade storyline into the pulse of the musical overall. The Muslim, Arabic style of singing is exemplified in the backing vocals on this section, but this type of singing is also referenced in the vocalization + opening verse of Soldier & Rose (which is an interesting association to make with the Soldier considering the extensive military aspects of Islamic history). Islam also has a very direct relationship with our modern understanding of math, physics, and particularly astronomy, which links our character here with the mosque in a more embedded way.

“There’s a shock/There’s a stillness

As the melodies twist and zap

And the air is filled with diamonds”

This is a spot of particularly beautiful imagery. If you have never been in a town/city where there are massive speakers blaring muslim prayers throughout the streets at certain times of day, the experience really instills this sense of disjointed beauty. Basically, it’s good writing. There is also an image that it creates: The air filling with diamonds, makes you think about the sky filling with stars. Connecting back to his wonder of the stars and love for astronomy.

“And I wish that I could sing like that

But I don’t practice enough

No I don’t practice enough”

The line “I wish I could sing like that” changes the tone of the whole preceding descriptive section. Not only is it beautiful, he wants it. Not only does he admire it, he wishes he could emulate it. This could mean a number of things. It could be a testament to the fact that making beautiful art or doing something out of passion is a matter of choice, it’s a matter of practice, and it can be learned.

“I don’t practice enough” is probably a reference to the fact that he associates singing (i.e., singing practice) with church and mosques, but he “[doesn’t] go to church much.” That’s one thing i find interesting about this. Singing and religion are inextricably tied in his mind. Singing is spirituality, and art is spirituality. It’s a romanticism that he yearns for, but because of his scientific ideals he can’t let himself experience that. However, even further than that, I think that he associates ghosts with spirituality. That becomes more evident later on, but he shows the same resistance towards 1) religiosity, 2) appreciating the arts + romantic idealizing, 3) believing ghosts, all under the guise of universal certainty. In his mind, those three things are related.

---------------------------

The next section is the list of things that he is confounded by. While a lot of this section appears to be largely Dave thinking out loud, several of the things he mentions could have ties to the rest of the narrative and the Astronomer’s way of thinking:

“I’m confounded by music”

As we’ve discussed, music is the symbol of his hangups with spirituality.

“And babies and laughter”

The baby brings to mind both Roxy and Starchild, both of whom are Rose.

“And stories and goodness”

Stories = Scheherazade + reference to the multiple lifetime stories

“Infinity and luck”

Another reference to the intertwined storylines, going on for what must seem like an eternity (hence: infinity). Also might just be the seeming infinity of space, since he is an astronomer.

“I’m confused by the notion that somebody loves me, and drugs make me crazy”

I listened to this song on a loop for this and eventually this line gave me the impression that it was like an excuse for what happened with pearl and rose. He didn’t understand why they loved him in the first place. [Edit: Drugs are also referenced several times throughout the musical, symbolized through “honey.” Most notably honey is used in relation to alcohol throughout, and also to heroin if you squint.]

“And a clairvoyant told me that I’ve got an old soul”

This is another reference to the extended intertwined reincarnations. The interesting thing about it is that the astronomer exists in the first timeline. Not the oldest chronologically, but in the inciting incident that causes rose to do all the time travel in the first place. This reinforces the idea of the circular story, because even in the original form his soul had already traveled through many lifetimes.

“Oh Lord I wish I could sing like that

But I don’t practice enough

No I don’t practice enough”

Although the meaning of this is the same as its previous iteration, i think it’s really important to note the placement of this. It comes at the end of a long string of things that confuse him. It comes directly after “a clairvoyant told me that I’ve got an old soul.”

Assuming that he relates singing with spirituality, maybe he’s wishing here that he believed that he had an old soul. Wishing he believed in clairvoyants. But he doesn’t practice letting himself believe it, so he doesn’t believe it.

