#and i dont mean to be all “woe is me” because like. clearly this whole situation is absolutely not about me & my feelings lmao

[wambsgender]

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[nobody-knose--archive]

i’ve been aching to commentate spirit phone’s commentary for ages. glad i finally got around to it, this was an ejoyable experience. liveblog below the cut

-i'm like half certain i've heard this commentary before. maybe not the whole way through & it was probably actual years ago

-nice hearing stuff like this. in-depth personal view of the album-making process. makes it seem like more of a real thing i could do myself someday

-neil cicierega real person momence

-i could probably go real in depth about neil cicierega/tally hall parallels specifically concerning like. the arc of their musical careers. but i won't, here

-wild how i legitimately don't care much about micheal jackson

-didnt we get a bunch of spirit phone stems from the needlejuice release/his patreon? we could probably hear the funny track he speaks of here in that

-i love hearing musical artists, especially neil cicierega, talking about the meanings of their songs. like, not only has this song been claimed to hell & back by the tumblr gays, but with later ones i just can't see where he gets these ideas from. also, claiming there's any one meaning or plot to a song just seems silly to me

-shoutout to neil reusing a midi from like, 1998, that he made at 12 years old, whose entire melody was reused for the main verses of everybody loves raymond. loved finding that out on my own 2 years ago. now it's common trivia in this fandom. not bad times

-it'd be neat if neil did individual trans tracks here like he did with view monstel, those things are half of why i consider it my favorite album

-it's a lot easier to ignore the creator's intended meaning behind a song when he can't even remember it. thanks neil

-seesaw effect

-and there's my joke all but 1 of my followers wont get. moving on

-what kinds of movie theater lobbies has neil been to where there are arcade machines. i mean im not one to talk but that does sound rather strange

-why do songs' titles even need to be taken from the lyrics. ive never seen that as any sort of requisite. it's like titling any form of prose you can just give it whatever name ya like

-"this part sounds pretty cool right"

-is neil's vocal range only mildly better than mine? with training i could change that

-oh i haven't processed any of the last 25 seconds hold on

-god. a shit ton of vocal modification in this song. it's like neil returned to his roots but with quality this time

-i, as an ace/aro, have never related more to an allohet guy in my life. what is the point of eyes!

-professional humming/whistling takes skill. it's different from the recreational or casual stuff. i'd know

-there's a name for the way sound (especially music) gets distorted when moving past you and i can't remember it but it's probably what neil's referring to here in the way he recorded the intro

(- update: it's the doppler effect no need to tell me cas already did)

-as someone who hasnt seen the rugrats or take me there by blackstreet i'll just say it sounded like a bouncy music box melody. nice to hear a song that messes with the typical scales though. lydian & diatonic.

-that's a rather specific thing to be glad about, but given what he talked about in his last full audio commentary about the jew harp i suppose i'm not surprised

-i know that tmbg song now. listened to it & saw the music video too. yep they're different alright

-where the hell does neil get all these instrumence from anyway

-huh. hadnt heard this part of the commentary before making my oc concerning this song but i like to hear neil's approval concerning part of my interpretation

-i love how ive heard a billion different tellings of this mellified man story from lem dem fans talking about this song and neil's is by far the wildest

-good god that does only make it worse neil

-i love making liveblogs of lemon demon albums. with the fullerenes or tally hall i cant name a specific dude to take out my woes on generally but with lemon demon i can just say neil all the time. i like being on a casual first name basis with this dude ive never interacted with once ever

-is sweet bod the one other than cabinet man with a demo in the bonus tracks? i forget

-holy shit the boston molasses disaster someone call up soapy if it doesnt already know, it'd love this

-two thousand nine. god i miss the fiddle solo. the ver with it is truly the best one

-he pronounces it jeff? i've always read it as gef with a hard g. that's what i get for knowing words that are never spoken aloud

-that's a fun meta interpretation of this ghost story that's over a century old. i like that

-i've noticed neil generally does the same synths across a whole album. it's especially more clear in the earlier ones, and does mean i occasionally mix up songs between clown circus & live from the haunted candle shop

-ah! ancient aliens! my least favorite track on this album. i cant even claim to have the least interest in a popular one i've just generally not liked this one much from the beginning. so im curious to see what neil's got to say, i think ive been in ~new commentary zone for a while now

-anyway. newest update on the loolin not realizing a song's funky time signature front: i think this one's in 6/4. or at least switches a lot between time signatures. granted i dont listen to it very often for the reasons stated above

-see the way neil describes it. eldritch horror upon being visited by the unknown at a time when humanity'd hadn't even yet had a chance to imagine such a thing occurring. should be right up my alley. but the sound itself & many of the lyrics simply turn me away.

