hootOS

To Be Adored; or, Is Kasane Teto my Inspiration or my Curse?

A heavily corrupted image of a Kasane Teto figurine.

I've been playing Project SEKAI: Colourful Stage quite a lot lately. In fact, I watched the movie tie-in in a cinema out of town with my brother and my good friend Ari. The two of them didn't know shit about the game, and the movie doesn't really hold your hand through explaining the things that are evident if you play the game. That being said, they still really enjoyed the movie, and that made me happy. I REALLY loved that movie, but I was so worried the two people I'd strung along to the movie would find it hard to follow. It ended up taking away a bit from my ability to fully immerse myself in the movie, but I was very moved by its story.

That's not really the point of this post, though. Rather, it is just backdrop to the reason why my ass is talking about using virtual singers in music all of a sudden, despite A) not having shown any interest in vocaloids before, and B) not having produced a damn thing in the past three fucking years. In summary, "it's the autism, man."

Through ProSeka, I found my passion for music reignited. Seeing the incredible musical stylings of PinnochioP, Giga and DECO*27 alongside names familiar to me like FLAVOR FOLEY and Anamanaguchi in addition to the thriving underground indie scene in the vocaloid niche was really remarkable. It made me want to create again, for the sake of creating.

When I first started making music, I thought it was incredibly cool to make music without any instruments but instead with software. I didn't need to buy or learn to play guitars, drums or anything, and I didn't need to learn how to record them or find private time to record anything without making my parents annoyed. You know, because it's normal for parents to be annoyed their kids are making noise or something. (it isn't. my parents suck. if your parents do this, they suck too.)

Even so, EDM production gave me the ability to make music without my parents even realizing what I was doing. I downloaded a DAW, downloaded some samples, slapped them together and... wow! I made a thing!

I was so stoked about it I played some of my music at the school talent show. Most people were confused by my performance because I realized I couldn't just press play and stand there. There had to be some performance aspect to it. So, I pretended to throw the samples down on the timeline in real time with a drawing tablet. That didn't really work because the students thought I was just drawing while music played... woops. Still, I played my music in front of a LOT of people, and as cringe as that 'performance' was, it's still objectively kind of incredible that I made my own music and played it in front of people as a teenager.

The problem is, shit got twisted from here. The rush of performing turned my motivation away from the process of creation, and towards fame and money. I no longer wanted to 'create,' i wanted to make money and be a star, even if it was just locally. I ended up doing live performances in the capital city as an opener to other bands, but performing my vocals live after pressing play on the pre-rendered tracks. This was better, for sure, but the attitude I had was fucked. I played in front of maybe a dozen people maximum, with some performances only being seen by like three people. I felt ripped off, like people didn't care, and thus I shouldn't care. I tried to compensate for this feeling by ripping off the bands who were giving me an opportunity to open for them by asking for more money than I really needed to travel in from out of town. That cut me off from the music community I'd been involved with in the capital, and thus cut me off from any opportunities there - and, of course, it followed that my motivation to create music cratered.

It sucks. I was a shitty person who got blinded by materialism and the myth of the Rockstar Lifestyle. It was stupid, and it's still stupid that it poisons my mindset to this day.

The most recent release I produced, the Smokeshows EP, was also produced as a way of showing off like a rockstar. Rather than utilize copyright-free music in my broadcast productions for Esports Drift Association, I decided to make my own music. Four brand new tracks were produced, with a fifth being an unreleased track I'd previously produced in a similar style. Despite all that work put into those tracks, in addition to the additional work I had done to give the livestream graphics a sense of unique brand identity, the company that was hiring us to produce ESDA competition broadcasts was underpaying us significantly for the caliber of talent they were getting from the team. Once again, I was frustrated by the feeling of being ripped off, underappreciated and unnoticed. This led to extreme and rapid burnout, a departure from the broadcast team and a complete and utter decimation of my desire to produce music. To make matters worse, one of the members of the broadcast team felt bad for me and forwarded his own pay to me. While it made the sting of being significantly underpaid for all the effort hurt a little less, it was still really not enough for all that work plus the long production days over the weekend back-to-back. It caused my friendship with that person to fall apart, or at least I feel it has.

Once again, I wanted money and recognition. Once again, the snake ate its tail. And sure, a company owned by a parent company who could have afforded to pay us more ended up fucking us, but I ended up fucking over people I cared about in response.

Since then, the motivation to make music has been fleeting. I produced a pop-punk remix of Antonymph by Vylet Pony and it so far has 100k views, my most popular video ever uploaded to YouTube on my personal YT channel. I had expected maybe a few thousand views leeched from Vylet's existing popularity, but it over-performed. And while I feel proud of that achievement, it still feels a bit shallow. That production, too, was marred by the desire to be seen and to make money.

The money never came. Sure, the views rolled in, but hardly anyone bought the track off of Bandcamp and I wouldn't have made anything off the Spotify streams if I had even bothered to put it on that service.

