How a Vintage Teacup Ended Up In a Song
Dearest Ratties,
I've been down with the Plague for a couple of weeks—hence the lack of letters and posts—but during that time, a vintage teacup became immortal. Here's how it happened...
A box arrived at Asylum HQ and was couriered over to me. Inside, a set of the most beautiful vintage teacups—a gift from Bishop, one of the Founding Inmates of the Asylum Inner Circle.
Crawling out of bed to put a cup to good use (Earl Grey, to be precise) and determined to host the Circle's scheduled "In Solitary, Together" event—where I work on music live in Striped Stocking Studio whilst Inmates work on their own projects simultaneously and we all inspire each other—I found that I couldn't stop coughing. Nor could the studio computer.
Rebooting the beast for the third time, I felt myself a disappointment to everyone watching. I sipped from Bishop's teacup and sat with that feeling of insufficiency for a moment before the obvious question arrived: what can we do with what we have, instead of waiting for everything to be perfect and shiny?
So, still on camera, I picked up the ever-present field-recording device I use for sound design and set to tapping on the teacup with a tiny silver spoon—another gift, from a Plague Rat several years prior.
The "tings" and "dings" issuing forth alerted me immediately that they desired nothing more than to be incorporated into the finally-opened "Girls Will Be Girls" session. Once imported, they began to take shape—and transform into what they always were: the shimmering synth that would underscore the lyric "and now I'm seeing stars."
By the final moment of what ended up being a 4-hour live work session, I was nearly falling off my chair, but I was also deliriously excited. One of the Asylum's most beloved bits of iconography, the teacup, was forever part of our sonic heritage, and, even if the casual Spotify listener wouldn't know, I would know, everyone in that room would know, and this was all that mattered.
I wanted to show this process clearly, so back in bed I went through it again—demonstrating how anything can become music if its true value is recognized, and how, in the end, the teacup became a synth became the sound of stars became immortal.
If you're inside the Circle, log in to watch the full session—and to see what becomes of a pair of sampled striped stockings and an industrial drum kit made entirely out of spoons.
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