So, a few of you will have noticed that a certain piece called Libera Me ~ version définitive was posted by me and a few other users, whom I shall not name because it appears that some awkwardness has ensued. In fact, it had been posted twice, and I've taken the liberty to unpublish it both times.

I think I want to clear the air on what it was meant to be, and what happened.

In early-ish 2013, on the Bandcamp page that I currently do not use -- and have not used for years on end -- I released a single called Terre des Hommes Libres, featuring three songs. They were

1. Terre des Hommes Libres,
2. Asperges Me, and
3. a track never released on Newgrounds, called Libera Me.

When circumstances dictated that I could only do stuff nonprofit, I switched my entire Bandcamp discography to downloadable only for free. Prior to that, I received a small token of support for the single in question from a longtime fan of mine on NG. Back when I released it, I was a student, broke and in need of a replacement computer -- any kind would do -- and I was desperate. Notwithstanding that throughout my university years, I had immense fears for my life and traumatic episodes about the place where I grew up and I didn't know what to even do about it all -- no work was being posted that I could sign up for, places I applied to wouldn't take me, and the only option I saw was to try and fund-raise with my own music, however badly produced it was. This led to me releasing these three tracks onto Bandcamp. Of course, fundraising has been a moot point for the last six and a half years.

Which leads me to Libera Me, or rather, my own setting of the words of Libera Me.

Wikipedia puts it straight to the point: Libera Me is a Roman Catholic responsory sung as a prayer for the dead, during a few different services.

The track that I released on Bandcamp was meant to be my own setting of the prayer, the music of which had come to me very strongly in 2013. 

Fast-forward a few years later and I had learnt that my production skills were wanting, to say the least. It was my hope to do a "definitive" version of sorts, gathering together the users whom I knew could sing this together with me, and who could feel they would be able to pull this off at some point, in good conscience. Not all of them had been confirmed, but I'd managed to get together four friends — let’s call them A, B, C, and D. B was not credited as they don't have a Newgrounds account, but they often sang together with A, who was one of the already credited friends on NG. Of course, for me to consider this a "definitive version," I would have to remake the whole file from scratch, with my current orchestration and production skills. I wanted to do it once I knew how to mix. Of course, my mixing skills only finally got decent mid-last year, and I simply wasn't able to pull it off in the preceding years.

But before I could sit down and do this, the unexpected happened.

Roughly a week and a half ago, one of the contributors I had named in the making of this new version of Libera Me, C, went and published a track that had little, if at all, to do with my setting of the prayer, which was what this track was intended to be all along. It was instead a sort of mashup of vocals and guitar with a song about the Easter Rising in Ireland called The Blood Stained Bandage, which I myself wouldn't do.

All of the other friends who had confirmed their participation in the reworking of my own setting of Libera Me were credited on the left sidebar, myself included. Even though we hadn't contributed anything to this piece that suddenly popped up. It was just this one contributor, as far as I'm aware.

I don't know if it was out of misunderstanding or what -- I feel I can only give the benefit of the doubt -- and I found out several hours after it was published, since for me, it was published in the small hours of the morning, when I was fast asleep. I also discovered that a post tagging me regarding this piece appeared on my personal Facebook page. The kicker was when I found out that the post had for its text, "We did it."

...We, meaning the rest of us, didn't do anything!

I knew for a fact that A, B, and D had all signed up to sing this prayer for the dead with me. They certainly did not sign up for this, and would be furious if they found themselves part of something they hadn’t signed up for!

I also want to briefly talk about the sentiments I have behind The Blood Stained Bandage.

Now I am engaged to Seán (@IrishChieftain), who in addition to being a British citizen, is also Irish both by descent and citizenship. As far as his views on Ireland go, he is a Republican — and very much on the side of peace. Rebel songs are known well to him, and I occasionally hear them being played — particularly those of the Wolfe Tones. Seán is not very distant from what goes on in Ireland; in fact, he keeps abreast of Irish news, among other things.

My beloved knows that while I have borrowed and understood a lot of Celtic culture, I struggle to find belonging in this world, and this applies to wherever I find myself. With my ongoing situation weighing me down, if I sing about anything overtly political, it’ll be about things that I can relate to the most: racism, xenophobia, pilgrimage, the crippling depression that we suffer as a result of how our world is being run... Once upon a time I was much more open to singing certain political songs within the context of national pride; I am now extremely sparing with the sort of songs evoking national pride that I lend my voice or my musical ability to.

C had told me that this Republican sentiment is very dear to him; fair enough. Libera Me is meant to be a universal song that transcends boundaries, and not limited to one nation alone!

Bearing all this in mind, I took the executive decision and unpublished it with moderators' tools, since something like this ought to have involved the contribution of all users named in the project, which it didn't. Then, it got published once more, and then I took it down again in the same manner as before.

The friend in question and I had a good talk, we caught up after many years of not having spoken with each other. I told him what the project was intended to be, in case he didn't get the intention behind it beforehand. I don't know if he has understood it, and I don't know if he's heard my 2013 version of Libera Me.

Anyway -- it has not been published since, and the file that he had inserted into the project has been glitching since I unpublished it, making it completely invisible and inaudible to him and to myself (and likely to all involved). I couldn't remove the file either, as the project page was giving me the option to preview, but not to delete the file in question, and whenever I attempted to preview it, it remained perpetually in a loading state. So I deleted the project altogether.

I've not been in a good place mentally and I've not been well physically these last couple weeks, and that day when this happened, it really hurt me, as I had dreams for that piece -- but I need to make something clear:

*There was no hurt intended from this sequence of events.* I'm aware of this, and I cannot stress this enough.

As of a few hours ago, I am remaking it from scratch; it will take me quite a while and we may not see hide or hair of this until several months down the line perhaps, but I know I will nail this.

Whether I get others to sing this with me, I do not know. I hope to. Let's wait and see.

Attention @sleepfacingwest.