Coto

The only problem with fiction is that it always ends. It's like being thrown out from your own home into another world. It's scary. There is no one to tell you what will happen next, the future is anything. There is no guarantee the author wants to write a good story, the future is as likely to leave the player disgusted and despairing as it is to leave them satisfied. But then I remember that I don't need to be afraid. I'm safe, because nothing happens in this world. Nothing happens, so there is nothing to be afraid of, and nothing to look forward to. That's not quite true, of course, but the words do sound better this way.

Life is so uneventful that it can be summarised. Plenty happens of course, there is enough that at the end you could have a story worth telling, but it happens ... so ... slowly ...
then at the end we say life was so short, we must tell the others to cherish their time, oh, it seemed like only yesterday ...

It must have seemed like only yesterday because we can't remember all of the nothing-time. I remember something happened a few years ago, I also remember something happened yesterday. I remember that they both happened, because that's how my memory works.

I look for soundtracks and listen to them over and over again. I thought it was because I liked the music, but that's not completely true. I liked the game, and I wish I could return to that world forever. But of course, the game has ended. There is world left to return to, so I try to relive the story through music. I get over it eventually.


I noticed another thing that the games had in common. They didn't have voices. I read what they said in words and punctuation. I could see their physical expressions, but I could not hear their voice or tone. So in my imagination ... they didn't need voices. I don't remember assigning anyone a particular voice that I could imitate. I had a general idea of what their voice might be like, but to me when I read them they don't have a voice, they only had words. Yet, that never limited their communication to me. I knew exactly what they were trying to say and I could imagine exactly how they felt.

Once these characters are introduced like this to me, that's how I will identify them. If I see some content from somewhere, where they do have voices, it seems unnatural and ruins the profile that I have of them. Maybe this is why people who read the books don't like the movies.

-----

I thought of a couple of ideas for comics or something like that.

1. Person is about to cross a road. Looks left, then right, then left, then right, then left, then right, then starts to cross, then is struck by lightning

2. Person has spider-phobia (I know there is the proper word for this, but I feel like it's unnecessary since this gets the point across faster). He is walking along a street. He doesn't like walking under low-hanging tree canopies, so he moves closer to the road to avoid a tree. A car drives past and someone inside throws a handful of spiders on him.

Once JM noticed that I was walking on the grass, close to the road, and asked, "spiders"? I think I've mentioned this before, but it still amazes me that he knew.

3. A lion is dying of hunger. He spots a deer, wait, do lions and deer live in the same place, ok doesn't matter, he spots a deer and lets out a mighty roar. Or tries to. More like a yelp. More like a whimper. The deer naturally begins to flee. He pounces and runs after it. Although, after a few seconds it's more like an exhausted jog. More like crawling.

The deer has stopped running a while ago and now turns and watches as the lion collapses. He rests his head on his front paws as if praying, but he isn't praying, he is crying.

A twig snaps. He opens his eyes to see the deer in front of him, offering him some grass. He closes his eyes again, shaking his head. He gets slowly back up and limps ... towards ... the lake.

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A little more than a few days ago I had a strange realisation. It was that, as much as my subconscious loves being ruthlessly negative, there's something more underneath that, like a second layer, the sub-sub-conscious. And no matter what distorted perception of reality my subconscious creates for me, deep down I'm in touch with a calm and rational truth. Aside from existing, the second layer doesn't really do anything to the first. Maybe like a parent not wanting to be overprotective, it lets my subconscious do whatever it wants. But it's always there, like a sentinel, ready for when something goes horribly wrong.

It seems like a redundant and almost meaningless realisation, but it matters to me. It means that even though I'm crazy, I will be rational about it. It means that I don't have to be scared unless I want to. I'll be alright.





I have been playing Coto again. I play when I feel like I need a break from the computer, or computer games to be more specific. To take a break from sitting down and concentrating, I sit down somewhere cooler and concentrate. When I was younger, I could sit down and concentrate on games all day. Concentrate, like concentrate, complete focus, if I ever made a mistake it was never because I was tired or distracted. All day, like all day. The part of the day when I'm not asleep. All of it. Except when I got hungry enough to notice that I was starving, because I had barely eaten anything that day.

I think I can still do something close to that now. Except it's not quite the same. I have to pay a bit more attention to eating actual food, and exercise a little (but only a little).


Today I was playing Coto again and I realised that often when I screw up, it's because I was reading the wrong bar on the sheet music. So on one hand I muscle-memory knew what to play, but on the other hand I was reading something else, so my brain is confused and tries to do both of them at the same time.

