Writing Parks

Lots of music! Lots of text! Lots of silly things interspersed throughout!





CURRENT MUSIC:
Apocalyptica - "Master of Puppets (Metallica Cover)"
Plays Metallica by Four Cellos

For those of you who don't know who Apocalyptica are, they are a Finnish cello metal band - that is, they primarily use cellos. They originally started out by covering Metallica songs (which is what Plays Metallica by Four Cellos, their debut album, consists of) and eventually began making their own music that rocked out just as well.

I personally love this rendition of "Master of Puppets" - for some reason, I think this actually had a stronger tone than the actual song did. The guitar solo/interlude in the middle of the song... oh, maaaaaan, it just sounds amazing.


Russell Brower, Derek Duke and Matt Uelmen - "Silvermoon City"
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Soundtrack

A good majority of the Horde players know this music piece as the primary anthem that plays when entering Silvermoon City. I say this because the majority race of Horde players seems to be the sin'dorei (the Blood Elves). That, or they're roleplayers sent to delegate something in Silvermoon.

I'm digressing. The brass and percussion announce your arrival in Silvermoon territory with a loud fanfare before giving way to a bit where a cello and choir aurally lament the loss and suffering the sin'dorei and Silvermoon had to endure. The brass switches in for the cello and repeats the same line the stringed instrument sounded off. It then goes through a different melody completely yet retains the same melancholic sound throughout the rest of the piece.

Now, that's not to say that by listening to this, I'm assumed to be in a depressed mood. No, I'm actually in a fine one. I just love the instrumentation and elegance this piece has. Don't get me wrong - the other anthems and interludes for the other Horde cities are great as well, but Silvermoon... man. The emotion just matches the city well.


Hideki Sakamoto - "prime #7"
Echochrome Original Soundtrack

The crazy mind-bending puzzle game for the PlayStation 3 has quite the interesting little soundtrack. Consisting primarily of nothing but a string quartet, the music just radiates with elegance and calming emotions... a perfect way to aurally clear your mind and get you focused on hand. The fact that the track names have no "real" track names help as well - they're all just prime numbers, forcing more of your focus on concentrating on the music rather than the name.

This piece (along with the rest of the soundtrack) helped immensely while I composed this entry.



"The easiest thing to do on earth is not write."
- William Goldman

This is a very true statement here. I honestly could not write anything anymore on this blog and not have to worry constantly about making a daily deadline or anything of the sort. I could very well stop posting here and would never have to worry about anything related to this site ever again. That would be a wonderful feeling, right? Not having to force myself to compose something? Not having to deal with self-induced pressure?

Wrong. I relish this site. It's probably one of the few things I have going for me right now, and by continually posting I allow myself to endure and embrace the hardships that rocket my way. Mind you, this site offers me no hardships whatsoever, but I like to think that so long as this site exists - as long as I keep writing - anything I do isn't completely for naught.

So, I will not take the easy road and tarry off, never to be seen again. I will write. I will write until my conscious self no longer exists. I will write for the sake of everyone who decided against taking the easy road and busied themselves with some kind of written task. I will write because I can write - because not many else will heed the call - because I love it.





*clears throat*

Apologies for being overly passionate up there, but like I said, I love it. Hehe.

Anyway, good night and welcome to today's edition of The White Knight Chronicles. In case today's quote (and my passionate response to it) wasn't a good-enough sign, then a good portion (if not the majority) will focus on writing.

So, if this isn't a book, then what is it? I've yet to decide.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was going to go through Keri Smith's This Is Not a Book and begin the process of bolstering my supposedly-drained imagination. For those of you unfamiliar with the book or the author (which, unless you read my stuff and/or are an artist yourself, is likely), I described it as "a keg of gunpowder waiting to set off the reader's imagination through creativity." It promotes out-of-the-box thinking - even if you're already the kind who thinks out of the box.

For those of you wondering if this book really does act as a sort-of booster shot for creativity, I would normally say "get the book (or any of her other books) yourself," but I can't do that without providing some kind of support to my "argument" (because let's face it - this is nowhere close to being a persuasive blog).



Before I continue, here's a disclaimer written by Keri Smith herself. It's the "prologue" of sorts before you begin to nurture your creative mind.

No time limit? No requirement as to what is considered "finished?" Gee, why couldn't school projects be more like this?

I read this again and again. I basically had the free right to do whatever I wanted. No, really. Even for creative-types, most find themselves bound by a personalized set of codes and ethics that they obey - whether they know it or not, of course, is a different story.

Reading - SO un-American these days.

As I browsed and browsed for something to get me started, I figured I could have one of three options come upon me:

1. Pick a page at random and do it immediately.
2. Find something that piqued my interest after browsing all of the activities in This Is Not a Book.
3. Eat some lunch. Procrastinate like the good twenty-something I am. Worry about it later.

For those of you guessing that I chose the third option, you clearly didn't read that spiel up with the quote. Then again, I guess I can't fully jeer at you - you're partially right.

FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD~

So I packed my stuff, went out, and nabbed some food. As I got back into my car, I asked myself, "Hey, Josh, when was the last time you actually relaxed at a park?" I didn't have an answer, so I made a beeline towards the closest one in my vicinity that I knew of.

What my view looked like from where I was relaxing.

The weather was practically demanding that I go someplace relaxing - today was a gorgeous and sunny day. Warm weather that wasn't too warm and clear skies to let the sun shine upon the earth... can't get much better than that. I sat down, got out my food, and began to happily munch away at my "Chinese food" while I skimmed through This is Not a Book.

