Well hell and high water if today don’t mark the one year annaverserary of this here blog.
Reckon it was zackly one year ago i declared i was gonna make a gdamn steampunk musically opera thingamajig.
Jan. 11, 2011:
“I am starting this blog in order to declare my intention to make a Steampunk Opera and to document the process.
“Hi. My name is Paul Shapera and I make music under the name Mocha Lab. I will be posting many selections of my work to date so that you can get an idea of what kind of composer/music producer I am as well as other great artists whose music falls within range of this project. I’ll post on the process and details of putting a theater show up (in London, although i myself am American currently living in Eastern Europe) from the first intention to create it to the opening performance (and Gd forbid beyond).”
It was several month ago i changed the byline at the top of the blog to read not just ‘THE WRITING, COMPOSING AND PRODUCTION OF A STEAMPUNK OPERA’ but also ‘AND ALL PERIPHERY TOPICS THAT COME ALONG IN THE PROCESS’. Because in order to keep this blog interesting to both me and y’all i found dwelving into any and all periphery topics is what made this fun.
I discovered, that what i REALLY want to do with this blog is entertain and educate myself on topics i would only go exploring if forced to write this blog. I pimp and discuss the show when necessary and relevant, but there’s just not so much interesting to write about regularly. There IS however a wealth of fun and interesting stuff to research every single day.
My dirty little secret: i knew NOTHING about steampunk before starting this blog OR 85% of the things i post about. I had seen steampunk occasionally online, some cool little thing someone made “steampunky”. The idea to use steampunk as in inspiration for a show just sort of came out of nowhere. Someone asked if i would write a real opera and i said i would be completely uncomfortable, as my background is everything BUT classical music. But what about… uh… hm…. oh hell, a…. oh i got it, a steampunk opera? It seemed like an utterly fun idea. I started the blog to self educate myself about all things steampunk, victorian and the dark cabaret genre of music.
In the year since this blog started, i did in fact write the damn thing, record a bunch of it and in fact i meet tonight with a production team to discuss the show’s workshop and subsequent festival schedule for 2012 and 2013. Who’d’uv thunk?
My average number of hits daily was 5 for the first month. Now it’s well into the 300s with over 42,000 total views. For a long time the most viewed post was ‘Jules Verne, 10 Interesting Facts’ (I knew it would be. In the blog’s second month, when my average daily hit was up to a resounding 7, i woke up and saw Google had turned their page into the anniversary of Jules Verne’s death or birth or somesuch, so i banged out a Jules Verne top 10 list. My number of hits that day was 1,500.)
After that it was the ‘Bauhaus’ post and for the past 3 months it is far and away ‘Listen to Act 1’.
I will be continuing this blog in the same vein. This year will be obviously exciting for the show as it will start to take shape as an actual theatrical piece and not just some music that one day wants to be a performance and when there’s something worth reporting or discussing i’ll certainly be doing it, but in the meantime i’ll continue with the type of posts i normally do: some fun, some informative, some pretty and in general i hope to continue to entertain both myself and you folks.
I do know of ONE person who was one of the original 5 who is still checking in: guilas41. Dude, i’d… i REALLY wish i could send you a cookie or something. Seriously, i would totally send you a cookie or piece of cake or bowl of lobster bisque. (I would kill you all right now for a bowl of lobster bisque. My wife was watching a show and they mentioned lobster bisque and i haven’t had a bowl of that in YEARS, since i moved to eastern europe and DAMN would i… oh wait. I digress.)
Anyway, enough of this dribble. One year. Yay! Future looks great. Love you all. Back to our regular shenanigans.