“There’s a man in Iran/who says he talks to ghosts

And the way that he does it/is he hasn’t spoken to anyone alive in forty-two years

He turns his mind off everyday/and stares at the wall”

When listening to Ghost Quartet more intently, it becomes pretty clear that this is in reference to Shah Zaman from the Scheherazade story line. There’s not much else to these particular lines except for the implication of disgust (disbelief?) that he turns his mind off every day. As a Thinker who takes comfort in certainty, that must be unthinkable to him. [Edit: The Man in Iran/Shah Zaman is also generally portrayed as disgusting for doing this, and no one seems to care that despite being an “empty sack of a man” (Bad Men) he still actually achieved talking to ghosts. It could also just be a comment on the fact that Shah Zaman/The Man in Iran is pathetic, and therefore hallucinating the whole thing, therefore making the whole idea of the existence of ghosts that much less credible.]

“And he is one with the universe

And he says that every soul that ever died

Is living in the shadow of the sky”

What I love about this line is how it parallels the way the astronomer speaks about himself in the first verse. The astronomer says about himself: “When I look through my telescope/I am certain of the universe.” Contrast that with the man in Iran, who “stares at the wall/and he is one with the universe.” At this point it makes you wonder: which has a better understanding of the universe? Who has found more peace? The one who has found certainty in the universe, or the one who has truly Become One™ with the universe?

“But if that’s the experiment

If that’s what a scientist would have to do

If that’s how long it takes

I’m afraid I just haven’t got the time.”

These lines are very briefly and simply explained in Dave’s Genius annotation for this song: “This amazing idea is from Ken Wilbur’s ‘A Brief History of Everything’… atheists/rationalists/scientists are so quick to dismiss the claims of gurus and mystics as unverifiable, but in fact none of them do the repeatable and thus verifiable experiment, which simply requires that you experience subjecting your mind to many many many decades of a spiritual practice.”

I have always agreed with this type of thinking. If scientists aren’t willing to be spiritual, how do they know without a shadow of a doubt that there is no spirit? Besides, ironically I suppose, blind faith? That is what’s happening here with the Astronomer. He is resisting spirituality, resisting conducting that experiment. In these lines, he’s admitting that even though he “never saw anything he couldn’t blame on [his] mind,” he hasn’t actually put in the time to disprove or prove his disbelief in ghosts or the spirit.

“So I’ll go home/pour some whiskey

And I’ll sigh”

There’s a couple of things that this reminds me of, which may or may not be related. Firstly, it reminds me of the defeated drunkenness of the Shah Zaman in Bad Men (to a much lesser degree). It also reminds me of the lines in Four Friends: “I remember you [whiskey] and my daddy/sittin’ in an easy chair/he’d rip open your wax/pour a finger or two/ and then he’d sit in the dark and just stare.” Despite the clear similarities, I’m hesitant to say that they are linked because the song Four Friends exists comfortably outside of the overall plot, but as with all the songs, the thematic parallel is there.

“And when it’s time to go to bed

I’ll keep the nightlight on.”

This is one of my favorite lines in this song. It’s what really got me thinking really critically about it (more than usual anyways) and wanting to do this deep explication of each line. The way that I see it, he is keeping the nightlight on to keep the ghosts away.

In the preceding verse, the man in Iran said that “every soul that ever died/ Is living in the shadow of the sky.” If the souls (read: ghosts) are living in the shadow of the sky (i.e., the dark), the only way to ensure they stay away at night would be to keep the nightlight on.

Even if someone were to not fully find a reason for why he is keeping the nightlight on, he is clearly afraid of something or trying to keep something away. This fear comes across as uncertainty, and it immediately casts doubt on everything he has said about himself. If he is so “certain of the universe,” and if he “[doesn’t] believe in ghosts,” then why is he keeping the nightlight on? It really vividly depicts someone who is wearily in denial of his own doubts and insecurities in the universe.

