Why I Started, Where I Am, and Where I Go

There’s a selfish reason I started Pondering The Orb: I wanted to get more of myself out there and promoting my work, and I saw/see the problems that TikTok created early, and I already loved YouTube. YouTube is my favorite website, bar none, and I love being a tiny, miniscule, slow-growing part of that community.

But I also started Pondering The Orb because the trauma of the pandemic ended up with me crying in my aunt’s outdoor shower to Figments by Forhill. For some reason that was the album that allowed so much I had bound up since the birth of my son and watching my wife to go work every day in New York City in a subway where people weren’t masking because some people care more about their comforts than they do people and the general stress of lockdown which felt poorly managed, followed by a series of blunders from the media and government that made the reaction and response to Covid-19 such a clusterfuck. I don’t want to forget the mention the performative respect paid to “essential workers” like my wife, who were cast immediately aside as ungrateful enemies of the state and society the moment they demanded fair pay and respect for sacrificing their time and lives when everyone else got to stay home. She went to work every day knowing she could bring home the virus to a newborn baby and her husband, which killed millions and continues to affect millions more.

But nurses wanting fair pay are the problem?

And as I usually do in the high summer, I ended up in an outdoor shower in Northern Maryland. It’s located in my favorite place in the world, which also has the brightest mornings and the darkest nights, but that space is a shelter at dawn or dusk where you can disappear in the heat and the water and stop thinking.

I don’t know why I decided to finally listening to Synthwave or Figments, but I have a suspicion that Van Halen was involved. I remember listening to a lot of Van Halen’s 1986 classic 5150 during that summer. Eddie Van Halen used a lot more synth a lot in his records with Sammy Hagar, who I think is the superior frontman, and listening to that lead to more piano and keyboard music, which led to Synthwave. But I honestly cannot tell you why I picked Figments. I think the cover of the album had a lot to do with it, because one thing I’ve come to adore about Synthwave is its aesthetic qualities. But there in that shower, it stuck. It allowed me to lose all of these emotions and fears and anxiety I had carried since the day my son was born and lockdown started, and I wouldn’t have done it without Forhill’s classic album.

I had the idea for a show about Books & Music long ago in college, but I didn’t have the technical abilities or acumen to pull it off. Long ago I wanted to create a YouTube channel for Borders Books & Music, which was the greatest big-box bookstore of them all. Yes, it was just a red painted, hipper version of the green and stayed Barnes & Noble, but it had a better coffee bar and treated its sections like they mattered. It was also the best place in the world to skip school. But I wanted to create a channel based my love of books and music because, in some weird way, I want the show to mimic what I would have done if I had visited my Borders. I’d go to the Fantasy section, then I’d head over to the Rock & Metal CDs in the music section, which let you scan the barcode and sample at least half the album most of the time. And then we’d have to get out of there because it’s obvious you were there too long and now people are judging you for your age.

(Actually, I think the show captures this very well.)

The idea for Leonard (the orb) and the show based around ‘pondering the orb” was another thing that caught me in a meme. I love memes—political memes, religious memes, funny memes, dark memes. Memes are great, but ones that kept popping up were wizard memes, and in particular this one meme of Saruman pondering what visions are granted to him by the Palantir, one of the iconic seeing stones from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings. It helped shape the theme and presentation’s aesthetic that I didn’t have nailed down until that meme.

(Credit to artist: Angus McBride, Middle-earth Roleplaying Game – 1993)

Now as of this writing I’m halfway through Season 3, which has been what I call on my scratch pad “The Stability Season.” Let me explain:

Season 1 was “Meant to Fail”.

I know some will read that and go “why would you make a season meant to fail?”

The answer is two-fold: first, I didn’t have any expectations during the production of the first season other than hitting a deadline of one episode a month and having all the elements together in a cohesive video. I edited in Windows Video Maker for the first four episodes before I realized I needed something better. I made two more episodes on two different video editing services that were okay, but things came together when I finally got my hands on Wondershare Filmora 11, which is now Filmore 13. I tried Da Vinci and a few other suites, but Filmora provided me an ease of use and a production quality that far outran the price of a yearly license.

