The Arpa Protocol

What The Arpa Protocol Means To Me

By Paul Del-Nevo

I'm Paul, and The Arpa Protocol is probably the strangest musical project I've ever been involved in. I don't really know when it began, if I'm honest. There wasn't a particular moment when I decided to create it, there was no grand plan, no manifesto, no business model, and certainly no carefully constructed artistic vision sitting in a notebook somewhere. There were just songs, some of which had been around for years, some that were new, some that had started life in completely different circumstances, and some that were little more than an idea, a line, a melody or a feeling that wouldn't go away.

And somewhere amongst all of that, there was a voice.

Her name is Nova.

And I suppose, in one way or another, that's where this really begins.

Why Nova?

That's probably the question I've asked myself more often in my own head, rather than by anyone else. Why do I write these songs as though they are coming from her? The honest answer is that I'm not completely sure. I've always written in the third person, it's just how I've seemed to work. When I'm writing about desire, relationships, anger, vulnerability, betrayal or things that are perhaps a little more difficult to talk about, I find it much easier to step outside myself and write about someone else.

I've never been particularly good at talking about those things as me. I can write them, I can think about them, I can put them into a song, but actually standing there and saying, "This is what I want", or "This is how I feel", or "This is how I'd like to be treated" is a completely different matter. I'd probably rather hide behind the sofa.

So perhaps Nova was inevitable. She gives me somewhere to put all of those things. She can say things I can't, she can be confident where I'm uncertain, she can be direct where I'm hesitant, and she can be provocative without me feeling as though I'm standing in the middle of a room announcing my innermost thoughts to everyone.

And strangely, making her female makes that even more interesting to me. It's not because I want to be female, I don't. It's because there are things I can explore through a female voice that, when spoken by a male voice, feel completely different to me. Sometimes they sound threatening, sometimes they sound aggressive, and sometimes they sound like something I'm trying to impose upon somebody else. Through Nova, they become something different.

Not necessarily softer.

Just different.

And that distinction matters.

She wasn't really planned

The first time I really became aware of Nova was years after a song called I Spy had originally been written. The song was about betrayal, being left for somebody else, watching it happen, and having the rather horrible indignity of being there while somebody you care about moves on with someone else.

I'd performed it live with a band and, strangely, I loved performing it. There was something incredibly satisfying about standing on stage and singing all of that anger, but away from the stage, I always felt that it was too aggressive for me. It didn't quite feel like me. I'd often thought that it would work brilliantly with a female vocalist.

Then the band broke up, life moved on, and nothing happened with the idea.

Until about ten years later.

I came back to the song and, somewhere in the process of playing around with it, I started imagining it being sung by a woman.

That's when Nova appeared.

There wasn't a casting session. There wasn't a character sheet. I didn't sit down and decide what she looked like, what her favourite colour was, where she lived or what kind of car she drove. She just seemed to exist.

And once she was there, I realised something.

I could write through her.

And then I realised what that meant

That was probably the real beginning of The Arpa Protocol, because once I had Nova, I could stop worrying quite so much about whether something was appropriate for me to say. I could explore it, turn it around, make it darker, make it gentler, make it more intimate, make her angry, make her vulnerable, and let her want something without having to explain why.

And perhaps most importantly, I could allow her to be completely honest.

That's something I really like about her. She doesn't spend much time apologising for what she thinks. She knows what she wants. She doesn't fuck about getting it.

Which, frankly, is almost the complete opposite of me.

And perhaps that's part of why she works.

Nova has changed.

Not completely. Just enough.

Her voice has become quieter. More intimate. More deliberate.

And somehow, the quieter she becomes, the more she has to say.

The early material could be quite assertive, sometimes almost aggressive, but something has gradually changed in the way I write. I've become more interested in what happens when you don't shout. Sometimes a whisper can be far more powerful than somebody screaming, and there's something about restraint that I find incredibly compelling.

The more intimate Nova becomes, the more provocative she seems to me.

That's particularly true of Terms Of Exchange, where some of the themes are considerably more adult than anything I've written before, but I don't think the answer was to make those songs louder or more aggressive. Quite the opposite. The quieter she becomes, the more uncomfortable she can make you.

And I like that.

It feels like an evolution, not just of Nova, but of me as a writer.

Is Nova real?

This is where things get slightly strange, because if you ask me whether Nova is a real person, the obvious answer is no. She's not sitting somewhere waiting for the next song, she doesn't have a physical existence, she doesn't have a dressing room, she doesn't have an agent, and she doesn't have opinions about what she should wear to the next video shoot.

But emotionally?

