Yes! there are more puppy pictures to be found here!
And I get to see the little darling this weekend, which has me very happy! Yaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy
*runs off to study for a chem midterm tomorrow*
If you havent seen part one, please read it first, whee! It'll make more sense that way.
It took us way too long, but we have finished. The album is finally analyzed. I feel much better now, ready to move on to With Teeth, NIN's new album out on tuesday. I knew I wouldnt be able to listen to that music without being done here, this was an unfinished chapter in the book.
And I definitely feel good about how it went.
Note to Steelix: 1514 words. :P
Click below to read what we've thought up:
The Fragile (Right Disk)
We last left out "hero" with the serious contemplation of suicide, his soul destroyed and his mind faltering. What happened in the end is made immediately clear in the first track of this side, "The Way Out is Through". The title says it all: he sees a way out. And the lyrics explain he is going for it: "the heavens fall, but still we crawl" he has a new found courage.
Yet with this, we then have "Into the Void". This has partially been discussed already, but in the context of the flow of the album it represents that though he has new strength, his past still exists (the echo back to La Mer in the bass line) and that he cannot get away from it.
Next we have "Where is Everybody?" here, our hero decides dealing with his inner problems isn’t going to get him anywhere. He wonders if his suicidal thoughts were a lie because he didn’t go through with it. So he decides to look out into the world he's been ignoring, to see if he can find an answer there. Looking out, he doesn’t see a hell of a lot, which is why he's asking where everyone is. This song is mainly him rambling to himself, trying to figure everything out.
"The Mark Has Been Made", like most instrumentals, is extremely difficult to put into context. This is a solemn song, I can tell you that much.... maybe I'll try to add to this song later.
Now we get to the first song on the album that isn’t on the usual CD version. "10 Miles High" is on the vinyl though, and we felt it necessary to include all extras and bonus tracks in our analysis. In this song, our hero expands on his quest of finding his place in the outside world. He makes a promise not to go back into old ways, and to not repeat past mistakes "tear it all down". And he is getting closer to his goal: using height as a gauge, he is "10 miles high".
In "Please", we see the resurfacing of the desires of the flesh. There are sexual elements, and he wants it all: "Never be enough to fill me up". He states that all the problems he had on the left disk were "all in his head" and though he knows all those old options of what to do with himself still exist, he's still 10 miles high, having his fun, with a lot more experience under his belt than he had last time (TDS) and he doesn’t "want to make it stop".
The aptly named "appendage", a continuum of "please" to be found on the vinyl, expands on the same feelings, though his overwhelming desires seem to be becoming too much for him.
"Starfuckers, Inc." comes next. This song is *full* of meaning. He suddenly sees whoever he was having fun with in Please in a new light. He has made friends with "Shallow little bitch[es] trying to make the scene" and he is disgusted by their way of life. There are homosexual elements in this song (and a bit in Please, actually) that can either be clues as to who he is now friends with, or insecurities about himself. In the chorus and the bridge he is then broader on his claim of overwhelming vanity and places it on the entire entertainment industry. Then he turns around, and borrowing lines from Carly Simon's "you're so vain", describes how the people in that industry are so incredibly self centered that they'll think this song is especially about them, when it's not. This song ends with the repeated phrase "now I belong, I am one of the chosen ones". This is him saying, 'I may be in with the in crowd, but I cant believe how bastardly these people are. And to think I almost started to become one of them.' He does not like the world he is trying to reach out to. The world he turned to in "Where is Everybody" when he knew sticking in his mind wouldn’t cut it. So where does he turn to now?
The next song, "Complication", is another damn instrumental. We get the feeling of moving forward to some goal. Definitely a sense of determination. Looking at the next songs, it appears to be his break from the crowds of “Starfuckers” and his turn to something different, an attempt to become someone better.
"The New Flesh" is the last of our additional tracks. The determination is still present but it feels a lot creepier, he appears to be confused as to what he's supposed to do. It seems to be the pessimistic side to Complication's optimism. Though he does seem to be succeeding: the title gives sense of growth. A new part of himself.