Anyways I didn’t really think of a way to conclude this so that’s all I guess lmao bye yall

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lanasitra · 7 years

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tswtms is over (and here’s why)

Did I get you with the clickbait title? I did? Damn right. Bangarang.

In short, I made a mistake.

I goofed.

I made a miscalculation.

I did not make a good prediction.

I anticipated something that did not happen.

I made an error in judgment.

I screwed the pooch.

I shamed the cat.

I faked my death but returned just after the halizah was carried out and now it’s super awkward between me, my ex-wife and my brother.

I fucked up.

(This essay will sometimes sound high-and-mighty, sometimes accusatory, sometimes selfish, and sometimes all-business-no-pleasure. In previous essays, I’ve detailed that my passion for music is not driven by money or fame, BUT I have also argued that I can want those things without undercutting my true passion. For that reason, I will not apologize, but I will acknowledge in advance that I may come off as slightly salty and overly businesslike over the next few paragraphs)

For all intent and purpose, tswtms has proven to be a failure. Since Honeymoon became available on major digital platforms in July 2016, I’ve only sold two copies (I’m just now seeing that I got 226 streams on Spotify, etc., which I am pleasantly surprised by and grateful for, but, in the scheme of things, that’s nothing – and only equates to 97 cents in my pocket, might I add). While it hasn’t been long enough for me to get a sales report back for In Between, I have a feeling it will have done marginally better, but still won’t be the kind of break I’m looking for.

There are three potential reasons why I believe tswtms has had a sub-par performance, and I’d like to go through all of them here and now (there is purpose to this, and I imagine the smartest of you cookies will have probably already guessed what it is):

- The music is bad

- The advertising is bad

- The name is bad

(The Music)

I will concede that tswtms is not everyone’s cup of tea. I am exceptionally proud of every piece I’ve written, but, of the ones I currently have on offer: “Canadian Summer” is six minutes long and meanders during the intro and outro, “Honeymoon” lacks a chorus, “Hate” lacks a chorus, “The North Wood” lacks a chorus, “I Am Not Afraid” lacks a chorus, “SRND” has a meandering intro and lacks a chorus, and all my interludes, intros and outros are “weird” and “artsy” in some way or another. In brief, I have tended so far to not write “accessible” pop songs. “Dreams,” “What’s It Like” and “For You” are what I consider to be my three most accessible, “poppy” songs that are currently available (there’s also “Heavy Crush,” available on my SoundCloud, which I rank among the most “accessible,” but it currently only exists in a place that is not really on anyone’s radar). Having my oeuvre be only ~16% accessible, singalong-able music is perhaps a worry, but, considering how many times someone ensures themselves a comfortable life and diehard audience as a one- or two-hit wonder, I’m not really concerned in that regard.

Such talk of “accessibility,” musical forms and choruses drives me nuts. I enjoy the music I make, and I think that serves as a good enough indication that other people would like it if given the right listening context. Though I go through peaks and valleys of enjoyment with my catalogue, I go through similar phases with any music, regardless of the writer or performer (even Ariana Grande! F***ing crazy, right?). I sometimes get hung up and blame my every failure on the vocal tuning in my pieces, but I realize that I’m only so critical because it’s my own stuff; I listen to other artists’ songs that have some vocal imperfections, and these imperfections rarely diminish my enjoyment of a piece. I like to think that an imperfection here or there on my part will fly similarly under the radar for audience members.

All this has been to say that the music is not the problem. I write a variety of things that appeal to me, and I believe that, while it won’t all appeal to everyone all the time, there is, indeed, something for everyone with tswtms.

(The Advertising)

With In Between, I attempted to do some online promotion leading up to the album’s release. I feel the campaign (if you can even call it that, given its size) did well to get the word out in my close circles. On release day, I got critique back from people I had never even dreamed would be listening. On top of that, I am very proud of the visual media I created.

