Introduction: The following page contains the lyrics and explanations for every currently recorded damezumari song. Some songs also have artwork.The original plan was to release a discography/collection of sorts, with the artwork and explanations and lyrics forming the content of a 7 by 7 book that would accompany the discs. While that would still be great, it proved just too expensive to finance given the difficulty that we have had getting personnel who could tour in support of the release. It's also a source of concern on our part that records are made with petroleum, and books are made with paper, and neither are necessary any longer in order to get one's music or thoughts out there. On the other hand, we still love to have physical objects that carry those ideas and give them form in the 'real' world. When one does tour, it is often handy as both a source of extra support for the band's finances and also as a momento or souvenir, if you will, for the people that come to the show. The record can't replace the show, but it can remind you of it. There are certainly things to be said both for and against digital distribution, in the realm of both practical and of idealistic considerations, but for now it is the best option for us to share what we have made with others in a way that we can afford, endorse, and customize to reflect the aesthetic context of the music. In any case, you can find mp3s of all the songs linked from the records page.
If you listen to the songs in order of their recording, which is more or less their order of composition, you'll notice a sometimes incremental, sometimes drastic change in musical style. In some cases, this was conscious; in others, it was a matter of broadening tastes; in most cases, it arose from a desire to avoid doing the same thing over and over. The band has included many musicians and for it to stay the same despite those fluctuations in membership and of course the fluctuations in taste and interest for each individual member would be silly, disingenuous, and ultimately rather boring. There is no point in writing 40 versions of the same song, especially if that song is essentially someone else's. While for some this may seem like inconsistency or even, in some cases, an inevitable mechanism that results in that oh so cliche observation "... but I like their old stuff way better", for us it was just a matter of doing what sounded interesting at the time amd most of all finding a way to enjoy the music we made and to renew that joy over and over by finding new challenges and expressing ourselves in new ways. When a band chooses a name, that name serves the same purpose as a brand. It is a label which indicates some common element, often the people writing the music, and sometimes by default it indicates the style or aesthetic sensibility of those people. To that end, it bears mentioning that we have deliberately tried to disrupt the formations of those types of expectations. The name damezumari certainly refers to a sensibility, but it casts a very very broad net. We mention this not to defend that variety (it needs no defence; it is what it is), but to explain part of what has made this band meaningful and interesting for us over the past 7 years. It means a tremendous deal to me that we have been able to pack this flimsy little word with so much meaning, so many relationships, so much depth.
In the same way that damezumari is a fluid designator for the musicians involved, it has also equally stood for various artists and other facilitators of the music scene in oklahoma and elsewhere. We wish to extend our hearfelt gratitude to the people that have contributed their artistic skills or otherwise helpful efforts to this band over the years: Jared Flaming, Katie Carter, Tim Elliot, Mike Laughlin, Aaron Thornhill, Chris Harris, Stephen Egerton, Hank Hanewinkel II, Dustin Cleveland, Mike Lindquist, Jasce Burrow, Adam from Texas, Matt Leech, Daniel Danger, Jamie Schnetzler, Daniel Sutliff, Craig and Karen Maricle, Angelo Milano, Chris Skillern, Kevin Skillern, Doug Johnston, Blake Foster, Clay Welch, Zack Ramey, Stephen Paul, Dylan Graybill, bart from under the mooch, dave thompson, alex and rachel kern, Gianni Sanitlle, Mike from roklok, Casey Powers, Ben Haynes, Toby CJ, Plaid harper, Sue Hannum, Tanya from Tulsa, Nate, Ryan Davis, Daniel Weaver, James Hammontree, Alex Barnard, Alex Bouknight, Tomoe from Japan, Trey in Florida, Lindsey Saunders, Seth Daisy, the sound pony, the pink eye, the phoenix house, the conservatory, dustin wallace, steeples, someplace to hide, atlatl, fire team charlie, scales of motion, thiswastheyeartolosefriends, and size records.
The following people helped with the artwork below (individuals credited under each piece): Jared Flaming, Katie Carter, Tim Elliot, Mike Lindquist, Jasce Burrow, Adam from Texas, Matt Leech, Daniel Danger, Angelo Milano, Chris Skillern, Kevin Skillern, Doug Johnston, Tanya from Tulsa, Tomoe from Japan, Trey in Florida, and at least one other dude whose name I cannot remember that did the groundhog drawing.
