MAYA: an Alan Watts hall-of-mirrors song where a stick figure dances inside the illusion

Lift one mirror. Another one lights. You forgot you built it.

MAYA is Song 09 in Out of Your Mind, the Napkin Films series built from the
Alan Watts lectures. This is the one about maya, the convincing illusion of
separation the universe plays on itself so the game can work. Lift one curtain
and another rises behind it. Each reveal hides one more, until the audience is
you. Watts kept circling the same point: the illusion only works because you
forgot you wrote the part you are playing.

A hall of mirrors

The thesis is recursive, a stage behind a stage behind a stage, so the film is a
literal hall of mirrors. The Plan 9 bunny performs to camera in a room of facing
mirrors, and its reflections recede to a vanishing point. Each reveal lights a
mirror one level deeper. The reflections stand with their backs to you, until the
drop, when every one of them turns to face you, because the audience is you, and
then the bunny bows and the reflections bow with it. A People of the Stars
constellation hides in the deepest mirror, clearest when the last one lights.

A real record this time

Earlier passes of this song were a gentle glass music box, and it read as twee.
So MAYA got rebuilt as a proper EDM record: 128 BPM, C minor, a modal turn that
never quite cadences so the harmony never lands, which is the point. The hook is
an anthem lead, stated in the chorus and both drops so it lodges in the ear, and
the hall of mirrors lives in the arrangement itself, every line of the hook
answered by a smaller, higher, pan opposite echo, a stage behind the stage in the
stereo field. Underneath sits a fat clean bass, a four on the floor kick with a
sidechain pump, a driving arp, and a real breakdown before the big drop. The
score is an original ChipForge composition, our own engine, no samples and no
GPU.

The bunny dances

The picture gives the idea a body. The bunny is on a real skeleton rig now, and
it dances on the beat: it bounces, it pumps, it nods, it sways, and the whole
hall answers. The mirrors flash on the kick. God ray beams fan from the vanishing
point. Light motes rise through the drop and the camera punches with the beat.
The reveals warm the cool mirror violet toward gold, and the custom sound effects
stem lights each mirror with an in key chime, risers and a sub thump driving into
the chorus and the drop.

Voices

Der Gouverneur, a Bavarian philosopher governor voice, spits the verses double
time and sings the hook, every line trimmed and locked to the beat. The verses
are real spit, written with internal and multisyllabic rhyme: the crowd is all
rabbits, the crowd is your habits, you are the trick and the hand and the air,
Maya is the magic, you are the magician. The Plan 9 Glenda bunny is the one
behind the mirror, answering from each new stage: I see you, behind the curtain,
another stage, that is me too. The German motif runs through, Das Spiel im Spiel,
and at the drop, Das Spiel und der Spieler. The bridge is spoken, the still center
before the drop: once you know it is a game, you can finally play it.

Made on a laptop

Stick-figure simple in Python and PIL, authored at 854x480 and delivered at
1280x720, a skeleton dance rig, a beat-locked double-time spit rap, a second
character voice, an original ChipForge EDM score with real drums, bass and a
sidechain pump, a hand-built sound effects stem. Generated locally. No GPU, no
subscriptions, no stock footage. Written, directed, composed, animated, voiced,
and produced by Joshua Ayson with AI, for Organic Arts LLC.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/EYd_80YuatE

More from Napkin Films

• Same Nerve, Song 08: pain and pleasure are the same
  nerve, one melody harmonised in minor and then in major.
• Ego Is an Inch, Song 07: the self you can never
  grab, Mussorgsky's Gnomus as grotesque EDM.
• The Game Inside, Song 04: consciousness playing
  hide and seek with itself.
• Ate the Menu, Song 03: the map devoured the
  territory.

License

Licensed CC BY 4.0. Remix it,
repost it, drop it into your own thing, credit "Napkin Films / Organic Arts LLC".
Engine code (Napkin Films, ChipForge) is GPL-3.0-or-later. ElevenLabs voice audio
is licensed content and is not redistributed. The music is an original ChipForge
EDM composition; nothing was sampled and no melody was quoted from any recording.
The words are adapted and compressed from Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind, not the
original recordings.