Hiya folks!! Well, we actually managed to get out and get something done and it was the video to the track Broken.
First of all I have to thank Miss Merkes for her ridiculous patience, ideas and time.
Miss Merkes you are a fucking legend!
Nicole and I spent 7 hours, some of that time in the freezing cold and rain, shooting the video. She spent a great deal of time lying on the floor in a tube station filming me prancing about like an idiot.
Thank you Nicole for taking part in this madness.
Ok, so what is all this Broken thing about?
Right- well, I was playing about with some chords again (like you do) and had this little melody thing going.
The song itself took about a day or two to write itself. At the same time I was doing
No More Tomorrows, which you will have already heard the video for which you will have already seen, If not, you can listen to it on Youtube and Bitchute or on the website under Music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24FrC_cl1gI
https://www.bitchute.com/video/t46NsMLxjwU3/
Lyrically it turns out to be how we are all broken (yes, me included).
It is our nature to be broken.
I spend a fair bit of time in meditative "awareness", "mindfullness", Presence" or meditative contemplation.
We are two worlds; the egoic identification or persona and the innate being-ness of being.
The egoic identity believes itself to be the "real" I. This thing is a product or accumulation of all of our interactions with the world and others. It is a necessary or useful vehicle with which we navigate the world of form.
The other I, or witness to this and everything else, is presence. This is the watcher and experiencer of all events, be they external or part of the identity.
In non-dulity or Advaita Vedanta you understand existence from the point of view of pure awareness or consciousness.
There are many "spiritual teachers" passing on this wisdom. They hold satsangs (spiritual discourses), which are aimed helping seekers to find this "mental" or "Spiritual" place of presence.
You don't have to believe in Gods or any other spiritual dogmas to come to this conclusion. It is more a system of self inquiry to bring you to this place.
Inevitably at these satsangs, are many seekers who are confused, frightened, lost, in pain and so on who are seeking freedom from all of these things. The experiences of the egoic identity in this world has left its damage on us.
Watching and listening to some of these satsangs, I realised just how many of us (all of us) are in some way damaged goods trying to heal ourselves.
We are all broken and looking for a tool to fix the damage. The tool is presence and the damaged entity is the egoic mind.
The good news is that the egoic identity is not YOU. You are the observer. You identify yourself as the egoic identity and that is where your supposed damage comes from. Once you realise you are not the egoic identity and stop identifying yourself with it- the damage is no longer damage but baggage that you need not carry.
If you are interested in this topic or idea, go and get my book The Beautiful Illusion.
It's on the books page of the website and is available on Amazon for 5 pounds or so.
Right, so all of this is a bit deep, but that is what the song is about.
I'm not out to preach to anyone, this is just my way of thinking.
You do you- as the Americans would say.
You can see this theme running through the lyrics- "The million moods that rule you have been sent to fool you. There's nothing left of YOU to see." and so on.
I quite like the lyric- " ' Can't seem to get it together's becoming a work of art."
I think everyone can associate with that.
Nice idea for a T-shirt (not to self)!!
"Heaven and Hell are children born of the same delusion"
There is no heaven or hell, no good or bad.
These are things or ideas that only an egoic mind can understand
and invent. The presence has nothing to do with these "things".
It is untouched by these evaluations. That is the job of the ego-mind.
"I" is a devil hiding in plain sight"- the ego is always there, so close you cnanot see
it, but you are wrapped up in it al the time -ALL THE TIME.
Think about how often we are in self dialogue- self talk.
Always in ego mind- never in peace.
The presence is also there all the time right in front of your eyes, but you spend most of your life unaware of this thing. We spend all of our time in egoic identity.
The "guru" is the fake spiritual teacher or path. It is another incarnation of the ego.
It will fool you that you are being "spiritual" and holy, but feed on the delight you get from this.
You have to give up the guru too or kill the Buddha As the saying goes-
"If you meet Buddha on the road- kill him!"
If you meet the Buddha- it cannot be the Buddha. You are the Buddha so
It must be a fake- get rid of it. It's the ego playing at being the enlightened one.
You/ we "wander through a labyrinth of hubris" created by the identification with the egoic mind. It delights and entices with sense perceptions and refined deceptions.
It has practiced this all of your life. It is very versed in what it thinks you want or rather
what it wants. It is very powerful and knows YOU (itself) well , telling you that is what you are.
You are not that!!
"Somewhere a light is shining, shining in your eyes
Glowing with warm intensity. Forcing the darkness into
Retreat, it illuminates you.
Open your eyes and you can see."
What you are is the light of true self, that pushes the ego off its pedestal
or rather, allows the ego to think it is the ruler of the kingdom.
The ego cannot even see the kingdom- There is no gold in the kingdom of heaven
(go and listen to my song about that on Youtube).
The kingdom is not a kingdom of "things", but "things" is all an ego can see, so
it can never "see" the true self. For the ego, the true self does not exist.
The true self, though, knows only too well that the ego exists (as an illusion)
and therefore is not threatened by this thing at all.
It sees the real kingdom.
It is this schism that makes us broken.
Read it however you want, but that was the starting point for the song.
So, it is all about broken people caught up in ego identity.
As I have said before, songs tend to write themselves and this was one of those cases.
It took about a day or two for the appropriate lyrics to arise, but they all fell into place bit by bit.
Once you have a staring point or theme in songwriting the rest seems to just appear. I think it is because the general theme is just running and running in the mind subconsciously and it inevitably rises to the surface at some point. The story begins to write itself.
So, once I had the lyrics, it became a question of how it's going to sound.