Index:
- the meaning (your believing)
- no hugging = no learning
- oh john
- coffee spoons and knives
- traffic circle
- the thing i think my friend to be
- no face
- groundhog day
- the second metahpor
- golden
- save my life
- second chance
- gravity (is a choice)
- the centre cannot hold
- a bitter means to a better end
- fear death by water
- triumphalism
- if we were all suddenly somebody else
- the snazziest ever
- ALP prefers the sea
- altruism
- what is a friend
- what a wise man knows
- now now now
- every friday buries a thursday
- the mark on the wall
- the force, not the water
- normality is just something that you are
- halvsies (the metaphysics of presence)
- becoming instead of just being
- karesansui (meditations on a japanese rock garden)
- compulsions
- go west
- conception
- all
- hope
- everything that rises must converge
- the truth is in the delivery
- victory is ours!
- blood meridian
disappointment followed on the heels of truth jumped off the ledge of clouded sentiment with no net to catch it and there's no concrete reason i can believe in that it won't happen again and again.
betting nothing is betting you can't win and you're losing again. losing the meaning is different than losing the thing. so which one is it? the meaning or your believing?
disappointment followed on the heels of faith and trust jumped from the ledge of clouded sentiment. delusion is a strength of mine, a strength of pride. the loss, we both suffer.
betting nothing is betting you can't win and you're losing again. losing the meaning is different than losing the thing. so which one is it? the meaning or your believing?
in the battle of who could care less, a contest (in which) i confess my promises never stand up to the test, it takes work to build a better net. promises stand up! there's no rest from battle of all against all against all.
EXPL: I think these are some of the first lyrics I ever really wrote, and oddly enough by this time I started feeling that something was missing from the community of independent music where I was living, where I still am, in Oklahoma; as I write this I think to myself ‘how cliché’ and is it really necessary to express a jaded perspective here? Yet I think there is something to it, when I see the scene ‘dying’ or things changing from what they were or kids not showing up or not caring, is it the scene I’ve lost? Does that mean that the meaning of it is gone? Do we need a show to remind us that life isn’t about money and products but instead about expression and community? Or is that thing, that manifestation of those ideals, however imperfect, just a reminder that we all make promises to each other, that punk or d.i.y. is a promise, and the whole idea in this song is just that if you don’t put something on the table, if you don’t open up, if you don’t express yourself and thereby make yourself vulnerable, if you don’t expend effort in the hopes that others will follow suit, then nothing will happen, and that cynicism, that pessimism will end up right, reality will live up to your expectations, if you don’t bet something, you can’t win, if you don’t risk something, there won’t be a reward, however much our hopes may be based on cloudy sentiment that is nostalgic and emotional and irrational, that is what we’re fighting for, that is what is worth risking for, because reason and efficiency and logic will tell you to go get a business degree settle down raise a family and vote for the status quo but your heart is telling you something else, everything that is human in you is telling you that need to do something, to make something, to express yourself, to be more than a cog in a wheel, we can delude ourselves into thinking that that is all that is left in these days, we can convince ourselves that its just a battle of economics or property, and we can fulfill our own prophecy but we can also fulfill the promise we have within us, live up to the dream that punk was for us when we were first introduced to it – if we remember that a commitment to that ineffable and luminous emotion of excitement and discovery is not a commitment to a static musical genre or to a social clique, but instead to a group of people committed to each other, committed to enriching each other’s lives, and that is a battle, it’s a battle against the complacency within ourselves, a battle against the culture of commodity, a battle against conformity, a battle worth winning, if we live up to our promise by keep our promises to each other.
Credits/Quotes: artwork - jared; ben folds five (who could care less), get up kids (betting nothing), thomas carlyle (all against all)
i'll stay the coward (because it's) the best i can get.
