Izzy: What if you suddenly went blind? The five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are crucial to informing our day-to-day life. Whether it be for assessing dangerous situations in the blink of an eye, or simply enjoying a podcast like you are right now, these senses shape our subjectivities in a way that is foundational and hard to detach from our sense of self. However, our bodies are not perfect, and things can and do go wrong. Our subjectivity is fragile and changeable. What if one of those senses just, disappeared? Dear listeners, this is the experience of Eli Santin, my younger brother and best friend who is with me now. Hi Eli.
Eli: Hi Izzy, it's good to be here.
Izzy: Good to have you.
Eli: Yeah, definitely.
Izzy: So why don't you introduce yourself? Who is Eli Santin?
Eli: Well, that's a complicated question. I guess I am a recent high school graduate who considers himself a creative individual. I have dabbled in a number of creative fields, really since 2017 I guess when I really made myself public. Some of these fields include video editing, animation, drawing, puppetry, and music as well, really audio stuff as of recently. So yeah, I mean, I've always been doing stuff creatively ever since I was a kid. I was always fascinated by art, I would always draw as a kid, draw like fake video game covers with Crayola markers.
Izzy: Yeah, I remember that.
Eli: Yeah, like, because I was obsessed with video games as a kid and I couldn't get enough of that shit.
Izzy: Yeah, remember when you thought you made up the PS9, like the PlayStation Nine?
Eli: Yeah, I made up the fucking PlayStation Nine that was like my I was like my fake video game console, and I created this company called universe run by a guy named Tory Clayton.
Izzy: That was one of my first web design projects actually.
Eli: Yeah, it was. I remember that.
Izzy: Yeah, I remember the summer of 2013. I think it was, I was working on that website.
Eli: Yeah, I just love to pretend back then you know, on the school playground in first grade I would always pretend that the playground like structures were part of old universe things. So I enjoyed pretending. It was really sort of a way to externalize my imagination; drawing was back then. And ever since I was a kid, I was always fascinated by audio glitches like, you know, whenever they did something in SpongeBob or the music would go like *imitates turntable losing power*., like that always made me laugh my ass off and it's like it made me wonder how they did it but it's like I've always been fascinated with audio abnormalities, I guess, and audio because I think it sort of foreshadowed my interest in audio engineering because that really did intrigue me as a kid.
Izzy: Certainly. And to that end, what have been your major creative endeavours of the past five years, aspirations or dreams?
Eli: So, five years would cover 2019 to 2024. 2019 is really when I found my voice as a video editor slash YouTube pooper. YouTube poop (YTP) for those who don't know is basically a form of video on YouTube that is basically taking any already existing piece of media and re editing it into an original work that in most cases is a satire or parody of the original source material. I started making YTPs in 2017 when I finally got access to a video editor that could actually allow me to do that kind of thing. I had been watching YTPs since 2015 in limited capacity, of course, because looking in a household that, you know, we weren't allowed to swear as kids. So, watching videos with swears in them was not necessarily allowed in the household and I remember the first YTP ever watch was video by NationOfOranges696. It was, I forget the title of it, but it was a YTP of Villager News 2, I watched it on the YouTube app on my Samsung Blu-Ray player, and it changed my fucking world. Like I was laughing so hard, like I watched it over and over again because I had never seen that type of thing before and it was and it was totally in sync with my interest in audio abnormalities and also visual abnormalities because you know, it was really just eye opening for me.
Izzy: Glitches are just so like, like that glitchy style of like editing is just like so neat.
