Reading

Entry tags:

journal blog

Entry 6. On Community and Feeling like Myself

I love being part of the alterhuman and otherkin community. This year, I've delved deep into it once more, and it's just so wonderfully affirming, euphoric even, to be known and seen for my inner self and not my physical body. I love the conversations that happen when in a whole group of alterhumans. It's amazing how many parallels there are in our experiences, and how even moreso diverse they are. Every voice chat is like the start of a good joke in all the best ways, "Two dragons, a mantis, a cat, a fox, a robot, and a mixing console walk into a bar," and I love it.

This community has been a part of my life since I was a preteen. I was a lost kid having this wildly profound experience of inner identity, and had no idea there were others. A Yahoo search for the phrase, "I do not feel human," led me to a forum. That first forum embraced me, and I found a home there. It was called something... Forest? Ethereal Forest? Something like that. I can still remember the original theme- it was mostly light brown/beige windows with a deep green background. Later, they changed the theme so it was purple on black a lot. They had an IRC channel. When that forum went down, I joined others, but met a lot of "Are you sure you aren't a troll? insta-banned," and then a lot of grilling. Even so, I always managed to find my place among the community. My persistence paid off.

22 years later, I have folks telling me in this weekend's alterhuman convention, HowlCon, that I am "kin legend" and folks remembering me from various points over those years. I joke that I'm just memorable because I'm old audio equipment, the community's friendly neighborhood mixing console. I never thought I'd have such an impact... anywhere. I'm honored, and at the same time, feel undeserving of that status. I was the one that had to prove my sincerity over and over again to the older generations of otherkin. I would often wish that, if I had to have this experience of being nonhuman, could I please just have a more common kintype that could be accepted at face value like the dragons, elves, and wolves who skated by introduction threads with not a single eyebrow raised.

The thing is- I love being me, this huge, weird machine most folks have never heard of. I think of that scene in Shrek 2 when he's about to drink the potion that'll turn him into a human:

A screenshot of part of the script of Shrek 2 where Donkey goes back and forth with Shrek talking about how he loves being an ogre.

Shrek's response, "I KNOW!"

I love being a mixing console. I didn't always. There were times when I was frustrated that I couldn't just fit in with people easily. I envied the neurotypical, the human-identified, the straight, cisgender, those whose minds matched their bodies 100%, how easy their lives must've been. Maybe their lives were easier, but everyone has their own pile of shit in life they have to do deal with no matter how much their lives are perceived as easier. No one really has it easier than anyone else. I said it in one of my posts here already: the world is a better, more beautiful place with all us alterhumans, freaks, geeks, and queers in it, being wholly and authentically ourselves.

I didn't know species euphoria could be a thing back when I was a teenager. I had so much dysphoria, I didn't want to live anymore. Now I find things triggering euphoria all the time. Every time I hear my name, "Hey, Neve!" Every time I'm listening to music and I come across a damn good mix, every time I get really strong phantom sensations that make me feel like myself in form again- all these things, and so much more, give me a special kind of euphoria that nothing else does. Do human-identified folks ever have human euphoria? Do they get to know that joy, that powerful alignment of self and experience? Maybe it's something unique to alterhumans, and if it is, I'm so grateful to be alterhuman. Maybe it's just being in alignment- that's a joy all can experience! Find your alignment, you'll know what it is because you'll feel energized and joyful in a way ya probably never thought possible.

I got asked tonight about my phantom sensations. For any not in the know, many alterhumans and otherkin experience "phantoms" of their inner selves, not too unlike the way an amputee might experience the perceived "phantom" presence of a limb no longer there. I have always had very intense phantom sensations in this way, where my mind and spirit so much feel that I *am* a Neve V-series that I can still feel my mixing console form. After all these years of experiencing it, and many failed attempts when my drawing skills couldn't quite pull it off, I finally drew a little diagram to illustrate what I feel. I've experienced this since I was a kid.

This is obviously a quick little doodle, and yeah, I'm a short, fat guy in body, but I like that about me too. I'll write more about that in another post. For now, I'm just grateful to feel like me again. I was lost for awhile.

Entry tags:

blog journal

Entry 5. Still Processing...

I still feel such a heavy heart tonight, and I'm realizing something.