EXPL: I'm well aware these lyrics suck, but as an aside, when we went in to record, I had no idea if I would end up doing vocals or not. I had some basic lyrical ideas jotted down, and I figured I would just sort of try something and see if it worked and I assumed it wouldn't and we would just come back to it when we found someone to do the vocals regularly, but doug liked my vocals and so i just sort of defaulted to the job (which has resulted in an eternal tether to a mic stand live, which is very annoying, but such is life) - anyway, the point is that I could really only fit in one or two lines of vocals, and they were on the off-rhythm part, and, well, this is what you get when you don't prepare - sadly, i never learned the lesson and persist in the error today. But, there is an interesting story behind the name, which was the name of the release as a whole. The writers of Seinfeld, the TV show, had jackets made and put this slogan on the back (though it turns out that they meant “no hugging. no learning.” as in, “sitcoms with sappy endings suck, so let’s do something different”). My Shakespeare teacher told us this while teaching us The Merchant of Venice. He suggested that we look in the text for places where hugging might occur. Hugging is kind of like when you close your eyes in front of a cat. They interpret that as trust because you are making yourself vulnerable. It’s also a symbol of communication. The idea is that you come together and make yourselves vulnerable by expressing yourself. There’s no official place for two men to be intimate friends. If they are, homosexual jokes abound. But not every close relationship has to be about sex. It can be about hugging. It can be about vulnerability. It can be about communication. It can be about understanding each other. There is no essence to being a man or woman. All these norms are just things we learn from society and they are NOT necessarily the best way or the only way. The only way to learn from each other is to listen and to try to connect – and the point of any friendship or community should be to grow through communication and communion with another being.
Credits/Quotes: artwork - tim; title - Seinfeld/Larry David
oh john! remember the way things used to be? and john, it's over: the way i'd take what you say.
so john, just try to understand where i am. no answer, no reason, no way to know or hope.
you look so long and you stop seeing that lies are just hopes that lies are just hopes.
EXPL: john actually represents god as embodied in the people on earth who claim to represent him, I used to be a pretty devout catholic, went to catholic school, knew all the words to all the masses, talked to him a lot, since then I have a very different opinion about religious matters, I actually went through a period where I was avidly atheist and rejected all the things I had once believed in, I’ve changed since then too, religion is overshadowed by its manifestation in human organizations, and that is why I gave a human name to god for this, I don’t think anyone can claim to really and truly believe something if they’ve believed it all their lives, if they’ve been taught it from birth, true faith requires doubt, it requires a change and a coming to a point on one’s own, the reality is that there is no proof, there is nothing there to say ‘here I am’ that is not ambiguous in some way, I hear of people who have experiences, but I haven’t, most haven’t, for most of us there is the world and what we can see and a vague sense that there is something out there, or that there isn’t, but the knowledge that it can’t be proven beyond any doubt either way, if it could be proven, faith would be irrelevant because it would all be a matter of fact, but that isn’t how things are, and that weird in between place is where I am now, just open to possibilities, and willing to admit that I don’t know, and that I can’t, and that I would like to believe there is something after this life, but that I have no clue what it is, I think that people who claim to know are lying, but its cool, its understandable, they’re just hoping, and maybe the way they do it is kind of mean and intolerant and false, but they really are just expressing their hope and sharing their faith, and that can be a beautiful thing - god is a word which represents a glimpse of something beyond, or possibly an illusion, but oftentimes a very optimistic and inspiring one, and so, of the other choices (matthew, mark, luke) I felt john was the most appropriate, besides also letting the song's name correspond with a jeremy enigk and a david bowie song (plus, "oh luke" would sound a little ridiculous)
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; Jeremy Enigk (oh john)
we measure our lives with coffee spoons and knives rather than try to believe the easy lie. it's not over till it's over. but our own regrets, we can't let others forget. the blood we shed, it's not our own.
EXPL: coffee spoons and knives comes from the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot, that poem is sort of like a character portrait, there’s no big point to it per se, it just attempts to express what one guy is going through, he is pretty pathetic by a lot of people’s standards, lonely, awkward, has problems with women, he’s very anxious, neurotic, I really identify with him, and one of the things he talks about in the poem is the sort of talk that goes on in society, in scenes, in communities, talk that’s not so nice, not necessarily gossip, not necessarily mean, but talk that is essentially reductive, that talks about you like some simple thing that can be summed up in a few words, that sad old man, what a character, never dates, always going on about silly things, look at his thinning hair, look at his rolled pant legs, how sad, did you know he said this about her or she said this about him or he did this or she did this and I know its hard to avoid this way of doing things, of seeing things, life can be a melodrama without much effort, but with a little effort it seems like we ought to be able to treat others like human beings, like some one instead of some thing, we shouldn’t presume to know what goes into the decisions and the words and an odd hairstyle, we should care, and man, that is impossible, it is so hard, but life is about trying, not succeeding, not giving up, but trying, to me at least, it seems like maybe we could just remember that when we say ‘alfred’ or ‘eric’ or ‘jack’ or ‘sarah’ or any name that we are referring to a person, not a thing, a living breathing human being with thoughts and feelings and hopes and aspirations and disappointments, and words exchanged over coffee can shed just as much blood as knives wielded in anger
Credits/Quotes: artwork - mike; T.S. Eliot (Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock), the Weakerthans (easy lie)
this air bag is suffocating me. all i can breathe is the sulfur. and i don't have a witness. it's a bitter, sweet, sweet, pyrrhic victory. lights looking left are lights looking away.
i promise i'll drive into the distance. your lights illuminate only exits now. you can drive around in circles for years and years and never do justice to all of your fears. a traffic circle. and the ringing in your ears is the car wreck i'm trying not to escape. this sulfur is suffocating me. circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, stop.
