No matter what version of the song you end up listening to, Mad World is my favorite song. Tears for Fears originally released the song in 1982, and though that version is fine and all, it was the Gary Jules version at the end of the movie, “Donnie Darko” that I became mostly attached to over the years. There’s just something haunting about the song, and I’m writing about it today because I have some thoughts to sort through about it. There’s a link below to a beautiful version of the song, and I want to find a way to turn Mad World into something visual.

I want to paint the music, I guess.

Well, technically I’m no painter. I do, however, have enough tools at my disposal to come up with something! I believe I’m decently adept at Photoshop and I’m capable of creating artwork with varied themes. I’m just not sure how to turn music into visual art! Is this a thing that other artists do all the time?

I mean, personally I can only do my artwork when I’m listening to music anyways. Perhaps that’s all there is to it? I just prepare myself to draw something, and put on a song. Maybe if I don’t think about it too hard, the music will just influence what I’m making? As you can see by the sheer number of my question marks, I have a lot of uncertainty here.

Another thing I often think about – and it’s related to the problem I’m having – is that I’m wondering if everything’s already been done before. I have this wonderful idea of taking a song and putting it to paper (digitally or otherwise), but is this new?

Why should that even matter?

Well, I don’t want to spend a lot of time with something that I end up liking, only to find that every single artist that has ever lived has done the exact same thing, and has spent years perfecting it. Making my little insignificant effort “less” meaningful. Not totally completely meaningless, mind you, as I did put the effort in and likely learned something new in the process. It’s just likely that my time could have been better spent.

I listened to Mad World and got inspired, simple as that. That familiar creative spark was ignited in my brain and I thought, “What if this is it?! The big idea.” I think I’m already kind of talking myself out of this potential “big idea” without even knowing if it’s something special or not yet.

Actually, it’s kind of dumb to assume that this idea is all that interesting. It’s just a baby idea right now. Extremely simple even. What I would need to do is turn it into something that is unique to me and what I can do. I mean, people have literally tried turning music into images in the form of album covers for like… ever. So I don’t want to simply do that. Then the other side of it is how people actually turn literal music sound-waves into artwork, but that’s not really what I mean either. Oh! Yet another side of this is how I distinctly pair this Mad World song and the Donnie Darko movie together. Or at least that final scene, at least. So that’s another way of combining visual art with music.

Hmmm

What’s left? I guess there’s like music videos…

Okay, maybe I have to think about this more than just a few hours in a single evening.