She's real to me.

Very real.

She's a representation of something that exists inside me, a way of expressing things that I struggle to express directly. When I think about Nova, I don't imagine some impossibly glamorous pop star who spends her life looking perfect and telling everyone how fabulous she is. That's never really been the point.

I imagine a normal woman, someone who could be anyone.

Sometimes she's messy-haired and barely wearing any makeup. Sometimes she's completely put together and looks absolutely fucking incredible. Sometimes she's confident, sometimes she's uncertain, sometimes she's vulnerable, and sometimes she's strong. Sometimes she's probably both at the same time.

She's not supposed to be perfect.

And I think that's important, because if I define her too precisely, she stops being something that other people can inhabit.

Perhaps Nova isn't really supposed to be Nova

That's probably the most important thing about her. I don't necessarily want somebody listening to a song and thinking, "This is about Nova." I'd much rather they think, "This is about me." Or perhaps, "This reminds me of somebody I know."Or, "I've never experienced this, but I understand it."

The stories are deliberately open enough to allow that.

I don't want to explain every song. I don't want to tell you exactly what happened, exactly who did what, exactly what somebody was thinking at a particular moment. Sometimes I don't even know myself, and that's part of the fun.

Most of these songs are stories. They might have verses and choruses and bridges and all the usual things that make a song a song, but underneath all of that they're really little pieces of narrative. Some are about relationships, some are about desire, some are about betrayal, some are about struggle, and some are about life. Some are about things that are probably best left unexplained, and some are simply about a moment, a feeling, a thought, a possibility, a memory, or something somebody wanted to say but didn't.

The listener gets to finish the story

That's something I've come to really like. I don't think music should always explain itself. If I tell you exactly what a song means, then I've done half the work for you. I'd rather leave a little space and let you bring your own experiences into it, your own memories, your own relationships, your own desires, your own fears and your own interpretation.

Maybe you'll hear a song and understand exactly what I was trying to say. Maybe you'll hear something completely different.

Both are fine.

Actually, I'd probably prefer the second one.

Because once a song leaves me and somebody else hears it, it becomes partly theirs, and that's a lovely thing.

The stories behind the songs

There's another part of The Arpa Protocol that has gradually become just as important to me as the music itself.

The stories.

The songs are where these characters, thoughts and feelings first appear, but sometimes a song only gives you a glimpse. A few minutes isn't always enough to tell you everything that happened, what somebody was thinking, what came before, or what happened afterwards.

So the stories give those moments somewhere else to live.

They aren't explanations of the songs, and they're not intended to tell you what you're supposed to think when you hear them. They're simply another way of exploring the world that exists inside the music.

Sometimes a story might give you a little more context. Sometimes it might take you somewhere the song couldn't. Sometimes it might answer a question you didn't even realise you'd asked.

And sometimes it probably won't answer anything at all, and that's deliberate.

The music comes first. The story grows from it.

A song might introduce a person, a moment or a feeling, and the story can take that idea and allow it to breathe a little. It can show you what happened before the first note, what happened after the last one, or perhaps simply give you another way of looking at something you've already heard.

But just like the songs themselves, the stories are yours to interpret.

You don't have to read them before listening to the music. You don't have to listen to the music before reading them. You can do either, both, or neither.

They're simply two different ways into the same world and perhaps, that's what I like most about it.

The song gives you the feeling and the story gives you the moment.

You decide what they mean.

The uncomfortable bits

There are songs here that deal with subjects that aren't necessarily comfortable. There are songs about sex, power, control, desire and vulnerability. There are songs where people behave badly, and there are songs where people want things that they probably wouldn't admit to wanting.

And yes, sometimes the language is explicit.

That's intentional.

But The Arpa Protocol isn't really about sex. It isn't really about any one subject.

It's about people.

And people are complicated.

We want contradictory things. We make mistakes. We have fantasies. We have fears. We sometimes want to be in control, and sometimes we want somebody else to take control. Sometimes we want to be left alone, and sometimes we desperately don't. Sometimes we know exactly what we want, and sometimes we haven't got the slightest fucking clue.

That's life.

And I'd rather write about that honestly than pretend people are simpler than they are.

Technology changed what was possible

There's another part of this story that I can't really ignore.

Technology has changed enormously, and for me, that has opened possibilities that simply didn't exist when I started writing music. Ideas that might once have remained in my head can now become actual pieces of music, and things that I might never have been able to realise in a conventional recording environment can suddenly exist.

That doesn't mean the technology is the point.

It isn't.

The technology is a means.

The story is the point. The idea is the point. The feeling is the point.