However, after observing my local contemporaries, I’m aware of better ways to advertise my music, including buying plays (which, at the time of writing, I think is a pretty slimy thing to do, but I can understand why it would be a necessary evil). I have friends who boast about how many Spotify plays they have, but, when comparing their day-to-day / week-to-week growth on Spotify vs Youtube vs Facebook vs Soundcloud, I can plainly see that they are buying listens. It’s pedantic and petty of me to go about comparing all this data, and I will admit this little search was initially born out of bitterness concerning my contemporaries’ seemingly inexplicable, magnificent successes. I have learned, though, that buying plays is just another way to make your product seem enticing. I hate to imagine that a prospective audience member or booking agent would think differently of my music or my project because it wasn’t “popular,” but I guess that must be the case if buying listens is actually proven to help a startup artist. For the sake of my integrity and transparency (which I like to think I hold above all else), I will make it public knowledge if I ever buy views, listens, followers, etc., and I will include where I got them, the number I bought, and for how much money.

If we’re thinking about an album as a product, let’s think about live performances as advertising that product (though, ideally, I would like to be at a spot where the album is being pirated and people are just paying to come to the shows, but that’s not how it is for me just yet). I haven’t performed live in about a year, and I believe I have a good reason for this: in my opinion, I don’t have a satisfactory live set worth paying any amount of cover charge or ticket price for. As a precursor to the next section, I’ll also point out that, with a name like tswtms or The Sunlit Woods, the Moonlit Sea, open mics are a bit of a difficult beast to grapple with, as it’s likely that people in attendance are just interested enough to go looking for you online, but not interested enough to ask you for your name if they don’t catch it during your performance (as you might expect, people do not catch my name during performances). In short, I don’t believe the returns would yet justify the work required to put on a live show.

Again, all this is to say that I don’t think advertising is the problem. I recognize that I could advertise better, but I don’t even think that’s a relevant conversation yet. My Soundcloud only has 51 followers after having it since high school, and the tswtms Facebook page only has 57 likes after 4 years. For comparison, my friends just started a Facebook page for their new Harry Potter podcast, Flipendo, and amassed more than 100 likes in less than 24 hours (yes, both pages invited people, but I will concede that Flipendo has the benefit of pooling three admins’ social circles). I was in a f***ing high school rock band that DIDN’T DO ANYTHING, and we were still sittin’ pretty above 300 likes when we deleted the page (pour one out for My Autumn Distraction, y’all). Before I even consider buying more ad space or any listens, I need a project that can organically grow in a satisfactory manner.

(BONUS POTENTIAL REASON: People hate me because I was a piece of shit in high school / early university who was annoying on social media and not a very good musician, and these people are deliberately ignoring and avoiding everything I do)

Maybe? Probably a little bit. This is a real insecurity of mine, but I think any effect this deliberate ignorance may be having is inconsequential.

(The Name Is S***)

Surprise, y’all.

It’s the name.

Of course it’s the name.

It was never not the name.

I’m finally changing the name.

No matter which way you say it – The Sunlit Woods, the Moonlit Sea, tswtms (tee ess doube-u tee em ess), tuhswuhtuhmuss –, the name does not roll off the tongue, nor does it stick in the mind. I wanted to take a few moments, though, to explain why I’ve stubbornly gone along with this dumpster fire of a name for four years and two albums:

There are already George Deans making music. George Dean and the Gospel Four. George Dean from the UK (We’rebothfromtheUKbutwhateverweallknowbynowthatIhaveaUSpassportandwishIwasCanadian).

I wanted a name that captured a dichotomy. For the better part of two hours, I brainstormed names that would capture the geographic dichotomy I see in Vancouver. We have mountains and lush forests, but we also have the sea. We can go on brightly lit, magnificent hikes during the day, but stare up at the stars as their lights dance across the waters of the Georgia Strait. For anyone who has listened to my piece “Tarot,” you know that there’s a metaphysical dichotomy that can be gleaned from this as well. As it happens, it proved quite hard to capture that imagery in anything less than “The Sunlit Woods, the Moonlit Sea.”