-must i specify i don't dislike it? spirit phone is neil's best album it not being my favorite doesn't mean i think it's bad yadda yadda nobody should be surprised by this it's not like anyone in these fandoms reads my liveblogs <3

-granted i think this is. the first bit of spirit phone content i've made on my blog ever. so who knows things can change <3

-the transitions in spirit phone are much less view-monster transition tracks & more extended outros. view-monster's were a bit more intro than outro sure but they also seemed directed upon making a 2-way rather than 1-way bridge between tracks. or something like that

-.............soft fuzzy man is an incredible nickname for a cat. i'd steal that if i werent afraid of introducing my relatives to lemon demon

-jirls

-an underlying metaphor is good enough. the literal side of the lyrics are fun. nothing but agreement here neil my good man

-the transition into as your father i expressly forbid it from soft fuzzy man is the best one in this album

-buddy you ask if a musical idea has been used before odds are the answer is yes in this day & age the question is has it been used in the way you're using it. like sure this soul jazz record from the 60s that was sold out in kansas stores for a week used this bassline that youve found yourself copying. but seeing as youre using it in some angsty garage rock ballad type tune does anybody actually care

-doesn't everybody like to say things in an unhinged manner from time to time

-imagine having a guitar dad, i say, with my dad being a folk accordion/fiddle dad, which is infinitely worse in every way

-i think he was in an actual folk band at some point. idk the 90s were weird

-iron my life?

-m-more intimate? there are a lot of ways i'd describe this song but intimate isn't one of them. granted as your father is negatively intimate so from there i guess you've got nowhere to go but up

-...still glad to see his interpretation kinda supports my oc at least

-the way he says characters in songs shouldn't worry about death really strongly makes me think this is some sort of. thematic continuation of stuck from dinosaurchestra, even if there's no real death in there. interesting. would also mean that the dad from these past 2 songs is named carlos betty (no last name)

-i literally never assumed this was a flute solo. piccolo at best. it's pretty clearly a recorder

-my mom plays the recorder. i wonder if she can play recorder better than neil cicierega

-we can throw a party in honor of the crushing weight of responsibility! i simply won't be the one throwing it because i have enough on my plate already <3

-what the hell does "a sense of intent" mean

-i've never heard rush before however i disagree with neil's understanding of 6/4. 6/4 is meant to have emphasis (onbeat or another term i can't remember) on the 1st & 4th beat of every measure, which is greatly different from a measure of 4/4 then a measure of 2/4. it's why his 5/4 always sounds weird, because while it's recognizable in sequences of 10/4, it's more 2 measures of 4/4 with one of 2/4 tacked on the end. that's also how it's different from 3/4. i don't know much music theory but what i do understand i will fight to the death about

-"canonized" that's. a very interesting term to use when referring to a former president

-from now on i will interpret every love song directed at some unseen "you" to be inviting me to marry them for tax purposes. thanks neil for being an aromantic icon

-ah hell yes hell yes man-made object is my favorite goddam song on this album

-short & sweet & good damn vibes. neil's thoughts on it all are only making it better

-wild how he uses very few vocal effects for a song that he clearly is straining his vocal range for. go off neil

-the qualifier of man-made is a wonderful thing. oldest or biggest thing? oldest or biggest man-made thing? what a incredibly important specification. a world of possibilities lie between the two. oh i love it

-just gets me thinking yknow! what we consider weird/impressive in another species, in our own species- what kind of equivalent to that would there be from an outsider looking in? are there alien versions of the significances we place upon things, that we could never imagine? the limits of the human imagination mean we could never conceive of something else in the world that isn't, in some way great or small, just like us- and are we wrong for thinking that? such a juicy topic i wish there were a name for it because it's kinda hard to explain concisely

-spiral of ants. my second favorite song from this album, in fact. a good one to experience

-the vocals are just another instrument. they really truly are. i wasn't going into this commentary expecting to feel solidarity for neil cicierega in this chili's tonight on more than one occasion but here i am.

-like, his whole stance on interpreting songs is something i agree with almost entirely. you can take it at face value, you can dig to their very depths, you can listen to songs without caring what the lyrics mean whatsoever, and those are all fun. & yeah while any of these people can be annoying as one of the types who enjoys gliding on the surface more than anything i find those who dedicate themselves to figuring out the whole meaning of a song over anything else to be both slightly scary & slightly annoying <3 keep up the good work

-i want to make songs for my siblings the way neil makes songs for his sibling(s)

-spinch

-neil really shouldn't be allowed to be this funny like this whole album youre thinking golly! he's just a normal man this neil cicierega! and then he starts listing the cat hacks jokes & you remember he's had ridiculously consistent viral success with all his humorous endeavors and holy shit it's neil cicierega in action talking about his music. god bless you neil

-you're welcome, no problem, my pleasure. good eveternoon, radio audience!