Then I realised that I don't actually read the sheet music, I've played this song so many times I know all of the notes. I just look at the sheet music because that's what I'm used to doing, but I'm not actually thinking about the notes, I'm playing from muscle memory. So when I need to look down to make sure I hit the right note when changing 2 octaves, sometimes I look back up to the sheet music, and look at the wrong bar and then screw up.

So I started to try play without looking at the sheet music, but looking at my hands was really distracting, because I would see 10 potential keys I could hit, and my muscle memory doesn't know which one it is, it just remembers which one it feels like. So there would be that conflict in my head again and I would screw up.

Then I tried harder and it worked.

From not having the notes in front of me, I also noticed a few more patterns in the song. Sometimes the chord could be either be AE or AC, but I wasn't sure which because they sound the same to me anyway. I would consult the sheet music after and realise, on these 8 bars it's AE every time, and then in the next 8 bars it's AC every time.

I would never have realised this if I didn't stop looking at the sheet music. I think any learning might be like this. For example, in maths, if I could stop thinking about the rules I've been taught, and thought about maths in general I would probably end up with questions that I can't answer. I never even considered 3D graphing or functions with more than one variable in high school. Sadly, I'm too used to thinking about what I've been taught and I'm unable to abstract from it. I would try harder, but I'm too tired to.

When I first started playing piano, my preferred way of playing was to look at the piano keys while playing. I hated looking at the sheet music because then I wouldn't see the keys and I can't play the note unless I see the key. I guess over time, songs became more complicated so looking at the sheet music to process all of the notes became more important because it would take much much longer to remember all of them. And at the same time, I got used to where notes are meant to be. I used to like how one handspan was exactly one octave. One day I realised that one handspan had become an octave + 1 note, and I was disappointed.

I eventually began to just start looking at the sheet music, and only looked down when I really had to. One reason for this might have been because I never practised sufficiently. I was a really lazy student and I did not do justice to how good my piano teacher actually was. For a teacher, any failure from a student would feel like a failure on their part. Even though you taught everything the right way and he just never practised, each time it felt like there was no progress that week, you would feel as if you had failed somewhere. If I ever see her again, I would say sorry and thank you with the most sincerity in my life. I'm thinking about whether that is an exaggeration or not, and I'm not actually sure. Her daughter would be in primary school now. I wonder what year she is in.

I haven't actually learned a song this thoroughly, ever. So I never knew there was this stage where the sheet music is more hinderance than help. In the future, if I ever want to learn a song again, I think if I tried to stop reading from the sheet music as soon as possible, I would learn it so much faster.


About a week ago I felt inspired to transcribe Swan Song. That's this one. It was because I felt silly playing the same song over and over again. Anyone listening would have been bored of it. I was starting to feel bored of it. In the album the songs flow on pretty much perfectly so it's more like one 15 minute song with 2 parts, rather than 2 songs.

So I started. The beginning's not so easy when there are so many pauses and notes with the duration of "as long as I feel like". I don't actually know what the time signature is meant to be.

Then it became hard and I gave up. When I gave up I had convinced myself that it was actually impossible, although now one week later, if I get spare time I'm going to try and pick up from last time.

-----

I know some really nice people. Thoughtful people. Considerate people. I have this realisation quite often, but when I had it again yesterday it was different, because I also realised that these people have been consistently nice, since ever.

Wow.

Thanks for being amazing.

...

but then, at the same time, I realised that I'm a horrible person.
Sorry.
I try to do the right thing, and I like to believe that I'm good.
I felt so ashamed of myself.
Your nice-ness hurt me. 

I used to be so proud.

Gratitude and apologies are closely related. Day9 once said that you should try,\ every time you were going to say sorry, say thank you instead. "Sorry I was late, I-" NO, "thank you for being so patient".  You turned it into a complement. "Sorry I crashed into your car" NO, "thank you for understanding that I was distracted while driving, it was an important phone call".

... maybe there is no guideline that should be blindly followed. There are some that are usually right. There are some that are sometimes right. But none are always right.

Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for putting up with me.




Maybe I've played Coto too much. The way I say that sounds like I've been playing hours every day, but I haven't been playing piano that much. Just a lot more compared to my previous 1 hours each week. But I still say this because I realised, after I stopped using sheet music, that I didn't really need to watch my hands either. So I would play "the easy part" with my eyes closed, because they are always tired, and only look at the keys when I needed to shift my hand to a different root note. But the "easy part" has been growing. It started off as a few phrases, now it's almost half the song.

I don't think I put down Coto as one of the songs that will remind me of 2013. Actually, I remember that I did, but I think I erased it because I already had too many songs when I was only meant to put one.

I think Coto will remind me of this year.