I wanted to take myself out of it. You’ll notice I tend not to post any performance photos on social media, and that my physical appearance is not part of any tswtms promotion. Other than in the music videos I’m planning, I want to remain ethereal and mysterious; I don’t want to be George Dean, but a purer distillation of my mind. I hate that One Direction’s and similar artists’ successes are so inextricably linked to the audience’s physical attraction to the performing artists, and I want so badly to be an artist that minimizes that as much as possible (short of wearing a mask to perform). Maybe, one day, if I’m ripped af – not if I keep living the way I am, I’ll tell ya! – and Vogue wants to do a shoot with me, I’ll bare all for the world, but I need that s*** to not be the reason I’m selling albums or concert tickets; the music comes first and foremost, and I will fiercely argue against the modern assumption that image is as important as the art itself.

I wanted to leave room for a band. Even on my FIRST album, I already had help from my friends: Janine on trombone, Jaelem on drums, Sean on lead guitar, and Are Been on piano. This continues on In Between, where Sean’s playing guitar on “For You.” This project clearly isn’t just George Dean, and it would be a disservice to my fellow musicians and artists if I called it George Dean. Sure, I write the music and lyrics, and I make almost all creative decisions, but, whenever another musician gets involved, they’re going to give their two cents and reshape a piece (no matter how minutely). Furthermore, I’m rarely going to give a solo performance of most of these songs, because they deserve to be played by a full band. I don’t want to go on stage with my friends and essentially say “Hey! I’m the guy you all came for and these five dunces can all f*** off!” Consequently, I have struggled with choosing any derivative of “George Dean and the ________” because, in my head, it may as well be the same thing in terms of dictating superiority. In live performance, I don’t want the audience to see me in front of a backing band – I want the audience to see tswtms.

SBTRKT, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance all exist. All three of these projects exist and have achieved a level of success that I’d be happy with. Despite it being pronounced “Subrtract,” I definitely had an acquaintance in high school who liked SBTRKT enough to go to their concert, but still called them “ess bee tee are kay tee.” Long names clearly work for some people, but I suppose mine was just too out there (and I am aware that Odd Future’s name has been organically shortened over time by the audience and the artists, and I was hoping that would happen eventually for tswtms).

I arrogantly wanted to create a barrier to entry concerning intelligence. In my mind, neither The Sunlit Woods, the Moonlit Sea nor tswtms are hard to remember, and I have always assumed that this feat of memory was a mark of intelligence. I realize now that the names aren’t hard to remember for anyone else either; it’s just that other people have other s*** going on that’s filling their heads, and I should be respectful of that. tswtms has been the primary thing on my mind for four years now, so no s*** I’d be well acquainted with the names. Even as I type this, I’m supposed to be working on projects for other people, but there’s so much on my mind that the minutia (or what I consider to be the minutia) is falling out. It would be hypocritical of me to expect someone to memorize cumbersome sets of words or letters that aren’t of the utmost importance to them if I’m not willing to do the same. Furthermore, I shouldn’t get salty about people choosing not to fill their mental hard drives with such nonsense.

Something I’ve often thought in the past – especially when I’m feeling bitter – is that, if someone couldn’t remember the name or wasn’t willing to put in a little bit of legwork to memorize it, then I wouldn’t want them listening to my music anyway. That’s a really arrogant, elitist, hurtful, b***s*** and insensitive way of thinking, and I apologize that I ever felt that way. As my buddy Sean Dales said to me, “You don’t choose your audience, your audience chooses you.”