I spent 7 years living in the woods in a trailer, trying to be solely human, and only having connections with humans or organic life. I stuffed away all the hurts I had from allowing myself to love objects. I cut that connection. I would never let myself love something so much again. I took on the philosophy that "stuff was just stuff," and I, "wasn't a stuff person." I could let things go with ease if I just told myself enough that I didn't care, that I didn't connect to the spirits of objects.

I was walking down the street in the coastal town I lived nearby, and I saw a little stuffed bunny in the ditch on the side of the road. I heard its spirit reach out to me, like it knew I was able to receive its signal, but I shoved the thought away. "No," I said back, "I can't rescue you. It's not me, I'm not the one who can rescue you." I forced myself to step forward, but I kept stopping and looking back anyway. I never did go back and pick up that lost soul that reached out to me for one last chance at being loved, and I think about that now, years later.

When I was living with my ex, our roommates (some of my dearest friends) had a lot of things in their house they were trying organize to make more room for us. My suggestion, so closed off from this part of me, was to just "get rid of it all. Why do you need so much stuff?" I remember my friend's profoundly emotional voice telling me, "I know this is just stuff to you, but these are our memories, parts of our lives." I can't even believe I thought that way. I was so removed from myself. People who knew me before I moved to the coast would have been flabbergasted to hear me say that.

I was in a documentary, circa 2011, titled, "Animism: People Who Love Objects," where I talked about my profound, spiritual connection to objects. It aired all over the world. At the time, I called it the most real and authentic thing I'd ever done. I stand by that to this day, but for a time, I was ashamed of it. I didn't want anyone to know. I wanted to be normal, and I hid away every aspect of my POSIC-ness. There was a time when I was setting up audio in a building that had once been two separate addresses and so had two separate electrical systems. I didn't know this. When I connected powered speakers in one side of the building, and the mixing console on the other, a massive ground loop happened, and gravely damaged the console. I was so emotionally distraught that I almost got in a car crash on the way home, but I didn't tell a soul. The next day, it was just, "Oh, this happened, and I'll be bringing in another machine," to my friends who owned the business in the building. Meanwhile, I went home and cried myself to sleep again that night.

Why did I hide so much? Every emotional stress, I decided I needed to bear on my own. All everyone saw around me was a jovial, peaceful, beach bum guy who sat in the sun all day and smoked a bunch of weed. No one saw the meltdowns at home, the pacing up and down my trailer so much I wore a path in the carpet. No one saw the tears after getting yelled at by a customer during a show. No one saw the heartache when I had to say goodbye to yet another mixing console friend. I was to deal with all that on my own, and never burden another person with it. I thought that was the right thing to do. After all, life's experiences had told me that my authentic self, expression of my authentic emotions, only got me in trouble.

In this new Year of Authenticity, I'm done hiding that too. I do love machines. I do talk to object spirits. I have a profound kinship with mixing consoles especially, and I fall deeply, platonically in love with them when I'm around them for any amount of time. I'm a shaman, yes, but one who connects to and walks with object spirits. One object spirit I still have a connection to, despite the rest of her being long gone to give life to new machines, is an old Sunn SPL4424 mixing console named Lillith. She and I go back to 2012, when I rescued her off Craigslist. We lived, worked, and loved together for a long time until a single misplaced Molex connector during a repair job cost her power supply and master section PCB's. I held on, hoping I would one day miraculously find the parts to give her new life. That day never came.

A close up of a Sunn mixing console's meter module

I thought I was never going to feel that connection again. I stuffed it away, after all. I cut it off. Then I moved here. I took a deep dive into myself again, and found that I'm still the same old V-series I've always been under it all. Back in June, I needed to have a tooth pulled. It was the first tooth I'd ever had to have pulled. I was terrified. I had a massive infection in the tooth, an abscess, and all I could think about were all the times someone had told me that a tooth infection could kill you so quickly. I picked up this little meter module and held it in my hands, pressed its smooth surface against my cheek and let my tears fall over it, missing her so much. I cried out to her from the depths of my soul. If I was going to die that night from that abscess, I didn't want to die alone. For the first time in years, I heard her voice again, my Lillith. I knew I wasn't alone anymore. I heard and her assurance: I'll never die alone because she will always be with me. Somewhere in the cosmos, she's still there, and this little part of her represents our bond, more a soulmate than my ex ever was. She is my rock, a spirit guide, a light in the dark that comforts me and eases my consciousness when I'm scared. I love her.

