Got What You Need
I wrote a zine for a video game about a non-existent future where music saves the world, and it consumed me.
I wrote a zine for a video game about a non-existent future where music saves the world, and it consumed me. Which isn’t to say the process where was bad, but rather the opposite. It was incredible and enriching in a thousand ways, and it became my every waking thought for all the spare days and hours I’ve had for the last two months.
If I have ever been a mark for anything, it’s the pitch “do you want to talk about the possibility of writing a zine about music for a video game?” I was already worried I wouldn’t get this job, and after a zoom chat and some back and forth the idea was set in stone. The game, Bandocracy, is still in its early stages of development, but I was enamoured with the core ideas of it. In the future, where rich people have abandoned earth in the aftermath of a rolling series of climate catastrophes, bands can change the world. A single song, at the right moment, will sway the hearts and minds of eager listeners, their reach heightened by the work of Bureaucritics, who are culture critics/music writers elevated to a heightened station.
In the game, a visual novel of sorts, you play as a band working and fighting to write songs that will inspire all raised fists to fight back at oppressive forces. In the game, your drummer is a robot. It’s charming and funny and full of life. But I wasn’t playing the game.
This is the challenge of making a physical zine about culture in a world that isn’t quite real. Zines are inherently counter-culture, hastily photocopied documents spread hand to hand at shows or in alleys around shared cigarettes. They are the narrative that runs counter to that which might appear bound in glossy pages, and with that at heart the largest hurdle for my brain was how to write about the counter culture to a mainstream that isn’t real at all.
I read through world bibles and narratives, and dug into the lore of the world as created by the team at Bloom. I wrote thousands of words that would be deleted, then thousands more than I would edit down and place in little piles to be deleted later. What I discovered is that so much of the world I had to envision was the result of whatever terrible folly our worst impulses here and now will lead us too. Yes, I was writing about a future where rich people moved to the fucking moon and whales are an active part of vibrant music scenes, but it was all rooted in a reality I could see and feel. So I wrote my fears in the present onto the page, and wrapped them in the security of the unknown.
I wrote and edited down, made test prints and samples and changed details. I thought about the future as seen in Bandocracy, about the despair at endless climate emergencies and wealthy people who will only ever act in their own self-interest as the sky in Toronto turned orange by wildfire smoke. I edited pages through endless alerts on my phone about squalls and unprecedented rainfall. I read about rich men in rockets hoarding wealth and power. I had panic attacks and took little walks and forgot to text people back. I got behind on deadlines and lapsed on projects and wrote about how people in the unknown future were living beyond the end of the world. I thought about the idea that a song, its seconds and minutes and all their little melodies, might change everything.
At night and in the morning on my walks with Bowie through our neighbourhood, I listened to music in headphones and breathed the air on the days it was safe to do so. Feeling everything, and nothing all at once. I thought about how music has changed my life, my home, my body, my career. I was never writing a zine about the future, I was instead processing all my anxieties of the present, and finding a way to make them beautiful for the days I will never see.
The zine I wrote and compiled will be available at Gamescom, a video game conference (event?) happening in Cologne at the end of August. If you’re there, seek out the Bloom Media tent and grab a copy!
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I got really into this track, “All The Rage” by Wishy, a band from Indianapolis I had never heard of until very recently. At first listen it reminded me of my favourite parts of It’s a Shame About Ray by The Lemonheads. Poppy and bouncy and a little frantic. It feels like summer, the way I want summer to feel in a song. Light and breezy, like a memory returned to a tired mind. Take a listen to it, and maybe like me, you’ll be instantly inspired to create a sprawling playlist on the strength of it.
If you’re in Toronto on Friday, August 28, my partner Lysh’s band By Divine Right will be playing a show at the Drake Underground, featuring the return of Army Girls, Carmen Elle (Diana) long dormant 2-piece band they fronted with Andy Smith in the 2010s. A legendary night in the making. Get tickets here:
