zka

Nearly a year has passed! And it's me, again. Oh lord

Look at this blockquote, from a post I wrote in 2019!:

I'm seeing a new therapist; she is the third. The other two were great, I wholeheartedly recommend them, but I moved from Washington to Oregon, and Therapist Number Two wasn't licensed to practice in Oregon, so ... It took a while to find a new mental health provider, because the world is hurting. The vast majority of therapists I contacted didn't bother to respond, they're already overbooked; just radio silence on their end.

The New Therapist thought my caffeine regimen was interesting, and asked me to take a short questionnaire. Long story short: Most people use caffeine as a stimulant, meaning they get "amped", energetic, and have a deluge of thoughts. But in people with ADHD, if you use specific doses of stimulants, the opposite effect occurs: thoughts are focused, emotions go quiescent, and noise recedes into the background.

Surprise, you beautiful tall bitch!: It is likely you've had ADHD your entire life.

I had no idea this was possible, until last week. I'd seen other people endure it (my partner has it, and was on medication when we met; Adderall is basically low-dose meth). I figured it was just something other people dealt with, and since I'm high-functioning ^enough^, it couldn't possibly be in my headspace.

But, what does this mean?! ADHD is a spectrum, and between the two major types, I'm probably more "hyperactive" than "inattentive". (I'm simplifying a bit, I haven't researched this properly. Roast me in the comments plz.) Below is a list of my quirks, which are suspiciously aligned with the classical symptoms of the ADHD spectrum:

* Either in a "hyper-focused" state of mind (flow state, especially when doing something interesting), or: huge struggle to maintain focus, easily distracted, lots of daydreaming, difficult to pay attention to the subject matter / meeting / conversation / whatever.
* Frequently changing interests, like how I dive deep into a new hobby every 1–2 years, and ditch whatever came before.
* Fidgety and squirmy.
* Constantly feeling a drive to fix things, and be productive. The flipside: Don't know how to relax; "doing nothing" is excruciating. Mentally punishing myself when I'm not productive.
* Constant struggle to manage emotions in situations that other people seem fine with, like this nice example from Wikipedia's ADHD article: "Often struggles to wait their turn, including waiting in lines." Why yes, I do want to scream if I'm forced to wait my turn, with nothing productive to do aaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

The list goes on. It's a deep subject, it's frequently "comorbid" with other conditions, including the tendency to avoid people (pretending to be human around strangers is difficult).

If this is indeed legitimate, then ^wow^ I've achieved quite a bit, in spite of it (or perhaps by leveraging it? Hyper-focused software development, and all.) No, I do not want medication. Actually, let me clarify that point: I already have medication, he says, slamming the coffee cup on the table and staring daggers at everyone. Now get out, as he hugs the espresso machine, caressing it softly, it'll be okay, they won't take you this time, my sweet baby

With my current routine, my mental state is nestled in a local maxima, I don't want to tamper with that equilibrium. ADHD may help explain some things, but I truly am high-functioning enough, and that's okay, I don't consider myself to be ^suffering^ from this. It's more of a shock that this went unnoticed, and unremarked, for nearly half a century.

Semi-related: Lately I've made an effort to not be productive, and I'm jokingly referring to this as my "flop era". Back to rotting my brain with Metroid Prime Remastered, also I suck at this game lol

In June, the $BAND visited my mountain hideout. I booted up the Mac Pro '09, and recovered some old recordings that we made 12 years ago.

Later, I sorted through my own creations from 2009 onward. My style evolved several times, and there are distinct periods (of atonal flailing and drowning). Here's a short description of each:

2007-08: Painful, abrasive, tuneless, slightly insane. Way too much distortion.

2009-10: This period is interesting! I was intrigued by physical modeling, which is software that simulates physical objects, rendering how they might sound if the objects existed in the real world.

There's a early-internet software package for this, called Tao. The instruments are semi-programmable and scriptable, although the learning curve is steep, and the sounds don't emerge in realtime. You program your simulation, and let it run (usually overnight). In the morning, you have 60 seconds of expensive-sounding audio, which may-or-may-not be useful.

The details are lost to time, but I had a workflow for using Tao, and rapidly iterating ideas. I wrote a micro-framework which let me compose rhythmic 16- and 32-beats; virtual hammers struck the shapes at precise intervals and tempos. I took these riffs, looped them, and they became an essential part of the Too Many Moths sound.

There were other tricks that 2MM used, in fact the whole reason I'm bothering to write this is because the sound design from that period is surprisingly >>>good<<<. None of the tracks were finished or released (they morphed for each live performance, ever-shifting). Listening from 12 years in the future, these have aged well. The overall effect is slow and contemplative, the sound design is lush and spacey, but also you can feel the allusions to solitude and darkened rooms, an inner pain.

2011-12: Trying to make "fast" music again, because I was "influenced" by drum & bass at the time. Also I entered an internet "song pact," and I tried using melody and harmony like a real composer. I was cheating, hunting for shortcuts to make quality tunes, and I had an idea for a generative audio app which could massage any sound into any other sound. But, just because you can twist a gunshot into the vague shape and timbre of a snare drum, that doesn't mean you *should*. (...... Because it grates on one's ears.)

I think I sold my music gear between 2018-20? It took a while to let go of it, emotionally. I've let go of that fantasy now, I wouldn't want a music studio in my life again.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this is because I wish the Too Many Moths tracks were finished, and released in some fashion. Not for judgment, or to impress anyone, but because I really like how the tracks sound, and I want to bathe in that aesthetic. There are 6 (maybe 7) strong tracks, which I estimate to be a 50-percent pain-in-my-ass to finish, and a bunch of weaker tracks that I can safely disregard.

Unfortunately, being a high-functioning American adult means my entire day is subdivided into tasks and errands, which fulfill me indirectly, without providing lasting satisfaction or life-affirming

Okay, WE GET IT, drama queen. I'm not saying this will happen, or even CAN happen given current circumstances. But IF it did happen, here's what the process would look like:

• Move the Ableton sessions to a modern computer. Some tracks use so much CPU that the old machine stutters. Also I don't have a DVI monitor big enough to handle the Ableton user interface.

• Find substitutes for plug-ins which don't run on the modern computer. ~or~ Bounce any channels that use essential plug-ins, ... hmm, this is getting complicated already.

• Edit the tracks to be concise, and tell a good story. Remove the voice samples, because I usually don't listen to music with voices anymore, and for serious music I feel that voice samples are a form of cheating. (The views expressed in this post are solely the views of the author, and do not apply to the world at large, no llamas were harmed in the making of this bytestream, update your privacy preferences with this one weird trick, etc.)

• Proper mix & mastering. This is the hard part.

• Choose track names!!! Oooh, the fun part.

• Album name? Album artwork? Hmm.

Do you ever feel like you can't accurately gauge what's truly important in your life, and what gives your existence meaning? I struggle with this a lot. This paragraph is not intended to be humorous, by the way, this is real. I just spent about 12 months noodling with a color e-Paper picture frame for my wall (...more on this train wreck later ...) and I'm surprised that I stuck with it for a whole year, for such a disappointing payoff. This "I'm going to fix Too Many Moths" enthusiasm might fizzle out in a few days, who can say?

I don't know. Goodnight.