Who Are You & What Do You Want?

 

Who Are You when the titles and status are no longer in play?

An important life question to know the answer of.  Some men have a big problem retiring and not having their position anymore.  There is a common story that "many" Japanese Men follow there wives around like wet leaves stuck to their wives shoes after they retired. Don't be that old man!

Also what Mr.Morden asked all the ambassadors in Babylon 5. 

Another of my amateur Heavy Metal/ Techno/ Pop/ Nursery Rhythm/ MUSIC+COMICS . It isn't a generic verse/chorus structure but rather 8 bar alternating musical bit and verse with 2 longer musical bits.

They don't have a repeating chorus either.  Just what I am doing at the moment and no set in stone rule I have set my self.

Jut straight ahead 4/4. I have tried to get into Prog Metal, but the stop start nature of it isn't what I need.  May be amazing technique, but that isn't attractive to me. 

I seen advice to record the vocals 10 times and comp together the best bits to make the perfect take. I don't go to that much trouble. 2 or 3 takes and just keep the best one for each verse. I will listen to the completed track a 1,000 times and may decide, like this time,  some words could be better, then record those verses again, 2 or 3 takes. I am the only one to play a track more than once so it really doesn't matter in my case. I am not some guy trying to go PRO and make a career out of music.

The rhythm guitar is this 8 string going through the DONNER 10 Band EQ (to cut lowest 2 bands)  into the POD EXPRESS BLACK Anvil+CAB. 

The melodic guitar is my Ibanez RG350. The drums and synths are very Dubstep/ Techno and I like that. The bass sequence is almost just a pedal tone, but it does drive it along.

Simple hummable riffs and melodies are all I am after.  This one kind of reminds me of the vocal sound of THE EAGLES (rather than Tull's Ian Anderson of a previous one), even if I am not a fan of them, but due to the tone and register of my voice and the multitracking. 

The track Who Are You? is on Bandcamp.

The Demon is a Copic marker on paper sketch I did a few years ago. One of 2 demons in an old Japanese illustration I have in a book somewhere. 

In MOHO V12 pro I assigned BONES to it and manipulate those to warp the illustration a bit to make it move a little.  

Lyrics:

Who are you,
and what do you want? 
The truth will set you free.

When titles and status 
are no longer in play.
Who do you see
at the end of the day?
 
Sift  through the pieces 
 find what lacks.
Tear the shadows 
Bring light back.

So drop all the armor 
and step from the dark,
See the version of you 
that you really are.

あなたは誰なのか 
 そして何を望んでいるのか？ 
真実はあなたを自由にする。

肩書きや地位が 
もはや意味をなさなくなったとき。
一日の終わりに、
あなたは誰を見ているのか？
 
断片を一つひとつ
見極め、欠けているものを見つけ出せ。
影を引き裂き、
光を取り戻せ。

だから、すべての鎧を脱ぎ捨て、
闇から踏み出せ。
そして、
本当の自分を見よ。

EDIT: 2026/07/22 Next day has had around 600 views (then it is just turned off on the SHORT feed, completely artificial numbers), but most only watch the first 9 seconds, which is even before when the drums come in!  The POPCORN BRAINED. 

The FB stats same deal. Turn tap on/ turn tap off after a fixed number.

 Enshittification and dumbing down run unabated. 

Other Things

Second time to replace closed back KRK KNS8400 headphones rotting earpads. An earpad and headrest set from Amazon.  Much prefer open headphones BUT recording vocals need closed back, and these isolate really well.

The realities of getting older with a sick spouse were our lot for the last weeks. Nothing serious, but trying. Luckily I didn't have to go anywhere at all. Preparing meals and the clean up after.  I had 帯状疱疹 too about 10 years ago. 

Met up with youngest son for morning after putting it off due to heavy rainy season rain for the last 2 weeks.  He gave me this late FATHERDAYS gift.

An AKIRA + EVANGELION mashup piece. Very cool.

And the rainy season is now officially over so the humidity and temperature skyrocket.

Kyoto Live House GATTACA July 17 - Anima Tempo JAPAN TOUR 2026

7月14日(火) 京都 GATTACA  

開場 17:30 / 開演 18:00

前売 ¥3,400 / 当日 ¥3,900 / 学割 ¥2,400 (+1Drink)

Anima Tempo is a Mexican Prog Metal Band I hadn't heard of. 5 bands in one night sounds like it finishes late.  Has Rikugo in the line up at a place I haven't been to before, but isn't far from here. But can I go? 

Would like to see them again. They supported Freak Kitchen last year, and the first time I saw them.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Psychedelusion AI

 

Psychedelic Delusion:  the scientific and philosophical debate surrounding whether profound, life-altering insights from some drugs are genuinely revelatory, or merely delusions from temporarily brain disfunction.