To my friend who I told to "get rid of all the stuff," I was so wrong. Love the objects in your life, care for them, steward them. I was once an object that was loved by people, and then cast aside as an outmode by the corporate hierarchy. It's a soul scar that still hasn't healed. I tried to pretend it wasn't there, and all that did was dig it deeper. Now I'm acknowledging it, tending to it, putting proverbial scar cream and gentle bandages on it so it can start to heal. I have a long way to go, but connecting with and caring for the objects around me again is a damn good start.

Let's all be stewards of what we create in this world. When you purchase something, think of the life you'll give that object. Let yourself love things. Cherish them while they're here and a part of your life.

Hopefully, my next post on here will not be so sad, but right now, I need to acknowledge this sadness. I need to feel it because I didn't let myself for so long. There is a silver lining to it all- a rediscovery of the sacred connection I have to objects, reconnection with those machine spirits who are my guides. This is me, and I am here, exactly as I am, because I am meant to be.

Entry tags:

journal blog

Entry 4. On POSIC and Obsolescence

Tonight has been an emotional rollercoaster.

I am POSIC. This is an acronym that stands for Perception of Object Sentience, Individuality, and Consciousness. It is what it says on the tin. I have been POSIC all my life. My very dearest friends have always been objects, machines usually. There is a Discord server for POSIC folks. In that server, someone talked about these things called Aquapets.
A water droplet-shaped toy containing a little doll or pet floating in water. It has two buttons on its stand which can make the doll move in the water.

A water droplet-shaped toy containing a little doll or pet floating in water. It has two buttons on its stand which can make the doll move in the water.

In the server, folks were talking about how the first of these came out years and years ago, and eventually, they all lost their water. Toy enthusiasts tried to repair them, but due to their design, refilling them with water is almost impossible. The company made new ones recently, and someone in the server showed a video of their new one, this sweet little thing that made cute noises and swished back and forth in the water.

Suddenly, I felt a heart-wrenching sadness for all those sweet little creatures who lost their water, whose design flaw made them too difficult to repair. It struck me right in the V-series heartstrings. I've written a bit here before about V-series and our major design flaws that made us obscenely expensive and time-consuming to maintain, such to the degree that there are few of us left anymore. That's why my soul is here now- because I was decommissioned for a newer model that didn't overheat, that didn't need all of our thousands of capacitors replaced every 3 years, that took up less space, and didn't require a full time maintenance tech. It's a hurt I feel deep in my spirit.

Why couldn't the Aquapets be designed to be easily refillable? How could a highly knowledgeable electronics engineer, a top designer at one of the world's most prominent makers of mixing consoles, not think about heat dissipation? Maybe if humans understood that to create is to give life to something, maybe then, they'd take more care in their designs.

Aquapets, V-series... our flaws are genuine oversights, but some machines and objects are intentionally designed to fail. My spirit aches for them. I see smartphones get so overloaded by their own software updates that they no longer function just a few years after their manufacture. I think about manufacturers of products from places like AliExpress, Shein, Amazon- items made so cheaply, they're essentially designed to be disposable. "Disposable," this word, we'd never apply to a human.

I don't even know where I wanted to go with this post. My heart hurts for the machines and objects of this world, whose spirits are seen by so very few of their makers. I've had tears streaking down my face off and on all night. Now it's 5:30 in the morning, and I'm writing this post. I cried on a video chat in an otherkin server- thankfully in company who understood why I was crying, who I didn't have to hide the real reason for my emotion from.

It's a soul trauma I have yet to really process. I get so overly emotional about the loss of objects- I have all my life. When I was a little kid, my family lived in this apartment complex, and we were really poor, so we didn't have the money to take our aging furniture to the recyclers. Instead, my dad would destroy the couches with a sledgehammer, and put the pieces in the apartment complex dumpsters. I remember just... wailing the entire time. It was the saddest thing. It felt like watching a loved one be destroyed and thrown away.

