The Playlist for There is an Emptiness in Me

Talking about song choices, and the personal value of designing a playlist for a piece of writing.

I think most writers have to have some sort of jam going to make sense of their work as they’re making it. My brother is a fine artist. He is also a fine artist. We discuss music quite a bit as a pivotal piece of the process. We both draw from various inspirations, country, folk, metal, rock, rap, etc, but for my brother, a driving beat and predictable tempo is what serves his dance with the paint. He loves Tech9, George Thorogood, Colter Wall, all great musicians. But my brother’s work (find his work here) is fundamentally physical. Painting is more of a literal dance than what I do with my fat ass plopped down in a chair moving nothing but my fingers. It makes sense that his process requires something literally danceable (or at least head-bobbable). Writing is different. Maybe just as cerebral as painting, but far less physical. To prime the mechanism of worldbuilding and character design, I have to get the whacky non-patterns in my head to come together into something sensible. The head-bobbable tunes, unfortunately, work like lithium to me. I can concentrate but cannot produce anything. I often resort to prog, and the weirder the story, the weirder the tunes required.

I recently finished “There is an Emptiness in Me”, which I am releasing chapter by chapter once a week. Emptiness is a weird fucking story. It follows a lot of weird characters who don’t know who they are, detached from their identity, putting on a play for seemingly no one. Each chapter opens with stage direction before diving into the meat. It’s weird. It’s disorienting. I needed some weird and disorienting tunes. Above are the images of the playlist. It’s pretty bitchin’ in my opinion, but I feel the need to justify just why I put together this specific playlist.

1. Thorn - Leprous I don’t understand what this song is about. I don’t know why they wrote it. In Biblical narrative, the thorn in the side has to do with any number of things. Irritation, annoyance, even the drive to sin in some contexts. The song is at least somewhat about something causing the singer to worsten in character or action. Sticking with Biblical analogy, Paul also has that whole bit about Sin being the thing he doesn’t want to do but does anyway, examining the general strangeness of desire in the first place. The story is about nothing if not desire. Not to mention, this song sets an uncanny and eerie tone, that I hope Emptiness also has. I kinda retrofit this song into the narrative of Emptiness, but I think it works.

2. Forget - Subhumans I added this song initially as a joke, since Emptiness is also about memory and how memory changes relative to desire (See Elizabeth Loftus). However, the more I listened to the goofy British lyrics to this one, the more I realized the song hints at quite a bit of the general idea behind some of the characters in Emptiness. It works on accident, but it works well.

3. Hyperreality Show - Utsu P First of all, shut up, weeb. But I think Baudrillard, the french postmodernists in general all had a hand in the creation of Emptiness. I stumbled upon this song on accident like 3 years ago, after having had read Anti-Oedipus, and found it interesting. I knew enough Japanese (not from watching anime, shut up, I hate you. I studied it in highschool because everyone was doing Spanish and French and I was/am a shithead contrarian.) to kind of understand it, and it stuck out to me. The notion of Hyperreality (Baudrillard) and Hyperstition (Land) play central roles in the creation of Emptiness. It would be wrong not to include a reference.

4. Hole - Bent Knee This song has nothing to do with Emptiness explicitly. It is more about the relationship (in particular, one scene) between Morroway and Claudia. As of writing this, that chapter is not out yet. But you’ll get it when you get it. It’s mostly a joke. But Bent Knee fucks hard.

5. Nighttime Disguise - Leprous Another Leprous song. Effectively Nighttime Disguise can be about winter. . . or about not knowing one’s self from one moment to the next. It is simply an addition to the general problems of Emptiness. Though, in particular I think of the character Rosalind. Rosalind gives me the willies. Hope she’s well.

6. One of Us is the Killer - Dillinger Escape Plan The tamest DEP song ever written. But yeah. My most abstract elevator pitch of Emptiness would be, “A murder mystery without the murderer.” Take that to mean what you will. This song was effectively a joke song, but it does tell some of the story. If you’re afraid of spoilers don’t listen to the lyrics. Then again, maybe the lyrics may further obfuscate your predictions. Emptiness was never really made to be a story with a great twist or anything like that. It was meant to be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. So if you know how it ends, it hopefully shouldn’t detract from the tale itself.

7. Unself Portrait - Artificial Language Poor, poor Dee. IYKYK, and YDK because that part hasn’t happened at the time of writing this. The most obscure way to write a song about self-destruction. But damn does it make me horny. AL are amazing if you haven’t heard them already. If you know Syncatto, you know their star guitar player Charlie Robbins. But Shay’s lyrics are what make the band for me, along with Robbins and Vic Coral’s ability to bounce off of each other. But self destruction in Emptiness is (maybe irresponsibly) treated as neutral. It is as much celebrated as it is shunned because self-destruction means a lot of things. It might mean becoming yourself. But what the song acknowledges is that self destruction doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it has a gravity that sucks in surrounding people. This song also reeks of Baudrillard. Take a whiff.

8. Mémoire Insuffisante - Art by Numbers A song from Claudia’s perspective to Morroway. Make of that what you will. ABN also features Johnathan Simpson and Victor Coral of Artificial Language. You can hear the influence bigly.

9. In Hell as on Earth - Cryptodira These guys are theory nerds which makes me hard. I love their lyrics. This song is about alienation under capitalism. Neat. There’s more I could say but it might spoil some of the fun of Emptiness (totality! TOTALITY!).

10. Memories Are Made of This - Dean Martin The joke. Do you get it?

11. Something for Nothing - Rush King Lear is a hefty influence on Emptiness. Maybe you get the joke. Maybe you don’t. Emergence is a terrible thing. Maybe a terrible good.

Anyway, that’s it. Enjoy continued reading of Emptiness. My other book (real book) Becoming analyzes similar themes from a different and maybe more palatable lens. That’s coming out relatively soon. For now, I hope you dig Emptiness. Leave a review, tear it up, love it, hate it. Do what thou will. For now, this is my playlist.