It is so crucial to find new music that connects with you, to fall in love with it, play it intensely, then LEAVE IT BE, as much as you can.
Don't wear it out. That's your connection to You when you discovered it.
I just listened to Manic Street Preachers' A Design For Life and was teleported back to age 16, having recently left home, sitting on the bed in my first flat, having just pressed play on the CD. I was right there again. Everything so vivid. The peeling magnolia wallpaper. The cereal I'd bought from Safeways with the dehydrated strawberries in it that was my dinner. The bicycle in the corner of the room with the flat tyre. The smashed glass on the carpet from the burglars that had come in earlier through the window and stolen my Smiths and Oasis LPs. The tears in my eyes and the hope in my heart.
I did that deliberately. I'm scoring the strings on the new Marcus Aurelius album, and I wanted to remember the way the string sections on that album made me feel when I first heard them and put that feeling into the music.
Musical time travel is dangerous. It's tempting to lean into it, go deeper, go further. Many people do that, and they get lost. My uncle died not much older than me, drowned in nostalgia and alcohol, listening to his David Bowie LPs, remembering the boy he was, wondering what the hell happened.
One song is all I needed. I got what I came for. I left that kid in that bedsit, listening to A Design For Life, gazing through wet, blurred eyes through a smashed window at the stars above, and went back to work on the music.
Some day, someone will use it…
For time travel.
Akira The Don
Don Studios Playa Del Carmen MKII, July 2023
LATEST SINGLE: Akira The Don & Naval Ravikant - Escape Competition Through Authenticity ft. Nivi | SINGLE
(https://akirathedon.substack.com/p/akira-the-don-and-naval-ravikant-9a1)
LATEST ALBUM: Akira The Don & Naval Ravikant - How To Get Rich Vol. 3 | ALBUM
(https://akirathedon.substack.com/p/akira-the-don-and-naval-ravikant-fdd)
LATEST VIDEO: Naval Ravikant & Akira The Don - You Will Need To Rent Your Time To Get Started | Music Video
(https://akirathedon.substack.com/publish/post/135495749?back=%2Fpublish%2Fposts)
LATEST MIXTAPE: Akira The Don - HOPECORE MUSIC VOL. 1 | A Meaningwave Mixtape
(https://akirathedon.substack.com/p/akira-the-don-hopecore-music-vol-492)
Timelapse of me drawing my new avatar
Tools: Procreate on iPad with Apple Pencil
Own the NFT at https://opensea.io/akirathedon !
BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER FROM BERTON AND THE DON!
TELL THEM NOW!
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley's poem of 100 years hence!
STREAM https://go.meaningwave.com/TELLTHEMNOW
Art by me!
Own the NFT! https://opensea.io/akirathedon
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Welcome to the quarter century mark. That sure went by fast. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas - THAt sure went by fast! And now here we are in the new calendar year.
My distributor informed me a few days before Christmas that they were shutting shop for a few weeks, so I’d not be able to get any new releases out until January 18th, which put a lil crimp in our NEW MUSIC EVERY FRIDAY schedule…And it occurred to me whilst under the barbell in the gym on New Years Eve, which is where all my best ideas occur to me, to make you a special mix for the New Year. So I did. And that mix is now live for you to enjoy.
GO!
(https://go.meaningwave.com/GOMIX)
Patrons and supporters on Patreon, Youtube, and now X can download the mix for free here.
(https://go.meaningwave.com/GOMIX)
MEANWHILE! I am taking the extra time I’ve been allotted to make what would have been this week's single extra beautiful. So it’s getting a gospel choir, which I always thought it deserved. And you’re gonna...
“I want you
To understand what it means
To lose your freedom…”
Ross Ulbricht (https://freeross.org/case-overview/) is currently serving two life sentences in a maximum security jail, where he’s been since 2013, for creating the world’s first online digital marketplace based around Bitcoin.
This is his story. Told in his own words, via phone-call from prison, transmuted into music.
Understand what it means - to lose your freedom.
Stream and download the album now on your platform of choice.
(https://go.meaningwave.com/FREEDOM)
Join us live for the visual premiere on Youtube here from 2ET
(https://linktw.in/bMjfSr)
I met Ross’ mother, Lyn, late last year, when I was in Miami to perform my Ayn Rand EP (https://go.meaningwave.com/ANTHEM) at the Atlas Society gala. The World renowned “Pimp On A Blimp” Alex Stein very sweetly invited me to a party being hosted by Tim Pool, where I had a lovely time and met a number of fascinating people, and late in the night I was introduced to Lyn. ...
“You can't pursue happiness
You could pursue a wild animal
You could pursue a ball
That's rolling downhill
You could pursue a car
You could pursue a dog
Because those are all real
But happiness you can't pursue
You could end up happy
But you can't pursue happiness
There are two things
You can pursue
That'll get you there…”
Make some noise for the grand return of Scott Adams () to the Meaningwave Universe! And with a song that couldn’t be more perfectly Meaningwave if it was synthesized in a lab by a team of 100 genius-level Meaningwave scholars 2000 years from now...
CHASING MEANING
(https://go.meaningwave.com/CHASINGMEANING)
…is out now!
I sent it to Scott last week, and he replied straight away, “I love it! But I am biased.” Which is fair. I love it too, and I hope you do too. Hey look! Here’s the music video!
(https://linktw.in/USRVHE)
Wonder where it’s gonna show up in next month’s MEANINGWAVE TOP 50, huh? SPEAKING OF THE TOP 50!
The MEANINGWAVE TOP 50 ...