Eli: Right. It is. It's it really is. I think it really is art. The thing about the YTP community that is really to its detriment is that no one really consecutively agrees on anything about the art form. You know, a lot of people just consider it a form of glorified shitpost, which it is in a lot of cases, but if you really look deep into like the core community or certain corners of it, you will find very introspective and interesting pieces of art, most that are comedic, but you know, they're actually doing really interesting things. So basically in 2017, I started making my own YTPs. And you know, as someone who looked up to NationOfOranges so much, in retrospect, I was really imitating him for the first for the first year or so of my, I wouldn't call it a career in YTP, it’s more like more like my, I guess, more as a hobby in pursuit of the hobby. And you know, I would bug the shit out of him on discord because I was such a fan of his. And of course, like I regret doing that. But basically in 2019, and towards the end of 2018, I started discovering my good friend Robin, who goes by the name of Zevio on YouTube. And she really, again, she reinvented YTP for me, like my perception of YTP for me. And I was kind of like a leech and that I sort of latched on to that style and wanted to imitate it. And at one point, I created this channel called Funny Media. And it was basically me pretty much being an exact copy of Zevio in terms of ironic YTPs. And you know, I commented on one of Zevio's videos from this funny media account and like, she sort of called me out as like, you know, why aren't you being yourself? So that really sort of made me get my shit together. And of course, I found out she was only she was only kind of weirded out by it. She had she has nothing against me. And in fact, a couple months after that incident, she wanted to do a tennis with me. Which was like insane for me.
Izzy: Yeah. For those of you who are out of the loop on the YTP community meta, I guess a tennis match is basically where you make a YTP of the other person's YTP of the other person's YTP. And so on.
Eli: Yyou're basically trading edits of each other's work. So, I did this tennis and I swear to God, I think it's one of the best things I've ever done. Because I remember distinctly watching around too. And I was grinning from ear to fucking ear because it was really pushing me. She was really pushing me to go to ever greater heights. And I think that tennis was really fruitful, I'm really proud of those videos. So yeah, and I did participate in the couple collabs she did where, you know, people would submit their entries and they would essentially be compiled into one big video. I participated in a couple of those. And in fact, I participated in the visual art collab she did called color, spelled C O L O U R because she's Canadian. So, I did that, and again, it's one of the best things I've ever done. If you want to check out those things, just go to my YouTube channel, just look up my name and you'll be able to find that stuff
Izzy: For sure! In the interest of keeping a good pace and like keeping time. What about your aspirations or dreams during this period?
Eli: I guess my aspirations or dreams for that five-year period, it’s sort of evolved from video editing into animation and filmmaking because, you know, I fell in love with the Simpsons when I was about 12 years old. And I was able to watch it at 13. So, I basically fell over the animation of the show, I don't know why in retrospect, because it really is quite mechanical, but it captured my interests, and I started pursuing drawing and art as a career. So, my aspiration eventually became to be an animator and filmmaker. And my dream was, I think my dream at that time was to make an animated feature film.
Izzy: Certainly, I do remember that quite clearly.
Eli: So, I sort of went from the Simpsons to Ren & Stimpy, which really opened my eyes to classical animation, then I was all over classical animation from the 30s and 40s. And I did my fucking homework on this stuff like, I researched, in my spare time would research this stuff like almost religiously. And, you know, in retrospect, it really, again, it redefined my expectations of what creative things are. And it opened up a new world for me creatively. Because, you know if you look at cartoons by Tex Avery from the 30s and 40s, they don't really have any story structure, but they're really sort of exercises, they're almost like cartooning philosophy exercises. Because like cartoons, like Northwest Hounded Police, they're essentially saying, okay, how crazy can we make the wolves takes before the story runs out of gas and they just end the fucking cartoon.
Izzy: Yeah. It's just like, I feel like there's kind of this pattern of like reinvention in your work almost, where It's like you're constantly seeking too, not only seeking inspiration, but always seeking new inspiration that kind of reinvents the way that you think about your art basically.
Eli: Yeah, definitely, because you can see it in my drawing style as it progressed, because some of my earliest drawings that I actually took seriously, they look like Simpson's style. Then once I was into Ren & Stimpy, I was sort of doing my own version of that kind of that kind of cartooning style. Then when I discovered classical animation, I sort of gravitated towards that in my style, I leaned a bit more towards that, but as sort of the changes with my vision started happening, I really started, I think, to find myself in terms of what my natural drawing style was, what my natural animation style was, again, just finding myself, both as a person and creatively. And that sort of leads into the promise I made to myself, which sort of followed a very difficult eight-month period in my life. It really was from, I think, October of 2022 to, I want to say, like--
Izzy: It started shortly after I came out.
Eli: Yeah, it did.
Izzy: I would say until like June, July, the next year.