EXPL: so there is a novel by J.G. Ballard called Crash, David Cronenburg made a film about it, its about this weird sort of subculture/cult, and they sort of get off on car crashes and the injuries that result from them, and this song is not at all about that, because I hadn’t read it when I wrote this, but, it’s not far from it, it’s a metaphor - driving around in a traffic circle, we go around in this circle, but we never go anywhere, and the only way something will happen is if it is brought to a head in some dramatic way, like a car crash, stopping all of a sudden and bringing the moment to its crisis, and of course, things never work out that way, hence the violence of the metaphor – but there are always exits too often ignored, and while they can lead backward, they can also lead to a goal/destination – it’s an abstract sort of situation, but one that repeats itself on personal and global levels, I find – and I bring up the ballard novel simply to suggest that this sort of thing is very much motivated by competing desires for safety and obsessions with consequence and trial by peril – a “drive” if you will to push moments to dramatic climaxes, tests of character – the steady and well-considered route being all too boring
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie;
the thing i think my friend to be
at least can mean that much to me.
if you can't, or it seems you won't,
your ghost will try, although you don't.
EXPL: not one of my better efforts, but the idea it’s supposed to express is simply that conceptions of friends and the reality of our actual friends can be way different sometimes, and that’s about it
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; this is in iambic pentameter, except the third line, which is partially in trochaic
the sun has gone and i'm lost without them. if i hold my breath they see through me. so i try to breathe the air, to feel the air flow through me. but the only one who sees me is the one with no face.
the monsters always care, the monsters always see, the air of anxiety surrounding me. i create it with hope and caring, an open heart, a thought of sharing. i try so hard to let go, so why don't i? the only one who sees me is the one with no face.
for a friend, or an enemy, or anything i thought i wanted. it's so hard to believe that this is what it's come to. this is all i wanted but i never should have had.
the monsters always care, the monsters always see, the air of anxiety surrounding me. there's nothing to fight when the air is your enemy. i forgot my name. i forgot who i am and i am left alone with the one with no face.
EXPL: so no face is a character in the movie “Spirited Away” and I saw this movie while I was having some major emotional problems, like just feeling like things were always unsure, unsettled, and questioning all my relationships, feeling really insecure, and feeling ignored all the time, I felt like I was invisible when I was with my friends, sometimes I still feel that way, like people who are supposed to care are really just indifferent, anyways, its like a monster, its like being a monster too, because it makes you do funny things, and you end up losing what you actually had, it’s a fixation, it’s like gluttony or addiction, it’s compulsive, not volitional, and no face isn’t a bad monster, really, it just acts out, because it doesn’t know how else to act, and even then it’s only reacting to what other people feed into it, and there’s this part in the film where two characters are trying to cross a bridge, and if they hold their breaths, they can’t be seen by the spirit world, and so I decided to use that, to try to breathe deep, which is both a way of being seen, in desperation, and also a way of saying I should calm down and take a deep breath and try to see what the real situation is, and when that doesn’t work, when despite all my own openness and caring, I still feel marginalized, in that state of hopelessness, sometimes even an enemy is better than nothing, or seems it, or at least that is what my behavior seemed to suggest, not that I ever literally make enemies out of people deliberately, but the point is that its almost better than not having any relationship, because that indifference is like a nothingness which compares rather unfavorably with the undeniable presence of crisis, with opposition as a something-ness, and man, that monster that is insecurity, anxiety, despair, its like a presence, there’s no face to it – it is the true enemy, the true opposition, but it will never show itself, allowing you to realize the folly of your actions - it’s just always with you, following you around incessantly, it’s the air you breathe, anyways, I hope this doesn’t seem to solipsistic, but it is how I felt, I assume you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t care what the lyrics meant, this is one of the songs people talk to me a lot about and ask about, and so I figure it warranted some explanation, because ultimately it describes a certain mental state that another person might share, might empathize with, or better understand, it’s personal, but it is still communicative, a lot of “emo” seems to whine, but the point (for me) is expressing yourself authentically, and its really cool when someone can identify with that
Credits/Quotes: artwork - amanda; Miyazaki's Spirited Away
this day could be the worst of my life green eyes and blue skies and this day is a start and an end this day could be the rest of my life this repetition discovered a why if this day could be the best of my life would I change anything?
