Lofi Beats to Experience a Demon Apocalypse to - Diners and Demons: Shared Liminal Spaces and the End; a post-jam mortem

(This is more of a way for me to create an archive of my thoughts on my little projects as I make them than anything; but if you stop to read, thank you!)

What do you do when every day it feels like the world continues to collapse around you a little more, through circumstances so far beyond any control of your own? It's a particular kind of hopelessness, overwhelming and numbing at the same time. How can you possibly do anything to affect events thousands of miles away, or things perpetrated by people with more power than we could hope to compete with?

     I find a certain peace in more liminal social spaces and moments. The non-places and inbetweens of our every day sometimes feel capable of keeping the rest of the world distant, in a state of temporary, quiet neutrality. The initial concept for this came from countless nights spent in cheap 24-hour diners with friends; it's a specific setting that, to me at least, feels so separated from the world around it. Ordering breakfast food at an hour when the world is at its quietest, alongside people who- maybe through shared activities, or happenstance, or just being up at 1 AM and having nothing to do and nowhere to go- happen to find themselves with you in that moment. In that way it has often felt very much like a sanctuary to me- a facsimile of a place, a stop for the transient, sleepless, and solitary. Comfort in the knowledge of others beside you with no need to interact directly.

     Lo-Fi (at least what is currently meant by the term), as a genre, occupies a similar place for me. A genre comprised heavily of sounds created by others, often used more as background noise than a focal point. So deeply associated with lonely late nights in spaces that place us distant from the fears that surround us daily. If a diner in the latest hours of the night is often a form of indirect companionship, then lo-fi is the solitary answer to this. Though even then, some of that companionship can still be felt in the form of server rooms and youtube stream chats.

     There is no shortage of work regarding the moments of a catastrophic event or the aftermath of a collapse. I'd like to find the space between those, where despite everything feeling like it hangs in the balance, that pressure is lifted for a few moments in the presence of those with you- spoken or not. Sometimes it's just enough to exist together in the face of so many looming, imminent unknowns.

     If you made it this far, thank you for taking a moment to read. This is a concept that's been rattling around inside my brain for awhile, and this jam seemed like a good avenue for it. Admittedly, I only ended up being able to make something over the course of a few days despite the jam's month long time period- but overall I'm fairly happy with what came out of it, a step towards something I hope to make more of later.