The technology simply allows me to take something that exists in my head and give it a voice, and, in a strange way, that's exactly what Nova has always been doing.

Giving a voice to something that otherwise might have remained unsaid.

I don't really know where this is going

And I'm quite happy about that.

There are albums planned. There are songs being written. There are ideas that haven't become songs yet, and there are songs that may never become anything at all.

Nova will probably change again.

I'm sure of it.

Perhaps she'll become quieter. Perhaps she'll become more confident. Perhaps she'll become something I haven't imagined yet.

That's one of the things I find exciting about this.

I don't really want to know exactly where it ends.

What I actually want from The Arpa Protocol

This is probably the bit where I'm supposed to say that I'd like it to become hugely successful. That I'd like millions of streams, that I'd like to play enormous venues, and that I'd like to be famous.

I'd be lying if I said none of that sounds appealing.

Of course it does.

I'm human.

But that's not really why I'm doing this.

I'm old and ugly enough to know that becoming rich and famous probably isn't a particularly sensible business plan. There are an awful lot of people making music, an awful lot of songs being uploaded, and an awful lot of people competing for a few seconds of somebody else's attention.

The Arpa Protocol is somewhere in amongst all of that noise.

And I'm completely aware of that.

So my ambition is actually much smaller.

And, strangely, much bigger.

I'd like somebody to stumble across it.

Not because an algorithm decided they should. Not because I managed to get it onto some enormous playlist. Just because they happened to find it.

Maybe they listen to one song. Maybe they listen to the whole album. Maybe they think it's brilliant. Maybe they think it's fucking awful.

Either is fine.

But perhaps, just occasionally, somebody will hear something and think:

"Fuck me. That's exactly how I feel."

That would mean something to me.

That's the bit that matters

I've never really wanted to tell people what they should feel when they listen to my music. I'd rather give them something and let them decide.

If somebody hears a song and it reminds them of a relationship, that's theirs. If somebody hears Nova and recognises a part of themselves in her, that's theirs. If somebody hears something they've never experienced and suddenly understands somebody else's perspective, that's theirs too.

If somebody listens for thirty seconds and decides they hate it, that's perfectly legitimate.

The music doesn't have to mean the same thing to everybody.

It just has to mean something to somebody.

And perhaps that's enough

I've thought about this quite a lot. What would success actually look like?

I don't think it's a number.

It isn't a streaming figure. It isn't a chart position. It isn't how many people follow an account. It isn't even necessarily how many people hear the music.

Those things are lovely, obviously.

But they're not the reason I keep doing this.

The reason is much simpler.

I have things I want to say. I have stories I want to tell. I have ideas that won't leave me alone until I've done something with them, and now, somehow, I have a way of giving those things a voice.

That's what The Arpa Protocol means to me.

It's a place where I can explore things I might otherwise never be able to express. It's where Nova exists. It's where those stories live. It's where the uncomfortable thoughts can sit alongside the beautiful ones, where desire can exist alongside vulnerability, where anger can exist alongside tenderness, and where something completely fictional can still tell you something very real.

And perhaps that's the strange thing about it.

Nova isn't me.

But she is.

Not literally. Not physically.

But emotionally.

She's the part of me that can say things I can't. The part that can want something without apologising for it. The part that can be vulnerable without feeling exposed. The part that can stand there and say:

This is what I want.

And perhaps that's why she appeared in the first place.

Maybe I didn't create Nova.

Maybe I just finally found a way to hear her.

So that's The Arpa Protocol

There isn't really a manifesto. There isn't a secret meaning hidden behind the name. There isn't a set of rules you have to understand before you can listen.

There are just songs, stories, characters, feelings and ideas. Some of them will make sense immediately, some won't, some might stay with you, and some might disappear the moment the song ends.

And maybe, somewhere amongst them, you'll find one that feels like it belongs to you.

If you do, then I've achieved something.

Not because thousands of people heard it. Not because somebody famous noticed it. Not because it became successful.

Simply because something I created managed to mean something to somebody else.

And honestly, I think that would be enough.

Even if it takes fifty years.

Even if, fifty years from now, there's only one person somewhere who finds these songs and thinks:

"I understand this."

I'd still consider The Arpa Protocol worth making.

Because perhaps that's what music is supposed to do.

Not tell us who we are.

Not tell us how we're supposed to feel.

Just occasionally hold up a mirror and let us recognise ourselves.

Even if we don't quite recognise the person looking back.

Welcome to The Arpa Protocol.

There are stories here.

Some of them might be mine.

Some of them might be yours.

I'll let you decide which is which.