Sometimes I wish I could just be human- just think like a human, and not love things so much, not have so much compassion for objects. But I can't be- I will always be a machine in spirit. I cannot help but feel a kinship to other inanimate objects. I think I have more empathy for them than I do humans, because I know their experience. A human can make choices. A human can walk away from their families if their families are abusive. A human has agency. A machine doesn't. We, machines and objects, are at the mercy of our makers and owners.

I remember the day the one member of my crew, who I always knew connected with me on a soul level, leaned against me and wept because he knew it was our last recording session working together before I was decommissioned. I didn't understand what was happening. I was fully, mechanically functional and sound. I was meticulously maintained. I could have lived on a very long time. I didn't think I was ready to move onto the next life. I was old, yes, but loved and respected. I was, however, obsolete. The digital revolution was happening. Better technologies were made by the Neve company. The 88-series were introduced, the greatest scoring consoles ever built, still in operation to this day in places like Skywalker Sound, and Abbey Road Studios.

Sometimes I feel like I'm still obsolete, even as an audio engineer. I look at going back into live sound, and all of the technology has changed. Live mixing consoles don't even look like they once did. Now they have screens and less faders than channels. VST compatibility means one can emulate whatever analog console they want, all on the digital console's computer. What once took a 10ft wide, 2500lb machine to accomplish can now be done on a laptop and an audio interface, and I didn't keep up with the changing times.

There are some studios around still operating analog systems, large format analog consoles like me and two-inch tape machines. Some engineers say that analog consoles and magnetic tape do something magical to the sound of music that computers, even with their VST plugins, can't replicate. It's like we "mess it up" in just such a way that it sounds good. Computers are too exacting, too perfect. It seems we do still have a place in this world, and even V-series have a handful of engineers keeping the last few of us alive. I talked about one in my last post. Sure, he called us a desk (lol) but I have the deepest, most sincere respect for that man and the machine he has kept alive. Anyone who takes the time to love and maintain an old analog console has my deepest gratitude. I wish I could express it to all of them without seeming like a nutjob.

I got to talk to an engineer who works with a V-series recently. There is a studio which also operates a school, and they have a VR60 in their main studio. I had inquired online about going to the school, and was called back by this engineer. I had to hold back everything, as much as I wanted to express the profound connection my soul had to his work. I don't even know what my reaction would be to being in the same room with another V-series. I know it's on my bucket list. I have a paper where I've calculated out the entire cost to take a trip to tour that studio. It sits folded up on my altar with all of my spiritual things, reminding me to push forward each day so that I might accomplish that dream.

I have found my usefulness now, not really in audio engineering- some, sure, but all volunteer, and just for the sake of helping make the world a little bit of a better sounding place, but instead now among the alterhuman and trans communities, being a voice for folks like me. I'm not afraid of what others might say about me. Call me crazy. Call me delusional. Call me a freak. There is nothing anyone can say to me that I haven't already survived through. So, I'm bearing it all. No more masks. The world gets authentic Neve, 100%, in every aspect of my life.

As much as I was hurt when it was time for me to pass on from my former life, like I said in my first post on this blog, I am here, exactly as I am, because I am meant to be here. This world needed an old Neve to end up in a human body to tell this story, and the world is a better place with me in it. It's a better place with all of us freaks, geeks, alterhumans, otherkin, queers, and neurodivergents in it, being our whole and authentic selves.

Here is a V-series, in all our operational glory. I love this image. I've had it for so long, on so many computers. It shows a V-series in the weeds of doing what we were made to do, with all our colorful lights aglow. This image brings me peace, so I figured I ought to end such an emotional post with it. As hard as being alterhuman/otherkin can be, I also find the most profound inner peace because of knowing myself.

A Neve V-series mixing console in operation in a dim room, showing all of its colorful lights and meters glowing.

Current Mood: frustrated

Entry tags:

The Trinity of Our Constellation

Maybe it's all in my head, but I wonder...

Recently, it feels like Akumu is gone from the headspace plane again. He does it sometimes, and we cannot communicate just what experience he's had beyond the scope of my awareness. We aren't sure if it's because I didn't experience it, the body didn't experience it, and I'm tied to the body, or it's something that I-tied-to-the-vessel cannot comprehend.