"I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally". One hell of a title. This song is beautiful. It is soothing and calm, but very sad. Our hero appears to be tired of everything. He seems to be in the middle of "winter", because of mentions of freezing and frost, and only vaguely remembering "the smell of sunshine". (best line in the whole album, oh shit yes.) It appears the people mentioned in "Starfuckers" saw through his hope to become someone better, they saw his disgust in their way of life, and attacked him. He has nothing left now so he goes into this dormant state (like plants do in winter.) At the end of the song he calls out to anything, anyone that would keep him company.
"The Big Come Down" is a major shift in the storyline. He has awoken from the drifting softness of "Looking Forward" and has made a severe realization. "Is that really what you wanted?" He is starting to wonder if he wants this to happen to him. He sees that he will destroy himself on purpose. He sees that all these problems originate from himself, and no one and nothing else. He sees that the more he tries to struggle against it, the more he loses. He has realized the nature of his problems and of the situation that it is in. We have alluded to some of this on other songs, and here it is, told to us in this song.
The question is, what is he going to do now that he understands?
The last track with words, "Underneath it All", He takes the first step in embracing who he truly is. He admits to himself that this sickness has been a part of himself the entire time. This is simply an extension of "Big Come Down". The last words of the album are uttered in a haunting voice: "I am stained."
"Ripe (with decay)" closes this album with what I take to be uneasiness, he is not happy with himself, though Brian sees it as his preparation to gain harmony. Yeah, that's pretty different. That's an instrumental for you. I shall not directly claim it is either. What we DO agree on though is that the story isn’t finished. His last utterance is not a resolution, and this last song is not a full answer. This is not over.
I hope NIN's next album will continue and let us know how the story finishes, or at least give us another chapter.
Looking at this disk as a whole, I made the following declaration: "He has tried to change himself, tried so hard to get rid of the parts of himself that he does not like, but the only way he’s going to be able to get out of this is if he completely accepts that this is who he is, he CANNOT change that." That sums up my thoughts on the storyline quite nicely.
I see the whole album as a strive for balance. The Left Disk follows the battle between feminine and masculine. The Right Disk follows pessimism and optimism, if using the terms generally:
(+)the way out is through
(-)into the void
(+)where is everybody?
(-)the mark has been made (10 miles gets a (+))
(+)please (appendage gets a (-))
(-)starfuckers, inc.
(+)complication (new flesh gets a (-))
(-)i’m looking forward to joining you, finally
(+)the big come down (I say optimism because he makes such important discoveries)
(-)underneath it all
(-/+)ripe (with decay) (-/+, depending on how you look at it)
The songs are perfectly complimentary. I have little doubt that this was intentional. Like a see-saw, we see the sides taking turns, one after the other to be dominant, but like a yin yang, balance is the key. That’s what this all is about: finding balance in your mind, and in the society you live in.
And even 26 songs weren’t enough for balance to be fully achieved.
Thank you so much for reading this. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you Brian for doing this with me.
Thank you Mr. Reznor for giving us all so much... if only we could ever give you as much in return...
<3
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I'm just mad I'm stuck here in Davis while they have SO MUCH FUN or somethingggggggGGGGGGGGGGggggg
*explode omg*
Edit: oh, and those are all at my parent's house, and that's my mom holding the puppy in the last one. holy shit that puppy is friggen cute.
So Brian and I attempted to analyze the Right disk of The Fragile tonight, and it totally pwned us. Not even half way through we were bickering at each other and were in extremely sour moods. We're going to try again another day.
And in other news, my family is getting the puppy on monday. Oh the excitedness of overwhelming cuteocity!
In other other news, um, moo.
I guess.
<3
Edit: shit, it couldnt do the symbols for partial derivatives in my entry title. Those are supposed to be stylish d's like this: ? (please let that not be a question mark)
Edit 2: Fuck.
uh.... That test didnt go too well. I was so fried on sunday that I didnt study nearly as much as i should have... whoops. I'm looking at a C, hopefully.