Eli: Yeah, July 2023 is really when I really started to start coming out on the other side of it. But yeah, basically the promise I made to myself really sort of marked the trend, because I had been going through sort of a transitional period throughout these eight months. I had four retina surgeries in that time and suffered two consecutive retinal detachments. And you know, it really turned my world upside down, because before all that happened, I felt like I was set for life, like animation was going to be my career. But I feel like this experience really brought reality back to me and sort of redefined how I thought about it. And basically, because I basically took my vision for granted for about five years, and then once I start losing my vision, I'm like, oh yeah, I have an unstable vision situation. This has been unstable for the past 16, 17, 18 years. So, it really turned my creative world upside down, and I really went through a very difficult time. But it was very much a creative transitional period for me, and that led to the promise, which I believe you have a question about that.
Izzy: Yeah. And that-- *coughing* excuse me, I'm having a bit of trouble with my throat right now. So, you kind of answered my third question, so I'm not even going to bother asking it.
Eli: Yeah. I'll go into a bit more detail about I made a promise if you'd like.
Izzy: Yeah, totally. So just tell me about that. Tell me about I made a promise.
Eli: So essentially, on I think July 19th of last year, the evening of that day, I literally wrote a promise to myself that was sort of a guideline for me to try and improve my mental health, and also improve my health creatively. Because the thing that most consistently hampered my creativity throughout the five years between 2019 to now, was that I thought about creative projects too ambitiously, they were too large scale. So, I was essentially coming up with these huge ideas that I wouldn't be able to realistically achieve within a reasonable amount of time. So essentially, what I said to myself in this promise was, only work on simple fun projects, you know, for the time being of course. Only work on simple fun projects, use the computer for one hour, take a 1-hour break in between and then rinse and repeat. Because I really needed that for myself because I was really struggling to basically free myself creatively and allow myself to try out new things because I couldn’t let go of this animation dream. Because I had this short that I was going to do called The Gondles, which was this character I made up. And I distinctly remember animating the first scene of that short with half of an oil bubble in my eye.
Izzy: That's just crazy in it of itself, right?
Eli: Right. And it's like, I'm actually pretty proud of that piece of animation. I never finished the short. So again, I had to learn to let go of the animation dream. And only recently have I sort of fully reconciled myself with that. But basically, this promise was basically a fresh start for me. I literally created a brand-new Google account, a brand new Discord account, and basically created a new YouTube channel for me just to create for myself and upload whatever the hell I wanted, when I wanted to, and not let anyone influence me creatively, and just not try to strive to be successful as in like world-renowned. Because I realized that in order to be successful on a platform like YouTube, you have to serve the machine. And if you make a video that blows up, the YouTube algorithm expects you to make that same video pretty much over and over again. And that's how you become famous on YouTube. But that takes a lot of creativity away from what you're doing. So essentially, what I was doing is just creating whatever I wanted to, when I wanted to, putting it out there for the sake of putting it out there, if someone likes it great, if someone doesn't like it, that's OK too. And if it doesn't get widely recognized, you know what? I don't really care. I don't really care what others think of me because I think you sort of have to not let yourself be bogged down by other people's expectations of you. So yeah, I started creating these videos. And I, at that point, basically truly found my natural drawing style. I created this character who had really been developing for a long time, since I was about 12 years old, I created this character named Chester, who is essentially me. The way he looks, the way I drew him, he sort of is an anthropomorphic feline mirror of myself, at least the way I view myself. And in fact, the profile picture for "I Made a Promise", the YouTube channel, if you look closely, you'll notice his right eye is bigger than the left, which I think was sort of a subconscious symbolic thing for me because I wasn't thinking about that at the time. But it just happened and turned out that way. So, I really found my natural drawing style, then, of course, all the problems with the cornea happened. And I sort of lost the ability to draw. But now I can draw again now, thanks to the tactile stuff. But I really sort of started expanding my creative horizons, listening to music essentially became my substitute for playing video games.
Izzy: And that brings me to my next question, actually. As your sense of sight has evolved and changed more recently, has that changed your inspirations, If so, how?
Eli: Yes, it definitely has changed my inspirations. I think listening to music really did, again, it really redefined my creative world because I listened to music when I was younger, like before the promise. But I didn't see it. The kind of music I listened to back then was production music from SpongeBob, which is just like stock music tracks that people use everywhere. And it's like, its music, but it's not like--
Izzy: It's not like art. It's meant to be a template copy paste thing, right?