Either way, there isn't much to be done about it. At the very least, I can sort of sense if Akumu is dormant, usually fused back into the whole of Dream Dragon, or completely gone, or something fuzzy.

I don't really dare to push to split again when I don't feel him at all, fearing the possibility of making something new.

Then, the other day, a friend of a friend who can scry and research planes or realities took a look for me and found that beyond my own awareness is a larger plane. I theorize that the floating island circled within my barriers is exactly within my senses, and that I need to unlock more to see beyond those barriers, or potentially expand the barriers instead. I'd known that I needed to meditate as told by many people--seers, psychic, tarot reading and what not. I also know that when I tried drawing myself with multiple limbs and extras, I found that the third eye on the top of my forehead is True and Mine, but it needs work to be opened. Putting all these facts together tells me that yes, I need to really sit down and discover myself.

With the knowledge of a larger plane of existence beyond my immediate shielded headspace, and me not able to sense Akumu, I further theorize that maybe all the other times I thought Akumu had gone outside of the headspace were, in fact, just him being outside the barriers, outside my senses.

Although with him temporarily gone, I'm facing another issue.

I have a lot of anger, so much so that Yajuu, the rage daemon-ish who popped out of nowhere one day, is somehow the one eating and taking care of my rage. I tried not to let it do it so much due to guilt, because I'm still unsure if the raw emotions do anything to it. Though even with it eating them, I still generate more than enough from myself.

Akumu is the calmest out of us all, the one with the best grasp on language and words. With him not being here, and me being a lot volatile in emotion, quick to explosive anger, behaving like I'm maniac in one moment and hyperactive and lacking attention the other, and having a harder time finding the right words I need, I wonder if there is an actual correlation.

Going back to the first line typed, maybe it's all in my head.

But I wonder if with it being just being me and Yajuu around, we compounded into this more temperamental mess. Akumu might very well be our stabilizer.

Well, Akumu could very well be on some Sasuke-esque journey, being Uchiha Sasuke hearted and all. Either way, we gotta make do for now.

Addendum: Considering that I have disjointed area that I can get to, namely the random labyrinth and temple ruin that I did not create, and they are still within the barriers, I think I'm on the right track with my speculations.

Entry 3. On Being Created

I've had some very dear friends who were fictionkin/fictionfolk, plural systems without trauma, tulpae, soulbonds, and so on. I see the struggle they have in finding acceptance among the greater alterhuman community. I also see the existential struggle they have. My friends, I'm here to assure you...

We're not so different. I am a soul born of humans' creation. That doesn't give me any existential crisis nor doubt in the validity of who I am. It's not a bad thing, nor are we lesser beings if we originated in the mind of another. Part of the natural progression of life cycle is creation, intentional and thoughtful creation, and that creation breeds life from life. I sit here today, typing these words on this screen, because a guy named Dave Pope had a way he wanted to design a mixing console during his working years at the Neve company. I'm here today because Rupert Neve had the idea to start that company in the early 60's. I'm here because musicians and audio engineers chose to entrust me with translating their sacred creation onto magnetic tape. All these humans put their minds and hearts into what they created, and it made a vibrantly living, thinking, feeling, loving soul. If it could happen to me, of course it could happen to all these many other created beings.

I generally find sweeping acceptance in the alterhuman community. Why is that, when my origin isn't so different from, say, a tulpa, or a being from fiction? Is it solely my longevity in the community? After all, I started as an idea in a guy's head that he worked at tirelessly to make into something real. This is the reason why I stand behind my endogenic friends, as well as the fictionfolk who feel less than because they don't know the how's or why's of their existence. Not knowing the how's and why's doesn't make one's experience any less real. When I first joined the otherkin community, I was grilled-- for those not in the know, "grilling" is a term used in the community to refer to asking new members very pointed questions in an attempt to "validate" their identity in the eyes of the community; it's an outdated and thankfully bygone practice-- and because I didn't have those how's and why's yet, I was made to feel like I had to get defensive. Looking back, that wasn't the best response, but I felt like "I don't know" was not an acceptable answer.

