got your picture; coming with you

[wickedlyable]

Who: Nuclear Parliament
What: Recording shit, welcoming Shinichi to the band, chilling. You know how it is.
When: Throughout March!
Where: NP Penthouse
Warnings: Probably nothing.

Johanna's been moody for the past couple months - fine, she admits it. That party back in December had been quite the damper, to say the least, and the way the band had fallen apart for a few weeks didn't help. Stella had told her not to be so worried, and Jo had scoffed - at the time.

But now the penthouse is starting to get loud again. It's starting to get fun again. With the band back to full strength, five members present and accounted for, their apartment actually feels lived in. And now that Johanna isn't locking herself away as much anymore, that means the place is back to being the home of the best pop punk band in town.

Of course, that means that the penthouse is kind of a mess, between the parties being had and the music being made. But hey - that's the price of genius. Or something like that.

[ mingle-style log; throw up whatever threads you want! ]

Comments

[bass_instincts]

Shin leans against the doorframe, looking the strange array over. "I'm not one to judge, but what on earth is that?" he asks, nodding to the drawn diagram. Man this guy was weird.

[off_the_edge]

"It's called the sephir..." Cloud starts, and then starts chewing on his pen. Then he pauses again and grows pale.

"I can't remember what it's called. It's nonsense. It's nothing."

He looks at it, holding the sides away from the wall in both his hands, staring at it as if he's just seen it for the very first time. His shoulders shake, a little like he's trying not to laugh.

"Look, it's just not anything," he says, slowly. "I'm sorry. I got away from myself a little." He swallows, and looks over his shoulder, casual again - "do you need the room for practice?"

[bass_instincts]

"No," Shin says looking worried, "I was just passing by." He steps in, moving towards Cloud, "I know I've been giving you a hard time, but... we're in this together. If there's something wrong, we can talk."

[off_the_edge]

Cloud looks over to him, grateful to be worried about, but glum. He has no idea if Shin knows the truth yet, and right now he's doing all he can to avoid the truth anyway. The feeling he remembered of his real life of being a puppet, absolutely nothing, with no will on his own, was more awful than any other feeling he'd ever had. Occasionally it would pop back into his mind when he wasn't thinking about it and he'd have to force himself to forget about it again. Better to stick with the life he could remember, of bedroom production and band arguments. (Though he can't remember the faces of any of the other members of his band, or the way they moved and talked. He can't even remember their names.)

"It really isn't..." he starts, then trails off, letting the poster go. "No, it's just that I'm trying to understand something I'm doing because it feels right, no higher reason." He shakes his head. "But I still don't get it. Do you know anything about the Tree of Life?"

He'll call it by that name - it doesn't make knives twist in his gut like when he thinks of the name S********h.

[bass_instincts]

Shin is still blissfully ignorant. It was easier to make him think he wanted this place and this life since he had been a rock star in the making back home. But here he's so much emptier than he was when he had his friends that cared about him. When he had a woman he loved. He was already broken, and they took away what had been holding him together.

Shin thinks about it but it doesn't ring any bells. "No. What is it?" He could understand wanting to figure out what you're doing. He felt so lost he didn't even dare approach that subject.

[off_the_edge]

"It's supposed to be an occult map of creation," Cloud explains, "something to do with the way we attain spiritual enlightenment. Each of the stations represents a different sphere of human experience, and each one is connected to the others by a system of rails. And each is assigned a number. If it doesn't have a number, it doesn't exist."

He's assigned each of the spheres a group of chords and various archetypical characters from the narrative of his concept album - Detective Joe (Em6), Alice (B), Ronin (A5)...

"I don't actually understand any of it, by the way," he adds, with self-deprecating lightness, "I just thought... well, I had this word caught on my head, so I looked it up to see what it meant. I thought I'd just invented it."

Why is it that when he starts trying to explain things, he always ends up sounding like he's been badly translated from some other language?

"Maybe we should consider going occult as part of our image for our next album?" Cloud suggests, scratching his head. "It'd give the conspiracy theorists something to think about."

[bass_instincts]

Shin laughs at the idea, but not in scorn. He kind of likes it, "Freak some people out? I'd be up for that." He takes a closer look at the symbol, "So you've been studying this stuff? It's pretty weird that a word you just made up turns out to be some creepy ghost thing. Maybe you heard it somewhere, like the TV?"

[off_the_edge]

"No, the papers," Cloud mumbles, without really knowing why he's saying it out loud.

--the most incredible man I've ever seen! Like no-one else on the Planet - strange and fascinating. I'm strange and boring, and I want people to look at me like how I'm looking at him. I cut out all of the articles about him and the photographs and keep them under my bed, even though I can't work up the nerve to look at them again with Mom around, or she'll think I'm weird.

"Have you ever seen a ghost?" he asks. There's a slowness that suggests this is an important question.

[bass_instincts]

"I'm not sure. I lived next to a graveyard, and sometimes...." Why did he just say that? Did he live next to a graveyard. Of course he did. He just hadn't thought about it in a while. It's not like it was something that came up often, right? He can't quite remember anything about it though, like the name of the place is at the tip of his tongue, like he should know it.

And this is the first time he's actually felt that strange sense that something was off. He's not about to say anything, but there's an uneasiness on his face that could just as easily be from admitting he may have seen a ghost.