Response: Connections ~ seaside after story
Sunrise Roadshow Era (#003.5)
July 7th, 2021
When I started World’s Last Garden, I did not expect it to grow as much as it did. Right off the bat, my debut single “Connections” skyrocketed to 5,000 plays on SoundCloud in the first year, which I did not expect to happen so quickly.
But as time went on, the idea I had for the project changed insanely from one idea to another; starting off as an in-universe continuation of PARANOIA FUTURE_DATA’s story 500 years later, to being a symbol of freedom, and mixing the two around to create Lillie as the gardener of the “world’s last garden.”
Outside of the project’s meaning, I also grew plenty since debuting, both as an artist and as a person (as I say with pretty much any project). Often I’ll listen to my older demos from 2019 and even early 2020, seeking new ideas but more importantly comparing my production from then to my production now. Unsurprisingly, I learned a lot more along the way as I met more musicians, joined more communities, talk to more people!
The messages of my songs over the years also drastically changed as I wrote different styles and wrote about different subjects, which was something I never imagined I would feel after writing “Embers,” an almost entirely instrumental album. Now that I’m on the horizon of writing more about my own personal experiences, I look back at some of my older World’s Last Garden music and notice I’ve been doing it unintentionally for a long while now.
“Connections” was one of those songs. Originally, I wrote it about Amelia Tachibana (who at the time was still a character of PARANOIA FUTURE_DATA) and how lost she was in the world until she found Rei Aoyama (the main protagonist of PARANOIA FUTURE_DATA). This took the form of Spring without You, which was actually intended to be an unknowndreamuser release until I redid the production of Connections to form what I released two years ago.
The lyrics of Connections easily mirror how I feel every now and then – the wheel of life and its uncertain balance. Ever since I was younger I always felt I didn’t know where I was going and that life was passing me by far too quickly, something I believe a lot of people can relate to as they reach adulthood. I found myself always longing for someone to lead me along the way and to “save” me from the path I was going down.
Of course, I wrote this all with the intention and idea that it was from Amelia’s perspective, but in retrospect it’s so shockingly resonant with my own perspective that it’s like I knew exactly how to put my thoughts into words before I knew how to.
I honestly only wrote Seaside After Story a few nights before today and finished this afternoon. I really wanted to celebrate two years of World’s Last Garden, because of how far I’ve come since I debuted (and gaining 700 followers despite not releasing for nearly an entire year). I didn’t really expect to write an indie acoustic version of Connections through it, but I’m happy with how it turned out regardless!
Here’s to another two years, and to the future of World’s Last Garden!
lyrics
—
tell me, oh tell me why,
i keep running to the sky
never told me who i am, who i was, who i'll see, who i'm meant to be
the things i've felt in vein
the love and the pain never helped me after all
so where do i go when i'm lost, where nothing's meant to be
i look up to the rising moon
reaching my hand so far away
i blur out what i never knew
i'm holding on, so i'm not alone
i know it's you, your voice that i need
i'll stay with you, and write in blue
if the world turns against me,
can you be here, by my side, so i'm not alone