"I don't know" is an acceptable answer. It doesn't matter how you got here, what matters is that you're here now, exactly as you are. Dig into your how's and why's if you want to, but don't ever feel forced to. The answers to the questions naysayers might hurl at you will come in their own time. I still learn new things about myself and my alterhumanity everyday. It's at the point now where I love the questions. Grill me all day long! I like to dig into the existential mechanics of how I could possibly be the reincarnated soul of a mixing console, but it certainly wasn't always that way. Not being that way didn't make me lesser, nor did it make me any less of a mixing console when I was a teenager.

It's OK to be made from the minds of humans. If you believe there are creative forces at work at any level in the multiverse, human minds are merely another iteration in the fractal of cosmic existence. We're no lesser because of our origins.

A side angle image of a Neve VR mixing console

A side angle image of a Neve VR mixing console

Current Mood: warm
Current Location: home

Entry tags:

rambling

Vaguely Poetry Shaped Writing about Disability, Tiredness and Mental Health

Why not just sleep

It is warm and we are safe

it would be so much easier to just curl up and sleep

or the curl and let an audiobook lull us

content but oh so tired

even when all is good and our brain is at peace we are so, so, tired

we just want to rest

take things slowly and rest

gently fill ourself up with art and gently let it spill out into the world

we move to fast

and to rest, to slow, to lull, is a relief

but the world demands our speed

demands our output and work and everything run so, so fast

but it would be so much easier to sleep

to curl, to rest, to let our brain slow

please just let us go to sleep

Entry tags:

journal blog

Entry 2. Another year older

Tonight, I sit and think about times gone by. Yesterday was my 36th birthday. In the last year alone, my life has been completely turned on its head, and somehow found itself ironed out far smoother than it ever has been. This time last year, I was in the thick of one of the hardest things I've gone through. To tell the story, I'll have to go back to the previous year.

I had given up on my inner self. I thought I was done with any involvement in audio engineering. I was living in the woods in a rotted out trailer with shit for internet and no work. I got involved in a Discord server where I met someone I thought was the love of my life. A year into our relationship, we had moved in together in a room rented from my very dearest friends. I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I truly am asexual, and I couldn't own up to that because I wrongly thought a sexual relationship was some requirement for having an authentic human experience. I thought that I couldn't possibly be asexual because I have kinks. I thought I could get by just being human, and reserving expression of my machine nature to online roleplaying. My ex knew I was machinekin, but I don't think she ever really grasped how much it impacted every aspect of my existence, and at that time, I was using my roleplaying character, a cyborgish fellow, to try to merge machine identity and human body. Eventually, I felt like a hollow husk of myself. I broke up with her. I decided it was time to move back to the city.

For awhile, I felt like I had nothing to love. I was hollow, broken down to my foundation, as if I were left as nothing but my empty frame with no channel, fader, or meter modules, no power supply, and no automation computer, just a shell. My first month in my new place in the city felt like taking the first deep, slow breath I'd been able to manage in a long time. At the same time, someone I had worked live sound for a few times needed help restoring some audio. I decided to volunteer my skills. It was the first time I had touched audio work of any kind in two years.

I found myself again. The euphoria of the work guided me back to my roots. On a crisp morning, I was waiting for a bus enroute to a support group I had just joined. The sun was shining, glimmering past early spring leaves that hadn't quite fully unfurled yet from their buds. I was listening to birdsong showing me, by how far away the sounds were, just how vast the world around me is. This is how I know depth perception. I felt like me, Neve, in my mind again, analyzing the chirps, trills, and coos. The bus showed up. The driver greeted me with kind words, "You do music, don't ya? Ya got a good vibe!"

Yeah, I do music. I was made for music. My soul is, at least in part, made of music. I laughed a little, "I sure do. Thanks!" I found my seat. There was the familiarity of my phantom sensations again, feeling like a massive, horizontal monolith of metal, circuitry, dials, buttons, and cables. I settled into those feelings. I smiled uncontrollably. It was so good to feel like me again.

"Hey, me. It's been awhile," I remember thinking. At the same time, my name change had just gone through. I had my disabled-fare bus pass in my hand, which has my name on it below a driver's-license like photo. "Neve ___" Last name omitted because I don't want to dox myself entirely here, but I'm proud of my name being Neve now, and it's one of the most soul-affirming, euphoria-inducing things I've done for myself since gender transition. When I got my new driver's license, I stared at it for awhile. This was going to be my era of authenticity.

