The Dead Scar is the beginning of a new project called From the Ashes that I’ll be writing and releasing one track at a time, beginning in December 2021 and continuing until I feel it’s complete. I anticipate that in the long run, I’ll be rearranging these for some kind of instrumental/vocal/live-weird-noises layout, but for now, they’re for your headphones and speakers. From the Ashes is a medium through which I’m processing some of the trauma I’ve sustained in Phoenix while also exploring some of the many forking paths I see in front of me that may (or definitely do) lead to relationships and a life that’s much more fulfilling than the one I’ve lived for most of the past decade.

Though I don’t foresee every track being dark or angry—it’s actually fairly likely many will be contemplative or even optimistic—The Dead Scar is a release of a lot of anger and frustration. I lean into stories I’ve told in small snippets on my blog and some I’ve never told at all before this point, all through a framework of wandering through an obliterated chunk of forest that used to be friendly. Though it’ll never feel complete, The Dead Scar is a chronicling of loss, regardless of if I’m counting friends who weren’t very good friends or pieces of myself I gave away in the hope that they’d care just a bit more.

For the longest time, this piece didn’t have a title, because I didn’t have a clue how I could accurately represent nine and a half minutes of pain in quite the way I wanted to. Fortunately (I suppose), my partner got me into World of Warcraft this year, and while we’re both hesitant to play right now because Activision really likes their predators, the WoW universe is lore-rich in ways I haven’t gotten to experience anywhere but in books. My very first experience in-game was romping around the Eversong Woods, and while I accidentally killed a cat I was trying to pet (and still haven’t recovered), the splendor of the woods and the opulence of Silvermoon City also carried a lingering dread—one that’s explained when I first arrived at the Dead Scar, a burned-out trail of destruction wrought by super-bad-guy the Lich King and his armies of undead. The Scar is immense: it cuts two and a half zones (and the blood elf capital city) in half, and its murky darkness and population of ghouls sit in stark contrast to the verdant, seemingly-tranquil woods on either side.

Of all the things I could point this piece at, that seems like it fits the most, particularly as each fallen friendship I mourn was once potentially (or, in very rare cases, actively) vibrant. I can’t say for sure if all the pieces in this project will follow the same naming conventions, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the easiest way to speak to these bigger ideas is by invoking worlds not our own.

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