-
Sel
- New York, New York
- Last Record: 2013-05-09 16:38:37 -0700
- Joined: Nov 21, 2010
- http://nacloftheearth....
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It was, they told us, the very latest in technology. The cutting edge, the newest of the new. “Free Your Mind With DreamShare,” was their slogan, and they promised us a new age of uninhibited creativity. It was easy to use. Drink down a packet of nanos dissolved into water, put the specs on, and dream your way to hours of entertainment and experimentation. When you woke up you could watch what you had dreamed on your tablet and edit it with a few taps of your keypad. The DreamShare webspace was soon invaded by millions of people’s dreams set to music, tagged with the users who uploaded them and organized by category (Slasher! Space Travel! Surrealism!). Some of the first went viral simply because they were the first broadcasted dreams anyone had ever seen. We later learned to be more discerning, preferring the organized plotlines of experienced lucid dreamers to the hazy events of your average Jane’s nighttime brain-wanderings. Still then it was free, and so new. Of course the porn industry caught on first. “Sex Dreaming With The Stars” was the first big series to be released on holodisk, and they bought up the dreams of just about anyone who had a racy sheet-stainer involving a celebrity. Arthouse types followed, with just about every asshole who could conjure up a melting clock calling himself the “Dali of DreamShare.” Hollywood was slow to pick up on the fad, assuming that people would rather see the work of real writers, real directors, with real actors saying planned lines, but when the box office numbers for the film industry’s first five years after DreamShare’s release went public everyone’s shareholders pressured the studios to partner up get into the business of projected dreams. To reignite interest in Hollywood-produced dreams, they organized a talent search for the world’s most interesting and creative dreamers. When they found them, they signed them up for contracts of one year, five years, even life if they were worth it. Every dream the lucky winners dreamed belonged to the studios, with a small percentage of the profit going right back to DreamShare. They paid the dreamers a lot, from what I hear. More than I think they were willing to, even with the huge amounts of money rolling in from people who wanted to see big name dreams on even bigger screens. After a while they stopped wanting to pay for people’s dreams. They tried to sneak it on us at first. Dreams started showing up in theaters by “Anonymous” dreamers who, it was later found out, had not consented to have their work shown for profit. Some of them hadn’t even shared the dream on the webspace before they saw it coming up as some studio’s next great venture. One guy tried to sue once, but DreamShare had written it into the fine print of the very first version of their product that they had the right to any information uploaded onto their database, and every dream recorded with their technology was backed up onto their cloud server. Nobody knew that because nobody read it, and now someone else had the rights to their dreams. So everyone stopped. They threw out their DreamShare mechs, smashed their specs, and stopped drinking nano water almost overnight. Poor bastards thought they were accomplishing something. They didn’t know that DreamShare had lied to them. Those nanobots, you don’t piss them out within a day or two of consuming them. They stay in your body. They build up, a million billion powder-small robots living in your brain and in your blood. And the specs were more or less a formality. As long as you had enough nanotech in your head, your dreams were recorded and used and there was nothing you could do about it. The screens haunt us now. They hover above our streets and in our houses, selling us products we invented ourselves and showing us fantasies that were supposed to stay secret. Anyone’s dreams are fair game, and you live in fear that one day you’ll look up and see your life, your fiction, your own stolen imagination projected in the sky for the world to see. We more or less entertain ourselves now. It’s the cutting edge of technology.
This is a "What If...?" story inspired by urbanization (remix) What if people could see your dreams? |
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I heard RP's track "Alone Is All I Know" when I woke up this morning and skipped breakfast to record this over it real quick. I ws at a loss for lyrics so I searched the word "lonely" on the site and turned up "Into Midnight" by smweed and even though they're meant to be lyrics to another song I thought they fit perfectly. REmix!
I've been listening to a lot of Lovedrug, a lot of ghost rock and the track sounded to me like a choir of pissed off dead people rocking out in the netherworld. To suit that image, the chorus is super dissonant and could use LOADS more voices. Hint. Stems are a particular weakness of mine, but I'll try to get them up soon.
REvised Lyrics from smweed's "Into Midnight":
I don't know where I've come from, but I know where I've been
And I won't ask for redemption but I know that I have sinned
And I am going into midnight to the end of all things.
(It's all I know, you know I'm going in alone)
I won't ask you for comfort, I won't ask you for your love
I have stolen all your mercy, baby, I'm the hawk to your dove
And I am going into midnight, from below to above!
(It's all I know, you know I'm going in alone)
I'm a stranger in the darkness, I'm alone among my friends
(I'm a stranger in the darkness)
I can see the road is open but I can't see where it ends
(I can see the road is open)
And I haven't tasted freedom but I've broken all my strings
(And I haven't tasted freedom)
I am going into midnight to the end of all the things
(it's all I know, you know I'm going in alone, all I know)
Do re mi fa..so I don’t know
Just how I always end up singing this solo.
