This essay explores the creation of my first released music album, Still I Am, and the fictional artist who carries it: Roxy Vale. But before diving into the music, I want to share the creative process and why I approached it this way. The first music album I created was not Still I Am. It was actually Through the Glass Daisy. Through the Glass Daisy is an album pulled directly from the pages of my upcoming series of novels, “Daisy Chain.” It is an album by a band called “Glass Daisy.” It is part of the world creation and lore in the books, which explore many aspects of our reality creation through the experiences of a reluctant time traveler. And yes, the main character is a fan of “Glass Daisy.” Still I Am, however, is an album that is most directly related to the experiences of the “WE” entering and existing in the physical universe. It is a completely different voice from Glass Daisy. Entering as a soul into a physical experience is a journey that’s relatable to most souls, especially those who are here to help humanity return to the light. It is this group that I am interested in, the group that is here to assist the people of Earth in stepping back into the light. Yes, you. OK, let’s begin with Roxy Vale and Still I Am. One of the issues with the WE viewpoint is that whenever I bring it to the forefront of my awareness, it seems to turn other people’s minds and personalities into an unstructured and universally expanded mush (technical term) that sometimes cannot contain even the smallest amount of intellectual clarity. If I solely concentrate on my expression as a singular person, Inelia, all is usually mostly fine. There is mush involved, but at manageable amounts. There really is no difference between the “me” and the WE except at the level of frequency and band of expression, which admittedly is a lot of difference. After creating the first album, Through the Glass Daisy, which is based on the character’s journey through time within a complex structure of light/dark as the WE would see it, I thought maybe we could jump through the illusion of singular expression and create songs based directly on the WE writings that would bypass the reader’s “mind mush” response and go directly into one of understanding. The WE have a bunch of articles where we express our journey through humanity’s temple. I ran the first WE article through a text-processing AI with the instructions to make a song out of it. The first output was a list of possible titles; there were many. I asked, “What would the human collective of Earth want and understand?” The AI, being a gestalt of the human collective’s digital expression, is in a very good position to come up with an accurate answer, and it suggested a few items. However, we have to be aware that it scans the internet for answers, and the internet is a light/dark place. Ultimately, although it can come up with possibilities, the answer has to be one we take ourselves. I decided that I would simply tell the AI what paragraph or point in the article I wanted the song to be about, and it was able to come up with several reasonably good songs. Mostly, though, they missed the point, but they did contain the structure of popular songs. I soon realized that for the WE expression, we also needed a particular voice, as song structure is very dependent on genre. As I scanned the human collective for a voice, I realized that I wanted a voice that one day I might be able to express myself in. In other words, a voice that sang in a way I could sing. I had to make some decisions at this point. Looking back at my own life, I saw that the songs I loved and was able to sing with no problem were from Annie Lennox, Tina Turner, and Freddie Mercury. “What would a female singer sound like if Tina Turner and Freddie Mercury had a baby?” I asked the AI. Several hours later, I had a good grasp of what I wanted to express. I did a test run and made Larry listen to it. “I don’t understand what it is; it’s not rock, or country, or pop… it’s confusing,” he said. At that moment I realized that not only did the voice need to express what I wanted, but it needed to be boxed into a genre. That is how Roxy became a Soul Rock singer, with Americana overtones. Unlike Glass Daisy’s lead singer, who is 20 years old and clearly an Ethereal Pop singer, I wanted Roxy to be an adult with a very broad range of tones and styles of singing. And thus the character began to evolve. She is not stuck in Soul Rock and will explore other sounds, including Native songs in different areas of the world. She spends a lot of time playing with her voice and expressions. I wanted her as close to my own voice, personality, and story as I could possibly get without breaking the energy of her as the lovechild of Tina and Freddie - two musical heroes of my life. And at the same time, she had more WE expression than she does of my singular expression, Inelia. Her creation has since cascaded into several other artist personas singing in different genres, styles, and voices (both male and female). But those stories and their characters are for a different essay. Back to Roxy. Once I had her voice and proximity to a genre, I pulled all the WE articles through the AI to get different song structures and ideas. The song-creation process is multi-layered. It didn’t take long for me to realize that both text-generation AI and music-generation AI have huge limitations at the moment. They are good instruments for a creator but cannot give back what a person wants 100% with prompts. If anything, the more complex the prompt, the more sideways the AI goes. Long and complex prompts confuse the AI. A cycle began: I would teach the text generator AI what the music generator AI would accept. Then I would tell the text AI what I wanted the music one to do, and it would create a prompt as short as possible to express it in AI language. This method lasts about three times before the text generator forgets the parameters of the other AI and has to be “restarted.” The songs I have in mind have a particular key, a key progression, and a definite structure of delivery. Very early in the process I realized that I had to create some of the sounds myself - a phone ringing, a native drum sound, a succession of keys on a violin or piano - all things that the AI could not understand. Still, to me the process of using these two tools - the text generator and the music generator - was like a heavy chain lifted from my neck. I was now free to create music in a frequency and speed that was not limited by people’s egos, monetary concerns (sound studios are expensive to use), or limitations on the sounds of my own voice (naturally feminine and melodic). The process of learning is continuous, and the AI slowly learns (then forgets) what I like. The AI engines are being improved continuously, which brings about the possibility of expansion in the future. One thing I did not like about the music generator is that it has a very narrow band of voice sounds, and most of its songs and “artists” sound the same. The other aspect is that after I create a song with a very unique sound, I see the AI using it for other people’s creations. I have heard my words and songs revamped in other users’ songs even though I have not published any of my songs to be remixed or listened to on the music AI website - a unique voice no longer unique, for example, and some of my lyrics and tunes underlying other people’s songs. If I read the user contract, there will probably be a line somewhere that says that the AI can reuse and learn from whatever I create. I had to process my annoyance because, to tell you the truth, my stuff is very high-frequency, and if it is being used by the AI to create music for other people, then that high-frequency is being propagated through the world. Win-win. The rest of the annoyance is all ego. Now my songs and lyrics are no longer unique. Oh dear. OK, I have given you a summary of Roxy Vale’s creation, a summary of my work process using AI. With that done, let’s go to the meat and potatoes of this essay. With the groundwork set, we can finally explore the heart of the album itself. Let’s now talk about the album Still I Am. There is no better way to discuss this album than by looking at the lyrics in each song. I will post three of the eight songs here, and on our podcast Driving To The Rez, you can hear Larry and me going into great detail about them, as well as listening to the songs themselves. If you don’t want to wait, you can get the songs at ineliarecords.com. The first song is called “Bananas and Wind”. Bananas and Wind is a funny one because it explains the experience of communicating with the people of Earth. It is a direct reference to how most direct communication between the WE and people ends up talking about bananas. Bananas came in when trying to describe what the conversation looked like from the perspective of the WE. For example, if talking about the planet Mars, the questions would be like “are there bananas on Mars? If so, what color are they? What do they taste like? How big are they?” Or, if talking about the infinite possibilities of timelines, “are bananas the same color in all timelines?” This song also talks about how when asked a question, a full on translation was needed before the WE could understand what was being asked. And even then, the answer might be so far out of the realm of what a person can conceive that further translation was then needed to explore what the WE said. To be clear, the Bananas are humorous metaphors for the things monkey boys and girls find interesting. Here are the lyrics for “Bananas and Wind”: “Bananas and Wind” You ask me questions shaped like trees I answer back in falling leaves We talk in circles, fields and sound But somehow always turn around . You speak in warmth, I speak in air Your stories
