I have a confession to make, and it is this: I’m not entirely convinced that I like the name I’ve chosen for this project. ‘Your Human Host’ seems a bit obscure, a bit vague and a bit confusing – yet I have chosen it anyway. Why?
The idea first occurred to me when I was reading Leonard Richardson’s fantastically goofy 2020 space opera, Situation Normal. He had a character in this book named Dwap-Jac-Dac, who was an alien parasite that needed a host body to reside within. He started the story in a robot body that was designed for battle, but (spoiler!) after that was destroyed, he had to seek out a new host or he would die. With each new host, he received a new name that would be appended to his existing name, reflecting the name of the new host body for his parasitic self. In addition to the name, he also received a new personality – as the host personality was now assimilated into the existing hivemind as a new facet of itself – of it’s hivemind.
Eventually (more spoilers, but don’t worry, this is only a side character in the book), our alien parasite ends up in the host body of a giant lizard, who has a very different perspective on the world than his existing personalities, causing a lot of growth that leads to a sort of redemption for this initially rather unlikeable character.
What a great idea, I thought, so I immediately used it as my character idea for a tabletop role playing game that I had joined – leading (perhaps) to a form of Stokholm syndrome in which I found myself growing rather attached to the whole concept, and thus the idea of ‘Your Human Host’ was born. And it may be obscure or confusing, but it’s also strikingly unusual and even a little bit funny, so it’s not really a terrible name – but I’m not yet done, so let me proceed a bit before wrapping things up, and I believe that the story will likely make a bit more sense. Or at least I hope so.
So I had the name, but I really didn’t have much cause to use it. You see, I’m a band guy – an ensemble player – and I already had a band that was taking up much of my valuable creative energy. Until suddenly I didn’t, and then this idea started seeming a bit more necessary.
Once I started trying to work on my own stuff the way that I would work on stuff for a band, it became clear to me that one of the reasons I worked so well with a band was that the other people in the band gave my work meaning and purpose that suddenly seemed lacking when I was doing it just for me. Why do I need to articulate the end of the song when I have all of the ideas sitting around there in my head? Isn’t it kind of self-indulgent to sit around jamming to my own idea, anyhow?
The website and the YouTube page, however, act as tools that help to provide the focus and direction on this project which would have previously come from my relationships with ‘the rest of the band,’ by giving me a place to document my progress and provide clear milestones for future work. Also, as I work on this project I am also finding ways to work better with myself as a collaborator – for I do contain multitudes, even if those multitudes might need a bit of focus.
So, now, I am setting out to form a cross-temporal collaboration with … myself. And this makes sense, for music is sometimes described as a means of ‘decorating time’ similar to how the visual arts can be used to ‘decorate space.’ And, with modern audio and networking technology, it’s not all that complicated of a process to record a part and then revisit and add to that part later on, allowing me to act as my own collaborative partner.
And, thus, we have a hivemind – existing in a single person, but spanning multiple times, able to communicate with itself, to learn and grow and (hopefully) to produce art. To facilitate this process, I have started a new YouTube series that I call “works-in-progress,” where I will share my new songs and techniques as I work on them, providing both you (my audience, such as it is) and my future self (my musical collaborator) with a chance to listen and respond to these ideas before they get too codified or turn stale – which should, in theory, help me to develop the type of coherent catalog and sound that a more temporally complete band would typically provide.
There you have it: Your Human Host, my tool for collaborating with myself – and, one might hope, the eventual home for a full and varied catalog of music. Also, it’s a name that nobody else is using, and it’s kind of funny – so maybe I’m okay with it after all.
Thanks for visiting. While you’re here, I’d love it if you’d check out some of my songs on YouTube or drop a comment here on the blog.
I’d love to hear from you.
Take care,
Rex
Your Human Host