3D Metropolis Digital Art, Writing, and more by Scott Drake

Or how my imagination got lost, and a chance performance by the unknown, but wonderful, artist Psyche Corporation sparked inspiration in me to get it back.

Last weekend I went with friends to Midsummer Magick Renaissance Festival in Oxford, CT.

Very different from the festival I was familiar with in Sterling, this was smaller and had only tents instead of permanent buildings; I started adjusting my expectations. They did have a time-traveling theme, embracing the guests who like to dress up but not necessarily in renaissance garb, which was a neat idea.

Source (used with permission)

But we happened to stick around for the performance by Psyche Corporation and that was actually fantastic (surprise!) Easily the best thing about the festival and it made the whole thing worthwhile.

Genevieve (Psyche Corporation) appears young, perhaps fresh out of college, and has the ability to jump wholeheartedly into nightmare territories, to write songs with themes like robot armageddon, necromancy, a sentient building trapping a child in an elevator. She seems both invested in these whimsical nightmare stories yet also self-aware.

All of this got me thinking: how is it that I no longer seem capable of such flights of fancy? That I balk at envisioning such things and abandon fantasy so readily?

In the same day I also saw Inception (very minor spoiler in this paragraph), which made me think that Christopher Nolan took a more “grown-up” approach to fantasy, or SF as it were, by maintaining a rigid internal consistency and realism. Such realism in fact that at times I felt, in Inception, slight disappointment that maybe he didn’t go far enough out. These are dreams? And yet the most wild images were zero-g fights in a hotel, caused by adherence to internally consistent logic of the van falling off the bridge.

So execution was still tethered to reality, in a way. For Batman his treatment was pretty good… but it never (in Inception) approached the imaginative invention of Psyche Corporation’s storytelling in song, or something like Kawajiri’s Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

…The question is, can I? Or have I welded my imagination to the floor in the name of logic?

Taking a step back, I know I got to my present situation through a succession of choices. I spend time writing software instead of pouring myself into creative expression. Focusing on my programming skills has worked, I now do it as a full-time job and also occasionally hack away at night on my own projects. Yet while programming can involve creativity, it doesn’t scratch the same itch as when I used to sketch and make 3d art; there’s no clear outlet for imagination, for storytelling.

Seeing Psyche Corporation perform, knowing nothing about them before Genevieve started singing, I was struck by the way the lyrics ventured unflinching into a rich world of dreams and nightmares full of fantastic imagery. Not to mention music that wends through my gauntlet of exacting taste to charm my ear in uniquely sweet and deadly fashion. I decided two things before the set was over:

• I had become a Psyche Corporation fan (you bet I bought a CD at the show, and eagerly await another)
• I was moved and inspired – I’m determined to strip things out of my weekly schedule to make time for creative expression

It will take practice just to get back to the level I had reached years ago, let alone surpass it, but it should be an enjoyable journey. Stick around if you’d like to see how it turns out.