I thought I was centuries ahead of the curve with the name tswtms. It’s arrogant to say, but I do actually believe this still. For the most part, you’ve got artists going by their actual names, but, when that’s not available, people are using whatever’s left to allow them to stand out against the incessant din of the modern world. Broadly speaking, you have artists throwing darts at walls, you have snappy mononyms, you have some variation on “X and the Y,” you’ve got “The ______,” you definitely have “______ the ______,” and NOW, with the rise of Chvrches, you’ve got people taking a snappy mononym and replacing letters with other letters. If this trend continues (and I’m sure it will as the digitally available library of art grows and grows with – hopefully – very little of it ever being deleted), I think it’s within reason to predict that, in 200 years’ time, people will be listening to popular bands whose names are just random assortments of letters. For the time being, though, I don’t think society is ready for this jelly.

The iconography is gorgeous. The thing that really sold me on going with the acronym tswtms as opposed to The Sunlit Woods, the Moonlit Sea (other than Soundcloud not allowing a name that long -.-) was the iconography I developed. In fact, the iconography for tswtms is impacting what the new name will be, because I want to keep the new iconography as similar to the old as possible.

I maintained a monopoly on search results. Google “George Dean” and tell me how many results pertain to me (you can get closer by searching “George TB Dean,” but NOT CLOSE ENOUGH). Google “Sean Dales” and tell me how many are related to either his music or his blog. Do the same with Kyle Cardigan. Now google “tswtms,” and you can bet your neck, back, p**** and crack that every result on the first page has something to do with me.

Banga-f***ing-rang.

It’s a little thing, but it was nice knowing that I wasn’t competing with anyone else.

I think that’s it for why I chose and stuck with tswtms. I felt that, if I pushed it for long enough, the music would persevere and people would come around to understanding and accepting the name. An anecdote that I believe accurately suggests how badly the name has failed is this: when explaining to a co-worker that I had “come up with a bad band name,” I opted to write down “tswtms” and “The Sunlit Woods, the Moonlit Sea” on a piece of paper and show it to them rather than just say the names, because I have not once said either name out loud and had it be understood without eventually writing it down.

I believe I’ve found a name that is more manageable, yet still allows me to remove my physical self, retain some air of mystery and avoid direct competition with similarly titled projects. Maybe I’ll use this name; maybe I’ll change my mind within minutes of posting this essay to Tumblr. Only time will tell. Anyway, I’ll soon be pulling the tswtms stuff off of iTunes and Spotify in order to re-upload it all under a new name, so, if you want that OG kush, get it while you can. The Tumblr, Facebook, Soundcloud and (hopefully) YouTube page will all just be swapped over to the new name when the time comes, but I’ll be sure to update you all with the social media links when they’re ready.

Namaste

t s w t m s

[2016-05-16 Edit: As of right now, the tswtms catalogue is no longer available on iTunes or Spotify]

