It has been hard, while this one particular song is nearing completion, to think of a description or to even broach the subject without going on about the hurt I felt, and still feel, and why. Put it this way, I am the type who WILL go on and on about an injustice done to me until it has been righted. I always have had this tendency since I was a child. This is something I will not stop doing now.
The full, extended version of this track, at its peak, will be released on Monday 15 May 2017.
Yes, it has been hard to mention the title Mio/Homura without bringing to mind the bastards who decided to tear me down (I will not be mentioning names, you all fucking know who you are). But the circle will now be complete: in addition to Mio/Homura being extended, there will also be a music video. Complete with green screen. And face and body paint. That will be arranged by friends at Soundskills. Considering the wonderful job they did with Asperges Me, I'm counting on them to give people the shock of their lives when they see the video for Mio/Homura. The ugly duckling is turning into a swan.
But before I go onto what led me to write Mio/Homura in the first place, I'm going to go back further still. To my childhood, in fact.
Those of you who know me or who have read my past posts and interviews will know about the abuse I suffered under my parents, and under the state where I grew up. Those of you who do not, I tried to go over it a little bit in a post titled GRAFT, some months back.
I want to add something to all this.
As children, many of us may not know what we are capable of, but we're more than happy to try. We're more than happy to say "I want to be an astronaut" or "I want to be a musician" or "I want to be a hero" -- we nearly never settle for mediocrity. Some of us, while we are still children, have that ability to believe that we're capable of so much, and are capable of rendering everyone around us silent with what we do. And so it is with me.
And of course, that capability and that refusal to settle for mediocrity will only get pissed on by bastards who don't care about us, or our futures. In my case, it was my parents, the state I grew up, and people around me. My parents did so by beating me up until there were scars and bruises, tearing up my original sheet music, yelling at me, hurling all sorts of insults against me, threatening me with death, nearly making good these death threats at various points in time, and refusing to fund any further study in music that I so yearned to pursue -- I was only an accessory to show off to the neighbours' parents, "oh, look how my daughter does this and this and this." The state where I grew up did this by denying job, education and welfare opportunities to minorities like myself, and by repressing the slightest dissent by taking people away in the night to be imprisoned, tortured, interrogated, even killed. People around me did this by ganging up with my parents in calling me useless, denying that I should even be listened to because I was a child and apparently didn't know better about where my place was supposed to be in the world. I was meant to be "seen and not heard."
In fact, I think the only people who even actually supported me, saw me for who I was, were men and women of the church -- and the people associated with them, the few friends I even had. But I couldn't even hope to claim sanctuary in a church or a monastery or anything of the sort because I only knew that my parents, or other people at my parents' behest, would drag me out for more rounds of abuse. No authorities would be willing to help me, and the people who did cherish me were powerless in that way. There was an unspoken rule that you always had to go to your parents, and you were always taken back there. Mental illness was never spoken about where I grew up. No one would suspect abuse. It was always the child's fault if a child ever ran away from home.
Fast forward to 2012; I had been in Britain for getting on two years and I was at university. I had only heard about the Newgrounds Audio Deathmatch for the first time that year, and so, believing in my musical ability, I decided to take part. I had no knowledge of mixing whatsoever. I had only used FL Studio 9, or 10 as it later became, for a year, knowing only the music theory side of things. There were only 32 people allowed to compete in the individual knockout round stages, as opposed to the 64 that we now have. I don't know how many people auditioned for the NGADM that year, but I was one of the 32 who would make it.
You accept, as a participant of the NGADM, that when circumstances get too much to handle -- and yes, they can often be out of your control -- there are only two options: find the time to make the music, or bow out. I accepted them from day one, and being a student at the time, did my best to handle whatever I could control. I had just begun my Legal Practice Course at the time, surprise, surprise, as a follow-up from having been press-ganged by my hateful family to do law because I was basically threatened with death. The idea was that I would have enough time to wrestle getting my accommodation, papers and beginning stages of the course under way while working on songs.
I remember every opponent I went across. I remember EVERYTHING.
And I have never forgotten it for the last five years.
After the NGADM of that year, my musical capacity increased by leaps and bounds, in ways people never imagined. Frankly, I couldn't have imagined it either. I bought my first bodhrán, an 18-inch, entry-level, factory piece with a really thick, sanded skin so there were no hairs on it. I struggled with it, but after a year, the movement became second nature to me. I wound up playing it an awful lot. It became my favourite drum.
But the whole instrument learning thing wasn't just going to stop there, oh no. In between then and now, I have picked up the bass guitar, tin whistle and harp. I also became a bit more confident of my drumming, and the medieval long drum I have now has superseded the bodhrán as my favourite drum. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy them both, though. I became even more interested in liturgical and period music as the years passed, but still also maintained the feel of a jazz player (or a rocker, take your pick), where it becomes sensual.
In retrospect, I have done more to surpass the idea put into me by those bastards that I have bitten off more than I could chew, just by the instruments I've picked. And yet, it fucking hurts far more than it needs to. You know why?
Because the people who bullied me over Mio/Homura acted just like my parents. They acted just the same, in that they felt they had all the bearing and they could be the judges as to what kind of ambitions I should have over my music, and so they could piss on them as much as they wanted. Some of them probably did intend to hurt like that.
And let me tell you, after that track, it's never been the same again. I've been even more volatile. Even more suicidal. Doubting my ability as a musician, because when I wrote Mio/Homura, I wanted it to be about how far I could dream.
Well you know what? This ends now. Fuck you. FUCK YOU ALL.
Clutterfunk cannot be remade, but this one can. I came up with that piece in the two weeks assigned to me during a round of the 2012 Audio Deathmatch. I dared to dream and to aim high when no one else did. It didn't matter to me that I didn't have the capability to match it, at least I HAD dreams -- and they were far better than what anyone there could have come up with that year. I had to grovel in shame because people thought that I was being a sore loser over the 2012 Audio Deathmatch. You know what? I was railing against all the abuse thrown at me. And apparently, that wasn't allowed. FUCK YOU ALL, I say. I hope that when Monday comes, the lot of you who bullied me will be rolling about in as much emotional pain as I had been made to endure over the initial release of this piece.
