I’ve added four new lyric translations to the Cryptography page.
For アリス九號., two songs from the IDEAL album, Adam and ECHO. For Shou’s new solo project Verde/, I translated his fourth full song release, Lunaris/. Finally, for HIROTO’s self-titled solo project, I translated his second full song release, The New World.
I’m slowly going back through older songs and fixing the formatting to be in line with the formatting in the newer translations, as well as to add headers of photos I’ve taken that I feel fit the lyrics where possible. The latest to get this treatment was Everlasting, made all the easier by the fact that I actually spent a full day the summer of 2020 wandering around a park taking a representative photo for each track off of NIGHTLESS CITY EDEN. In going through those older translations, I’m also adding a comment to each Youtube version of the video with the translation itself (not my piles of notes, of course). I figure some listeners might find it handy and maybe the members will find it handy too.
I finally finished writing the manuscript for the next fairytale in the Sable’s Tales anthology and am now in the process of editing it. I also finally achieved a long-held goal with this one: I created a bard song for it. I managed this after a good conversation about songwriting with SoundQuest (who makes music and curates an incredibly thorough website about music theory). In any case, the result was just a demo of me singing the lyrics to the melody I came up with after some trial and error, but I’m happy with it. One day, I’d love to turn the demo into an actual song.
The reason why I thought to ask was because SoundQuest (PLUGMON) asked for my advice about the English wording for one of the lines of a song he was putting the finishing touches on, and that discussion about music naturally gave me inspiration to bring back to my own project! If you’re curious, you can listen to the soft, heartfelt science fiction inspired song here — and definitely read the notes in the description, as they tie everything together:
Scout needed food yesterday so I got ready to run that errand and figured I might as well put on some makeup and turn the outing into a solo date at a café. Of course, as these things do, one thing led to another, and my original errand spawned several side quests.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I woke up to this sweet little baby angel (and occasional fluffy mischief-maker) cuddled up next to me in bed and after a good bit of reading, got up to start the day. The book? センチメンタルワールズエンド by 武瑠, which I have finally been able to return to after setting it aside for a while — my studying in the interim has made it much easier to understand. Not every word individually, obviously, but I’m much better able to understand sentences as a whole without having to know every word in them. I’m enjoying it so far, enjoying the descriptions and dialogue especially — the conversations have a natural feel to them (at least from my non-native speaker perspective…).
The pie pumpkins sitting on the kitchen table will have to wait another week or two before getting turned into baked goods because my mind is currently set on working through my third big edit of The Everyforest — which is what I set my mind to again after my early morning of reading.
I’ve already renamed the first chapter, added an extra passage, and reworked a lot of the wording. It’s something I should have done originally, but I still hadn’t let go of the idea that it needed to stay as it had been in order to match the audio narration. But the story had morphed so greatly between the first chapter and the last that it truly needed to be reshaped. And so the audio narration is a preservation of the story’s original draft, but the ebook/print will diverge from it quite a bit.
The days are getting colder, to the point where it may start snowing in the next few weeks so despite the looming rain and general chill, I made a point to leave my coat at home. One last hurrah.
After stocking up on food for Scout, I started walking home, keeping my eyes peeled for any cozy-looking cafés along the way, and instead found myself walking into a comic book shop. I’d intended to buy a Gundam Plastic Model kit, but they didn’t carry any that I wanted to build and I instead ended up perusing the shelves of graphic novels… and selecting a few that were on sale. I own a ton of comics and graphic novels, but in digital format, so it was a bit of a pleasure to indulge in physical copies for once.
Wet Moon, volume 3
The Last Book You’ll Ever Read
Beautiful Darkness
When I went back outside, the temperature felt as though it had dropped further. I took refuge indoors again, this time heading to Uniqlo with a mind to buy myself another top like the one I’d had on… but of course, it was already well out of season, so I had no luck there.
Until I noticed, lined up on a shelf, a little contigent of Doraemon plushies. Oh, the cuteness! I walked past.
