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Date: April 11th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 12:24 AM on the following day.

Weather: Unknown.

Mental and Physical Health State: Incredibly odd feeling these last twenty four hours. Surreality has superimposed itself on everything.

Day Overview: I can't exactly describe the events of the last twenty four hours in as full a picture as I'd like. Maybe someday in the next few years. But it changed the mood of the house in a way I'd not thought possible. I slept in until noon or so, and then decided on a whim, call it the spirit of the day, to block off the whole period for leisure activities. I've been stressing myself way too much with schoolwork. A day completely dedicated to entertainment and taking a break is what I needed. It means I have to work harder tomorrow, but that's fine. I just got done making a fool of myself in Minecraft, but in a Robin Hood sense. I'm being incredibly vague. It's fine, it's fine!

On My Mind: Today's question is from T... oben! He asks, What was the album or experience that made you really decide to get deeply into music, and what's the story behind the start of that journey? A very interesting question! My parents are deeply connected to the world of music - for a long time my father worked in live sound mixing, and my mother was part of an Industrial music group's dance ensemble for a while. I forget the name of the band, though. Growing up, they played a lot of music around the house, but I didn't really absorb much of it. I was more interested in Video Game and Anime music, if I'm totally honest. Around middle school I started getting a little bit deeper into music, but that was mostly confined to Pandora stations of artists I liked. I was briefly a big Trip Hop fan, through this band called I Monster that introduced me to the likes of The Avalanches, Portishead, and Massive Attack. I was also into Imagine Dragons and Muse and more alternative (oh, how feeble this label seems in the face of what was to come) music as well. I also liked Gorillaz a lot. Growing up, my brother and I liked to watch music videos on TV for a while, and those were some of my favorites. Through middle school, I got more and more into music. I quoted a Muse song in my eighth grade graduation speech, but I won't tell which. It's best that moment is forgotten. The Japanese word chuunibyou is very apt to describe those times.

After the end of eighth grade, though, I found that I wanted to get deeper into music. My usual stock had, as it were, started to grate on me. It had worn on me a bit too much, grown tired, overwrought. It felt melodramatic and useless. As it happens, the end of middle school coincided with the onset of my first real depressive episode. I felt isolated and without guidance, as the K-8 school I'd gone to for the last ten years (Kindergarten twice) of my life was such a constant that to have to leave it behind was very emotional for me. One fateful June day, my brother's summer program was having a start-of-the-summer-potluck at the high school. My parents went in with him, but I decided to stay outside and wait for them to be done. The high school in my city is right next to the library, and that whole block has a sort of courtyard/park thing going on, with lots of open green space and plants. Perfect for a bit of a walk. From my youth, I remembered one music video that my Mom yelled at my Dad for letting my brother and I watch, animated like Gorillaz, but scratchier, stranger, definitely not the same level of cartoony. The song it accompanied was called Paranoid Android by a band called Radiohead. I'd heard them compared to Muse enough, so I decided I'd check them out while I went for a short walk that summer evening. I put on OK Computer, put in my earbuds, and pressed play.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

• Consume Red by Ground-Zero: Probably the longest singular track of music I've ever heard. It takes its time to build an incredibly tense atmosphere, built around a looping sample of this korean horn thing that sounds like a wolf-man hybrid's howl. Intermittent noise bursts interrupt this occasionally for twenty or so minutes, each burst longer than the last. It feels like blinking red lights on a snowy mountain range in a blizzard, one per peak. Then, midway through, drums break out, and it just takes off. It's impossible to put into words. It's on the high end of a 9/10 for sure. The sole complaint is that perhaps the beginning portion goes on too long. The noise bursts felt almost necessary to keep me interested, at points. But when it comes to being in service of a higher artistic goal, this absolutely is for sure.