Avenging Gales

Winds of confusion -
the weather of December
is quite so strange, yes?

Unions of December Fun

Eleven months down and now... we're at the tail end of 2011. Amazing, isn't it?





CURRENT MUSIC:
Bear McCreary - "Dirty Hands"
Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 Original Soundtrack

I wanted to surprise you with a little something different, and I believe this piece does just that. Those of you who only know of Battlestar Galactica's music through what I've posted here will find a stark contrast between what I've posted before and "Dirty Hands." That's good - there was meant to be a difference in what you've heard before and expect to hear from the soundtrack... and what you end up hearing afterwards.

"Dirty Hands" aurally represents a "working man" theme, conveying through music a sense of hard labor and strain faced by crews aboard some of the more "essential" ships in the refugee fleet (such as a fuel refinery ship and a sewage treatment vessel). You can almost picture the formation of a union strike with this music. Matter-of-fact: a strike ended up occurring in the show itself...

As I've been a working man of sorts for the past eleven months, I have to say that this blues-sounding track carries a musical representation of the hard work I've done and the hard work I'll have to face in the future.

Plus, this makes for good background music for typing stuff up. Try it the next time you're writing some big, bag paper or a vehement e-mail to your supervisor about the pointlessness of TPS reports (or whatever business ethics minutiae you're calling them out on). Take the fight of the common man into your hands! ...er, I mean... *twiddles thumbs*

Artistic Combat

Sometimes, things just go horribly wrong. You're there just working on creating or editing something when without warning, the ideas just stop flowing. You don't know what happened, and right now it's the biggest obstacle in your life since that moment when you were six and the grade school bully was standing between you and your lunch. Or Game Boy. Or the playground.

Regardless of what this bully's blocking, you know you need to reach it as soon as possible while you still have time to do so. You struggle to get past, yet each attempt ends up falling apart as the bully stops you in your pitiful tracks and shoves you back. As you land on your butt for what seems like the umpteenth time, the bully just cackles maniacally at you. You struggle to get back on your feet, determined each time... only to repeat the cycle.

I don't know where I originally found this, but it's obvious that this isn't mine.
However, her focused and intense look at her laptop? That's me, like, half the time I type something up.

Artists (like myself) these days will tell you that while they've come a long way from the schoolyard blues, a different kind of bully comes through and blocks them from their goals. As such, the metaphor changes and adapts to their current wants, needs, and goals - lunch is now that lunch date they promised a friend they'd go out on when (s)he finished working; that Game Boy is his/her social life they've been cast away from due to some kind of self-imposed exile; the playground is the rest of their life that (s)he could be enjoying instead of working on whatever it is they're working on.