[hideitfar]

Don’t know how much you regret dropping me your LJ link, maybe much more after this. haha but I am glad and thankful I got that link to know what’s happening to you.

Were you at church today? After I got up the bus, on my way home, I realised I never texted you about picking up the things you wanted to pass to me. But ironically, you were on my mind the whole time during sermon. Much fails.

I don't know how long more I can stay alive.They temptation to give up completely is stronger now than it has ever been before.

Please stay alive. Please don’t give up. I really am sorry I am not a friend to you when you needed me to. I am sorry I wasn’t sensitive to your needs and assumed you were fine with all the arrangements I was making. I never thought you were irrational for being upset about me making you feel less important. But like I said so many times, you never were less important to me. 

I was too caught up with trying to find out what went wrong, and I wanted to know because I thought if I knew the issue then I wouldn’t do it to you again, if i knew then I could love you better. Which I feel all is valid still, but I was so caught up with the past, I forgot about serving and loving you in the right now. 

That fateful monday of our crazy texts, I got really upset, I needed to purge something in my life, so i left instagram haha (knowing i’ll be able to get it back), and also knowing I didn’t want to purge you. 

I hope you don’t see this as blackmailing, or if they were the wrong words, I hope it doesn’t cause you pain anyway. I just want to relieve you of whatever pain I’m causing you and honestly I don’t know how to make things better from here but pray that God will work his magic.

 A few days after Monday, Nazera asked me where my instagram went, I told her I was going through a break up hahaha. She got really worried because I told her it was a girl. She paused the conversation and ask me, are you lesbian? LOL. That aside, whenever I shared with Jer and Stella on how I should help you and I move forward and get better, they get defensive for me, but also because they only hear me from my woes and not your side, and that made me sad because then that’s not what I wanted. And what i loved about my convo with Nazera was that she defended you, she spoke for you when I was caught up with my own emotions and she gave me so many explanations I would not have come up with other than you’re going through rough period, and you’re just having it tough.

She related to me about her and her hall friend that she decided not to be friends with anymore. And I saw her crying about it when the whole drama was happening. (But honestly, her other friend was mean ok. She lied to Nazera about her whereabouts and played bitchy moves on Nazera during like hall election period lol, I never lie to you ok, or intentionally bitchy move on you.) But besides that, she was telling me she decided to not be her friend anymore because she knew the other girl can be happier with her other friends, and she felt that she was being needy and maybe her other friend will just be better off without her anyway.

And I broke, because no Anne. : ( you cannot break up with me like that. You only break up with me if I lie to you for stupid things and if I play bitchy moves on you. aiya but then again Aisyah came into our convo again. And we concluded that even though we both love Aisyah, and we don’t know why she left us, but we know she’s happy now. 

And Nazera said this, sometimes we’re just toxic unintentionally. : ( sometimes we’re bad influence to someone we love just by being who we are. And for Aisyah it was really hard when she was the only one working and the rest of us were studying, and her work woes were really really heavy on her. We all understood that, but I guess that was not enough.

And that’s when I decided really to stop pestering you. because maybe just being me is not healthy for you now. But the point of this whole thing is, I want you to be happy. I really do.

And I just want to reassure you that you still hold a very special place in my heart la. You’re always my Anne Usha Mahendran, and there’s only one you. And I dont want you to feel like shit because of me. As in I feel sucky because of what happened, but I am confident that we are bonded in love for eternity, because that is what Jesus is about, and that is what Jesus will keep for us. 

Do you see us going out on coffee dates again? I do. I AM NOT SAYING U R AT FAULT OR U R WEAK AND BROKEN. all I want to say is as tough as things are, you’re a good human and I know it, and u r an overcomer because u r built as one. I wrote this because on Monday I was angry. And I reacted angrily even tho I tried my best to phrase it nicely. But I was still angry and for that I am sorry. Because I didn’t look pass my anger and reply you in a manner that might have drawn us closer, i reacted in a manner that clearly drifted us further. haha

i dont know if you’ll read this. should I drop you the link? haha Anne, you’re important not just to me. But to so many people.

we’re okay. we’re just growing up. I’m just growing up. maybe it’ll be better when I start working? : ) who knows bb who knows (Jesus) : )