We're not back to normal yet for this newsletter, but I did make a game this month, for the launch jam of candle's bitsy clone bipsi. bipsi appealed because - among other additions to the bitsy formula - it lets you plug in your own javascript code in the editor. Which let me plug in some webaudio text-to-speech and synthesis code.
forest song is the result. It was very much an experiment in what I could do with bipsi, but if you ever wanted to wander through a bitsy forest that is part musical instrument, part sequencer, this is the game for you.
This is not a here and then gone project, so I won't be deleting it at the end of the month.
Further Reading
At the start of the month I found myself listening to the same 4 songs over and over again. In my head they're all connected, but possibly only in my head:
Taeyoon Choi's Distributed Web of Care is an intriguing introduction to something (the peer-to-peer web) that I was aware of but hadn't fully grasped. When I have some time I think I'd like to explore it properly.
Elizabeth Sandifer's on to chapter 3 of book 3 of Last War in Albion. This is a long-running series (started in 2013) covering the history of British comics, particularly focused on Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. I've ended up dipping in and out of it over the years; the one that brought me back to it this time was the first part of chapter 3: The Drums Stalk Up, on Morrison's comic St. Swithin's Day. Which I wasn't familiar with, but I did find a free copy online (it doesn't seem like you can buy it anywhere these days, barring very expensive second hand copies).
It feels very different to Morrison's usual style. And it's not like the story itself is super bleak, but what gets me about it is that the tenor of the comic feels so current (references to Wimpy, Thatcher, etc. notwithstanding). That sense of hopelessness, of living in a grey, miserable crab bucket of a country, run by the same venal, brutal aristocrats who have run it for centuries. So much of the UK's meanness, the country's thoroughly embedded, deep-rooted cruelty... I mean, enslaving half the planet, murdering millions with famine, concentration camps, the old divide and rule... It's hardly surprising there would be consequences for a nation's psyche, its conception of itself. I'd like to think an independent Scotland would be different, but I don't see any real willingness to face up to Scotland's role in the Empire, and it's obvious by now that burying this stuff doesn't work. It comes back. Again and again, twisted and seething. It seeps into the soil, poisons the air.
...the day after I wrote that paragraph, I read this powerful piece by Ritesh Babu on Morrison and Quitely's All-Star Superman. And there's an important counterweight to all that hopelessness; fitting that it would come via Morrison. CW: depression, suicide, but I recommend you carve out some time to read this one (it takes a few paragraphs to warm up, but once it gets going it doesn't let up).
"That’s what I found so comforting from that text. That there was someone out there who understood. Who also wanted to reach out. That they could make art such as this from that impulse. And that for all the horrors and failings and muck and shit of the earth, amidst all that, these works saw genuine beauty, they witnessed wonder, and were inspired and astonished by it the way a passionate child would be, without shame.
If it had just been the empty platitudes of Toxic Positivity I’d been given all my life, it wouldn’t have worked. Any of that would’ve fallen apart. I needed someone or something to acknowledge all the mess, how much it all sucked, and then emphasize that it was worth going on anyway, and the why of that."
So I think I’ll leave you there. Next month will probably be another month with no here and then gone project, but I am planning on releasing another game next month, so I will have something to share. Take care.