Psychedelusion: A similar thing applied to AI. Life-altering insights and mystical experiences from AI THAT ARE completely delusional!

Psychedelusion a term I made up yesterday. 😃

Lyrics below are just supposed to be Psychedelic.  Vague and just all out of your mind words of a experience rather than dig into the meaning of the title. It is more fun that way, and what I need at the moment. 

Lyrics: 

Ooohh the right thing 
Melts right through the floor 
Spinning like a neon sign 
On a locked up door 

 

The colors start to breathe 
The walls begin to bend 
We’re walking backwards to the start 
To find the heavy end

The static turns to sound 
The shadows learn to speak 
We’re climbing down the mountain top 
To find the lowest peak

This just came out of playing with the Mackie 402VLZ4 Roland Rubix22 Reaper DAW set up re-installed during the week. Allows ZERO LATENCY input monitoring. 64 sample buffer gives 3.4ms latency. Will use this for awhile. They used to say a change is as good as a holiday.

Expected the bright colorful animation will make it more popular than the pencil Greek philosophers of last week music+comic.

See so many on social media and YouTube, "all about music". About the gear, or fashion, or some other non sound aspect, but actually making and releasing music itself isn't what they seem to do very often... cool solos though...  

Other Things

Lots of rain during the week. The Rainy Season hasn't let up much.

The year is half over and that speed just gets faster and faster as you age. 

Killswitch Engage, melodic metalcore, is new to me and have been listening to some 6 tracks with great riffs on repeat the last few days.  The guitarist uses a fixed bridge, rather simple down tuned 6 string guitar.  180BPM and lots of pick slides in his technique. Too fast for old me. His current Caparison TAT Special FX "Metal Machine" Guitar is at that 400,000yen price of the boutique/ collector stuff in Japan.  

Been thinking about a 10 band EQ pedal for the 8 string for awhile, as my BOSS EQ-7 doesn't  have the required low bands, and testing with a 10 band EQ vst before Neural Dsp Modeler shows that tightens up the low end sound a lot.

Looked at that MXR pedal, but this Donner seems more appropriate for my low end home studio use to go in front of the POD EXPRESS BLACK.  Those sliders would be so fragile for stage use, but that isn't how I use it.   

All I really need are the 31.25 and 62.5 Hz bands and in a previous life I would have made something myself, probably just a variable High Pass Filter, but I aren't that person anymore, and just couldn't be bothered.  

In 1938 psychologist B.F. Skinner, using the "Skinner box" to dispense food to rats and pigeons when a button pressed discovered "Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule" is extremely addictive. SM is now built around it  for both users and creatives. The whole reason a posts or video will generate completely different view numbers. We are all rats in a Skinner Box to YouTube, X, Facebook etc. Constant Bait & Switch, as the Algorithms Spin

Just because you understand what is happening doesn't mean you can control yourself on Social Media 

Powerful stuff. 

Dopamine is produced when you are expecting something feel-good.   Not on the actual receiving of the feel-good thing. So dopamine sky rockets on looking on your feed expecting to find something good.  When you don't, you try 10 minutes later, again... 

A related piece from him is related to this in that the powerful and wealthy loose empathy. This now is a scientific fact. And they are the ones controlling the country. Maybe the reason America and the UK have become dystopias. Despite NASA and other super cool really attractive American things. It isn't just the current administrations but a wealth imbalance system.  

See yesterday actor/body builder that was in Mad Max 2 died yesterday at 76 after a long painful illness. See a lot of things like that and comments from the other retired.  One of the early 60s retired in America is in a group of retirees where they share what is going on mentally and physically.  The GO/ SLOW GO/ NO GO years came from him. He mentioned a few in their late 60s died recently. They don't just die of one thing though. There is a cascade of health issues in the last year(s). I think about that  and see it in people I know.  

You just don't know how long anyone has.

Another thing that comes up amongst the retired introverts is they don't want to deal with others. Being alone with your own thoughts and interests is the best.  I very much feel that way too. The ones that suffer from loneliness are the extroverts, not everyone.  This seems common knowledge now.

Who are you? is a question I answered years ago even before retiring.

Joe mentions it in his latest video here too.  Many men, apparently, are lost after they leave their "position of title and authority" where ever they worked. They don't know who they are without that. And the reality is that is never who they were, but what a job they had was.  

The only 2 things I will comment on in his 12 here are WORK STRESS and WHO YOU ARE.  

Loosing the stress was such a huge thing for me when I retired. Life changing to not be responsible for solving big problems not of my own creating.  So much happier without that,

Musical Cartoonist is what I think of myself now, despite being involved with high tech electronics & software/firmware design and development for much of my career.  It doesn't have the status, but no one cares about you, other than your wife and kids, after you retire anyway. You are just one of those old guys...

Updated my EP- The Songs to have 8 songs and a 12 page PDF booklet now. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN