there is a rock in my house - Behind the Scenes

Hello, folks! It's a new video that I wasn't really sure I wanted to post!

Since it's another weird one, I don't have much in the way of bloopers or deleted scenes, so instead, here's a long post on how it came to be:

This video is another strange departure from my normal style, and to be honest, I made it more for myself. I was feeling extremely rough—a mixture of burnout, and sadness, and anger at my burnout and sadness—while staring at the computer screen one day, and I wrote the lyrics about simultaneously hating my computer screen and needing it in order to survive. I used "rock" instead of "screen" because, really, what is a screen if not a bunch of rocks and metal and junk all flattened together? 

(I don't actually know if that's what a screen is. I am not an engineer. I prefer to keep those things a mystery.)

After writing it, I went into my office and tooted around on a recorder for a while until I finally managed to make this marching tune. I'm sure Karen appreciated me turning the house into an elementary school music class in the mid-afternoon.

(You can watch my great talent for recorder here. Password: dootdoot)

I did that back on April 11th. I didn't touch the song for two weeks, mostly because of the other video that I wanted to come out first, RGSS (which folks in the Novelty Instrumentalist tier have seen in the process streams). 

Eventually, I sat down and composed the rest of the song. And then I filmed the whole thing in a day and a half. Lucky for me, I had some cool rocks from when Karen and I went to a gem & rock sale in Joshua Tree to use as the titular rock in my house. 

(I included some photos from our trip to Joshua Tree up top, so you can see where we procured such a beautiful rock. Kind of feel bad for using the rock in a video that casts it in such a bad light.)

I finished editing the video on May 2nd, and decided I'd hold off on posting it until RGSS was done, mostly because I didn't want to post two "serious" videos one after the other.

And then I fell back into all the feelings that had made me make this video in the first place. I was a little paralyzed by not wanting to post two sad videos in a row, while also feeling like I needed to post something or I'd be failing as a creator. There's the constant anxiety of losing momentum as an independent creator, lest people forget about you and the algorithms throw you to the wind. But on the other hand, what if people don't like that I put up one sad video after another?

I've been wallowing in this feeling for the past two weeks, and yesterday, after hitting a breaking point, I finally decided to just put it up. This video was all about needing to get through this feeling, and I can't finish the catharsis until I chuck it up on that wonderful/terrible internet that I hate/love so much.

Tomorrow, Karen and I are finally going on that weeklong break we've been planning. I'm glad that I'm posting this video before I get a week off the internet. 

Hopefully, I'll come back energized and refreshed and ready to rock and roll on some new, silly, maybe scary, videos. But that's not the goal of the trip. The goal is to hopefully not have a goal, and be cool about that.

I'll catch you all when I'm back! Thanks for hanging in there with me.