hello, world!

the journal part

So I've had, probably, the WORST year of my life. 2024, you did your absolute best, but please God never again. I can't acklowedge the good without the bad - and fuck have I learned about /good/ and /bad/! - so let's start at the beginning.

January was uneventful. February was ten years long. In March, my great grandmother - born in 1923 - passed away. In April, I stopped breaking the law when I drank. June, July, I was so utterly alone; in September I was swept back up in a love I thought was doomed. The very next month, I learned a very difficult lesson in trusting my intuition.

But New Year's Eve? Fuck, man.

Music's a big part of my life. That's not to say I can *make* music - I can do a diddy on the piano, at best - but that was a different story when I was younger. Picture this: middle school, 2014. You're a pimply fat little kid sitting in second chair clarinet. You spend way too much time plugged into your ipad (you're too young to have a phone!), finding ways to download MP3s from YouTube and gushing to your online friends (psssh, who needs *in person interaction?!*) about Five Nights at Freddy's.

Your band director, Mr. N, saunters in and happily declares he has something to show the class before we get into our lesson. A few heads pop up, but most of your classmates continue in low, disinterested chatter. Mr. N switches the flip on the ancient projector, its hum filling the stuffy room as he shuts the blinds. He has found, he announces, a new kind of music.

That gets your peers' attention. The room is dimmed and quiet. The projector's beam flickers to life, and you chew on the end of your reed a bit as the search is entered:

skrillex dubstep dance

And hell, it's actually kind of cool. The guy in the video moves oddly, at once completely controlled but moving perfectlty in time with the chaotic, industrial sounds bleeding into a mix of melody and sensation. The bass hits you in your chest, rattles around your ribs. Fuck, you think, Mr. N is right - there's never been anything like this before.

Now, this experience didn't ignite a bone-deep passion for the art of EDM. Honestly, I wouldn't remember the specific song if I heard it now. But I felt it, you know? Kinda like peeking into a bar's window but not going in.

Fast forward ten or so years, and here we are again. Time is a flat circle and all that. I started going to more events early 2024, but I was by no means a regular. It was LOUD, I knew one or two people there at best, and it's pretty intimidating being around so many passionate artists. Granted, the passionate artists are also complete fucking losers and dorks, but they're the *cool* type of losers and dorks.

There's this group called the Low End Legion.

The party they're throwing is an exclusive invite list, which I know I'm only really on because I'm friends with a few of the DJs. People start trickling in as the sun starts sinking behind the trees. First in is F4LL3N0N3, which is just an objectively cool thing to type; ANNIHILATE's been with us the whole evening, and it's strange to see him so relaxed before going up to the decks. I can see myself in OBS, sitting on the black couch next to a friend of mind who looks like an irl Oblivion character.