The Dark Side Beckons

(Alternate title: "Victory Conditions.")

This isn't going well. This whole May 2006 Alternate Universe reconnection thing, this wild attempt at redeeming a perhaps irredeemable time and place.

First of all, my two small children pretty much stab me in the brain every time I try to sit down and get in the right mental space to approach music composition. I'm just not in the right season to be very productive with music right now.

Second, I am reminded of the feelings of abject futility I had the last time I tried to reconnect with old friends from BGSU. People just don't seem to care anymore. Or, at least, optimistically, they don't care enough to act. To reciprocate.

Third, I'm not 24 anymore. Some things from that time are hard to recreate.

Fourth, fifth, sixth, and beyond... forget about it. Fuggeddaboudit!

And then there's the Dark Side. I have decided to come back to the Maelstrom-related goals in September, when BGSU fall semester is in full swing. But this time, I'm not going to coincide with the New Music and Arts Festival (NMAF) in October as I did before, because this year I am going to unleash the crap out of Halloween because i deserve it, and I don't want BGSU getting in the way of my prime time glory season. Nah, I have BGSU Revenge now rescheduled for September. It was going to be this month, but... coronavirus canceled school.

I wanted to indulge in the Light Side aspects of BG, whatever scant little of it there ever was. But that falls flat when my friends deny me a high-five.

I joked with my wife (she didn't know I wasn't joking) that I could easily have several seasons' worth of Quantum Leap episodes about my two years in grad school alone, and that I was thinking about my time there in terms of precisely that: projecting myself back in time, skipping around on the timeline, "putting things right that once went wrong..."

Look, I'm trying to be positive here. But if you're going to leave me hanging, then the only thing left is the Dark Side. And I will scrub that fucking place off the face of the planet.

In September.

I'll harass some people on Twitter, I'll spam links to my scathing EA satire narrative composition "Unfinished Fever Dreams" along with my tell-all Twitterstorm from last October, I'll compose my EA autobiographical opera to add to that spamming, I'll unleash my other orchestral outline for "The Destruction of Bowling Green, Ohio" along with program notes, I'll train with a bokken in the rain at 2am, I'll smash a bottle of Jim Beam Devil's Cut against a clay bust of each faculty member, I'll make wargaming miniatures terrain with a scale replica of Kobacker Lobby (at the very least, if not the rest of the musical arts building) for a lightsaber slaughter, and I'll be an otherwise general nuisance. In September. All of those things for real, in September.

The Dark Side is laughing at the Light, encroaching on all its corners, surrounding it, threatening it. Taking its time. Slowly closing in, savoring the moment.

But now, I want to indulge in the idea of a "repaired timeline." It's May 2006. After an abysmal first year, in August 2005 I'd turned things around just as Noah and I schemed we would do over that summer, when we were gearing up for Year Two, the chance to get something out of that awful program. In this timeline, I finished my thesis composition by Christmas, as planned, before Lillios and Shrude fucked me over. In this timeline, things went according to plan, and Spring Semester 2006 was altogether glorious, redeeming the past three shitty semesters. Or, realistically, hopefully at least breaking even. According to plan.

More than anything, I wish I'd gotten more words of affirmation. Or something like that. More recognition for my work, or for my many trials. Encouragement. Anything.

But hey, at least I'm blogging within a week of my last post, instead of going a month or even a year without word. Trying to get this ugly, mossy ball rolling.

Right now, though, I feel especially resentful of BGSU, of Time itself, and of everyone who has forgotten me.

So, what's the point? What's my endgame, you ask? What are my Victory Conditions?

Well, my endgame for Maelstrom is a direct confrontation with the faculty members who made my life a living hell on purpose. I would think that much is obvious. But the rest? How to "redeem" this mess?

Apart from several personal goals, which I have listed privately to be assiduously pursued, a lot of it comes down to "relevance," as the good Captain once diagnosed for me. If our friendship circa May 2006 doesn't matter now, then whatever was the point? Sure, I could focus on hurting those who hurt me, and then there's still the War of Perception, of course, but what matters most is holding onto the light. That's you.

Isn't it? What matters most, I mean. Isn't it?

But the light is flickering, dimming, failing.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand no one cares. All righty, then. It's the Dark Side for me. That's cool, too. I've got all month for this.

And again in September. The Dark Side beckons... Gooood... [cackles]