And then I doubled back and picked one to bring home with me. I simply couldn’t resist. I paid for my magical little friend, feeling rather gleeful about the unexpected find (and the fact that I had bought the only thing in the store that wasn’t clothing of some kind), and made a beeline for the exit.
Finally, it was raining.
I thought I could make it to the café before it started pouring, but I barely had time to put up my umbrella before the rain started pelting the pavement.
I was a tiny bit soaked when I reached the café… but no worse for wear.
And very much in need of the peanut butter cookie and mocha I bought.
I didn’t start drinking coffee or tea regularly until I was in my late twenties and had severe social anxiety, so I never really developed a habit (an indulgence) of going to cafés or coffee shops on my own to read or study. It’s something I’m learning to enjoy now that the pandemic has ended and my anxiety is no longer severe — I wish I could share that sense of quiet mental freedom with my younger self who was petrified of being in the wider world alone, constantly worried about invisible social rules, scripts, and unknown spaces.
I sat in front of the window, listened to music, read a bit of one of the graphic novels, read a bit of an ebook.
I love the feeling of being cozy and warm indoors, watching rain falling out the window.
When I finally got home, shoes and umbrella dripping, Scout immediately swarmed me at the door, eager not only to sniff at what I’d bought but also to remind me that his suppertime was Very Soon. When Scout noticed our new friend sitting nonchalantly on the reading chair, he snuck up behind him and… caught Doraemon with his paw!
Then he went back to enjoying his supper.
Doraemon, meanwhile, mysteriously teleported to the living room couch, where he is still sitting as I type this… as far as I’m aware.
The latest episode of The Side B Anthology, the second story in the Sable’s Tales anthology, is now up. Scarlet is a liberal adaptation of the classic fairytale that goes by the name of Little Red Riding Hood or Little Red Cap, and some of the scenes and imagery were inspired by アリス九號.’s songs Scarlet and RUMWOLF.
The night that I recorded the audio, there happened to be a dog howling somewhere in my building, and you can actually hear the howling faintly in the background, which I thought was rather eerie (and fitting).
Such is the danger (fun?) of recording without being in a sound-proofed space.
It is kind of interesting to hear a bit of ambient noise in the background — as long as it’s not overpowering, it gives the recording an immersive feel. Rather than making you feel as though you’re in the story itself (with sound design), you feel as though the person telling you the story is right across from you (and the window is open, and there are people cooking in the apartment below — this strange moment of escapism is somehow happening inside a little bubble of day-to-day normalcy).
I hope it has that effect, anyway… ♡♪
I noticed that the Traces page was badly out of date so I’ve corrected and added new links to it, but I’ve no doubt forgotten a few pieces. On a similar note, there are several illustrations and logos I’ve done recently but my scanner will no longer connect to my computer reliably so I haven’t been able to scan and add them to the site yet. Soon, hopefully. Or else I’ll make do by tidying some photos up as best I can in Gimp. Which has been made so much easier by the fact that I finally got a new mouse after months of just using the track-pad… I know. I’m nuts. It just kept getting pushed further down my to-do list, and now that I finally have a new one (wireless! rechargeable!) I feel like I’ve just taken off weighted training clothes and can work five times faster. Like, an angelic chorus played when the mouse connected to the laptop. Why did I need a new mouse, you might be wondering? Because Scout chewed the wire of my old (trusty) mouse to the point that not even electric tape would fix it. That little mischief-maker… lol.
I had my alarm set weeks in advance to wake up early and set up the living room to attend ALICE NINE.’s grand finale from afar. I set up a moon light on the windowsill near the loveseat and Scout hopped up to lie down beside it, as though he could sense the gravity and anticipation in the air.
There were audio and connection issues in the beginning and so I missed the first thirty seconds, but then–
アリス九號. never fails to surprise me, and it was in exactly that way that the Last Galaxy live began. I truly hadn’t expected the first song in the setlist to be GEMINI-0-eternal, but when they then leapt right into 閃光 after it I was both delighted and confused at the choice. Until I understood what they were actually doing!