if i had a dime for every time that i’ve heard this song i'd have nothing more than a reminder of why every day means as much as the first repetition signifies
no regrets is a lie
this day could be the worst of my life green eyes and blue skies and this day is a start and an end this day could be the rest of my life this repetition discovered a why if this day could be the best of my life would I change anything?
if i had a dime for every time that i’ve heard this song i'd have nothing more than a reminder of why every day means as much as the first repetition signifies my life
the endless day is over and now there’s no need for choices and no regrets is a lie
now i can say the reason why i choose to live life
EXPL: ok, so, I love the movie “Groundhog Day”, go see it, anyways, life in the american business world can be very repetitive and boring, but then again so can everyday life anywhere, when you do the same thing day in and day out, often we make a choice one day to live that day a certain way and then we end up repeating that decision ad nauseum because of inertia, but the reality is that every day is the same, the weather may change, but the same potential for life and living exists every day, and this song is about realizing that, seizing it, embracing it, realizing that we can make meaning by returning to the things we love, that not all repetition is meaningless, but also realizing that that repetition can empty out and void what earlier meant something to us, there is a balance somewhere in there, life is about repetition, endless numbered days, but its also about investing each day with active and assertive joy, something I repeat a lot is that no regrets is a lie, its in a few songs, and I really believe that, regret is a form of repetition, reliving a former decision, but there is totally a value in that, dwelling on it too much can be bad, but if we just forget all our mistakes, that is bad too, there is a balance to all this, I think, somewhere – I guess to sum up, I think that each day should be informed by but not determined by those before it
Credits/Quotes: artwork - tim; the movie Groundhog Day, holiday is often day before my birthday, Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence, othello
instrumental
EXPL: “The different languages, set side by side, show that what matters with words is never the truth, never an adequate expression; else there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (for that is what pure truth, without consequences, would be) is quite incomprehensible to the creators of language and not at all worth aiming for. One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor.” Neitzsche – “On Truth and Lie in an Extra Moral Sense”
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie;
NOTE: I was never happy with these lyrics, but due to schedule restraints on the part of the studio, never got to rerecord them, so, in my opinion the lyrics to this song suck and are sorely underdeveloped because i was unprepared, sorry
and that’s something i wouldn’t say cause there’s nothing right with us today you can’t stay golden no you can’t stay golden
you can’t mean the same to me now as then cause you won’t be the same now as then
not the same, you change, nothing stays the same
now that ... (i forgot this)
.. in the way you shake your head you say there is no rain today if there is then it’s needed
and all the stars that shine will fade into the light of common day and lose what made them ours
EXPL: see “The Outsiders”, it’s a classic, I really don’t like these lyrics, but we never could afford to go back and do proper lyrics for this song, it kind of got left in the dust, all I want to say is that, in William Wordsworth’s “Ode to Immortality” he talks about this idea that we start out sort of golden, innocent, there’s this ‘visionary gleam’ and when we’re born and as we age we sort of lose this, get caught up in life, in the inherent loss and lack involved in living, all that glitters is sure to fade (to quote a really bad band), and anyways, the theme here is just inevitable change and you know, the implication is that you should appreciate what you have when you have it cause it might not be there later, meaning it might not be appreciable by you because it has lost what made it special for you before
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; the outsiders, william wordswoth (intimations of immortality)
this image that i worship blends your real with my make believe and i live in constant fear that the real i love will only leave
i'll settle for the more and the less all you need is a reason and i lose
the sound of your voice the touch of your hands the look in your eye when you say maybe
i can’t trust you till you have a choice
please can’t you save my life
until the waiting is through, please can’t you save my life
EXPL: one of the few songs about love/romance, but apropos of my distaste for pop songs and their incessant regurgitation of that subject, its more about idol worship, about putting the object of one’s romantic affections on a pedestal, I meant to depict how silly that is, devotion is great, but worship, idealization of just a human being, the way kids will seem to think that the person they are dating is the ultimate focus of life, its unhealthy and counterproductive towards forming a good sense of identity, its counterproductive towards community activism and revolutionary change, its hurtful to communities of friends which inevitably consist (and ought to consist) of more than two people, when we love someone, I believe that is supposed to show us how to love others, it should bring out the best in us, not obsess us, give us a reason to be a better person, and not just for them
Credits/Quotes: artwork - jasce; Chaucer, the Bible, some movie i saw but cant remember now (the more and the less)
everyone deserves a second chance, it's only good luck that we had the first. the quality of mercy is not strained but generous. substitution is realizing it could be you. that we give of ourselves is our only saving grace. forgiveness is a responsibility.