Hmm. What else is going on. I have an essay due in a week, I've started planning it, so yay, I have a lab write-up due tomorrow that I havent really started yet, that is not yay.
Oh, this is such an interesting line: "She lived like a murder but she died just like suicide" Soundgarded - Like Suicide. Great song.
So, well, some of you BNBers might have noticed I haven't done the final draft of my map, yeah I know I suck, I want to do it eventually but there are just so many other things I need to do, or should do (or want to do) instead, that I havent gotten around to it... damn you Tripps for predicting this.
Well, that's all for now, I'm going to either go do math homework, or pretend to go do math homework but actually do nothing.
<3
Yes, I know that line is from a Sting song. It just seems to fit with what happened. I was awake for another nine hours after making my blog entry last night. Yep, up till 7am. That is the latest I've ever stayed up, and I will readily admit I feel like crap today. And I have a calculus midterm tomorrow, so I have no room to slack off. I shouldn't even be taking the time to make this entry, but I have to before the memories fade into static.
So randomly, because I was so discouraged after the failure of my remix, Brian offered we try to analyze as much of The Fragile as we could, and I readily agreed.
The rest of this entry, for length's sake, will be made in an extended entry:
The Fragile (Left Disk)
This album follows a man who, unlike the man in The Downward Spiral, is already clearly broken and damaged (first track, "Somewhat Damaged" being an obvious understatement of the truth) and already contemplating the option of suicide (The Day the World Went Away). What this album has that the other doesnt is a clear representation of feminine: The Frail, The Fragile, La Mer. I believe this represents how there is a struggle to balance masculine and feminine aspects of the self, and possibly also in relationships. We follow this man as he discovers this feminine (The Frail) sees himself starting to fall back down into familiar shitholes (The Wretched) makes a vow to cling to this feminine (We're In this Together) and realizes he's taking "her" all the way down with him (The Fragile). I dont want to explicitly say whether or not this feminine is an aspect of himself or a woman, because I am not completely sure. It can easily be either, yet it is also more easily dealt with to say that it is a woman (easier to talk about, I mean).
So then the the second instrumental (the first being The Frail) occurs, entitled "Just Like You Imagined". Something rather important occurs here, Brian thinks it is something good, I think it is something not so good. It is debatable, and because it is an instrumental, it is very hard to make any conclusions. But entering the next song, Even Deeper, we find our main man alone, feeling everything sink in, feeling himself unable to keep himself from moving toward some inevitability. This is followed by our third instrumental, "Pilgrimage", which is full of the sounds of marching, yelling men, which brings to mind war, and for some reason both Brian and I had images of Nazis here. This possible imagry adds ideas like brainwashing, which gives a reason for his journey, his pilgrimage, and his madness--he is not under control of himself. This is really the only echo of the immense control issues that could be seen in The Downward Spiral, something I didnt get into in my other entry (though listening to the album it is decently clear, especially in songs like "Closer").
After this song is "No, You Don't" and it is clear this woman has betrayed our "hero" (If I can call him a hero...) and he can't believe she left him to his fate, he was abandonned again, something that he feels happens "every time" he seeks help and guidance (this is not just an idea in this song but in several).
"La Mer" Is a mostly instrumental piece, which gives a premonition to the melodies of "Into The Void", a song on the Right disk of the Album. The phrase "into the void" should give anyone an idea what is going on, and translating the french that can be softly heard in "La Mer" will make the picture crystal clear:
"And when the day arrives
I'll become the sky
And I'll become the sea
And the sea will come to kiss me
For I am going home
Nothing can stop me now"
Visions of a cliff... standing in the wind and the smell of the sea, sky above, water below, and nothing but the only choice for salvation in between...
Simply put, both of us were shedding tears by this point, and we hadn't even gotten to the last song on the Left disk. As a side note, the phrase "nothing can stop me now" or something closely resembling this has appeared in six of NIN's songs. Brian believes it is his tell-tale way of saying that something *is* going to stop whatever he's trying to do, because it does not come true in any of the songs in which this line is mentioned.