But that first season was design to be a trash, learn-how-to-do-this season. None of the episodes have consistent times. The sound is wonky because I didn’t have the real means to edit the sound until late in the season, and I didn’t know how to pick it up in the clearest possible way in certain settings, like a convention. The readings are actually pretty good, in retrospect, and music selection is surprising for my first outing. I landed a lot of great Melodeath bands and Synthwave artists I never expected to give me their permission.

Second, it was the season that showed me I needed to curb my own expectations–which was also a goal. I wanted a books and music show along with an interview podcast, and those things didn’t work together. It also doesn’t help it added two to three hours of editorial and processing that I didn’t need to stress myself with. I also had to learn how to shoot with multiple different cameras and recording setups, which was a real learning curve I only felt like I achieved in Season 2. But I needed to know what didn’t work first before I could figure out what did.

Season 2 was the first round of what I considered the “Technical Season(s).”

(Yes, I plan to have phases like the MCU. No, they will get better instead of worse.)

Season 2 focused on putting together a cohesive presentation, sans interview, and trying to contain the times down to where there was an expectancy that readings would only last 7-10 minutes on average, with more time given to music. I also went from one episode per month to two, which I’ve been able to maintain fairly well by developing a process and methodology that allows me to find new (and old) books and music, source them, record the content needed for every episode, all based on a script I can turn out in a few days to a week if I add together all the time it takes to do outreach.

In Season 1 it took me two to three weeks to edit an episode. By the end of Season 2 it averaged down to about three days, and that will probably be lowered by the end of Season 3. I’ve already had one or two episodes that turned out really I was able to put together in a single day. Repetition truly is the backbone of developing skillsets.

And then, on the last episode of Season 2, on the last shot, right at the end of recording, disaster struck. I had been using a 4k web camera connected to my main PC along with a pro-grade microphone in tandem to record the show. It often meant employing a lighting system as well to achieve a certain ambiance, which is why Season 2 is much warmer in tone than Season 3 has been so far, though I think Season 3 is brighter, more colorful, and clearer. But that 4k camera died a hard death, which necessitated switching to the 4k camera on my iPhone (I honestly forgot what generation it is. I think 14 or 15?) Adding to it was a shotgun mic and a metal frame attachment which allowed me to have integration for both as well as more stability to a tripod, until recently when the shotgun mic died and I learned to “wire” the Bluetooth mic in the headset I’m always wearing.

Season 3 has been stripped down because of it, I’ve done some experimentation with the lighting both on set and in editorial, and I’m near settling again on what the show will look like for Season 4. Season 2 and Season 3 were/are about cohesion, making sure that I can put out a new episode with a better level of presentation than I did in Season 1. Considering that disaster, I’ve definitely achieved many of the goals I’ve set out to do. The sound is more uniform, the presentation is brighter even with less effects, and I think the iPhone is a slick camera built well for its function.

Season 4 will be the end of the Technical Seasons. My goal in Season 4 will be to correct the lingering issues in the presentation of Pondering The Orb. For example—the introduction is too damn long with the signature. I will be reshooting a new signature for the show while hopefully retaining Overture’s fantastic song, “Shadows and Streetlights”, but it will be around 10 to 20 seconds versus the 70 seconds it is right now. I also intend to nail down the readings and improve my performance on them. All of this is to sharpen and prepare for Season 5, when I go to three episodes a month. How many months I’m still working out, because I do need time to work on my own books and improve my skills at production for the show as well as the more important job of being a husband and father.

At this point someone might ask “how long are you really planning to keep doing this?”

As long as it takes to get over.

If it takes ten seasons, it takes ten season and 120 episodes. If it takes five? Great, but I think I’m here for it until I physically can’t be. I never grew up wanting to produce this program, which I liken to a Fantasy Mr. Rodgers meeting you at the Twilight Tavern for some books and music, nor I think it would bring me so much happiness. I find honest joy every time I finish an episode, a real feeling of “I did this?” I know it may not look the best, because it obviously doesn’t sometimes, but it looks wonderful to me.

