|
1. |
|
|
|
|
2. |
|
|
|
|
the last time I saw you you had cut the patches off your denim jacket. I was not unaware that the future had already happened because five years ago i was living in the past. still, it caught me off guard. you gave me a lump sum of your life that began and ended with your children's achievements and I nodded earnestly when you expected a laugh. Your life seemed be drawn out and graphed the way math equations can go on for years and years but there's always the same right answer. you pat me on the shoulder with a look of complacent sorrow that i remembered from college, handed me a card and said "call me tomorrow I'll find you a job". I kept the card on my bedside for the rest of my life, crossing out the number in bold black pen and noting each time i would try to see past the ink. these were the moments where i tried to see you and your rusted vision of noncompliance smoking outside on the balcony telling me "the world will never take me the way it took my father" and each time i thought of it your face kept losing shape like it was being rubbed raw by children's fingers. Somewhere there is a version of you that i could recognize and i wish for its place within you. your soul is the shape of a wild animal but you're aged enough to understand that your lungs are its prison, that breathing again and again is a choice you decide at thirteen years old when kid things don't matter but adults things don't either. I don't idolize your time. I don't want your job. I wouldn't want your life except in the form of a blanket I've had since I was a baby, calming and warm and long-lasting and strife. Your rules have become currency, passed around each area of your life until no one expects you to do anything more. You lost yourself in the future, but i keep perusing the past because maybe someday you stayed the same.
|
|
3. |
|
|
|
|
4. |
|
|
|
|
when you listen to this album
it’s best to think about the words in your head that i’m blocking out
jobs babies money death
the game you play where the winner dies slower than everyone else
saddled with more responsibilities and more people to let down
and more money left behind that they never got to spend
i like to think of my voice as a vice
a way to wrestle with the thoughts in my head
in a dimly lit cage where the trophy is denial and a dead weight on your shoulder
i play pretend with the thoughts i write down
because telling the truth is like touching up your face with transparent foundation
i play pretend with the scenes i lay out
because what happens in my life isn’t what happens in my head
i want my body to crave the freedom of the universe but all it wants is a nice warm bed
it’s so simple, the way i’ve been taught to live this way with a few bucks in my pocket and a lot more in the bank
i am not the bird i used to be
instead i am here speaking to you
telling you that the sky is falling and
when it’s dark you can be anything else
because i know i’ll never get the chance
|
|
5. |
|
|
|
|
in third grade the boy who picked his nose on the swings asked my teacher what sadness was
she stared at him, giving him a look like she knew he was too old to ask these questions but she also knew the kid who picked his nose on the swings wasn't the kind of kid who would care
so she gave him a trite answer, a move seemingly parallel to quickies after a long day. she said "sadness is a very bad pain that won't stop"
It turns out I took my third grade lesson too seriously, because eight years later I was under the impression I was in a chronic upset because my friends were shitty and my skin was bad and my tears never once made me feel better
Sadness was being stuck, i was taught. It won't stop, i was taught. it's a sickness, i was taught. DON'T FIGHT IT, I was taught
So i had to figure out on my own what was really happening. I had to find out behind the veiled curtain of anxiety medication and tiny zen gardens just big enough to avoid having to look at my therapist when she tells me that
it's all in my head
that if i tried hard enough if i got strong enough i could be any kind of person i wanted to be
sad or miserable or bitter or patient and strong and secure
this is the secret no one talked about and you only get to hear if you're sad and giving up and on your last wind and sick of dealing with shit that sucks
sadness is a jar of blue paint made for a nursery but only half full, filling knicks on the walls and ceiling of the house you can no longer afford
happiness is a jar of blue paint that was never the blue you wanted anyway and knowing that a nursery can wait
happiness is fucking hard
because everyone knows even white picket fences were homes for birds once, destroyed and sold as a suburban dream when black people were getting hanged for being black and every father was an alcoholic and children grew up learning to hate and love women in very different ways
but at least it's not a secret anymore
|
|
6. |
|
|
|
|
7. |
|
|
|
|
our friendship started with the backhanded excuse of poverty
for years and years i believed you to be the mary sue of reality
pulling yourself up from nothing like a shadow standing on its own two feet
you had a face like the sunshine that polluted our vision after closing the backdoor
orange basketball stains on the floor of my garage when it was raining too hard to play outside
on good days we combed through rocks to find peace in the dirt as hydrangeas grew around our ankles
but you wouldn't let them keep us there
you pulled away from childhood as though it was merely a spiders web holding you down
intricately designed but easily broken with too much silk to pry from your fingers
you instead fell into the crafted path of a downtrodden child,
intending to blanket your sadness with downers mixed with bad decisions and real talk (ironic, right?)
but instead blinding yourself to empathy, to sensibility to honesty to all those good words we learned so early in life
precisely, inevitably, so that we would use them first
i began to notice my own collapse, following you like a dog into water
pulling my own weight but still ending up in front to catch you when you stumbled
it took four years of shame and mistrust to realize you were not
who i was going to be
you were put into my life to be used as a memory
because even when you pull the veil over your eyes
you can still see the lines of my body getting smaller and smaller as i abandon ship
I have left you fully, without any chance of recovery through college or kids or storms that make pitch black of the day
because the world turns too fast sometimes
when the aching legs of our exhausted futures are slimmed down to 'and they lived happily ever after'
|
This EP was recorded between the summer of 2013 and the summer of 2014, mostly on a rock band microphone with the aid of garageband. The poetry was written and performed by Cameron Cready-Pyle. The music was written and recorded by Matt Hoban. Christian The Narc also wrote and performed parts on "I'm climbing up the walls in the valley of death". It was mastered by our friend Drew Bandos. The album art is a drip painting by Matt Hoban, and photographed by our good buddy Adrian Lozer. Thanks for listening dood :)
released September 12, 2014