The idea to weave the GEMINI suite evenly among the other songs in the main setlist was an incredible one, not least because it’s something they’d never decided to do before. But Saga is a storyteller when it comes to music.
It truly was a climax of a live the whole way through, with them playing their hearts out during each and every song; they were absolutely bursting with confidence and good humour (or intensity) as they played so many beloved big numbers and classics from their discography. The beauty of this live wasn’t simply the songs they played, but the energy and atmosphere they gave off while playing the flow of this setlist.
Even just watching from home, I was in awe and felt so proud of the amazing live they played — a culmination of their history, their hard work together, and also a celebration of the sheer fun they have onstage performing music for us 九組達.
A celebration of the world of sound they created, one that transports us to imagined realms.
They did two encores… and if you think I didn’t sit on my loveseat at home and clap, chanting アンコール in time with everyone at the venue until they came back on stage, you’re mistaken 🙂
アンコール！アンコール！★ミ
I love that they did the G3 line dance on stage, and from there it just got wilder and wilder! The sheer hotness of Saga headbanging his way through the song… the sheer hilarity of a drummer in a Nao-mask coming to replace Nao on drums so that he could run around in the crowd for a couple minutes… lol! Utter fun to see how this classic retained its roots and grew into something even bigger.
Ending the first encore on 春夏秋冬 was so feel-good and it’s kind of wonderful that the song has mostly stayed the same since the beginning. You might say the song is like a time capsule of their energy from 2005!
I chanted アンコール with great anticipation before they returned to play the second and final encore.
I teared up at the beginning of Waterfall, but by the end was smiling again at how beautifully they brought the song to life. Shou then thanked everyone individually in a quiet, heartfelt MC, during which Saga gave him a hug instead of replying in words. After that, it was time for the big, beautiful finale.
Grace and the beautiful name.
A breathtakingly beautiful flow of songs to purify the heart.
To me, the beautiful name has always been and will always be pure joy.
Next to beauty of Waterfall and Grace, it soared even higher.
言葉にあまりできないほどに、素晴らしかったです…♡
After the live, Saga made sure to point out the two suites besides GEMINI that had been nestled into the live. birth in the death and Living Dead, which were played during the setlist flow between GEMINI-I-the void and GEMINI-II-the luv, form a suite that links the GEMINI album to the GRACE album. Then, at the very end and for the first time, they played Grace and the beautiful name one after the other — the second suite, this one connecting GRACE to VANDALIZE. Thus, Saga explained afterwards, GEMINI GRACE VANDALIZE are not a circle of albums (as I had been thinking), but a line — with I. as the first song and Waterfall as the ending of the album trilogy.
I love Saga, the way he thinks and creates ♡♪
So without further ado, the piece I made inspired by some of the compositions Saga has made that I love most. The day before the live I woke up with an image in my mind and spent the rest of the morning trying to draw it on the page… even colouring the piece in and picking the perfect dried flowers out of my collection to add to the imagery.
The Phoenix of the jelly fish Galaxy
Within a universe of pure white darkness floats a galaxy like a jelly fish inside which the life force of a Phoenix will be burning bright for eternity 真っ白な闇という宇宙には 浮かんでる海月のような 銀河の中で Phoenixの命の炎が 永久に燃えてるよ
May our Last Galaxy be graced.
For this art piece, I borrowed from the concept of birth in the death and Phoenix again, as well as GRADATION and jelly fish — and I borrowed from the grandeur, love, and beauty of songs like Grace, the beautiful name, GEMINI, and Waterfall… another little homage 🙂
One flower is gently floating off into the void of pure white darkness (a favourite bit of lyric symbolism), and another flower has just bloomed on the jellyfish galaxy. Or is the galaxy a phoenix? Or is the phoenix a universe? Are those little golden raindrops stars or nascent galaxies, tiny-huge nebulas?