It's not even as incredible as I treat it; most of it is just repeating and building up upon one theme. But his signature controlled chaos captivated me. I had a thought\ that music in its purest form - without words - is like a universal language. With books, people a hundred years later can know the author's exact thoughts as they read. And likewise with music.

Orson Scott Card wrote something like, when we read his books, we're not entering a world that he has created. Rather, when we read the books, it's like he and us are creating a world together. Because our imagination draws our own world from those words. Everyone who reads this book makes a different world for it.

With music, we don't create these kind of worlds. The world we think of is our own, and the music becomes about us. Sometimes, at least.

When I play Coto, the song becomes about whatever I'm thinking. It doesn't carry it's own special meaning with it; it's like an empty socket I'll put whatever I have inside it. Often, the song isn't about anything because I am thinking of something trivial or not at all.

-----

For the last month or two I've been watching jacaranda trees. More specifically, I've been watching the patterns of their flowers. First I noticed that many trees had lost most or all of their flowers, becoming just another green-leafed tree. But at the same time, a few trees still had all of their flowers, as if they were refusing to go even though the time had come for their species. The flowering season seemed really short this year compared to others, but I think it's just my perception of time rather than an actual change.
Then I noticed that these trees, too, lost most or all of their flowers. Most trees had no flowers, but a few still had a little bit left, enough for you to see the purple from a distance.
And then the flowers were gone. But I noticed that very rarely, a tree would have a very small amount of flowers left. You wouldn't notice unless you were close, but they were there. It surprised me when I saw them. Oh, there is something left.
One of these trees is in my backyard. It has 3 small clusters of purple left. I noticed that some days ago, and I noticed today that they were still there.

-----

Yesterday I noticed that these trees that are more common than I thought.

Sometimes I think I have problems. Then I read a tragic story from the news and realise no, I don't have problems.

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They're going to be recreating our house soon. Planning for this began a long time ago, but now it's finally going to happen. It means that I'm going to be losing my room soon. It means that staying up late is going to become an issue soon. It means I'm going to have to throw many things away, things that I never think about or use, that I don't even need at all, but there is still remorse if I let them go.

I helped disassemble the brick-tiled path outside and relocate bricks, with extended family that I barely know. I speak a different language and live in my different world. Some of the bricks were damaged because we threw them instead of stacking them neatly. Stacking them would have probably taken three or four times longer, and taken up space that we didn't have since the only flat ground was too far away from the fence, and would have been dangerous because if anyone was sloppy which naturally happens when you are exhausted, a few bricks falling over would have been enough for someone to get hurt. Of course I didn't think about this argument a few hours ago. The bricks ... are damaged. Blame me, then. I'm the only one left. It's my fault, then. Yeah ... I guess I don't have common sense. I should have thought before I did what I was told. Maybe I just shouldn't help in the first place, next time. I'm pretty much useless anyway

my arms were sore, I don't know if it was that or placebo that made it so hard for me to play the piano. I'm careless when I play and it sounds like I'm getting worse.

If I was a house and they were going to recreate me, I don't know how I would feel. I guess I would understand that I'm old and outdated and just not good enough anymore. It would hurt, but I would look better afterwards, right? I would be better afterwards. And of course I would be better, I would be someone else. They would destroy my weak points and rebuild new and better things in their place. They would improve me.

Even though everything would be better, I would still miss what I used to be. I would still miss what once was, even though I hated it.



Sometimes people say that they hate the main character. Or at least I think I've heard that in the past. I was never one of these people. After you know their story and live their struggles with them, how can you hate them?

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Sometimes I think horrible things. Like before, except I don't get to think about what I think whereas I can think about what I type. I almost always never mean it, so I never say anything. Maybe these thoughts are like a coping mechanism ... to help me cope with these thoughts? I'm not really sure.

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Working on Swan Song is so much fun. With Coto, when transcribing I achieved a new-found appreciation for the song because by copying note by note, I could make out what was really going on with the notes, instead of the rapid-fire cluster of notes that my brain would process when I listened to it normally.

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I recorded myself playing Coto. I had many many takes, but then I realised I would never be happy with how I played it, and also that I had a mastery-of-song-cap. I'm not going to get better at playing this song, now it's just whether I can maintain not-screwing-up / playing-at-the-right-speed for the whole song or not. I found it difficult to play the first part of the song with my eyes open. I think my memory of the song is starting to get worse, because I would lose track of which variation I was up to in the fast part of the song and play the wrong one.

It's sideways atm, but it should update to be upright soon. Actually, I think it's not even that bad this way.



Swan song isn't actually that hard to transcribe. Maybe I can finish it during the holidays, and then spend the rest of my life trying to learn it.

I guess this is how I end the year then. With this music that has been a staple of my existence for a few years.

I still don't know what Coto means