With the 6 CD set to be manufactured and the Bonus Album online, our work in New Albion is done for a spell. Thus we turn our attention to the next big project: The Slenderman Opera.
In general, i have put very little thought into it. I put all my attention into one album at a time (unless a paid gig comes along) so Slenderman has had to wait until the The Room Beneath New Albion is done. This isn’t to say i’ve NEVER thought about it. There’s been a night or two.
I had one idea that’s probably too insane to actually make a musical out of. It had to do with 3 to 4 acts all of which take place in unfolding layers of reality. I don’t mean like a multiverse type of different realities, i mean if reality were made up of different levels, like layers of an onion.
Back in a DC 4 comic series about a young magician written by Neil Gaiman (The Books Of Magic? I don’t remember), he had this kid journey to the end of time. There at the end of time everything had imploded into tarot card archetypes. Only the characters of the tarot were left. I loved that. I’m not saying i’m going to use that (i’m not), but picture if a tarot archetype were a sub-layer of reality to ours. That…kiiiiind of thing would be what i mean by layers.
It’s ridiculous of course. I’m probably going to get a completely different main idea. I’m just talking.
All Along The Watcher always took place on a sub level of reality to me. The song. That little song story always for me took place on a sub level just like the tarot level. And there’s an archtypal thing going on on that level… THAT kind of archtypal thing is more representative of how to portray that level.
But.. so what if there are different layers and a sub-sub layer is where the Slenderman derives from. Like… the entire creepy pasta type of style in various media on the net are portraying when this sub-sub level rises up and congeals into ours. All the creepy pasta phenomenon is a reality more primal and even more “true” than ours. We are a bubble built by people on the sub level below ours to live on, protected from the lovecraftian actual nature of the universe. But our bubble is not without holes.
There could be a religion. Or a particular order of monks. The religion has this whole doctrine which as actually completely bogus and doesn’t matter, since the only purpose it actually has is to spread certain prayers. The content of the prayers is also meaningless. They are made up by these monks to disseminate because of the phonetics of the prayers, which act as audio keys to keep our bubble locked, or simply help keep it holding together. (If you’ve heard Cthulhu: The Funksical that’s an idea i brought up there) Masses of people reciting these particular prayers keeps our world safe.
As to the purpose of the Slenderman i don’t know and obviously i shouldn’t ever say until the project comes out. That;s a tough one. Needs to be REAL good. Can’t do some crappy cop out like “the denizens of that layer subsist off of feeding from the souls of the layers above them and the Slendermen are the collectors of that food.” Hell no. That is SO obvious. We’ve got to do better than that.
Of course this whole general idea is ridiculous and no fool in their right mind would make this the backdrop for a friggin musical. I mean… they’d have to be a nutjob. Seriously. Ridiculous.
Still…
still…