#tswtms #The Sunlit Woods the Moonlit Sea

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canaryatlaw · 7 years

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Well, today was pretty chill. It's been a pretty relaxing few days off thankfully and tomorrow I go back to work for the "summer" internship lol. I'm not terribly confident they're gonna put me back on the same calendar which I'm kind of sad about because I liked them a lot but I mean whatever happens hopefully I'll be getting to handle cases and it'll be good, so yeah. But today. Woke up to my alarm at 9, got ready and hopped on the bus, bus to the train, then finally up the street to where our new church meeting place will be for the month of May. I knew it was down the same street so it can't have been very far, and I found it pretty quickly. The place where they're doing the kids ministry is actually in a totally separate building that's kind of like, diagonally across the block from the school we'll be in, but there's like a parking lot you can cut through so it's not bad. Of course there's plenty of volunteers making sure everyone gets everywhere cuz they're good like that. I have a few minutes so I head to the make shift volunteer lounge, which is the cafeteria haha which makes sense for food serving purposes and had a donut while chatting with people for a few before heading into the service. The service was REALLY good, and I can actually remember most of it this week haha so that is definitely progress. Basically we started in worship with this one really simple song that I've known for eternities but recently have been kind of fixated on just because it's so simply beautiful and perfect and sums up all I'm feeling in such wonderful words. So I was already in a good place with that. Then we started the message, kicking off a new series called "neighboring" which is focused on, you guessed it, loving thy neighbor, which, if you actually pay attention to any of my religion-related rants, you know is pretty much the thing I focus on more than anything and it's something I think the church has to get a lot better at if they want to stop losing people. So we went through the story in Luke with the young douchey guy being like "but who is my neighbor?" and that's what Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and in the end asks "who acted like the neighbor to the injured man?" with the answer of course being the Samaritan, when Samaritans were reviled and mocked by their people- but a priest and a Levite (which, for a short explanation, is kind of like a knock off priest) passed him without even stopping and immediately my mind flips to the homeless people I see on the streets every single day that are passed by by so many people without a second thought. How many priests, how many pastors have been among them? How many have been going to teach a lesson on religion while fundamentally forsaking the greatest tenet of that religion, the foundation upon which it is actually based on? On that note, our pastor said something I liked about the two commands- love God and love your neighbor- that they're inextricably linked, that you cannot fully love God without loving your neighbor and vice versa. And that makes a lot of sense to me. This stuff....obviously, as you can probably tell by the unintentional rant I just went on, this is something I have a lot of feelings on and it's an area I think the church is failing in now more than ever and their hypocrisy in it is at its most obvious when you have callous statements being made about people's lives directly being compared to what the bible says. People aren't stupid. They're not gonna want to go anywhere near a religion where all the public figures they see representing it are giant hypocrites. How much influence could we actually have if we lived up to those biblical promises? Just.....just give me one republican politician that gives a damn about the child welfare system and I'll vote for them, promise. But honestly, with that and many similar issues missing from their platforms, their campaigns come off as nothing but hot air. I'm getting off track though. Anyway. As the service ended I went right over to the kids building to help with the transition between services. We ended up having 3 helpers and 5 babies, which wasn't bad at all. Most of them were fine, but there was one little boy that cried. The. Entire. Time. And we texted his parents and they didn't fucking respond or come. Seriously, over an hour of crying. Finally during the last like twenty minutes someone had the bright idea to give him his bottle and that shut him right up for the rest of the time, lol. I didn't end up holding him though, I was mostly with a 7th month old and an 8th month old, both I've had before and just kind of bouncing back and forth between them and entertaining them. Neither of them could quite sit up on their own yet, and at one point they were both fussing so I was trying to get them both balanced on my lap, and as I was trying to get the little girl balanced the little boy kind of fell over onto the mat right next to us haha he was totally fine, just cried for a moment, of course I felt bad about it but he really only fell a few inches so he was fine. I ended up just with the girl for a little bit and walked around with her and looked out the windows which she seemed to like, so we did that. It was funny, because every like 20 minutes or so the lady over babies would pop her head in and be like "how're we doing Rachel?" and it always either like, complete silence, every baby playing content and calm, or like, 4 children are screaming, something's on fire, two helpers have fled for their lives and one baby is just sitting in the corner laughing maniacally (okay that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but mostly only with the fire, and there is a very cute little girl who has the most maniacal giggle and it's hilarious). But yeah, overall not bad. I kind of de facto got recruited into packing up the room and moving everything back downstairs