18082019

Gonna be spending the bulk of tomorrow in transit to London, which means I had to pack up all my stuff. I worked almost entirely on audio today and specifically on implementing a low-pass filter on rain when the player is indoors. I set up a pretty flexible crossfade system that works very effectively and I’ve also begun using it for the overall forest soundscape as well, moving between day/night ambience. Speaking of, I changed those sound effects to quieter, less wind-heavy tracks, and converted all the ambient audio files over to OGG to further reduce size on disk and memory footprint. I’m feeling pretty good about the audio right now; when I return (on 3 September…) I’ll have to make sure to get new recordings for moving through brush and maybe even footprints, although that might require better equipment to which I don’t currently have access anymore. Well, I’ll figure it out then.

Staoue came over today and we spent some time by the lake and then we went to the high school, where we passed the time lying down and watching the sky as the storm moved in. It looked like a massive, dark wave surging towards us and it made me feel uncomfortable but having a friend by me made it a worthwhile experience. We talked about high school – it seems like that’s all I ever talk about these days when I meet my friends, but we do talk about other stuff – and girls. I’ve been feeling real nostalgic lately. It’s not that I want to be back in high school: things were just much more straightforward back then. Everyone was just put there all together, and you never had to really reach out and find people: they were just there and all you had to do was find some common ground and all of a sudden you were great friends and you felt something in common with them. There was a clear and palpable understanding of the future and even if it looked totally empty, the sense of a schedule gave the days a kind of structure and intertia towards which we constantly stumbled and occasionally hurtled. 

It’s much harder now though. 

Everybody’s either gone away or they’ve all got their own goals now and I can’t relate to so many of them. Going out to see them or to meet new people costs money that I don’t have and can’t make. Even if I were able to meet them, I don’t know if we’d have much to talk about anymore: in the lack of common interests, there are no more shitty assignments to bemoan, no more teachers to mess around with, no more rumours to piss away the time. All that’s left to us to share is this creeping sense of uncertainty about ourselves, our futures, where we’re headed as individuals and as a nation and as a species. I know that sounds really dramatic, but really, it’s actually quite banal. And that’s the saddest part. We think we’re becoming mature, you know, we’re becoming adults or whatever and learning how to deal with “the real world” – but actually, we’re just growing more cynical, more indifferent towards and even accepting of the casual cruelty of the world. That makes me really sad. I don’t want to get used to being swept away. I don’t want to see my friends get used to being swept away either. But I’m afraid we already have.