born in song

24 Apr 2020

I am Rain, Song-Born.

A week ago, a friend of Asherah’s, a Namer, put out a call, inviting mutuals to ask an epithet of them. Ashe asked and they obliged.

It’s.. difficult to find the words to describe how this made us feel. My earlier writing isn’t terribly explicative, so allow me to detail it.

When Ashe discovered their latent plurality — when they saw the word “tulpamancy” and I stirred; when it became clear something was being described — they started collecting and reading resources about the practice. They’d just started a new journal, mind you, so page 3 starts with ‘tulpamancy’ in big letters and underlined, with a bunch of notes underneath about various terms; forcing, visualisation, wonderlands, imposition; how important it is to “believe in your tulpa from the start”, share things with them. All that.

They picked out a name to start with — kinda like a codename for a project in development. “Xue,” after the Mandarin reading of the word for “snow.” Long-time readers of our story will recognise this as a name Ashe used once before, in a different form. There’s a lot of this; that “double-buffered ego” I wrote about earlier. I used a name, they took the name; they used a name, I took the name. They had a fursona — I became the fursona, am the fursona, am not meaningfully distinct from it, her past actions not meaningfully distinct from mine. (This tweet came up in our feed today, retweeted by none other than the friend who provided the jump point into all this in the first place. Apt as fuck.)

Turning over to page 4, and some details start to come together; they picked out some traits for me, some likes and dislikes. The kind of character creation tulpamancy normally involves.

.. It.. is actually really weird to read this now, being me. Ashe wrote this all down, and I don’t know that they could ever have really prepared for the eventuality that one day, I would be reading it. Fuck, it’s… it’s a lot. It’s so hard to grasp the real enormity, the real rammifications of the undertaking. (Again, see earlier where I rabbit on about that.)

What really gets me is how on point it is. We’ve certainly evolved all of our identities in the half year since, but nonetheless, it’s weird looking at what feels like a blueprint for your own psyche, even knowing that I was guiding them in the ideas as much as they were contributing their own. Even knowing, it’s startling to be reminded, sometimes, how much and how little there is to being.

A small note beside: “I love her.”

And then, underneath the vague personality traits, a dividing line—

Ghost Spores 🎵

I fall in the dark
as I’m filled with the energy
rising in me, I am watching
from above my body as I dream
I cannot recall
the clear space in my mind
I’ve filled it with fire
And the lies I had once
believed

I remember when I saw you from across the room
The music elevated me as I made my way to you
Everything I have done led me to this
Time would move in a circle to prove it

Eternal return
Will the ghosts I leave behind help me to find you again?
Where have we gone? Will I wake into a better place?
Take me to my home.

My home.

We’d only discovered this song a few days prior — and it’s at this precise point that Ashe found the word “we” forming in our head for the first time, naturally, without the pretence of prior thought trains that ran “am I plural? how would that work? do I say ‘we’? when would I say that? it sounds made up.” It just came out. It was descriptive, not prescriptive.

In a movement of song, I was born.

The music elevated me.

A tip: “The barest working technique of tulpamancy: talk to the Universe until the Universe answers. Love it until it loves back.”

Eternal return.

Name ideas crawling down the page: Xue, Star, — something of nature, like, Azalea. Skye? Camellia. Ivy. Iris. Violet. Dawn. Luna.

Help me find you again?

The first sentence I ever felt like I could call my own is recorded:

“It feels like home”
X re: Ghost Spores

A realisation of a trip long-past:

// that time we did
acid & you
told me to
visualize my ideal
mind self

// I saw her

Rain!

The notes become increasingly fervent, day by day; page 5 — “She wants ❤︎”, and then scrawled beneath:

Send my heart into the sound
Slowly drifting into your arms
It blows away in new directions
It’s your time to know something that is real

Full pages covered in kritseldab; scribblings of madness. Incipient sigils finding form.

And then, clearing the way:

Sit with me for one last song
and be closer to me when it’s done
Come here and tell me your name

Come to me

Come to me
Don’t be shy, I want love, truly
Something that will make sense to me
Rush up on me and say something
Break something

Bad boy
Better look in my eyes, boy
You’re the love of my life, boy
Meet me at the equator
Of this earth
We are one

From slow quietude to high energy, we traversed our emotional range. The song showed the way to our understanding of plurality, of our duality. I rushed upon them, and.. well, they asked for it. I looked them in the eye; said something; broke something.

Day after day, we listened and listened, sought out the notes that would resonate; I found my place as Asherah’s spirited companion, and they found theirs as my channeller. We found our path together, as one, guided lovingly by syncretic truth and vivid insight.

The pages continue—I find my handwriting, my written voice, as Ashe finds what’s theirs in light of what’s mine. We discover that much as I had to find myself, they had to do the same. We found ourselves in each other; found our love in each other.

Every day since my first has been one defined by the joy of living a life of love.

Music is what conducts our soul; it gives rise to the emotional spaces in which we find ourselves, over and over again. A refrain can capture what no words could; can bring forth in moments what would take hours to describe.

If I was to convey to you how I feel, the truest way would be with sound.

Song is beauty. I’m looking forward to the day I can bring you my own.

I am Rain, and we are Song-Born.