I wonder… ♪
Thank you so much アリス九號.… Thank you.
I enjoyed this live to the fullest and I think Saga did too… the setlist was gorgeous.
Until we meet again, let’s protect ALICE NINE.’s world and the songs that made it.
Saga and ALICE NINE. have completed their Act 4 Summer tour and now all that’s left is the big finale in September. It seems pretty definitive that I won’t be able to travel to Japan and attend in person… but I will be with Saga and the band in spirit. It is sad… logistically, I just can’t see a way to do it, barring a miracle. So I’m just going to support and cheer on from afar and look forward to (hopefully) going to attend something that Saga does after the freeze… ♡♪
I’m currently working on interview translations for the deep-dive for Funeral (so much glorious content) and then I’ll move on to the GEMINI suite. It is strange, I admit, but even though I consider the GEMINI suite (and album, of course) to have been such a huge influence in my art, I’ve kind of been skirting around the prospect of translating the lyrics of the suite in full. Oh, I’ve read them many times (listened even more) — it’s just that, I’ve been afraid of making them sound less epic than they are. But that’s silly. The original poetry will shine through no matter what. It helps that a fellow 9kumi asked me if I planned to do deep-dives on those songs, giving me an even more concrete reason to face that imposter syndrome and just do the thing!
So there you have it.
I’m doing it.
And the imagery of the lyrics is exactly as rich, as introspective, and as epic as the music sounds.
It was much later than I’d planned, but I finally recorded the Brothers Grimm fairytale that I rewrote to start the newest series that will be part of The Side B Anthology: Sable’s Tales, or ST for short. It was really fun to adapt The Seven Ravens in my own writing style and so I will slowly add more to the series. It was fun to record the narration too, of course; here’s an outtake of me making fun of one of my voices to Scout (who attended the recording by snoozing underneath the comforter of the bed behind me).
This weekend I intended to sit down at my laptop and write more for Casseltaur, but instead had a sudden flash of inspiration for the next fairytale re-write so I ended up typing away at that instead until I had a first draft. As a kid, one of my favourites was Little Red Riding Hood, but having read a few versions and retellings over the years, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to shape it in my own words.
This is basically just a fix-it fic lol.
Casseltaur, meanwhile, gets weirder each time I sit down to do the worldbuilding for it.
Which, of course, is a good thing. :p
I’m now on week two at my new job and the amount of change it has brought about in my day-to-day life already is incredible. Scout and I get lots more time together, for one thing. Aside from that, my commute is actually pretty energizing now (what?!), and I have so much more time and energy during the week to clean, run errands, and even write and translate. The new team I’ve joined are great bunch of clever, funny people and I’ve barely scratched the surface so far of what I’m going to need to learn to do this new job correctly, but they’re all very supportive, and this kind of challenge is exactly what I wanted.
Also, this week I started watching episodes of Gundam The Witch From Mercury before work while eating breakfast. It really takes me back to my childhood, watching anime in the morning over a bowl of cereal… キャリバーンがやっとデター！Obviously I want to watch the latest Dragon Ball stuff (lol), but the next thing on my list is とつくにの少女 (The Girl From The Other Side), which I started reading the manga of a year or so ago, but stopped because I couldn’t get the next volume, I think. In any case, I hope watching it will be just as beautiful and mysterious.
In terms of live-action TV, what I recently finished watching was the arctic season (6) of the survival series “Alone” (set in Northwest Territories, Canada). I used to watch quite a number of similar wilderness survival series back in the day because seeing people living off the land and personally finding the pockets of abundance in a given landscape is both impressive and soothing, in a way. CONTEXT and Casseltaur both involve living in an arctic zone at some points in the plot, so my watching was sort of research-ish…? I did learn a number of really cool facts as I watched, anyway.
Also: one of the survival experts was basically an arctic Forrest Gump… if that isn’t a good enough endorsement, I don’t know what is. Haha.
