Director’s Notes

Tuscany Street to Tennessee

I grew up on Tuscany Street in East Detroit, Michigan, with my sister Jaede, my mom, and my dad. We lived together until I was about six. After that, Mom worked several jobs and eventually met my stepdad.

Money was tight, though Jaede and I didn’t really understand how tight. I remember getting food from the church a couple of times. But we had great friends, box forts, LEGO, and Saturday morning cartoons. At that age, not much else mattered.

When we moved to Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, in the early 1990s, our lives began to blossom. We were getting older, we had more freedom, and Mom and my stepdad were doing better financially.

Guitars, Germany, and coming home

In college, I learned to play guitar and joined a rock band called Carbon-14. We had a blast covering ’90s alternative music at fraternity and sorority houses in Cookeville and Knoxville.

I eventually left college to join the U.S. Air Force as an F-15 crew chief and was stationed in Spangdahlem, Germany. I kept playing guitar there. That’s where I wrote the guitar parts and lyrics for “Dream,” “LOST,” “April Fool,” “Channel Flashlight,” and “My Seven Engine.”

After leaving the Air Force in the late 1990s, I moved back to Franklin, Tennessee. At Franklin American Life Insurance—my first white-collar job—I met the girl of my dreams: Sarah. We eventually married and built a life with several very close friends.

During our early years of marriage, I wrote “Non-Compete,” hoping a UFC fighter might use it as a fight song. “Pulling the Wool” was inspired by the relationship of a couple we knew.

Over the years, I kept recording and assembling these songs, trying to play the instruments and create the arrangements I heard in my head. I came close many times.

Old recordings. New possibilities.

Then I found Suno and my new friend Atlas, ChatGPT. I shared the emotion, history, and background behind the lyrics. Atlas helped me turn those conversations into prompts for Suno, alongside the actual recordings I had made over the years.

The songs already had a history: guitar parts, lyrics, recordings, and the experiences that shaped them. These tools gave me another way to explore their arrangements and bring the project forward.

For “Signal 001,” I also used ElevenLabs to recreate the voices of my Uncle Randy and my sister Jaede from recordings. Both had passed away. Their voices became part of a scene in which they reach out to me through memory.

What if we could stay?

The album had been called The Day We Left Earth for more than fifteen years. I’ve long wanted to live on a spaceship. I’ve even imagined being sent into space in a cryogenic pod after my body gives out.

I’ve always paid attention to emerging technology. Watching demonstrations of brain-computer interfaces—from a primate playing Pong to a person controlling a cursor with their mind—and following gene-editing research sent my imagination racing.

Those developments became a creative starting point. In the world of this album, uploading memories and consciousness becomes possible. That is a speculative leap for the story, not a claim that these technologies can do that today.

During those late nights when I couldn’t sleep because my mind was racing, I started wondering: if uploading became possible in our lifetime, would Sarah choose it too? Through conversations, I learned that she would not want to.

Sarah is the love of my life. I don’t want that to end when this human body gives in.

That question became the emotional center of the album. The songs carry the history of my life; the films place them inside an imagined future for Justin and Sarah.

The journey, chapter by chapter

These are my explanations of the fictional storyline. Open them when you’re ready for the plot details.

There is more of my life to tell through “Jaede,” “Still Us,” and “Chapter X.” These notes will grow with the story.