Cinnamon Stars
A Personal Reflection on Memory, Drums, and Dust
This piece started with a poem. Well—half a poem. The phrase “cinnamon stars” dropped out of my pen one morning and just… stuck. I wasn’t planning on writing music that day, but that phrase opened something—a fissure, a portal, a spice-laced memory chamber—and suddenly, I wasn’t at my desk anymore. I was walking inside the pages of Dune. Not in a literal, fan-art way. More like: emotionally wandering through the book’s residue. Echoes. Dust.
There’s no clear timeline in Cinnamon Stars. No beginning, middle, or crescendo. It’s not that kind of piece. This is closer to remembering something you never lived—an abstract recollection. The sounds came the way desert winds move: nonlinear, patterned only by something ancient and unknowable.
Sound as a Memory Map
The instrumentation came together slowly, but instinctively:
Taiko drums for their elemental weight—like the slow heart of a sandworm or a tribal rite you’re not meant to witness.
PVC pipe drums—hollow and reverberant. They remind me of wind howling through a Fremen sietch, or what bone might sound like if it dreamt.
A modified kalimba, twisted just enough to lose its sweetness. I wanted something that sparkled but wasn’t friendly.
Synths, of course—droning, gliding, breathing. They’re the thread, the mist, the mechanical sand.
There’s no narrative to hold onto here. Just emotions, in layers:
Mystery. Distance. Stillness. Pressure. Curiosity.
I didn’t write this to be followed. I wrote it to be entered.
Sometimes, when I listen back, I slip into a meditative state. Not on purpose. I just fade in, as if some part of me remembers a past I’ve never had. Maybe it's the spice. Maybe it's just the rhythm of forgetting.
A Visual Echo
The visual element came later, but it’s integral. I had Sora build a 3D wall-hanging sculpture—somewhere between Klimt’s glimmering mosaics and Dalí’s warped dreaming. Texture is everything. I wanted golds and shadows, sharp edges that curl, things that feel aged but alive. I didn’t want to illustrate the music—I wanted the art to vibrate with it, mirror its emotional logic.
It’s not a moving image in the traditional sense, but there’s movement inside it.
Like dust suspended in light. Like an altar in a dream.
Who Might Hear This?
I imagine this resonating with:
Film producers searching for ambient cinematic atmospheres with edges.
Choreographers who like music that breathes but doesn’t beg for attention.
Percussionists curious about unconventional forms—who know that rhythm doesn’t always mean tempo.
But really, it’s for anyone drawn to sonic meditation. For listeners who appreciate uncertainty, who can sit inside mood without asking it to resolve.
What Sets It Apart?
This isn’t ambient as background. It’s ambient as portal.
What sets this piece apart is the combination of tactile percussion and spacious electronics—that soft tension between grounded and drifting.
It doesn’t offer resolution. It offers reflection.
A sense that maybe… just maybe… you’ve heard this before.
Not in this life. Not on this planet. But somewhere.
“When I listen to this piece, I drop into a meditative state... perhaps it’s spice-influenced?”
—me, to myself, more than once
Acknowledgments
As always, my deepest gratitude to the Strepito group. They turned these weird textures and pulse-ideas into something real, playable, resonant. They understood the emotional logic of the piece before I had words for it.
