Music and space when you write

[Ele'ill]

or do something creative. What one type of music or what one musician do you always listen to? What does your creative space look like?

I'm currently sitting at a computer in a corner of a one bedroom apartment that's taken up mainly by art stuff- window frames- easels- paintings etc but when I want to get into those beginning stages of processing something that I want to get out with words I listen to Windy and Carl. I love that type of music. Aphex twin's and Burial's ambient stuff helps me out a lot too.

I used to go to a tavern to write when I was younger. That made me feel pretty hip but the best place I've ever sat down and come up with ideas was in the center of a shopping mall on a Saturday.

[La Comédie Noire]

Usually I think of my best ideas in the middle of a lunch rush, after I've had my second cup of coffee. I get all excited because my frontal lobes are pulsing a mile a minute, over flowing with sensations and then I have to go home and try to catch the flotsam in a series of inadequate chalices (writing, drawing, painting ect.)

[¿Que?]

I usually do my writing at home, a one-bedroom apartment close to campus but comparatively quiet. There is mess and clutter all over the place and a cramped feeling on account of the small space relative to the furniture. I work off of a KIA dinner table standing in one corner of the living room/dining area, to the side of the front entrance. I got the table from my mom a while back ago. It was clean and pristine then. Now there are scratches, coffee rings, and anarchist symbols drawn all over it. When I write, I don't listen to music because I find it distracting. I like to listen to music after I write and reflect/project my writing onto the lyrics. I try to shape the song according to my imagination and a sense of the universal. Naturally, it can be difficult to pick a song. I remember listening to EL-P's "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" after I had written a scifi short story concerning the enslavement of humanity by warring factions of intelligent machines and aliens. The aliens were unique in the speed with which their intelligence evolved. As such, they were the only species in the universe which had achieved interstellar space travel. Aside from exploring the galaxy benevolently, the aliens invented intelligent machines, but which would eventually rebel against them, igniting an epic war which required the enslavement of millions of species throughout the universe on both sides. The story begins as a history textbook describing the events that took place when the aliens, and then shortly after, the machines, arrived on earth.

The main premise is somewhat allegorical to the competing ideas of positive and negative liberty. The aliens were a very restrictive society. They monitored speech closely and attempted to indoctrinate people into accepting their enslavement for the benefit of the universe and all biological species. On the other hand, the machines ensured every worker worked, however, they had little interest in what humans thought, said and did, per se. Out of the areas controlled by machines emerged schools of radical revolutionary philosophy which sought to liberate mankind from both machine and alien. The hero of the story must find his way from alien controlled territories to machine controlled ones, as he is guided by a voice compelling him to fight for the freedom of humankind.

And that he does. He finally makes it to machine controlled territories, and hooks up with a group of workers who have smuggled a spaceship piece by piece onto earth's orbit. The spaceship is meant to take revolutionaries to another planet, one in which due to cosmic radioactivity, electrical technology cannot exist. This was the new front for all species wishing to liberate themselves from the yoke of machine and alien. The machines themselves could not have access to the labor resources of this planet, while the aliens could not employ advanced technology to enslave the species there.

However, it was all a trick. There was no spaceship, and questions as to whether such a planet existed were never answered. As our hero attempts to board the ship that was to presumably take him to a larger orbiting interstellar vessel, he is arrested by aliens and sentenced to life in prison. In prison he meets one of the aliens, who communicates with him telepathically. The alien tells him that the war between the machines is over on earth, that humans can have their planet back, but only because a much deadlier and ominous force has been detected. In the far reaches of the universe, there is a presence that grows and grows and all consciousness that it comes across, whether biological or synthetic, ceases to be. It is an expansive area in which no intelligence exists, no thought, only physics and mechanics. And it is growing.

As the aliens leave earth, they decide to release all prisoners, but not before publicly announcing that the expansive area where intelligence cannot exist is soon to reach earth. Humankind will perish. As millions of prison doors open worldwide, our hero is stunned to see his jammed shut. Furthermore, he is in a hidden cell, nobody knew where he was or whether he was still alive. He is left to live out the last days of humanity with only the company of a small droid which brings him his food everyday.

And this is the song that goes with the end of the story:
rOxB2lCayRU

The very end of the song...