The Outer Darkness (ft. RAN)

Music is therapy for me, first and foremost. When I say that, I mean it in every sense of the word: this hobby/obsession/lifestyle/whatever is one of the only things keeping me out of my head and present in my life. When I heard RAN's final master of this song for the first time, I wept like I haven't in a long, long time; it felt SO FUCKING GOOD to get this out of my head and into my ears and make it somehow external to myself, if even for a short while.

The Outer Darkness is where I end up when I let myself stop and listen to my own internal monologue reminding me what a useless piece of shit I am; how incapable I am of being a success, or a father, or a functional, useful human being in general; or how stupid I was to bring a child into this dying, collapsing, greedy cesspool of a planet; or how much better off everyone I love would be if I did them a favor and ceased to exist. It's foggy and cloying and pervasive and it makes even the smallest decisions or baby steps of progress insurmountable and terrifying, and most of all, it brings with it a lingering, abiding fear of things going right, because that is where disaster waits to drop me back to rock bottom if I let myself indulge in even the briefest moment of positivity.

My producer handle is Pashang 爬上, which comes from the Chinese "to climb up" or "to mount," and for me, it represents my ultimate goal in music creation: to climb up and out and away from the Outer Darkness and remember, even for a little while, that it doesn't exist everywhere all the time.

So this song is for me, and for you, if you find yourself curling your toes over the cliff face of oblivion, staring outwards and inwards at the endless expanse of nothingness and still find it within yourself to raise your voice to the universe and say "FUCK YOU, NOT TODAY." It does that for me and I hope it does for you, too. Thanks for listening.