cobaltie (original) (raw)

I'm borrowing excuses to keep writing, so I'm grabbing at another meme that's been going around. This is that 5 things that people associate you with, or something. I make no promises on passing this on, though. :-P

This particular list thanks to tracerj!

1. Mixing trance music into a larger, even more impactful work.

Mmm... yeah, I've been doing this for a while, making music mixes. The first one I made was partly to show off the different kinds of music in my collection. The basic idea was that someone could listen to the mix hear some songs they knew, but I'd be the only one who was familiar with every track. The mix ended up organizing itself into a loose theme, and after that it was much easier to base each one off some theme. They were supposed to be chillout mixes, but I couldn't help putting some trance and other things in when it fit. Before I knew it, I had a series (Counter-Entropic), and then some. Lately I've been focusing more on telling a story with the music, taking the listener on a journey.
I'm working on getting the mixes back online, too. The last server they were on closed, and I need to find some good space to host several hundred megs of music files quietly off on the side. I'm averaging about one a year, and I really need to finish the next one.

2. Power to ground: Return to source.

Something of a motto that I've ended up with. I used to make stickers with a symbol on it, and the symbol needed something next to it, so I came up with this text. At the time it sounded cool, but the concept has gotten a lot deeper and more personal as I keep thinking about it.
To me, this phrase is a cycle, like the stroke of a lightning bolt. Charge goes up, charge comes down, a connection is made, power flows. Spiritually, too, it's a connection to the Source (whatever/whomever that might be) in two directions. From the self to the universe, surrendering will (right hand path)--return to source. From the universe down into the self by act of will (left hand path)--power to ground. I see myself as attempting to balance in between the two, or if not balance, then fluctuate with the cycle. Alongside the symbol it's somewhat of a mad scientist motto too.

For some reason I also imagine this as a call-response in a heavy metal rock song. The band sings the chorus 'power to ground', and the audience screams back 'return to source!'.

3. Baraka.

This is still one of my favorite movies. I first saw it back in a film class, as an example of well-done cinematography. It's a film that was shot originally in IMAX format, and I'd love to someday see it on a big screen. All it is are images shot literally all over the planet, combined with a sometimes-haunting, sometimes-uplifting soundtrack. No talking, no acting, all raw and very real situations caught on film. Nature combined with humanity, pollution and poverty, time-lapses of clouds and cities and people, and the chickens, oh the chickens.
The message is fairly clear, though a bit more uplifting than similar films like Koyaaniqatsi, and it can still be a bit heavy-handed at times (or the term I used on the most recent viewing, occasionally Anvilicious). If you really want to get abstract, I'd say this movie actually somehow manages to distill the earth and all life on it (or mostly human life) into a single cinematic experience. There's not much more I can say about that, other than that everyone should see it at least once.

4. Rez, Every Extend, and similarly abstract games.

Ah yes, that is a particular passion of mine. I don't know if I can describe it properly, but I know that geometric abstract shapes excite my brain in a certain intellectual way. Playing games with shiny glowy abstract shapes are often a visual overload, compared to a lot more realistic 3d rendered shoot-em-ups. I don't want reality simulation when I play games, I want what you don't get in real life. Shooting down polygons ala Geometry Wars (especially the extra-shiny GW 2 on Xbox), sliding along a track generated by my own music in Audiosurf, or creating the music itself through rail-shooting action in Rez...none of that is anything like running around Yet Another World War II Game loading weapons and managing ammo. (On a side note, I only recently played Every Extend Extra Extreme on the Xbox, previously I hadn't played it at all, but of course I love it, and already in a few hour's time figured out how to get the super-mega chains that go on for 30 seconds... I racked up a 3364 chain already. Overdrive to the max! )

Tangentially, it's not to say that I don't like some shooting games, but I veer strongly towards ones with superweapons or play that's distilled to one simple 'shoot everything that moves' mechanic. Unreal Tournament and Painkiller are on the less realistic FPS level that are just perfect for me to sit down to. I adored every single aspect of the Half-Life series, partly because of the strong storytelling, partly because they made it more than just twitch-and-shoot, and partly because it's full of SCIENCE! I'm actually enjoying geeking out on Fallout 3 recently, because it's entirely unrealistic in weapons, especially in the ones you get to tinker and build yourself, and the storyline and side quests are too much fun to tease out. And it's actually fun to explore to find random junk to sell or upgrade to.

5. Not just blue, but cobalt blue... deep blue... the purest, most intense blue....

I've always loved blue as a color, and I think it gets too much flak for being associated with depression. To me it's the most uplifting, soothing, calming color around, particularly the shades closer to purple, and very specifically the hue known as 'cobalt blue'.

I can actually pin down when I realized that was my favorite color. My memory's odd like that, but hey, since I took my chosen name after the color, of course I'm going to remember such an important thing. I was in my senior year of high school, and we took a trip as a group up to this other college for as I recall a 'science and math weekend'. Basically it was a preview trip to show what kinds of things college kids got to do in science labs with facilities that high schools wouldn't have. I don't recall much of the math part, but the science track impressed me greatly. In the medical lab, we got to check out an actual cadaver the nursing students had been working on, and I got to hold a human heart in my hands (somewhat dried out by then, but still neat). Then in the chemistry lab, we got to perform an actual experiment with some chemicals. The test for whether the chemical reaction worked was to put the beaker into a spectrometer and read the particular hue of liquid. The ideal hue was, of course, a very deep and pure blue. Quite possibly cobalt blue, which would mean one of the chemicals might have been cobalt, but I don't remember that much detail.
I do recall deciding that it was my favorite color ever, and of course later on ended up naming my dragon persona after it. Later of course I started using 'Cobaltie' (a nickname given to me by pretty snakey eapa ) as an online handle as well, since Cobalt Blue itself often ended up being taken. I answer to either one now.

Aside from the name, I definitely associate the color with a state of mind, and with the soothing calm of twilight before sunrise or just after sunset. The world needs more blue. :-}