Casey Barajas/06 Influences
06

Influences

A small, honest list of what is shaping the work right now. No links to buy, no affiliate energy. The point is the room, not the receipt.

01

Music

  • The room everyone is still trying to walk into.
  • What restraint sounds like at full attention.
  • The arrangement is the player too.
  • The puzzle that keeps changing the puzzle.
  • A love letter that takes its time.
  • Joy as a structural choice.
  • The bridge. Everything is in the bridge.
  • Vulnerability with a horn.
  • Open water on a record.
  • The calypso bones under the form.
  • The late-set ease, recorded.
  • What an orchestra does to a horn.
02

Books

  • Scythe (Series)/ Neal Shusterman
    Rules, consequences, the moral cost of the design.
  • The 48 Laws of Power/ Robert Greene
    Read as anatomy, not instruction.
  • The Bible
    The original anthology.
03

Games

  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
    The one that taught me a story can hold you.
  • The Legend of Zelda (Every One of Them)
    The franchise that made playing feel like reading.
  • RimWorld
    An extraordinary story generator that happens to be a game.
  • Kenshi
    The same trick, with more dust and worse manners.
  • Cyberpunk 2077
    For how immersive the story turns when the city does its job.
04

Ideas

  • Improvisation Under Constraints
    The only sentence I am sure of.
  • There Are No Wrong Notes in Jazz
    Only the ones you do not follow up on.
  • The Room Is the Instrument
    Credit to Eno; lived as a producer.
  • Geography Before Lore
    Place is the precondition for story.
  • Describe What Is There, Not What You Think Is There
    A rule the Archivist taught me.
05

People, Quietly

  • The People I Play With
    Names withheld; the gratitude is not.
  • The Maintainers of the Open-Source Projects on Which All of This Rests
    A thanks that will not fit in a colophon.

// Updated when the room rearranges itself.

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