When you sit and sing a song with just and acoustic guitar it sounds, well, like an acoustic guitar song. As you play it through though, you begin, or I begin, to image what other things are or could be going on in and around the melody. What is the bass going to be doing? How are the drums going to sound and where are they coming in in the song etc.
In this case I had already downloaded a hip hop drum loop which I was thinking of using at some point. This became useful as a musical starting point. I reversed it too at some points in the track to give it a weird sound.
I wanted everything to sound weird and twisted, manic and disjointed- just like the ego.
I wanted a sort of schizophrenic quality- things being disjointed and broken. That's why you can hear the shattering glass sounds dotted throughout the track. They are representations of this damage and broken-ness. In fact the tract starts with the sound of breaking glass backwards. All of this is the mind in madness.
Additional inspiration came, as so often, from Bowie, who was a master of being the "outsider", the damaged and alienated character stuck in a fake world in which he didn't belong, or didn't feel he belonged.
He once said that that was his only theme- the one single theme running through all of his work was alienation.
I was watching the video, which is great, to the track "Little Wonder" and loved the colours and the disjointed images.
so, now I had to think about how, on a minuscule budget, I could capture some of that feeling.
Costumes, my own normal clothes actually (yes, I often walk about dressed like that) and locations were considered. Contact lenses were purchased.
We (Nicole and I) thought about possible locations and decided that U-Bahn stations (underground tram stations) would be great. There are a few here that have a quite interesting decor. The one we used mostly was Lohring in Bochum because it has this "glass" floor and the lights running along it
So we began with the footage of the graffitied wasteland under the bridge in Essen (a city near by), then moved on to shoot the trains in the pissing rain and cold.
The next stop was the trams stations, two in all, and then to the motorway to shoot the cars. I mean, not shoot, but shoot- you know what I mean!! Don't want to get branded as a terrorist and extremist.
As I have said, all of this took 7 hours.
Most of the video was to be lip-sync. This is another problem, at least for me, as it means being delicate when editing to get the lip-sync right. This was necessary though, as the lyrics are so important in the song.
The editing took ages because I already had the video finished, I stayed up till 3 in the morning to get it done, and the next day the whole lot got lost and I had to start all over again. So, the video you are seeing is essentially version 2!
I hope this is interesting and possibly useful. And I hope it gives a little more insight into how a track is completed, from the very first inception of the idea to the final video.
It's another track that i am quite "proud" of, I don't really ever feel proud because I never really have the feeling that I have done anything. The songs are not mine- I don't feel like I wrote them.
But there are songs where I listen to them and think- "If I hadn't have written that, I would wish that I had." and Broken is one of them.
I like it. I like that it is a sort of dance number. I like the theme. I like the video.
I am not much of a performer and hate standing in front of a camera.
I mean, I don't mind to be be able to do the thing that needs to be done, but I am not
so sure of myself that I enjoy it. I just get it done.
This is also a but Bowiesque. He hated performing as Bowie, so he would hid behind the characters he created because they had the ball that David Jones lacked.
He could sing as Ziggy because Ziggy was a poser and a rock and roll star, but that
wasn't Bowie, that was Ziggy.
Yeah, I am sure there are people who will think it's not up to much or they can or could have done better- that's fine. Go and do it. I don't' mean that in a bitter way- I genuinely mean go and do it. If this makes you think you could do something better or inspires you to get up and go and do your own thing- great! I hope it does.
I would love to see the results!!
So, all that remains is, as usual, please LIKE (or dislike if you didn't like it), SUBSCRIBE, SHARE, this is important so that others get to hear the music and see the videos,
and COMMENT if you have any ideas or criticisms or you just want to say hello!!
As I have said before- We/I do not do this for money. If anything it costs us time and effort and money. We do it for the love of it and to entertain others (hopefully).
All we ask in return is a like, share, comment and subscribe. This is because the algorithms work this way. This is the only way to reach as many people as possible and give others the chance take part, just as I take part in other peoples channels.
Even if I am not in agreement with the content of a channel, or it's just not my thing,
I always think about the creator putting in the time and effort to make it available at least and, in most cases, they get a thumbs up just for that.
I don't think I have ever given a thumbs down even if I hated the content.
But that's just me!
The lyrics are below and the little picture of yours truly can be pressed to open the translator, so that you can get a gist of the lyrics if you are not a native English speaker.
Google translate isn't perfect, but it gives you a fair translation.
BROKEN
The million moods that rule you
Have been sent to fool you.
There's nothing left of you to see.
Just twisted, strange reflections
and obscene obsessions is all you really seem to be.
"I" is a devil hiding, hiding in plain sight.
Staring you right between the eyes.
"I" is a guru feeding, feeding on your delight
Using the self as a disguise.
Heaven and Hell are children
Born of the same delusion
Adding to our confusion
Letting us see that we are broken.
Broken.
We're broken.
So, now you wander through this
Labyrinth of hubris
Baying wildly at the moon.
Lost in sense perceptions
And refined deceptions
You stumble blindly to their tune.
Somewhere a light is shining, shining in your eyes
Glowing with warm intensity. Forcing the darkness into
Retreat, it illuminates you.
Open your eyes and you can see
That we're broken.
Broken.
We're broken.
It's shaking me us just a little
Tearing my world apart
Grating and grinding in me.
' Can't seem to get it together's
Becoming a work of art,
Shattering me into pieces.
We're broken. Broken. We're broken.
Broken is an original song by Robert Stevens.
Written and performed by Robert Stevens.
Copyright. R. Stevens 2021.
Pleas ask for permission if you would like to use the
track.
I'm unlikely to say no :)
< Go to Google translate
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