So this isn't Bapple Blog. Ok so I may have changed my mind… but I think it's for the better! So I'm starting the Epsilon Repository, which is basically a catch-all for everything I write. So this will include my blog, essays, poetry, and other stuff that you can't even think of because your brain is so small.

But why “Epsilon”? It stems from my music, actually. When I uploaded music under “Bapple Business”, I named my projects using Greek letters. My first EP was Alpha, then my two albums were Beta and Gamma. I later released some songs and grouped them together under the title “In the Interim”, which is supposed to reflect the fact that I was working on Delta while making them. Delta later became Evening Rumination, which I released under the name “Plain Henley”. As you can see, I have many a identity crisis.

Fun fact: “Evening Rumination” only became the name of the EP probably a few weeks before release. I was just gonna name it “Delta”, under Bapple Business, but then COVID hit and “Delta” had other connotations. The EP was a quarantine project, sure, but only by coincidence. I wasn't gonna let this pandemic be associated with it. So I had a lot of names floating around, notably “Bus Rides and Evening Ruminations”. But this became problematic when I decided the cover of the EP would feature train tracks — I thought the mix of transportation methods wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to people (I actually passed those tracks on my bus rides home, which is where the association came from, but obviously people don't know that). So I dropped the first part, dropped the s, and just called it “Evening Rumination”.

The name “Plain Henley” actually came about around the same time. One day in October 2022, I noticed that my crush and I were wearing the same plain henley shirts and jeans. I thought that could make a cool song lyric, so I wrote it down in my notes app. As the EP approached completion, I realized (with help from my friends on Twitter) that “Bapple Business” didn't exactly fit the kind of work that I was gonna put out. I remembered that potential song lyric and thought “plain henley” sorta sounded like a name, like “Tame Impala”. It was also abstract enough that it could fit lots of music genres. So after about a day or two of ruminating (haha get it), I went with it.

Anyway, I still think of Evening Rumination as my “Delta era”, if you will. So now I'm in the Epsilon era. Each album has a color: Alpha was red, Beta was blue, Gamma was green, Delta was yellow/gold, and Epsilon is magenta. Epsilon was always supposed to be crazy. I've actually thought about this since the early days of Gamma, back in 2018. Epsilon is genre-breaking. It's radical. It's supposed to make people go “wow, what the hell was that?”. I'm very proud of Evening Rumination; it was cohesive yet varied in a way that I'm still surprised I was able to pull off. So I want to continue a lot of the good, but I want to try something new as well. Epsilon is meant to be a redefinition and recomposition of everything I've made before.

These statements are certainly ambitious (and a little pretentious), but they're more of a guide that I'm using to create good shit™ rather than a realistic idea of the end product.

So how does that relate to this? Well, the repository is supposed to be all-encompassing but also organized. It reflects the values that I'm putting into the EP/album that is codenamed Epsilon, and also my life right now (my “Epsilon era”). Also, the likelihood that this project will continue is probably a little higher. Whether I keep up with the blog is one thing, but I will still need a place to keep my stuff organized, for my own sake.

The blog I view as a nontraditional art form. Sort of like prose poetry mixed with diary entries. I'm not trying to do much rather than break the kinds of boundaries of honesty that have been placed in between me and the rest of the world. Maybe I placed them? I don't know. Phrasing things matter-a-factly, going on tangents that take over the post, not giving too much of a shit about traditional sentence structure — that's stuff I hope to utilize and have been utilizing. Hopefully this makes the blog somewhat interesting to read in its differences and oddities.

A lot of this is based in anger at the constraints of other creative endeavors. I actually love placing arbitrary constraints on myself — I think it has the potential to spark creativity and force you out of loops you usually feel comfortable entering. For example, I have a playlist of songs that I aim to influence the songs I create for Epsilon — a lot of them are indie rock and dream pop and stuff like that. But my restriction is that I'm going to use acoustic guitar instead of electric guitar. I hope this will lead to the creation of a more unique style that isn't just a shitty copy of better stuff.

I view this blog as an outlet. It's something I don't have to think about — it's basically me vomiting on the page. And I think this will help me create good shit™ by allowing me to write my thoughts in some way, even if it's not the best way.

Am I worried about people copying my ideas? Uhhhh I'm not sure. On one hand, I think the idea of copyright is sort of dumb; wouldn't it be great if we structured our society in a more collaborative manner? If I come up with some idea and it gets spread by someone else, that is a good thing. But on the other hand, I have to recognize that under our current socioeconomic system (I use this when I want to say “capitalism” but am worried about looking too radical), people do not always act in good faith. The one thing I really care about (beyond, you know, making a living) is credit. I don't need compensation (again, if I'm making a comfortable living already), I just want my work to be recognized as mine. This isn't to say people shouldn't build off of my work — I do — rather that a footnote with my name isn't much to ask for.

The idea of copyleft I think is super cool, and I might explore it more soon in the future. Basically, using a copyleft license (of which there are many) means that others can use your work in their works, only if they make their work available for others to use in the same way. But I can't ignore that other people are in different situations than me and might rely on having their work stay proprietary.

But I've decided that the benefits of writing thoughts here probably outweigh the downsides. So here it will be.

Also I know I keep saying stuff about my “thoughts” while never actually writing them here. Don't worry, those will come soon! I think