(Edit: Brian thinks I am being a bit too careless with my addition of a slight interpretation of "Into The Void" here when we havent thoroughly gone over the song. I stand by what I have here. I'll post complete results of this song in the Right disk after we complete it.)
(Edit again: Alright, alright. We've talked about it and it seems to make sense now that the bassline being in "Into The Void" is him thinking back to the feelings of "La Mer". The fact that I heard "Into The Void" several years before getting this album makes me think that it would come first and the echo of the melody in "La Mer" was simply a reflection of this. But one listening to the album obviously hears "La Mer" first. "Into The Void" is then a reflection of these feelings, amplefied thanks to the new outlook he adopts in "The Way Out Is Through".)
Alright. So any of you out there that are lucky enough to have heard the last song on this half of the album before, "The Great Below", you likely know how chillingly beautiful it is. This is about his serious contemplation of suicide through drowning, an idea started with "La Mer" and followed through in this song. Abandonment, regret, helplessness, and such an overwhelming feeling of sadness make this song ideal to sob to like you never have before. Or possibly It affects me so because it feel so personal. The thought of suicide is no stranger to me.
This whole side of the album is extremely personal, brian described it as "ethereal" though I dont think I am spelling that right. All of the action is in the mind, which allows every individual that hears it to take away their own unique meaning. It's all very open to interpretation, something that wasn't quite as much the case in TDS. Things were much more physical in that album and thus more concrete.
The presence of the other half of this album shows that all the illusions to suicide never really went anywhere. We have yet to tackle that half, but when we do I believe some of the questions that arose on this half of the album (what happened during Just Like You Imagined, or during Pilgrimage, what directly caused La Mer and The Great Below?) will be answered.
That is it for now, I have to study. <3 to everyone, especially Mr. Reznor.
P.S. Yes, Brian, much love to you too. Thank you so much for helping me through last night.
EDIT OF EDITINGNESS: part two can be found HERE WHEE
Well buh.
So Mr. Reznor, being the awesome guy that he is, released all the parts of The Hand that Feeds to the masses in GarageBand form. Fuck yes, we all say, remixes galore. It's supposed to be for GB2, I have GB1, thought I'd still give it a shot. It loaded up just fine. So I picked out a song to mix it with, and screwed with that song for several hours, counting the beats, deciding exactly where I would put everything, etc, and then decided to tackle combining this song (one of NIN's other songs) with THTF stuff. So immediately I come to a problem.... though I can easily slow down the 128 bpm THTF stuff to the 80 bpm of the song I chose, it sounds like shit. So I decided to change it to 90 bpm. the vocals sounded a lot better, but the song itself did not change. So I ask people on ev3, hey, how do I get it to change, no one was quite sure. It appears, in GB2, one can convert the song file to a GB file and change it freely. but that did not work in GB1. SO I took the file into sound studio and sped it up to what felt like 90 bpm. Then I dragged this into GB, and tried to line up the vocals with it, but it just wasnt quite sounding on time... then I realized that GB was playing the file in the original 80 bpm. So I delete that, bring the 90 bmp file into GB again, but no, GB is still playing it at 80 bpm. so I create a new GB file, and open my 90 bpm song in it.. STILL PLAYING IT AT 80 BPM.
I do not understand why.
It is making me extremely upset, especially because it doesnt make any sense at all. No sense.
So I guess I have to trash this project until a time comes where I can get GB2.
Goddamnit I'm dissapointed. I had a vision. you know? I had it in my mind how I wanted to to sound (this entry title is what I was going to call it), and it is very frustrating to not be able to get technology to do what I want. This seems to happen to me a lot when dealing with technology, photoshop and terragen, I have a vision and the programs just cant do it.
Oh well.
Hope you guys are all doing okay.
<3
Edit: or as the case may be, I just have no fucking clue *how* to do it. Brian said he'd look into it for me. I just feel ill.
hmm.
I was thinking I'd get some sort of responce to my last entry, I dont usually talk like that. That's kinda a side of me I'm reluctant to show on this thing for sake of... something. Oh well.