I try to set it up to make it easy to duet
...but nothing’s happened yet.
'cause A-E-G-C, it doesn’t spell it out like L-O-V-E
But even if I say it clearly music isn’t nearly
Enough to make you see me like I thought it would be
Do re mi fa-so in love with everyone but me-re do
I'm sick of all these hopeless cases
Same old loves in New York places- so
I-I-I would like to turn it on itself and sing it:
Do ti la sol fa- but oh no!
They say that everyone is music at their heart
We all know the same notes but we're all singing different parts
And when our melodies come harmonies we call it love, or art?
…Don’t get me started on-
Do re mi fa- so in love with everyone but me-re do
Sick of all these hopeless cases
Same old loves in New York places- so
I would like to turn it on itself and sing it:
Do ti la- so far you don’t know
So I hate to be the one to break the news
But no one’s gonna love you like I do
And I’m feeling like Bogey saying “Here’s to you, kid”
(I tried to act it out but I just looked stupid)
And maybe singing it will make you realize
You and I are meant to harmonize :)
Do re mi fa- so in love with everyone but me -re do
I'm sick of all these hopeless cases
same old loves in New York places so
I would like to turn it on itself and sing it:
Do ti la sol fa- but oh no!
Of course I have an idea for a song right after I pack all of my recording equipment. Maybe someday I'll record it properly but for now, it's just me, my laptop microphone, and a ukulele. Feel free to sing along? Chords C G Am F, as usual.
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I never had one of those red hot All-American summers. No boyfriend's blue convertible, no keg in the... |
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I’m watching all of the things you do like: tapping out your ashes, thumbing through a yellow book and drinking out of glasses, |
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Sometimes you come across two records that just make sense in your head. When I heard the pulsing electro-beat of christopher.harn's "Flights" and read joel the gentleman's "context clues on a chalkboard" I immediately heard the words in a melody. Both of these records are great you guys. Thank you SO much for making these.
If anybody wants to mix this better, let me know and I'll put stems up. There's a "please" somewhere in there on my part.
Lyrics adapted from joel the gentleman’s “context clues on a chalkboard,” only the line in [brackets] is original-ish, and even those are inspired joel the gentleman’s “odd, how strange.”
Two handed, grace demanded
I sit up straight while on this planet
And we’re all colors sitting quietly; we’re all crammed inside a cabinet
Waiting patiently as patience, as if our path already planned it
Well, I can’t stand this plain outlandish point of view (in pews with traffic)
Looking back and moving backwards
Dull edged hatchets that never quite hacked it
‘till we feel it, ‘til we feel it, ‘til we can admit that we’re all realists
‘till we feel it, ‘til we feel it, ‘til we can admit we know what real is
Oh, tree of life, I think I might go blind inside and lose my sight.
Just to prove that I’d be fine.
But we’re all mice we follow light so bright we never notice height, we fall…
Just to prove we’ll be all right.
That seems fair, right?
Good thing I brought my A.C. because things are getting heated
In the backseat with bruises matching the ones we got when we were defeated
[And bad things come to those who burn their bridges and build no boats
So I hope you don’t, we can float…]
Sex and violence don’t mix, but our populous of pop culture is too quick to tell us that we need it
While preaching we don’t need shit, oh how convenient
I believe it’s way past time we all relieved this
All we gotta do is feel it…til we can admit that we’re all realists
‘till we feel it, ‘til we feel it, ‘til we can admit that we’re all realists
‘till we feel it, ‘til we feel it, ‘til we can admit we know what real is
(oh, tree of life, I think I might go blind inside and lose my sight
Just to prove that I’d be fine…)
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Before there was language, there was sound. An endless stream of noise that crashed and bubbled and whispered and sang to us every night before we went to sleep. Without langua... |
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Occupy sounds like a filthy word. It’s half-hiccup, half-oath, leaking history from its double-c cuts and contusions. Heaping, loaded with the weight of iron chains and bullet shells; Occu... |
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I started out thinking of all the depressing places a Gloam could spend its time and ended up making this plucky little activist. I'd like to continue her story, but this is all we have for now.... |
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I know the Gloam are misunderstood and not evil, but I feel like their outsider status would lend itself to a few colorful misconceptions about their shadowy status on the edge of society... ... |
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I love the idea of doing a cover collab! This one of my favorite hitrecord songs and I wanted to give it a kind of folksy, singer-songwriter treatment. I also transcribed the lyrics by ear, not realizing that sparrow did them in the original record so I got a few of them wrong. Oopsie.
