The Navigators

Image: Just some artwork I liked, inspired by the Dead Rabbit in us all.

Good morning… it’s Friday in late July. Don’t cry.

Strange days as so many little things I’m working on are culminating to an end. I suppose I can see another little cross roads approaching beyond these next few months. A time when maybe I’m fully engulfed in the Hadder book or maybe another book that I recently started called “the Ancients”. Something about winter rehearsals sounds very enticing to me as well… I love the cold air of autumn as it collides with summer.

Music: It looks like my little timer is almost done. So where am I on the record? I’m a few sessions into the “Rabbit’ re-write. I believe I’ve solved the riddle of the front of the track… which seemed to come together after a few hours on the piano. I had a little guitar doodle that kind of took off on it’s own and I ‘Think” has become the ground work for the opening sequence of the song. It's in the video below. I also spent a day trying to incorporate this new opening sequence into the rest of the track and for some reason… I think it just doesn’t work that way. Funny how that works… it does seem to sound nice standing on its own to open the track. Time will tell as it always does. There’s also a new operatic section in the song, it’s something I’ve been thinking about just for this track and so during the 1st vocal tracking session I did earlier in the week, I think I found a spot for it. And some new lyrics came to me the following morning for it as well. I'll test it out this weekend. If it works…. Great!!, if not… oh well. Life is filled with as many failures and successes. Trick it seems is to navigate away from the failures and towards the successes. That relates to many things. We are navigators at heart.

In all reality I don’t think the rabbit track will be done per my front page counter, but, I’m close and well in the throughs of it.. and so we’ll see what I do. I may update the music page with some artwork I had commissioned and add all the songs to it with little players, minus the last rabbit track of course as I continue painting it. That might be nice, we’ll see… I may design that next week.

Life After: It’s frightful to think about a life without writing this record. It’s been a part of me for some time. I do love finality to some degree. My gears are already turning on what’s next. I’m guessing there will be a little breather time when I just sit around the tower, sketching ideas and seeing what seeds are left in my little bag of tricks. Perhaps I’ll travel more, who knows.

Well that’s all for today, I have a very busy time ahead as I approach the final weeks of this endeavor. Ezra says hello, I noticed a few more people joining up on the site recently and I just wanted to say Thank you all for reading and for taking part in this little Hadder journey with me. Always so very much appreciated. Much love.

-j

PS. Some new lyrics that might show up on “The Ballad of the Dead Rabbit”

I took the road through the pass

Fate it seems she never asks

Where a prophecy looms ahead… some see

The clouds they took a shape

To warm of coming days

And this winter she would take… it all… from me

I saw a wolf that night…

In a dream…

It rode the winds from the fire that I set

It spoke in tongues I’m yet too understand

But one thing was clear, it said that we’re… headed for the end.

Sins they fall like winter leaves

Call me the master of the weeds

Tending the garden once a week,

Shame some things we can never keep

So I tried to hold it all in

Things I could never be or say

Oh this precious gift of life,

Still buries in the end.

Sands they run through broken glasses

Falling falling ever faster

Till the hills they made are still

it starts again..

All it ends and turns to ashes

Burning burning ever after

Till the hills are nothing more

it's then… we rise again

Video Info: Some clips from Watership down in 78 to some "Dead Rabbit" doodles earlier in the week.

10 miles down: The Oceans of Intention.

Image: The amazing artwork of Jack Dullahan, a suprise rendition of Skylark and Ezra from the book I'm working on. A true representation of progress born from Noble Intentions. Check out his work @dracarysdrekkar7

Good morning, it’s fast approaching the autumn months here in Bok.

A lot can happen in a week, and so a little update.

Some deeper thoughts to start the conversation.