With all that comes the immense musical burnout. I tried making a cover of a Jamie Paige song, but abandoned it. I couldn't find time to record vocals, I couldn't simplify the song well enough to play bass guitar on it without losing the song's identity, and... well, the primary motivation was still wanting to be recognized. I wanted Jamie Paige to like my cover, because if she liked it, then that meant she likes me. And that means I'm a good musician if she likes me, and it means I get to say "I know Jamie Paige!"

It's stupid. It's a really, really stupid way of thinking.

I'm not lost on where it comes from, though.

The following isn't to excuse my behavior - I've been trying to work on it as hard as I can. However, I can't ignore the fact that this deeply-knotted desire to be seen and recognized and acclaimed comes from the fact that my parents hardly even consider me a full person, even in my 30's. Anything I enjoy is discarded and shrugged off, while they impose their fascination with their own hobbies onto me. It caused an immense feeling of emptiness in myself that I've been trying to use music production to fill, and when that desire to fill the gap with fame obviously comes up short, it kills my mood. Since I actively live with them as a result of having no other option, I'm perpetually stuck in the cycle of being neglected by my parents, seeking validation from other people, and not getting the amount of validation I want.

Now that I think about it, I took sim racing so seriously a couple years back for the same reason. I wanted to win because I wanted to be recognized. I wanted to feel special. When I realized the best I could do was be a backmarker, my motivation fell apart - it just so happened to coincide with worsening chronic pain that made sim racing difficult in the first place. I also have a suspicion that this is popping up in my broadcast production with Arrow Broadcast Network. The team there is immensely forgiving and understanding of the list of 'brain problems' I have, but it's becoming worrisome to me that I've been missing more broadcasts as of late. I think this same desire to be lovebombed 24/7 has a part in contributing to my absences, though the extreme brain fog, eternally fucked sense of time and the difference in time zones between me and other team members are the major factors in play there.

It poisons everything I do. I don't just want to be seen, I want to be adored.

To be clear, I'm not looking for sympathy by saying this. People who are hurt can hurt other people in a cycle of pain, but that cycle can be stopped. I know I can do it, and I should want to do it. Being a better person than the environment I was raised in - and am currently surrounded by - matters quite a lot to me. I'm trying my best to do better. I'm not where I want to be, but I'm trying.

And so, I find myself downloading openUTAU and a Kasane Teto english voicebank. A bit of me still wants to be adored, but this time the primary drive is to Just Make A Fucking Thing.

'Koi wa Sensou' (trns: Love is War) by ryo is a fantastic vocaloid rock song from the 2000's, which features in Project Sekai. Listening to the song and practicing the chart made me realize I could make vocaloid music of my own. Furthermore, seeing the original music MVs to other songs in the game made me realize I could very easily produce my own music videos, too. It has spurred on a swarm of ideas and thoughts about what a Hoot_OS vocaloid project would look like. Here are some of those ideas:

...and suddenly that motivation to create is back.

I've downloaded Kasane Teto's english voicebank and openUTAU, and I'm getting ideas. However, it's hard to ignore that thorn in the back of my head...

"What if I get one of my songs in ProSeka?"

I mean, that ain't happening any time soon. My ability to advertise my own music and get it out there is miserable, and my ability to collaborate with others means I have to keep making music for a very long time and being fine with nobody seeing any of it. And yet, that drive to be adored is still sitting there, staring at me with its dark sunken eyes and waiting for me to choke.

I want to make music again, and I want to make music because making music is fun. I want to be able to be satisfied with just making music and having nothing come of it. I want to be able to produce the vocaloid music I would like to see, without needing other people to see it.

I just worry my creativity will get overwritten by my desire to be adored again, and burn me out completely.

I guess that's why A Miku Who Can't Sing, that Project SEKAI movie I mentioned at the beginning of the post, resonated with me so much. I feel similarly to the people the Miku who couldn't sing was trying to reach out to. I feel constantly singed and burned by this inherent desire to be successful immediately, to be known, to be admired. It kills my motivation to continue doing what I love. In that same regard, those people Miku tried to reach out to were also burned out. They gave up on their passions, and moved through life listlessly and bored. Miku, try as she might, just couldn't reach out to them on her own. Her SEKAI - the world she inhabits - was overwhelmed by darkness and failure. The other groups with their own Mikus and SEKAIs sang for her, as an attempt to help the Miku who couldn't sing reach out to those people. They were successful, of course.

But what was it that touched them, what was it that inspired them to pick things back up? Was it the music? Was it remembering how good music can make people feel, and wanting to do it again?

I need to find my purpose for my creativity. Why do I want to make music? Why do I want to make art? Why do I want to do the things I'm passionate about?

I don't know if this vocaloid experiment will change anything... but maybe, like those stray victims of burnout in the movie, I'll find that purpose and give it another shot.

Maybe I can find my purpose and keep going.