Eli: Right. After the fourth retina surgery, which was really the most difficult recovery of all of them, I started listening to Aphex Twin. And Aphex Twin blew my fucking mind. And like I really connected on a whole 'nother level with this artist because I had actually heard of Aphex Twin before then. I had actually listened to a few of his tracks, and I sort of liked them at the time. But at the same time, I was like, I'm not sure if I really liked this, this is too intense for me. But you know after having gone through the intensity of the surgeries, having sort of lived the experience of the music that Aphex Twin makes, at least some of it, it really opened my eyes to this world of electronic music that was so creative and so full of artistic potential. So, I really latched on to audio. I started thinking about audio engineering, because again, as a kid, I was always fascinated by audio, but I never really thought of it too seriously. And I started listening to more and more audio recordings of trains, which I had always been interested in trains as a kid. The only types of trains I knew as a kid were like steam excursions from the '80s to the '90s, not like regular service, steam locomotives. So, I started listening to more and more regular service audio recordings of trains and I started doing audio restoration stuff and creatively listening to music really--
Izzy: It kinda like fine-tuned your ear, right?
Eli: Yeah, fine-tuned my ear and basically made me aware of certain techniques and sort of the history of it all. And it, again, it redefined my creative world. Generally, the way music influences me creatively is interesting because I'll listen to a song and I'll think and images will pop into my head, not necessarily of the singers like playing at a band, but of scenes, of little cartoon scenes that apply to my Chester character. Because for a long time during this period, I wanted to do like an adult animated series or some sort of animated thing of some kind that involved Chester and his world. Because Chester, again, Chester is really sort of a mirror of myself and I wanted to sort of express myself through this character. I'll tell you the first time I came up with Sheila Ruddstone, who was sort of the co-main character of my novel. She showed up. I remember there was an animator on Twitter that I used to follow who had this female cat character that I really thought was an appealing design, and essentially, the first time I listened to Pulp Fiction, the movie Pulp Fiction, I pictured this female cat character in all of the female roles in that film. And I pictured Chester and all the male roles. And I thought, this is something interesting going on here.
Izzy: Yeah, it just kind of worked, huh?
Eli: Yeah, it worked.
Izzy: And I guess that leads me to my next question. What are you working on now, how does it involve each of your unique senses?
Eli: Well, essentially, what I'm doing with Chester and Sheila now is writing a novel. And I'm not gonna go into much detail about the plot or anything because I want that to be a surprise for most people. But basically, it's about these two anthropomorphic characters, Chester Hendrickson, and Sheila Ruddstone. And I swear to God, it had been developing in my head for a long-time sort of the storyline. And then there was this one time in early spring of this year that I almost had like a case of spring fever or something because I was basically in a constant state of being, the way I described it to mom was, it's like, I feel like I'm being thrilled constantly. And I just boom, boom, boom wrote this rough outline, like this very loose bare bones outline for, originally it was gonna be a screenplay for three animated films, but then I got smart and sort of realized that that's kind of in violation of the promise I made to myself. So, I dropped the screenplay idea and started going with the novel. And I realized that in typing and thinking about what I'm writing, I got the exact same physical and mental fatigues and sensations as animating use to give me. So, this tactile contact with the keyboard and also my mind and heart working in this novel, it really did make me feel free creatively because everyone in my family has told me I'm a gifted writer and I guess out of modesty, I never really believed that. So yeah I’m basically writing this novel, you know, the way I'm approaching it is sort of doing, because I wrote a very bare bones like outline, like I didn't really, I basically said this is the basic progression of the story, whatever happens in between is up to me. So, I'm essentially writing it almost, I'm almost improvising it. I'm sort of discovering the story as it's going along. Which is really helpful for me because I feel like I excel at improvisation, especially channelling my subconscious because a lot of the best drawings and animations that I ever did sort of fell from the sky. Like I didn't think about them that much when I made them because I feel like--
Izzy: You feel like you discovered them rather than created them.