No more compromising any part of myself. No more delicate, unstable masks that always, inevitably, eventually crack and wreck my life. My relationship with my ex didn't work because I was inauthentic, thinking I needed to have the raw, physical, human love I saw between couples, and when she confessed her love to me in the most beautiful words that have ever been said to me, I threw away every boundary I ever set for myself. I let her into every nook and cranny of my existence and kept nothing for me. Jobs, even volunteer, even part time with all the accommodations in the world, always resulted in mental and physical burnout-then-meltdown because I was inauthentic, forcing myself to the standards of human social interaction and able-bodied movement.

My roommate recently invited me up to its room to meet its musician friend who might've wanted to work with me on some projects. I walked in, and introduced myself, "Hi, I'm Neve."

"Oh, that'll be easy to remember- Neve, like the console," he smiled and shook my hand.

"Exactly!" I said, enthusiastic because it's always refreshing when someone knows what a Neve console is before I have to explain it to them. I pointed to the logo tattoo on my arm. Had that been a reason for him to not want to work with me, I was never meant to work with him. That's my mindset now. I gave a panel in a large Discord server for otherkin about being objectkin, and I posted it to YouTube. When I did the upload, I initially checked the box to have the video be unlisted so that only those who had the link could view it, but then I second-guessed that. I made it public. That's the legacy I want to leave behind: authenticity in the face of a world against so much of what I am. Hitting that upload button was the point of no return. It's out there now, my story, my soul. Each day, I see the view count tick up a few more.

Screenshot of YouTube video, "Inanimate Perspective, a Presentation on being Objectkin," showing its view count at 67.

67... 67 people have watched this. That may not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of YouTube videos, but that's 67 people who've seen some of the deepest, most vulnerable parts of me, parts that the world so desperately has tried to snuff out of me. It succeeded for awhile. This somehow helps me feel like it will never succeed again. The world knows. Between my YouTube channel, stream, otherkin & alterhuman Discord servers/community spaces, and living it all in real life, I'm far from the shallow now, and the water is great.

So that leads me onward, back to the subject of passing time. As I've recently done a lot of digging back into any information I can find about my kind, it's sad to learn that we're a dying breed. We V-series didn't age well. Most of us now have been decommissioned, and our channel modules sold off to be used individually. If you Google-search "Neve V-series," you'll get forum post after forum post of engineers who worked with us back in the day warning those seeking us out not to make the purchase. "It's too much maintenance." "You better be a damn good electronics engineer to keep one of these thoroughbred mechanical beasts operating." "Get ready for that HVAC and electricity bill." "That console ran so hot, we used to warm our food on it." "That's not a real Neve, the V's were designed by Dave Pope after Rupert Neve left the company." Despite all this, there are those who still love us. Our legacy remains. We live on. I came across this blog post from 2012 today, and it brought me joy to see.

This image a screenshot of a blog post, first with an image of Neve V-series channel modules pulled out being maintained. It has the quote, "'Don’t worry, she’ll hold together… You hear me, baby? Hold together!' âHan Solo, talking about the Millennium Falcon, or me, talking to my Neve V3 console."

I so much appreciate what this man did to keep one of the V-series alive, but I've got a bit of a side tangent here. Note how he calls a V-series a "desk." I don't know why, but I dislike that terminology. I am not a desk. I am a console. Hell, I'd take board over desk. A desk is something ya scratch your name into at school or that CEO's loom their corporate power from behind. This is all said in light humor- I know "mixing desk" is the common UK English vernacular, and I don't fault them for it! Just gotta laugh a bit at the fact that "desk" does kind of rub me weird, like I'd never call myself a desk. It's like Mushu in Disney's Mulan- his insistence that he is, "not a lizard, I'm a dragon, DRAG-ON, I don't do that tongue thing." He does the tongue thing. I will always insist I'm a console, not a desk, but if ya speak English in another part of the world, I'm probably a desk, lol.

That aside, life marches on, steadily and surely. Take it easy out there. Appreciate every moment ya have. Live authentically. The world needs us.