to the u-haul because we needed to be out of the building like immediately because it's actually a children's theatre that had a production of Pinocchio going up at 2 (and church generally runs till 1:45.....) so that was, interesting to say the least, but we did it. Walked to the train, got off and there was a wait for the bus with still a bit of a chill in the air (ugh) so I went inside the donut shop to get some tea and my second donut of the day, lol. It didn't take too long for the bus to show up thankfully. So I got home and wanted to set to work making cookies because we're having a kids ministry coaches movie night tomorrow to get to meet our new family ministry director and I wanted to bring something. I was fairly sure I had all the ingredients for at least one of my two go to cookie recipes (that being my vanilla pudding cookies and my smores cookies) but I must've used the box of vanilla pudding I try to keep on hand at some point and never replaced it, and I didn't have any graham crackers or chocolate chips (although I was prepared to replace those with Christmas m&ms). So either way I needed to make a store trip quickly, so I decided on the vanilla pudding cookies just because it feels like it's been a while since I've made them and that I've been making the smores cookies somewhat frequently lately. So I throw my coat back on (brr) and run to the grocery store down the block from me. For some inexplicable reason they do not have normal vanilla instant pudding mix, so I end up with one of the fancy organic and shit ones that's vanilla bean that I figured would taste good since I was planning on adding vanilla bean paste anyway. I also grabbed a bag of shredded mozzarella, because I was gonna make my creamy Parmesan chicken pasta for dinner and that goes well with it. So I went to the check out line with those two items, and the lady in line behind me is like "I love your boots they're so cute!!!" and I completely blanked on the name of the designer haha I even checked the bottom of the boots but it wasn't there (I later remembered it was Steve Madden). So I get back and home and make some cookies which of course turn out very nice, and then go pretty much into making dinner, and then I ate some dinner and settled into watch the rest of the first season of APB (it was only 12 episodes, so it wasn't gonna take long). I really liked the show and idk if it was just because I was so bitter over Chicago Justice being a crapshoot that it was just like a breath of fresh air or what haha but I did really like it (spoilers ahead, duh). They definitely had multiple endings written for the end of the last scene with the mayor depending on the status of the second season at that point. If it was gonna get renewed, they would've saved the mayor. If it was gonna get canceled, they probably would've had the mayor get shot but then add some sort of finality, and then there's the "they haven't renewed it or canceled it yet" option which is what we got, so the mayor gets shot and everything is going crazy and then they just cut to black because that way they can either do a second season or not and get away with it. I hope it gets renewed though. It's definitely different than your average police show. It's funny that some people on the show were like "they're infringing upon on rights!" with the technology when I really didn't think they were at all, meanwhile in crim pro I was always like "this is bullshit!!! This cops shouldn't be allowed to do this!!!!" Lol, the difference probably is that I actually can enumerate those rights for you whereas for the average viewer they can get away with saying they're infringing on our rights when they're really not at all. We did have a huge essay question involving drone surveillance on our crim pro I final, and it was actually an extremely well thought out question that brought into play a ton of different cases and doctrines and was actually really cool to answer (yes I am a major dork sometimes, I know). But anyway. I did that along with my back exercises interspersed in there (side planks are beginning to grow on me, I may start doing more of those for abdominal strength and yeah, then I made my lunch for tomorrow (so excited to be back to only having to cram one meal into my lunchbox!) and got ready for bed. Whenever I wasn't watching tv or doing something else throughout the day I was listening to the up and vanished podcast, and I made it through to just after the arrest was made and I have to say, I am SO curious about how they arrested this guy after openly admitting he wasn't on their radar at all until a few days before and then they got a tip and within days they had made an arrest in a 11 year old cold case. Like that's crazy. I also think it's funny that the podcast (and the GBI for that matter) were going in depth on all these theories (and some fan theories involving fairly big conspiracies) and they were literally all completely irrelevant to what actually happened, haha. I'm kind of endeared to the podcast though, I'm really enjoying it. In the first episode where the host was like "I'm gonna hold a contest for people who subscribe, and whoever wins I'll send some of my grandma's cowboy cookies!" I like couldn't stop laughing because that was the most adorable thing I've ever heard haha but he definitely upped the professionalism and actually got an idea what he's doing and I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of it. I'm assuming his plans for the rest of this season (and possibly season 2?) are toast now, being that we may have an active trial to cover here, so it'll be interesting to see where they go from there. Okay, that's all I got. I'm gonna have to adjust my sleeping schedule if I'm gonna be waking up at 7 am 5 days a week and not falling asleep at my desk (hopefully, anyway). So basically I have to be up in 6 hours and I should get to sleep now. Goodnight lovelies. Hope your Monday is as great as a Monday can be.

#daily journal #May 2017

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