Anyway, I am incredibly bored, so why not make an entry? So I'm listening to random music I rarely listen to, and that is fun, cause it is surely random (I just went from r.e.m. to eiffel 65 to mary J blige...) and my roomate went to bed super early so I'm sitting in the dark, typing by the light of my screens.
*dances about*
So last night Brian and I decided to be creative and analytical, and listened to Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral (the whole album) and deciphered the lyrics to the best of our ability. It was immesurably fun (which was good, since earlier I had thought it was a stupid idea, I'm glad I came around to it) and I'm quite surprised how emotionally involved we became by the end. The story of the album, summed roughly (brian, feel free to add to this if you want, or tell me if anything's wrong), is that theres a dude who is fucked up and lives in a fucked up world, blames god in a few songs for his hard time at life and the state of society, and then eventually he realizes that he's screwed up because of himself (though we're not saying society isn't screwed up, it sure is) and then a mental uproar occurs and we find he is schizophrenic, and a person in his mind starts trying to take over, and they fight a bit and he wins for a time, but as he tries to go on with his life he finds that his life is shit and it's really not working.. he lives in a disgusting state of being and destroys everything he tries to get close to... he decides to kill himself. and does.
Now, I've heard this album several times. but it wasnt until we sat down and thought about what it all meant that we realized the severity of what was going on... the title track, which is when he takes his life, was so agonizingly sad after following this man through this journey that I cried. Looking back it was like we were listening to a full-length movie without pictures. It was that intense.
Unfortunately, because someone up there decided to be funny or something, both of us lost the logs of our conversation. Ichat borked and didnt save it for either of us. Creepy, if you ask me. Regardless, I'll never forget how that experience made me feel, and I know I'll have immense appreciation for this album from now on.
We plan to repeat the process with other Nine Inch Nails albums, and possibly other band's albums as well if we feel it is worth it.
<3
Had an überfun time with Brian this weekend. We lounged around, ate pizza for dinner and breakfast the next morning, and watched "all that could have been", an NIN concert on DVD. It was a very relaxing weekend, except for one bit of me freaking out, but that wasn't a big deal overall so I'm not really concerned about it.
Wow.. I'm listening to a song that I havent been able to stand listening to for quite a while. Avril Lavigne - Things I'll never say.
Isn't it odd how songs can take on such deep meaning for a person? How no one else could ever relate to the same melody and words in the same way? The second to last time I heard this song I had broken down crying (the last time involving me storming out of the room). Long long story. But another person could listen to this song and not be at all affected.
Ah, breaking down crying, that's what happened to me last night (the aformentioned freak out) I was listening to NIN - Leaving Hope and realized how utterly perfect it would be for suicide... why? Because it was the most beautiful song I had ever heard.
Odd the way a mind thinks somtimes.
<3 to all, I have homework to do.
So much stuff! This is the first full week of the spring quarter. I've riden my bike all over the uc and down town, and i'm tired... but that's not all! I've been working on a project which is taking up a bit more time than I thought it would, but it's been fun. Homework's starting to pick up even though I've only been to each class twice, but I was expecting that.
3D graphing is FUN!
So, the frustration... I was playing Darwinia last night, trying so hard to get good at it, to like it, but I got so upset by it that I deleted it. yeah, a little extreme, I think I'll probably download it again some time in the next few weeks for another shot, but god was I pissed at it. Brian says I need a new mouse, he thinks Darwinia doesnt like mine and that may be the case, so I may look into that.
(Goddamn have to draw the fucking triangle 20 times for it to accept it??? and then GRENADES, i tell the squad to throw a grenade and it walks to where the grenade lands... it WALKS OVER THERE and goes KABOOSH when the grenade goes off... I dont get it. running into walls? Running into waaaallllssssss?!?!
...
/rant)
anyway, um, my second work unit for folding at home is about to finish...
:o
IT FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11@!112
whee.
well that is all.
<3
Edit(4/11/05): When Brian was over this weekend we re-downloaded darwinia and he tried it out, and couldnt even get the squads to produce a grenade, they just kept going where he was clicking. So it appears it is indeed my mouse. Maybe I'll get a new one some time this summer.