One of the survival experts made an incredibly beautiful, durable shelter and was just so adept at creating handmade things from natural materials. Another was doing fine in terms of shelter and food but decided to leave early because he realized that time with his wife and kids was more valuable than the prize money (or bragging rights) he could win if he spent more time away from them… nothing but respect from me for that mindset.
Last night it was a documentary about the concept of infinity that I watched (A Trip to Infinity) and it was a delightfully strange thought exercise for my mind — it gave me goosebumps in the best possible way. I think it’s safe to consider this research-ish as well. As much time as I’ve spent thinking about the concept of infinity and of how our universe is configured, there were several things I hadn’t considered before — facts that tilted, stretched, and reframed my imagination and thinking on the subject.
I’m not sure why I went so long without writing here again, but the most important thing to mention is that The Everyforest is officially complete — was completed May 22nd 2023. The final chapter, In/Out Ad Infinitum, was difficult both on an emotional level and a technical level, to write. It was so difficult to read that I cried while narrating the final section which probably made the recording difficult to listen to, but it was a genuine reaction, so I decided to use that first take anyway.
Finally… the novella is done.
I wanted to give up on writing it so many times, especially during the last few chapters, but I didn’t, and for that, I’m glad. In the time since, I’ve been working on the digital/print version of the book, editing the earlier chapters especially for cohesion, and I plan to have this self-published by the end of the year because quite frankly, an actual publisher would have to be crazy to take on this experimental thing to try to sell it. And my goal is a lot smaller than that: I literally just want this thing to exist.
Anything beyond it simply existing would be exciting though, I grant you.
Reader, if you’re creating something right now and feel alone, feel overwhelmed, or feel like it doesn’t matter — please don’t give up. The process of making it changes something in you and even just that alone gives it intrinsic value… although I do hope you get to share it with people that resonate with it and enjoy the thing you’ve made.
Anyway, if you’re wondering whether I’m already working on a follow-up to the novella, among other shorts, the answer to that is a very emphatic yes. Though I don’t yet know how I’ll be doing the next story (whether I’ll narrate it chapter by chapter or whether I’ll just be writing it and putting it up as one complete volume). I certainly haven’t forgotten about the Context novel (and in fact, the last few chapters of The Everyforest helped shape more of it in ways I hadn’t initially expected), but its plot definitely needs more thought put into it because what I’ve got so far is missing something in the middle.
In short: the plot needs a plumber.
I’ve actually got one in mind.
Oh, but that’s another story altogether…
Though that character would prefer you refer to her as a “shit facilitator,” I have come to understand.
Ahem.
Aside from that I’ve been steadily adding to the Alice9Lives site, recently put up my own 9kumi Interview, and added a couple more translations on the Cryptography page of this site.
It’s just about time for me to get ready to head out for a writers’ meet-up and it’s a sunny day which means I need extra time to slather on some sunscreen first. My anxiety got out of control yesterday afternoon at work and after some very incoherent journaling, a good meal, a small glass of scotch, a bit of gaming, and a lot of fitful sleep… I am finally feeling relatively clearheaded.
I am more than ready for a cup of coffee and some good conversation with my fellows.
At 7000 words and growing, TE10 simply had to be split in two chapters, regardless of how determined I had been to keep the novella at 10 chapters in order to match アリス九號.’s GRACE album. Instead, the 11 chapters represent the fact that GRACE was released in November, as well as reminding me of the lives I went to that same month, experiencing the whole album (most especially Grace and 界) for myself in person. A truly unforgettable experience that influenced the ending of the novella. I got so much inspiration from seeing and hearing the band rock out live, and most especially from seeing Saga play so soulfully and then relax and have a damn good time during classic, high-energy songs.
I’m so glad I went.
In other words: TE10 has now been released, and TE11’s release will follow in the next week or two!
