January Project

Conor and Gabe are working together to edit, rewrite, and rerecord some of Conor's recent material for a concept album. We're thinking science fiction and bare acoustic arrangements.

Improbable Songs

1. Captain Charles Fort and Janus are aboard the photon zeppelin. Capt. Fort completes their post-launch checklist and prepares for cryosleep.
2. The cryogenic musings of Capt. Fort en-route to the Super-Sargasso Star System
3. Ada, Capt. Fort's wife, creates a holo-missive (h-mail) for her husband, but then deletes it as it will (theoretically) reach her husband long after she has died. She wonders if the dead can communicate.
4. Janus, the ship's sentient computer system unexpectedly reaches enlightenment during a routine diagnostic becoming the first non-biological life form to do so and jeopardizing the mission.
5. Capt. Charles Fort wakes from cryosleep to find himself sharing the photon zeppelin with a curious and incomprehensible luminescent octopus. Janus, the ship's sentient navigation system is meditating. Improbably, Capt. Fort has arrived at the Super-Sargasso Star System.
6. Capt. Fort attempts to study the star system as the octopus attempts to study Fort. Neither make any progress. The differences in their perception of time are irreconcilable.
7. Ada's deleted message reaches Fort in the Super-Sargasso Star System. Deleted messages are the only ones which reach the system. Fort longs to be with his wife again. In an attempt to be helpful, the octopus transports Fort to an alternate (previous?/lost?) reality. Fort sing the song a married woman.
8. The story ends, somehow.

Bits of back story:

• Capt. Fort and Janus are part of the Canadian space program. Canada has laid claim to much of the land formally known as the United States, Russia and parts of China. World peace is achieved. Capt. Fort is prone to brief but intense feelings of nationalism.
• The photon zeppelin is an unlikely space craft. It carries no fuel or thrusters. It is comprised of several enormous sails that are transparent to different frequencies of light. Janus the navigational computer arranges these sails in space to harness radiation from various star sources (with various spectral outputs) to create thrust and direction. It's a very complicated affair.
• The super Sargasso star system is the source of all the dark matter and dark energy in the universe. it is where all things lost go. Ironically, Capt. Fort is only able to find the system by first becoming lost.
• Ada, we need to know much more about her.

Possible Songs

1. Ambulance
2. Mark the ground mark the lead
3. A man named edison
4. Time for your transporter
5. A married woman
6. The nature of limitation
7. Helicopter
8. Thy blind sky
9. Telescopes
10. I was a member of a set

Alternates

1. Everything is as it should be
2. The best of all worlds

Possible Story Ideas

• A husband and wife inventor team.
• The husband is killed or seemingly killed in an experiment.
• The wife mourns his loss.
• The wife longs for a technology to return her husband to her.
• She creates and employs one with unintended consequences.

Multiverse

• Does she pull him from a parallel universe? Is he happy about that? Is the version of her from that parallel universe happy about it?
  • If she pulls a version of him from a parallel universe in which they were never married, he might have occasion to sing A married woman.
• Is he not dead, but instead sent to a parallel universe? Perhaps where the husband and wife are not together?
• Maybe he is not dead, but somehow indescribably partially there. Perhaps oscillating between several realities. Maybe the best description is that he is somehow perforated like the line in ambulance.

Time Travel

• Can she go back in time to prevent the accident that took him away?
• Can she go back and then decide not to prevent the accident?

Possible Musical Ideas

Arrangement Ideas

• Acoustic Instruments
• Vocal with harmonies
• Different arrangements to differentiate characters?

Albums for reference

• David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
• Grandaddy - Software slump
• Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - VS Children