Weekly Composition Post — The Tree

(Poster image crop from original by "Malta Girl" used under CC 2.0 license) This week's track is "The Tree". I don't have a lot of time for writing, unfortunately, so no short story this week, but I wanted to explain how I got to the piece I ended up doing (and the "story" of it). The prompt was "Trees," but I heard the 'Enchanted Garden' sample loop in Logic —- this is the arpeggiated bit you hear underneath the whole thing —- and my mind went to an image that's popular in Japanese pop culture media (like anime, manga, games, etc.): a "guardian tree." The idea is that as a tree grows in a spiritually meaningful spot, and becomes particularly old, it's invested with mystical power that protects that space, or something like it, (My actual mental image, specifically, was the Fujisakura from SRW OG Saga: Endless Fronter, a giant shimenawa-wrapped cherry tree that's the center of the nation of Kagura Amahara, but that felt like a too-specific ref for most folks who might find their way…