This morning I was thinking about the process. The long processes of things… the bigger pictures and this illusionary fast paced world we are in. I say illusionary because ultimately you are in control of your life. Life doesn’t really control you. It might try to fool you into thinking you have to be a certain way with little apps and digital trinkets and patterns that beckon for your daily and hourly attention, but you must remember… you have the power. It is all just brilliant marketing after all, perfectly disguised to make you think it’s all about your life. In truth, your pretty special without all this stuff. The really meaningful memories and accomplishments I think… well, they can take some time. It’s like gold in a river… things sometimes need to pan out to be seen for what they are. Sometimes there are a lot of flakes and sometimes it’s time to change rivers. But it takes time to see some things. It took about a week of singing after a 2 week virus to start to assemble my voice again, oddly enough it feels better and stronger than it ever did. Disguised inside that 2 week window of not being able to sing was the fact that my voice was healing in a strange way, it hadn’t gone unused in some time with such a break. A stark reminder that not everything is as it seems. I sat on the hill this morning watching the past full moon sink into the horizon while I was training with some vocal scales while my mind was off on drawing conclusions and connecting dots. I thought about an ocean…. And the patterns of waves and how they resemble the trials and tribulations of art and process. I thought about the large violent swells and the absolute still calms, the occasional storms and the stary night skies over our liquid dreams.

1. Passion

2. Action.

3. Noble Intention.

Combined, these things create a form of honest progress. Notice how time has nothing to do with the equation. I suppose you could sit on the shoreline and complain about the moment, about the waves or about the view 10 miles down the beach… or… just maybe, instead, you could just dig a nice hole and put a beautiful umbrella up and stay awhile. Like the ocean, our dreams happen and change over time but as long as we live by the equation…, I think we have a chance to accomplish great things. This weekend, A July gloom will be hovering over my ocean, although I see nothing gloomy about that. It’s just part of my landscape and process… as I dance with time and think about the dead rabbit. Yes, these are the things the moon told me today while I was singing to her… just a few hours ago. Ok, sorry for that, maybe it will resonate beyond this little website someday.

On to some record progress:

Music: Well, I spent most of the week learning to sing again, well, not really but yes… had some levers and switches to re-activate again. Good news, the old voice is back. Joyous to me as I feel a little strange without singing in my life. The week really was about listening to the first big music session I did with the dead rabbit track, rewriting the entire front half of the song. After all the writing, it was necessary to step away and pray I didn’t screw it up ever more. I may start the vocals on it this weekend in between hillside travels and ancient photo things I’ve been working on behind the scenes. Life has been good to me these last few months, a calm seemed to role in with the fog banks and some new patterns have helped me stay the course. Earlier in the week I started mixing “Long is the road”, that was fun. It took about 5 hours or so to really break the mix down and isolate all the drum tracks and group everything into little sections of my mixer.. it was a lot of fun actually and the new mix kinda blew some circuits in the tower after a few hours of loud listenings. It was my first real focused attempt at seeing what I could do with a track in this tower on the mixing side of things. Results were promising and before the actual record comes out I think that the tracks will all slowly and secretly get updated with better mixes behind the scenes. I’m a firm believer in a song being a song without some mind blowing sonic and scientifically engineered mix of supreme greatness. Something I always admired about most of the heavy metal records in my collection, they are what they are. Passion, action, noble intention…. Remember? These are the things that matter most to me and the things I care about more than you know. I’m in Rabbit mode. Hop hopping along down the rabbit hole these fateful days in July.

Artwork: Still contemplating the record cover.. it crosses my brain at least 10 times a day as I sift through some of the latest artwork I’ve commissioned. I spread them all out on the floor like some odd puzzle pieces to a larger painting… wondering what are the most important pieces of this first story. Soon as the writing is done for the record, I can see this artwork task will become a much higher priority and I really want it to be special. It should be an extension of the musical art, not just a package for it. And so that’s what I hope to accomplish when designing it under my beach umbrella. As for today, enjoy the Ezra and Skylark art from Jack Dullahan, it might show up in the future on something really cool. Thanks lord Drekkar

Well that’s all for now. I think I see a nice set out there… at least the rumbles of something groovy. I hope your finding happiness on your own beach. You have time for great things. Enjoy the afternoon. I’m 10 miles down under that black dome thing with red diamonds painted on it.

-j

The Fields of Summerset

Image: Hadder and the Tyme Seer in summerset.

Good evening lords or the crimson alliance.

Its Friday in the 7th cycle and ponderings are plentiful on the summer plains of BOK.

I’ve returned from a little Tyme Seer adventure on the outskirts of Boulder country. I suppose a little update is necessary.

