I wrote and recorded "No Countries" to express my feelings about nations, borders, flags, and patriotism. They are illusions created by humans, sometimes to protect, but more often to control, dominate, intimidate, and exploit our differences. There are no national borders in the natural world. Animals have survived without borders for millennia and humans can too.
As part of the process of recording this song, I learned how to use the Japanese vocaloid software Hatsune Miku by Crypton Future Media. It was an exciting creative challenge to learn a musical tool that was outside of my normal skill set, and it underscored the idea that all human artistic expression lives and breathes inside of and apart from language and culture.
I also used an AI video creation tool called Hedra to make the video, with the same intent of diving into a process that is completely modern and current and foreign to how I usually work. Both the Miku vocaloid software and the Hedra AI video tool were ways to reconcile with the forces at work in our world that I find alarming and fascinating. I believe the only way forward is to understand the changes happening, so we can harness them to propagate values of peace, unity, decency, fairness, equity and tolerance.