Clearly this isn't a book - it claims to be an itinerary, so it must be one!

Midway through one of my bites, I came across this little activity. After reading the directions, I chose to go ahead and begin this one while I let my body digest the lunch I consumed. Win-win, right? I finished my lunch, disposed of the trash, found a nice and shady spot in the grass to sit down and sat. (Oh, and I can't forget to say that I took my shoes and socks off. That feeling of lush, cool grass underneath your feet... ooh, there's not much like it.)

So, first step first: "Go to the closest park." *looks around* Check.

Second step: "Spend 10 minutes looking at the sky. What do you see?" I lied back on the grass, grabbed a composition notebook and a pencil, looked up at the sky and began to time myself. Watch shows... 1624 hours and 6 seconds. I then told myself to just relax and write anything that came to mind while I stared onward. This is what I came up with:

I see the sky.
I see an endless aerial ocean of blue.
I see an insect-sized airplane and the snowy contrails it leaves behind.
I see a black crow gliding.
I see the cerulean essence of peace.
I see peace incarnate.
I see more insect-sized planes weaving through the clear cobalt skies.
I see a notebook offering me solace and shelter from the light of the sun.
I see something - a bird? a sheet of paper?
I see harmony... balance... serenity... grace.
I see the branches of wayward trees desperately attempting to get a hold of my attention.
I see my words - my thoughts, my blessings - floating upwards into this vast sea of azure sky.
I see etchings... etchings of lines, of objects... streak across my vision.
I see nothing and everything - a dichotomy of life, of this earth, of this universe.
I see that there is no limit to this aerial mural.
I see enlightenment... I see knowledge.

I then decided to check my watch to see if my 10 minutes were up. 1643 hours and 45 seconds. Nearly 20 minutes when all I was asked to spend was 10. I then came to see that this wasn't time wasted - rather, it was timed earned. Time I thought I didn't have that was well-spent with my thoughts and recollections. Whoa.

Looking off into the distance: sign of a badass, or sign of a... an awesome person? =P

Third step: "Document yourself standing under a tree." Well, as nobody was within casual talking distance to help me capture a photo of myself where the tree is plainly visible, with enough imagination you can see the rest of the tree behind and above me.

Now that I look at it, it kinda looks more like a hexagon than it does a circle...

Fourth step: "Arrange something you find into a circle." I looked around the grass and the field and found dead leaves and what not lying around. I figured that could do - if I had access to rocks, not only would I end up creating something that might trigger a paranoid person into thinking it's a trap, but I'd end up looking at it, rushing away to buy an ocarina, and rushing back to play the "Song of Storms" to see if any mysterious holes open up in the middle.

Ocarina of Time reference aside, I looked at my creation and deemed it a worthy offering to my task at hand. On to the next one!

Fifth step: "List the number of people you see." I counted 36 people. Wow - guess I wasn't the only one who thought that today was an excellent day to relax in a park of some kind. Well, that's that. Now what was that last step?

The cast of Lucky Star seem surprised at the fact that I'm finally writing stuff again.

Sixth (and last) step: "Leave something of yours in a secret location." Uh... this might be a problem. Like the nerd I am, I opened up my messenger bag and took a look around.

Inventory

• Two (2) Worn Composition Books
• One (1) Nintendo 3DS
• One (1) Nindendo 3DS Game Case
• Two (2) Mechanical Pencils, 0.5 lead
• Four (4) Vials Troll Sweat
• Three (3) Oshu'Gun Crystal Powder
• Two (2) Heavy Frostweave Bandage
• One (1) Arcanite Ripper
• One (1) Folded-Up Note
• Five Hundred (500) Saronite Bullets

Unlike the Lv80 Orc Hunter known as Tednugent, I at least could do something with some of this stuff. Mind you, I don't have any vials of troll sweat (although I do hoard garbage to sell to the vendors like the piss-poor RPG player I am), but that folded-up note came to be of use - mostly because it was blank. So I wrote a message on it, which (in the event that you were too lazy to read the photo above,) said:

TO WHOEVER FINDS THIS:

This message was left here courtesy of Keri Smith's This Is Not a Book. I recommend you get it.

- from a reader (JDB)

Ooh, cryptic, I know. Obviously to some of you this may seem like a cheap cop-out from leaving anything else behind, but I have my reasons. For one, it didn't exactly specify what I could leave behind and how much of a monetary value it had to be worth. Secondly, this book lets me do anything. Anything. And thirdly, that Arcanite Ripper's going to net me some serious gold at the auction house. =P

Now, where to hide it...?

Can you find that little piece of paper?

...done. I'd offer to help you locate it, but I'm afraid that if I told you, I'd have to kill you. It's on a need-to-know basis. Other cliché lines from spy shows and movies here. Alzo include ze part vith horrible German achzents too, ja?





Anywho, I afterwards called it a day and have been hanging out with a few friends since. This Is Not a Book, from my view, has now proven its worth and then some. By using it I've found myself more mentally active in my work than I have been in months. Most of the things I've encountered in here have been things I'm not exactly used to when it comes to creative thinking. That's a great thing for me - it provides my ever-bored mind with something fun and exciting to do.





Now, I'm done boring you, so it's off to beddy-bye or work or whatever-have-you to do. Until the 'morrow, everyone! I hoped this proved to entertain y'all out there!