Eli: Yeah, I feel like I discovered them rather than created them because as an artist, I struggle to draw when I have preconceptions in my mind of what I want it to look like. So, I'm writing this novel and I'm also doing audio engineering stuff, you know, I'm gonna be working with my mom on sort of learning keyboard shortcuts for this program called Reaper, which is my DAW (Digital audio workstation). Recently I released an EP of these things I like to call audio cacophonies, which are essentially like audio YTPs, but they're sort of separate in a way. And like, they're sort of musical, but they're not at the same time.
Izzy: Kind of like what the project is to IsaMorphic, I Made A Promise’s audio cacophonies are to you, right?
Eli: Right. Yeah. And I release this EP, It's actually available on YouTube music and Spotify and everywhere else. You can just look up, "I Made A Promise" on YouTube music.
Izzy: Or anywhere else where you're streaming music.
Eli: Right. And you can see this EP. It's called "Assorted Creations, Vol. 1". Because I really like to call them creations because that's what they are.
Izzy: And, um, why don't we actually go ahead and play a couple of those for the listeners right now?
Eli: Yeah.
Izzy: *Playing "Fat Man Wednesday Mix (It's Tuesday Night)"*
Eli: You know, I had a lot of fun making those. Um, I, again, it was really sort of channelling my subconscious. I don't remember much about making them apart from laughing a lot and just, because one of the things I really honed in as a skill with video editing was timing, both comedically and rhythmically. Because I think very precise timing is very important to the rhythm of what you're editing. So as far as audio engineering goes, recently I've been doing audio restoration on steam locomotive recordings from the 50s that I've ripped from vinyls. Because a lot of those tapes either no longer exist or in a state that is not like playable. Because, you know, the people who recorded this stuff just stored it in their attics. And tapes are not something you want to be a barn find.
Izzy: Right, yeah. And like, to wrap things up here, this has been a really wonderful conversation, and I've really enjoyed it.
Eli: Yeah, definitely.
Izzy: Um, what is your biggest hope for the future? And if you could say one thing for the whole world to hear, what would that be?
Eli: My biggest hope for the future is for someone, somewhere down the line, could be five years from now, could be 20, 30, 50 years, whatever, for someone, maybe a couple people to come across my work and, you know, be interested in it and feel impacted by it and want to reach out to me and talk to me. Because I talked to a lot of animators who worked in the animation industry during the 90s, and I just asked some questions about their work and they were very responsive and I enjoyed talking to them, and I really want someone to do that for me somewhere down the line because I feel like I really had an impact on those animators when I talked to them. And so that's really my biggest aspiration at this time. Um, if I could say anything to the world, it would be this. I think that the world at large is sort of under the collective philosophy of “existence is futile”, which I really think is not a good place to be in. I would like to counter that with “existence is funny, enjoy it”.
Izzy: Yeah, for sure. And to that extent, I would like to like to add my own spin on that, “existence is resistance” in a lot of ways.
Eli: It is.
Izzy: I think that it's really important to strive for who we want to be.
Eli: Yeah, definitely.
Izzy: And I think that's a wonderful place to leave it. Thank you so much, Eli.
Eli: Yeah, no problem. I, you know, I'm willing to do this anytime. If you want me to have back again, just to update people on what I'm doing.
Izzy: Totally, for sure.
Eli: But yeah, I had a really great time, you know, not to be egocentric or anything, I had a great time talking about myself.
Izzy: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's something that we all enjoy and I'm glad that I could give you this platform in this way.
Eli: Yeah. Because I'm, you know, I'm always looking to pull myself out there and be seen by the world because no one's going to find me if I'm not out there.
Izzy: Right. Exactly.
Eli: So yeah, listeners, check out, I made a promise on whatever music streaming platforms you listen to. Check out the Eli Santin YouTube channel just because you'll really see the progression of my creative journey from 2017, really up to about a year ago. And check out the I made a promise YouTube channel, you'll find what I'm up to, what I'm currently up to right now. Um, the audio restorations of the trains, I can't necessarily put out yet because they're under copyright and I may have to negotiate with the owners.
Izzy: Yeah, the rights for those aren't exactly cleared yet.
Eli: Yeah. They're not cleared yet. So those are sort of in a gray area, but yeah, check out my audio cacophonies. My novel will be coming out whenever it comes out. But yeah um, love life, learn, create, and thanks for having me Izzy.
Izzy: Yeah. No problem. It's been a pleasure.
Eli: Yeah.
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