CHRONICLES OF S.TARR

I went up the Mountain to see what I could see

03.11.2012

Greetings Traveller

While I busy myself with writing a book and such, I am ever-joyed at presenting you my latest musical offering via those space-faring, time-travelling, earth-loving, soul-searching virtual beings known as The X-Structure. I call it Soultronica, music for the body, mind and soul.

Mountain is the album and it is short but deep journey right to the heart of the matter. Get it now for free, while it is still light out, and join me on the journey to the Mountain.

Changes to the site

05.09.2012

Greetings cyber traveller

I will be making some changes to the site to reflect the new direction I am heading towards with regards to the publishing of my book-to-be, which is based on the various entries, thoughts and poems found on this site. I will most probably be removing most of the writtings as some of them will be edited in the book and I therefore would rather, at a later stage, repost them here in order for them to be in their new and proper form.

Here is to the exciting, scary, unknown path I am now taking. May we all benefit from my experiment and experience.

Until then.

Fare thee well fellow traveller.

Starr

A book, now there's a novel idea

26.08.2012

For a long time now I've wanted to take the best chronicles and thoughts found on this website and compile them in to a book. I feel there is enough good bits here to create some sort of memoir / inspirational book. I will of course edit and update some of the pieces and find some creative way to lay it all out but I am pleased to finally be able to create a self-contained vehicle for the expieiences and ideas I have documented here on Chronicles for the past 7 years.

I will go the way of digital publishing but would also like to have physical printed copies as there is nothing as memorable as a book in your hands that touches both your body and your mind.

You, whoever is reading this, will be the first to know of the progress of this fine endeavour and I hope to get to it sooner than later. Like they say, there is no time like the present.

-Starr

Into the Wild

08.06.2012

I made and released another album through those epic virutal beings known as The X-Structure.

This album is wild and, as always, free. Get it from The X-Structure's website and discover your wild side.

Wild Places

Words of wisdom by those now past (some of my favourite quotes)

27.04.2012

‎"An adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose." G.K. Chesterton

"To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize." - Blaise Pascal

"Nothing changes when nothing changes." - Austin Kleon

"'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver...'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'" - C.S. Lewis

"We have only to see a few letters of the alphabet spelling our name in the sand to recognize at once the work of an intelligent agent. How much more likely, then is the existence of an intelligent Creator behind human DNA, the colossal biological database that contains no fewer than 3.5 billion 'letters' - the longest 'word' yet discovered?" - John Lennox

"Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism." - Blaise Pascal

"Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them." - Blaise Pascal

"Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much." - Blaise Pascal

"You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself." - Benjamin Franklin

"When I consider what marvelous things men have understood, what he has inquired into and contrived, I know only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God, and one of the most excellent.” Yet the potential of the human mind “… is separated from the Divine knowledge by an infinite interval.”" - Galileo Galilei

"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear." - G. K. Chesterton

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Don't ask what the world needs; rather ask what makes you come alive and go do that because the world needs men and women who have come alive." - Howard Thurman

"The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after." - Oswald Chambers

"It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"It is not right human thoughts about God that make up the content of the Bible, but rather right divine thoughts about human beings." - Karl Barth

"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God." - C.S. Lewis

"For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a love we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited." - C.S. Lewis

"And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." - C.S. Lewis (The Last Battle)

The Liberation

07.01.2012

The Liberation has been going on for a long time now. Hard to say how long really. But what is known for sure is that there is a battle for our souls and victory over darkness and despair is certain, for we have the Hero on our side.

So that there is a little introduction to The X-Structure's latest album called Liberation.

You are most welcome to download it and share it with your friends.

If you would like to support my musical endeavours financially and also get your hands on my new album, which is being released on Airborne, then head on over there and give the first track, Prepare the way, a listen. The album, called Wild Places, will be released track by track over the next few months.

p.s. I am planning on releasing my first story, probably Tempest City, chapter by chapter on Chronicles, so stay tuned!

x

Announcing 'The Future' before it's too late

22.11.2011

Yes, I have not written a Chronicle entry for a while now but that does not mean I have not been busy.

As you may know I have actively been crafting and shaping my virtual band The X-Structure. Things are starting to come together nicely now and although I have not yet acquired the skills and services of a regular visual artist for the band's visual side I have been tinkering around with what resources I do have and created a few of my own imagery. Check below to see what I have been up to. I've also been experimenting with poster designs for the band and will post them shortly, or longly which ever comes first.

So besides exploring my visually creative side I have also released another album for/by/through The X-Structure. This one is called The Future and is our biggest and longest album to date. It really delves into my exploration of always trying something else, something new, and not just sticking with what is known and expected. I have fused quite a few musical ideas and am happy with the result. As for the direction and meaning behind the album I am still amazed at how unsaid things can be communicated on a musical level and I hope that the intended message behind the songs and album gets through the intellectual walls we put up around us and is planted safely into the souls of the listeners, where it can grow and bring forth good fruit.

As for the title of this entry, I am almost ready to release yet another album by The X-Structure, called Liberation, and therefore thought it good time to annouce the other one before it was too late to be called my latest album. You know what I mean, right?

So, that's all folks. Get ready for Liberation, the epic futuristic western space opera. Pretty intriguing eh?

p.s. I am also really contemplating on contining writting my stories/novels and getting them out of my head on to paper. I have most recently been inspired by the game Skyrim and the show Game of Thrones to go at it with renewed vigor to complete my epic fantasy saga called Saga of South (don't use that name now ;)) 

Peace be with you.

x