We often seek comfort in stories. Narratives we create to make sense of the chaos, even if they aren’t grounded in fact. That fragile space between truth and belief, where hope, fear, and imagination blur the lines of reality.

In uncertain times constructing emotional shelter from ideas, symbols, or myths that feel more real than the world around us is comforting. It’s really about the need to believe, not because something is provable but because it helps us survive.

The Security Blanket Of Ilusions

In the silence that follows grief, music offers a way to process pain, remember deeply, and hold onto moments that words alone couldn’t capture.

Recordings become a conversation with someone no longer here—a way to keep their spirit close and find light in the heaviness of absence. Through music, mourning transformed into meaning, and loss into a lasting connection.

There was nothing

A tribute to an album I made in 2002, it is a celebration of heritage, memory, and the enduring power of voice. At its heart are rare historical recordings of the my grandfather, my Koro, his chants and songs sung in te reo Māori, preserved through time and lovingly woven into a modern sonic landscape.

Blending archival audio with contemporary instrumentation and production, the song bridges generations, honoring traditional Māori culture while reimagining it through a new lens. The raw, unfiltered recordings capture a spirit that is both intimate and universal.  A living echo of a time and place that still resonates.

An offering to the past, and a gift to the future.

A gift to the future

So imagine a person—maybe your neighbor, maybe your barista, maybe you—whose psychic hard drive is so jam-packed with ephemeral pop-ups (think HOA politics, Taylor Swift conspiracy TikToks, third-hand outrage over school board decisions in towns they don’t live in) that they can’t seem to get around to, you know, actually backing up the system. These are folks who obsessively rearrange deck chairs on their personal Titanic while the hull’s already taken on water, not because they don’t see the problem but because the deck chairs are easier. They are, in a sense, both hyper-aware and willfully blind—a contradiction so common in late-capitalist modernity that it barely qualifies as ironic anymore.

Their inner monologue (though they’d never admit it because they don’t do introspection unless it’s hashtagged) runs something like: “If I can just win this pointless argument about paper straws vs. metal straws on Facebook, then maybe I’ll finally feel in control of my life.” The real issues—the slow estrangement from meaning, the dread of mortality, the creeping suspicion that their job title is just a socially acceptable costume for existential inertia—get buried under noise, static, fluff. It’s not ignorance, exactly. It’s a kind of knowing-but-not-knowing, a posture of learned helplessness covered in a thin glaze of performative indignation.

And the kicker is, they’re not wrong, exactly. The petty stuff feels real. It gives them dopamine and validation and a sense of community (or at least combat, which is often more available). It’s just that the cost is the stuff that actually matters—which is usually quieter, slower, scarier, and harder to meme.

In short: they are not bad people. They are simply people whose existential horror is being smothered under an endless, buzzing swarm of things-that-seem-urgent-but-aren’t.

And if you find yourself judging them too harshly, you should probably ask what you’re avoiding by doing so

Horizons that delude

I found it tucked in brittle folds,

A photo, faded, soft with time-

A rainbow arched in gentle golds-

Framed by her hands, her quiet eye.



No grand design, no sweeping scene,

Just light and color after rain,

A ribbon strung through quiet green,

A whisper softened into frame.



She must have paused to catch that bow,

While sky still wept and grasses gleamed,

A moment only she would know-

A world half-grieving, half in dream.



No faces here, no clever pose,

Just wonder, still and simply kept,

Like something only mothers know-

The way the sky leans in when wept.



And now she’s gone, her hands are dust,

But here’s her gaze, her hush, her grace,

This arc of light she thought to trust,

To hold a small and sacred place.



I never knew she took this shot,

But now it lives beneath my skin-

A rainbow caught, a fleeting thought,

Of how she saw the world within.



And oh, the beauty that she knew-

Not in the grand, but in the slight.

She left me this: a sky turned true,

A mother’s eye, a prismed light

She caught a rainbow

This photo is quietly profound, it captures more than my grandfather on the shore feeding a seagull. It speaks to the human instinct to reach beyond, to seek connection with something fleeting and untouchable. The seagull, mid-flight, just beyond his grasp, becomes a symbol not of loss, but of aspiration.

Framed by the endless expanse of sea and sky, he is both small and significant. His gesture part playful, part poignant, echoes a timeless yearning: to make contact, to reach into the unknown, to affirm our place in a vast and indifferent universe. With one arm extended, he defies gravity, futility, even time, chasing something ephemeral with dignity and hope.

And maybe that’s what this image really captures for me. Not just the moment a bird flies overhead, but the essence of being human: reaching toward something we may never touch, but nevertheless striving for.

Just beyond forever

Each empty sunrise unwraps the day without you
light falls cold and thin.
A name in the wind 
I reach through the hollow air, held by memory.

A Reckoning Part 2

A Reckoning Part 1

Hope awakens
a soft stirring

It does not shout.
It just blooms
And suddenly,
the world
is possible again.

Hope awakens for you

Haunted repetition of a moment, lost to a null loop.

whatwas [loop 0x0]

Ash drifts sideways through the door. We do not look back  The church keeps shrinking. Outside, light stutters through the ribs of the steeple.

Special thanks to the Post Form String Quartet.

Departure

Touching Down

Defnd - Bio

Beginning with classical music training, my journey into music production evolved from traditional composition to exploring the limitless world of electronic music. Over time, I have gravitated toward creating ambient, synth-driven soundscapes.

My work is a fusion of my classical roots and passion for electronic innovation.

Defnd

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