human_error by Nakama.

*deep inhale*
First and foremost I want to say thank you.
This body of work is in honor of many things, your patronage and alignment with my craft included. I think, in late 2017 ( and some months earlier when the first songs for this project were being written ), I observed myself undergoing some unwitting changes. Unintentional even.
I was reflecting much on what being an artist was going to mean to me long term, and which struggles I needed to tackle in order to embody that person I saw in my mind's eye. I worked backwards.

These songs became extremely personal, at times scathing critiques of my own faults and follies, and at other times loud proclamations of would-be premonitions. Where I chose humor and levity, there was an underlying need to improve and become even more self aware. These songs call in to question all of the trappings of a "conscious" person, when the title is self-appointed. Bravado begging to be chipped away. Pride filtered through dissociative out-of-body experience.

This was an act of subtractive therapy. My thought was, "If I can condense these feelings of grief and uncertainty into explicit terms, I'll always remember how not to be." Dispelled from the internal, crafted for the external, a simulacrum for my shadow.

I say all this in the hopes that, when you press play, you'll remember some things:

1. You are not a being set in permanence. You can change and adapt in ways that your imagination could never have conjured. We are not meant to remain the same over time, and any one daring enough to walk the path, has already begun their shift.

2. It's really okay to not take yourself seriously. There are small joys all around us, every day, cultivated from strange and often exhausting places. It'd be a shame to miss these gifts because your ego and pride prevented their acceptance.

3. If you need help, ask. Our tendencies to carry unreasonable weight in the name of independence also prevent us from connecting with love in a meaningful way. If you, like me, have isolated to prepare for the world and its challenges, you may emerge from your cave worse off than when you entered. Trust is not something to be taken lightly. It must be built, maintained and fed, and opening yourself to receive it and give it in return, will do so much more for you than circular internal dialogue.

4. Owning your mistakes and failures will give you a much clearer picture of where to go than running from them and making excuses. Underneath all of those verbal hurdles is some element of fear, and that fear is what fuels your reticence. Be fair to yourself, but also be bold enough to not stop because "it wasn't right" the first time.

5. Let time do what it does. There is only so much control we can exercise in our daily lives, and each day is a chance to add more to your cumulative experience. If you move forward, and remain consistent, the ambitions behind your action will flow until your cup runneth over.

6. Forgiveness is one of our greatest gifts. Not to be carelessly distributed, but to be intentionally enacted. Upon oneself and upon others who simply cannot see what you see.

7. You are worthy. Let no limitation convince you that you lack the dynamism to be EXACTLY what you wish to be.

8. You will be tested. And those arduous moments are fortifying your spirit to withstand greater and more peculiar circumstances, as you educate yourself and adapt to the role you seek in this mortal journey.

9. You can start over.

So here are some audio logs of my progression to these tenets. Still I am actualizing and defining the grey spaces, shaping my perception and piercing through long-standing walls. But I am not the person I was when these songs were written, and I celebrate that openly.

The first steps in accepting human error.

"The threshold I be on is beyond".

youtu.be