Thankfully, I’ve chosen a lane where I don’t think I’m going to anger the YouTube gods and Google demons with what I’m doing. The biggest challenge to production of the episodes is sourcing the music, but for the most part Pondering The Orb has been very successful about reaching out to musicians, bands, and labels, and cultivating a relationship where things work out really well. I have to shout out Century Media Records, MDD Records, Girlfriend Records, Soundcloud, and the all-important Bandcamp, for being wonderful places to discover and support both established and new acts across the gamut. I really have to thank MDD Records, who have been so supportive in helping me find new and past Melodic Death Metal bands in the German tradition and the access they give me to their catalogue of past and upcoming metal superstars.

That said, I do worry for other creators on the platform, especially in the continuing shift brought about by the inclusion of AI-tools. Already there is a lot of generated videos and Shorts that take bland data sets with only cursory fact-checking cobbled together with stolen art and images to produce terrible videos scored by a luxurious male voice. I also worry about how Google might apply AI when it comes to censorship, calibrating their algorithm, and general discoverability. So far it seems AI is summarily terrible at these things on their own and still require human management to create useable data that people will draw management decisions from. Given Google’s behavior around their own projects so far, I think there are reasons to worry. Already I have concerns as a content creator who creates both video and audio. It is very possible, if someone wanted to, to create a facsimile of Jay Requard and get him to say anything.

But I also have a consider that there’s only so much that can be done about this, and what I am doing about it? That is something I’m still trying to figure out. I’ll let you know when I do.

I love books and music. Yes, I love my books and I hope you will check them out, but the chance to give voice to work that was once high in the world and works yet to be uncovered is a real privilege. One thing I really like about my fellow BookTubers in the space is a commitment to finding the old titles and releases that were popular in yesteryear and granting them time to be recognized and rediscovered by an audience always in need of more books and music.

Oh, and why Melodic Death Metal?

The music and bands of the genre influence so much of my work. The character Valen Goldentongue, the bard in my Spy|Counter|Killer series and many more stories, is directly inspired by Mikael Stanne from Dark Tranquillity and The Halo Effect-fame. I can’t tell you how many chapters or titles to my stories either start or end up with a title of a Melodeath song. I’m writing a dark fantasy light-novel, right now, completely inspired by Insomnium’s Argent Moon. All the way back to the three kings, which include At The Gates and In Flames along with DT, I have had an affinity and reliance on this genre to get them through my days. To not include it would be a disservice and dishonest to the intentions of the show, which is to spread awareness of Epic Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, and music I love and I believe needs more exposure. And the show, in one of its great benefits, forces me to go out there and listen to new music in both the Melodic Death Metal and Synthwave genres, but in that constant cycle of seeking, researching, and selecting before I reach out to the bands and musicians, I cross many, many paths of different sorts of music. Synthwave will take you to Vaporwave, electronica, Futurefunk, and all the way to Phil Collins. Melodic Death Metal stretches across the history of Rock and Metal music, and with its international success, draws my attention to more places than wonderful Sweden, where the form emerged. And I’ve had HUGE names give me permission to showcase their work, including Insomnium, Ensiferum, Orbit Culture, Eluveitie, Suidakra, Countless Skies, and so many more over three seasons I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting someone really big that I shouldn’t. Hell, I had Omnium Gatherum on the second episode of the first season! One of Finland’s finest!

I hope that the show conveys something else that it brings me—joy. It’s not monetized, and it’s not going to make me money, but it is a part of something that could lead to something else one day that might, and I’m having so much fun. Despite how solitary it is, I find myself still learning, still progressing, still figuring out new ways to make it better and to make myself better in turn. My only hope, outwardly, is that the audience is enjoying it as much as I am. Anthill by anthill, the show seems to be growing like a wicked, pernicious weed.

A weed might bloom a beautiful flower, or feed someone, give them a drink, heal, or even clear our minds. Books and music have always brought clarity to so many. I hope to plant a field, somewhere, after the wind blows it all away.

But until then, more sunlight, more rain, and more working on this passion project I hope remains with its passion, not only for myself, but for other authors and creators and hopefully musicians and bands. I’m not alone in this dirt, and I need to make sure the rest come along too, in what little ways I can bring them.

I hope you enjoy it, now and into the future. If you liked this blog, please consider signing up for my newsletter below! You can also check out the series mentioned in this post by clicking here.