tsukitourou

i don't get any of my music taste from osu! anymore, not in a few years, but much of my past music has come from this game. tsukitourou is a big example of this.

it was one of the tiebreakers to an old osu world cup match, maybe 2017?, involving the us team, which i watched live. i added it to my soundcloud likes soon after and listened to it many times, not really thinking about the match at all. whenever i listen to it these days, i just think of the owc stream layout, with its 8 simultaneous broadcasts of each player's gameplay, their graceful cursor trails following every successful pattern and mistake.

i think of how involved i used to be in the osu community, typing in streams, joining tourney servers, playing nadeko trivia with tourney commentators - nowadays, i don't actively participate in any community, online or offline. and just now, i thought of how i secretly stayed up at 3 am, my mom sleeping a few feet away, while i was on the brink of sleep but still engaged in the gameplay. evrien commentated most good owc matches and probably that one. what a good caster.

right now, maurice ravel - le tombeau de couperin, vi. toccata is playing. this song is also loaded with memories.

i was on a school bus in the early hours, shrouded in darkness. i was headed to one of the first races to train for my second marathon, but also one of my last - i missed a later race since i stayed up late to read some book or fanfiction, overslept since i would've had 2 hours of sleep if i woke up on time, and got disqualified.

=> endurance.gmi

on the bus, i had already downloaded some music onto my phone, namely the academic decathlon music selections of the year, and felt like playing them for the first time, to recognize and possibly appreciate them. i heard toccata and immediately thought something along the lines of, the fuck? this is artcore. but it's not electronic. it's so old. why does this sound exactly like artcore? artcore is usually an energetic, instrumental, piano-focused electronic genre common in rhythm games like osu. i thought of xi, the rhythm game composer, as i heard toccata. i quickly messaged an online friend that was one of my main friends, that i don't keep up with now, my thoughts. and they were like yeah!! this is so similar! i liked being supported by them.

later on, i listened to it more as the decathlon season progressed and it sounded less like artcore but the original memory persisted. when i hear it now, i think fondly of an older teammate who wrote a speech about classical music that year and was really good at decathlon - not the one i had a crush on btw. i think of how good energy our team had, most of us excited by all the reading of music and death and illness. long gone days. basic nostalgia, but still meaningful.

mar 2, 2022

update 2022-10-10: link