For some reason this blog is becoming much less texty and much more picture-y.
Here, lemme combine the two.
I've known for a while that Adam has a whole ton of side projects and/or old band stuff lying around, but I never realized how many things he actually took part in until I did some research.
After coming up with too many results with weird names ("Can You Smell What the Rock Is Cooking"? ...what?), I decided to smush them all together in one big...
Took 8 to 9 hours too long to complete but I personally like the result.
I ran out of projects halfway through. There are many... but sadly not quite enough, so I brought in all the albums I could find, and then a couple songs I found awesome. If you haven't heard some of his old stuff, I encourage you to check'em out!
...not really 'boredom', perse, more... uh... 'not wanting to do real work'.
This one's the latest piece of procrastination I've done - at first I was going to do All Things Bright and Beautiful's album cover, but it looked complicated so I chickened out. The small words in the back are all lyrics to Owl City songs... can you name them all?
This one was actually done about a year ago for a friend's birthday present - I've mushed several of her usernames together and the background words are snippets from her stories.
FEEL YOUR RETINAS BURN. A random vector I did for fun and because that pink was so pretty I wanted to use it somewhere.
All of these are vectors, made in, uh, Powerpoint.
Yeah, I do have Photoshop - I just prefer using Powerpoint's 'pen' tool over Photoshop's. Granted, you could probably do a lot more with PS; however, at this point in time... I don't feel the need. Once I get a tablet I'll be scrawling all over Photoshop's pretty canvas with that brush, but the pen tool just doesn't seem to like me (and vice versa). Plus, in Powerpoint you can make the shape(s) as big as you want to or zoom in as far as you want without making it pixilated or anything. The downside is that I sometimes put so many shapes in that Powerpoint starts lagging...
Someday I'll start using the pen tool like a real artist does.
June is usually, for me, full of nasty and rather undelightful things, such as finals, nights too hot for sleeping, and the emergence of the mosquitoes. It's at this point in time that the year's stresses and disappointments all seem to come and slap me in the face. Every little thing seems to affect me too much, whether it's being bested in something I tried hard at, dropping a raw egg accidentally, or just tripping over my cat - I become irritable, snappy, and it's hard not become the pessimist I am and rather despise. However, this year round June also dropped something rather shiny and glorious into my lap.
Or, should I say, bright and beautiful.
Through the haze of tests and studying and stress emerged All Things Bright and Beautiful, a pretty little CD filled with the most amazing music I've heard from you yet.
You've truly outdone yourself this time, Adam. To say the songs are breath-taking would be an understatement - they do so much more. They make me smile, want to dance and laugh and sing and fly, dream - and simply sit there, each song breaking my heart a little bit more with its beauty.
The Real World swept me up completely with its vivid descriptions and amazing imagery. Don't need no iTunes visualizer, and please never make a video for it - nothing in this world could ever capture the absolutely beautiful scenes your song created for me. After seeing your "Track by Track" for it, I had high expectations for a song I could relate so closely to - and they were met with flying colours. It felt like I was completely lifted free of this world and set somewhere beautiful and carefree, where anything was possible; it was my own little haven, my escape from reality, and for that I have to thank you. When I opened my eyes (I don't quite remember when I closed them, but closed them I did), I was honestly quite startled to find the normality and drabness of my bedroomaround me after being drenched in such a vivid world of colour and music.
I hadn't even realized I was becoming depressed (again) until I felt that happiness your songs brought with them, and those reminders of God's love and strength made that desperation and hopelessness cease.
Thank you for reminding me why I began loving your music in the first place - for being filled to the brim with that dreaminess only you have ever managed to bottle up in a song - for reminding me why I strive to be an optimist in this pessimistic and cynical world- for giving me that feeling that I can fly and soar somewhere above reality and its troubles.
When I saw Adam's video for the Real World, my jaw literally dropped.
(If you haven't seen it yet, here it is.)
Because for years I've been wishing for the exact same thing, in nearly those exact words - somewhere you could escape to and be yourself and just relax for a bit, push away reality for a while yet be able come back whenever you wanted.
I've always felt the need for some place like that; a dream world of some sort, or even a separate reality like they have in those science fiction novels - but a reality where I'm in control and everything works out a bit more smoothly, a bit more quickly and a little more happily.
While reality can be nice to come back to once in a while, there's no doubt that it's tough to go through sometimes. A lot of the time life feels like it's contorting and pushing and twisting in every direction, like its very purpose is to squeeze the life out of me, and having keep my balance on top of that shifting mass of reality sometimes just seems too much. Please excuse the analogy, but you know those pirate ship rides at amusement parks?
(Google Images FTW. Photo cred to... someone.)
Yeah, those!
I love them, but if you ride them fifty five times in a row you can throw up, even if you have a stomach made of steel. Bleeeuaaahghg. Have you ever tried standing up the entire time the ride is going? Riding at the veeery front/back of the ship? I don't know about you, but I get pretty tired after a while just because of the way I grip the bar like a lifeline (which it is), and the way your core muscles and stuff have to keep adjusting so you keep your balance and don't topple over headfirst onto the people in the row in front of you, and possibly out of the ship as well. And at that point, what I'd do is I'd get out of the ship, go grab a cotton candy, sit down on the grass and laugh while other people scream and throw up on the pirate ship.
Sadly, you can't do that with this reality.
(or can you? [insert "DUN DUN DUN" here])
A little while back I was obsessed with sleep - obsessed to the point where some people might have deemed it unhealthy. I loved sleep. I rushed through things (or simply gave them up) so I could get to my comfy little bed earlier. When I was awake, I was constantly thinking about sleep, daydreaming about speedwalking home to take another five hour nap. Never mind the fact I was sleeping as much as a cat does; I just needed more sleep.
Why?
(Adam, if you're reading this, please don't get creeped out.)
I'd found my 'escape'. Somehow I had gained a little control over how my dreams developed, who was in them and so on and so forth. I had obsessed over Adam enough in the real world that I had managed to drag him into my dreams (as well as a number of other things). Nightmares were non-existent. Every dream was happy, carefree, weightless, stressless and completely and utterly... dreamy. Who needed dreams to become reality? Screw reality, I have sleep to carry me to my dreams. Besides, it's the only way I'd ever be able to fly, and I did quite a lot of that during those dreams. Even if I didn't have those ridiculously awesome and vivid dreams, I would wake up feeling rested for at least five seconds.
...and then get slapped in the face with the load of homework, work, stuff to do, and life in general.
To quote Ernest Hemingway,
"I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
It worked well for a while.
Then I began having troubles falling asleep. (finally bitten by the insomnia bug that seems to plague all Owl City residents, it seems.)
I'm back to trying to find that escape from reality.
My imaginary 'dream world' currently hides past a magical portal behind a poster on my wall. Tee hee.
