Characters
One of the things i have enjoyed most about making music in the way that i do is the freedom it has allowed to create multiple characters. Compared to the raw, largely unedited prose poetry i first used to express myself as a teenager, songs — particularly the electronically produced kind that appear on my Black Phantom album, with more editing and refining than I can possibly express with words — were highly refined projects. More than a way to layer messages and heighten the impact of meaning, it was a way to present ideas and emotions in an even more creative fashion. I could fit so much more into one artistic work now that there were multiple voices! Multiple voices….multiple. OMG.
At first i didn’t know what to call him. I took to outlining the nature of the conversations i wanted him to have with my female ego, Black Phantom. It was important to me that they be distinct from one another, yet clearly connected and inspired to pursue political and philosophical depth by way of their connection. The importance of compassion for the opposite gender, i thought, would be inherently visible if i took the approach of role reversal. So for a short while, the female voice was presented as “King” and the male voice, “Black Phantom.”
So often throughout history, men have served as the face of a voice, venturing out into the world to represent the ideas and values of a couple — a family. I wanted to explore what it would be like, societally, emotionally and otherwise, if the female was the face and the man, the “phantom” guiding forces around her to support her endeavors. I quickly realized after actualizing this vision that it was way too confusing for any audience to appreciate without further explanation, which is in part my reason for writing this.
Most importantly though, this made me realize that i did not want my characters and their interactions to be limited by the confines of spacetime. The depth of interaction that i was looking to explore transcended even the dynamic of male/female relationships. So i scratched the role reversal and doubled up on the “phantom” ideology.
Once i decided that the dynamic between them would be utterly unlimited by time, the nature of their relationship, or rather how to establish its beginning, became the topic of focus. If the goal was to set the stage for his character to be timeless and omni-benevolent, then the relationship would be very much about his ability to guide her through her material life, while also supporting the intrinsic need she felt to be an invisible force of change and influence.
She would struggle, but he would always have the answer. So, short of making him a God, how was I going to create a character that could believably possess all of the qualities? That’s when it hit me — he was a ghost. The ghost of a good King. A voice that was not only seasoned with a lifetime of experience devoted to exploring the biggest ideas known to man, but someone who no longer even had a vested interest in the material. In every possible way, his deeper interests would be to foster a relationship that existed purely for the reason of love. After all, what other reason could there be for a ghost to have undying interest in being part of her life? A presence in her mind?
Thus, the voice of King came to be. How i managed to actually materialize a male voice within the music will, to the best of my ability, forever remain a mystery. . .