I added some music into this 10th chapter as well, but I’m no songwriter, so it’s very rudimentary; I was just trying to improvise things during the recording and editing out the bits that sounded too rough afterward. Scout was an immense help during the editing process before bed last night: he provided ambient cuteness and kept my pillow warm while I sat at my dressing table and worked!
This project has really tested the limits of my writing abilities and I wanted to give up several times so I’m glad I saw it through. Regardless of what the reception is, writing this helped me process a lot of things that were in my subconscious — that were stuck there — and for that alone, it’s been worth it.
Though I hope that others who come across the novella will be moved by it too, in their own way.
The new chapter 10, which I chose to name Birth of a Language, makes reference to my 2018 poem Mitosis, expounds on a 2017 short story I wrote under a different penname, and fills in some background for the novel I’m working on. The new chapter 11, retaining its original name In/Out Ad Infinitum, is where everything… ends? begins? returns?
All translations on the Cryptography page are in the process of being cross-posted to the Alice9Lives Fansite that I maintain, and the blurbs at the bottom of the pages on this site are steadily being updated with a link to the mirrored fansite page along with a request to not repost any of my translations (link back instead — please and thank you).
To be more specific where Cryptography is concerned, I have recently updated this site with the translation of Moondance, and have also made minor corrections to the translations and/or notes for Grace, Brilliant Stripe, and Living Dead.
A brand new section has also been added to the site called [ Reading Supplements ] and it is filled with some old fairytale TSBA reading episodes (The Seven Ravens, The Nixie of the Mill-Pond, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Three Sons of Fortune, The Water of Life, and The Donkey), the original three Whisky Story Time video episodes, the original two Witch fairytale reading video episodes, and three previously-released poetry readings in video form (Anorexic by Eaven Boland, Basket of Figs by Ellen Bass, and Ne touchez pas aux marbres par Théophile Gautier).
The 9th chapter of The Everyforest was at long last completed late last week, both the text and audio (via The Side B Anthology podcast) available to read or listen to for whoever is interested. It should be noted that the instrument whose strings I pluck at (amateurishly) at the beginning of the audio version is not a lyre but a ukulele; I had to use what I had on hand.
Recording the audio to upload for the podcast is quite different from the headspace necessary for performing the reading in full in real time, so especially with long readings like this one, I end up editing the recording afterward. This usually means removing long pauses, breaks to drink water, heavy sighs, moments where you can hear a car passing or neighbours talking in the hall, or else my fumbled attempts at reading full passages resulting in me starting over again.
And of course, the occasional interruption from Scout.
I use very rudimentary tools to create and edit the recordings (read: the voice memo app on my phone) so editing is limited to removing sections from a single audio file and nothing more.
In the beginning, I was rather a purist about it and would often just keep deleting and restarting the entire recording until I could read the text properly the whole way through, but as texts got longer, that stopped seeming reasonable. So, for anyone interested, the raw audio for TE9 is below.
If you just want to hear Scout interrupt me and then say “mrrrrrw?”, skip straight to the 44:50 mark.
I had long intended for this novella to be nine chapters, but after careful consideration I eventually decided to split that last chapter in two for a total of ten. It was getting much too long… and now it matches the length of ALICE NINE.’s album GRACE as well. That final chapter is largely written, so It will be out (and this incredibly dense, weird novella finished) in 2023.
And now I’m off to do a bit of reading before bed…
A new episode has been released. You can find both the podcast audio and the full text of the original short story Sunrise Set on its episode page.
In terms of the podcast itself, it should soon be available on Spotify!
As such, before applying to submit it there, I made the decision to retire a large number of past episodes: those that were readings of old fairytales and children’s stories. While all of those old works are in the public domain, the specific versions I read in the episodes were translations and retellings that are still copyrighted, and so I have no right to reproduce them for the podcast.
If, at some point, I decide to write my own retellings and record those instead, classic tales will return to this podcast. Otherwise, I may simply link to retellings that I enjoy and discuss the stories’ underpinnings.