Music and Fields: As I stated last week, I’m still recovering from a treacherous virus or spell that took my voice from me for 2 weeks… it’s ok, nothing I haven’t been through before. The voice is a delicate matter. That has given me some time to dive into the music of my last Rabbit track. It’s also given me an opportunity to revisit some mixing chores and experiments that are on my list. Once I complete these songs that doesn’t really mean the record is mixed and ready to press… most of the mixes on the site are simple vocal board mixes used during tracking and so once my ears kind of reset from all the musical crafting and such, I can start to think about the sonic qualities and wave lengths of the songs and work on some scientific mixes. I will say that this current tower is great for creativity with plenty of flying creatures but mixing music is an entirely different beast and I’m not so sure my gardens or the beasts will tolerate the loud noises that will be needed to glue some of this stuff together. And so… yes… I may mix in another tower, we’ll see. Most of the high powered trinkets needed for mixing are in a tomb out back that I buried to protect them from fires, furniture from the 408 tower… so, there may be a little autumn cob web cleaning and a fresh new platform built for that other mix stage of this endeavor. The countdown on the front of this website was really just a number that I attached to the writing process of this endeavor. It was something to keep me honest, kind of like a cliff I set in front of me, a soft number to mark a stage on this road. I’m almost there, I am on the last track, so it worked to some degree. Ezra is bored as hell with all this writing, she’s a bit eager to get to the gates of Europa already… can you blame her. In truth, I’m bored of it too… there’s a time to sow and a time to reap my little friends. here in summerset the garden is growing behind me and I’m on my last row, so to say… 25 cents a bushel Lord Decambra would say. You could probably grow a tulip on my hat I’m so dirty from these fields. Soon… I guess I’ll reap something from these seeds, I hope. Although the wise old man that I am is ever present that a simple storm could wash away all this work in a simple summer swoosh… and the Hills of BOK wouldn’t even flinch a whisper of regret or remorse. Life is a bit harsh at times, so I’ve learned, best to just keep weeding and not think about such things. A storm might wash the fields work away, but it does take an earthquake to change the landscape and I’ve literally seen things rise from ashes before. I find comfort is the storms and heavy rains that have fallen on me, though that wasn’t always so. I also don’t see any landscape rumbles in my future so I think these fields will at the very least, be here for sowing for some time. Every good harvest has a bad harvest year as well that measures it. Think about that. I’ve seen a few years go by me that were complete losses, as will you. No worries… just stay the course.

The “rabbit” track is a tall grassy task, there is some good with the original demo and some bad. Lots of re-sings and edits are needed, the initial song was 12 minutes long, I was in a LONG SONG mode back then, when I’m done with this version it will be about 4:30. I don’t mind a long song, but this rabbit track really was meant to be straight and to the point. The front of the track was a cluttered mess of music and so that really is the hardest part of this new painting. Listening to the vocal and rethinking a simple musical phrase and pattern that supports it, then building it up from there.

Artwork: I should mention that an artist I’ve been working with pleasantly surprised me with a beautiful rendition of “Ezra” and “Skylark” hanging out together. It was a beautiful surprise that I awoke to while I was fighting the virus. It gave me a nice smile and for that Lord D I am humbly grateful. Ezra and Fanglores in general were inspired by a Japanese TOSA Inu that I had. The concept is very close to my heart. To see an image of her, as though she has been brought to life forever now, well, let’s just say it’s very inspiring to me and it makes me smile to imagine that she is forever in BOK now wandering the hills with Hadder. I also have another piece being crafted by Lord Jules, who did 2 amazing pieces for me already, this latest piece is a rendition of the moment I awoke by the tree and first noticed the words Diamonds Hadder… I’m excited to see it come to life… and last but not least I have a large canvas of Diamonds Hadder that was done in Portugal, where some of my blood actually came from. I’ve seen the finished piece and it’s just a matter of getting it on a boat and to the states now. In all honesty I’m holding off on a larger more expensive canvas I was originally planning on doing, at least until I can come to terms with the contract and the costs. I have so much artwork as it is right now, perhaps it’s best to build the record with what I have already. We’ll see, I’m undecided on that today.. but my moods swing like a leather seat hanging from chains at windy playground. Art is important to me and so perhaps I’ll proceed with that after all. Time will tell.

I suppose that’s all for now, just some thoughts to close the week. May all your dreams come true. I’ll be in the fields if you need me.

-j

Video Info: Some more furious video for the Long Road. The end vocals are from a previous mix, not sure how the end will be on the final, still listening and deciding on a lot of things with this track. Tricky little number.