Waxin’ Lyrical

About the name “Waxin’ Lyrical”

While playing around with the idea of starting the site, Xephyris asked Stranger “So what’ll it be called?”. Xephyris isn’t really very good at thinking up names for sites - the last one he came up with was called “Xephyr’s (because he was Xephyr, back in the day) Haven”, and we all know how that went - check here (I use it’s very first url - ah, memories…) to see its final state of rest.

Another one he had the pleasure of doing and naming was called “About Hot Mama’s Garden”. Right. So, if he had been left alone, this site would probably have been called “Stranger’s and Xephyris’ Translation and Lyrics and Personal and Anything Else We’ve Missed Out Web Site” - and while that may have been fine and good, Xephyris is glad that Stranger came up with “Waxin’ Lyrical” off the top of his head. He really liked the play on words, and the name stuck.

About the origins of “Waxin’ Lyrical”

Xephyris always wanted to do a little site for himself. What stopped him was the lack of original content to put on the site itself (Xephyr’s Haven, in all it’s animated GIF glory, was basically a glorified bookmarks list). One day, Xephyris decided to find out what “Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan”, Sakura Taisen’s Opening Theme, meant. He searched for a translation, and the only one he found was the one at Sakura Archives, and after reading that, he still didn’t really understand the song (especially the bit about the “maiden checks in at the theatre at dawn”). Feeling puzzled, Xephyris decided to try then to do his own translation.

At the same time, Stranger decided to burn a CD of, among other songs, Sakamoto Maaya’s “Dive” for use at work. He thought “Hey. It sounds like I actually understand most of this song now~! (for at this time, both Xephyris and Stranger were learning Japanese) Cool! I’ll go do a translation of it like Xephyris did for Geki!”, and also got sucked into doing translations.

Of course, both of them weren’t satisfied with doing just *one* translation. After showing both first translations to the other (at first, Stranger wouldn’t look at Xephyris’ translation because it was in Chinese. He can be silly, at times.) and then looking at more online translations, they decided to both try to provide translations that were at very least more coherent than literal translations, and (while it’d be nice and dramatic to just say “Waxin’ Lyrical was born!”) Xephyris decided to try to finally stop being lazy and try to make a site.