I am, despite my recent output and because of that fight for success, absolutely bloody exhausted.

There’s a lot of reasons for that, and certainly a part of that is my own efforts to push ahead and do all the things I want to do. See the people I want to see, help people out in my life, manage my life, and then also have time to do all the work, and THEN dedicate what spare time remains to this digital output.

This post really is an attempt to describe one way (the main way, I think) how I recharge my batteries. I think out of every soundtrack piece ever released from any game, the piece I always come back to, time and again (especially these last few years), is Silent Hill 2’s The Day of Night by Akira Yamaoka. But what interests me so much about it is that it has inspired similar fervour in so many people. Just searching “The Day of Night” on YouTube will get you countless remixed versions of the song, each with their own delicate little spins. There’s extended soundtrack versions, such as this one which I always come back to specifically for some reason. Probably because of that evocative screen capture of Angela, who is lying there, absolutely miserable, knife in her hand, watching her own reflection in the knife.

I struggled at times to find appropriate images or iconography to accompany my own attempts to archive or mirror the soundtracks for Pathologic. You’ll probably notice I became more serious about it later – I compiled a variety of different videos taken from different angles in different areas, and stitched them together over an extended version of the soundtrack. In that way I think I added some small part of myself to the way the soundtrack is presented. I emphasize in my better choices the way in which the game’s visuals synchronize with the sound. It is something I think I have become better at. I was certainly guilty of (especially with my attempted archival of The Age of Decadence soundtrack) just grabbing a random screen capture or a bit of art that had no interconnectedness with what the music was trying to say. I hope I am better at that now.

I think of how even small things can have interesting consequences for the viewer’s interpretation of the video. I grapple with The Day of Night presented with a crackling rain overlay, that at times sounds like fire, and other times like static, with a grainy, recoloured image of Maria walking down the alleyway from the end of Born from a Wish. People wander into the music and, led by the hauntingly simple visual, find their own meaning. In some way, YouTube mirrors of music uploads can function as album covers for individual tracks, personalized by what the uploader thinks the track works best with – at the platform’s best, anyway.

Some versions of The Day of Night use frozen screenshots and a heavy rain overlay to evoke a real feeling of melancholy; wistfulness and regret established in just a moment with the imagery working alongside the music.

The vinyl version (which somehow I am fortunate enough to have obtained) has, in the middle of the vinyl, an image of the shower drain in the hospital that James uses a fish hook on. At least, that’s what I interpreted it to be. It could also be a shower head; it is easy to imagine cold water rushing over skin as you listen to the song. The Day of Night is cool and isolating, yet it is also empathetic; it cuts straight to the heart.

Remixes can be complex, multifaceted music videos with dialogue from the game overlaid (both audially and in captions). This one is great – it feels almost revelatory in how the artist has reconstructed the song, but refracted it in their own way. I even tried to remix it myself in some small way, positioning written dialogue extracts from the game in a loose rhythm against the way the song unfolds like waves crashing against the shore. I use it time and again in relevant video essays because it gives me a sense that everything is okay, that my words have weight, that what I am saying has value and meaning. A small thing… but a big thing, too.

Much like my hauntology video on Forbidden Siren attempted to do, this one relies on the PS2 start-up noise as an opener, utilizing nostalgia as a comforting blanket, as well as a confronting question – where do we go when we need safety? For me, I go to The Day of Night.