it's not for your sake. The world is what you make, but it's not for you.
the judgment we put on our friends stays with us, sticks to us, for all our days, it follows us through our lives, and it makes us who we are.
we make ourselves by who we love
forget and forgive and let all be done with, it's a glorious thing to live and to let live. where there is anger, there's always a better way. i'd rather be happy than right anyways. this was the year to lose all of my friends. another person is not a means to my ends. this isn't worth another moment of pain, maybe i like it, maybe i'm wired that way.
once i've realized that fighting is never fair, i can't look away and pretend that i don't care.
EXPL: so, this one really ought to be pretty self-explanatory, a lot of lyrics within what is called ‘emo’ these days can be pretty vague, and I am just as bad at that as any other, but about this time I really started trying to be a little more direct, this song is about how important forgiveness is, how important it is to really give someone a second chance, because you might want the same thing one day, and that doesn’t mean you do it so you get good karma, that means you do it because that means it is the right thing to do, anger and resentment only make this world worse, it is a glorious thing to move beyond past wrongs and trespasses and to forgive, and to forget, and not to hold things against people, and to realize that we are all humans, we all make mistakes, we all mess up, we all deserve a second chance, maybe even a third or a fourth, and I don’t think that it’s right to assume that everyone acts with the full consequences of their actions in mind (though they should strive to), and that means that sometimes you have to inform them, and forgive them, and if they do the same thing again, then maybe you need to move on if you can, but usually honest communication will go a long way towards reform of both their deeds and our hurt emotions
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; William shakespeare (quality of mercy, Merchant of Venice), the Bible, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, seth mccarrol (this was the year ..), the TV series scrubs (wired that way), the movie A Very Long Engagement (fighting is never fair)
this is the last time that i wear these shoes, worn thin from the weight of inward attention, gravity pushes down and in, eyes locked on feet, can't tell what is
i feel my heart through my toes
all i've seen is what i wanted to see, out of sight and out of mind, as a way of life, and i'm out of my mind
this fight is not a fight that i wanted to start, infinity in a point is still nothing at all, identity in the fall of a whale, and a wonder at the world
no matter how different i think i am or how changed i feel, the wreck is still all encompasing, without effort there is no meaning
to be light and float away, growth comes from wider angles, gravity is a choice
EXPL: this song, despite its metaphor, is pretty straightforward - gravity here means gravitas, weight, over-seriousness, over-analyzing, pressure, you get the idea, it’s really sad when you can’t get past something, the same old demon coming back to haunt you, and dwelling on a problem is not solving it, you need to make an effort to learn from it and to get past it, not everyone has this problem, but I do
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; infinity in a point comes from somewhere cant remember, Hitchhiker's Guide (whale), note: gravity is a metaphor for gravitas in this song, not a literal force of nature
things fall apart and the centre cannot hold
(other lyrics lost, and unintelligibly buried in distortion)
EXPL: so this is right out of a W. B. Yeats poem, you should read it, basically this phrase sums up what it’s like to live in the modern world (to many), things keep changing, there is no central organizing and signifying meaning to hold on to, life can feel pretty chaotic, etc., and we are beset by doctrinaire voices that alternately seduce and condemn us
Credits/Quotes: artwork - amanda; W.B. Yeats "The Second Coming" (...centre cannot hold)
The silent breaking of the thin line Is inability to say 'I’m not fine' What I’ve got to find my friend (is) A bitter means to a better end I can’t just take whatever’s offered And passively accede to suffer ‘All is well and as it should be’ When nothing in this world is right for me
I could continue on and stay broken in the end Or find a bitter means to a better end I am worn out with dreams A Mind moving that seems stopped Leaves nothing but vague memories And a sort of messy suffering
It’s only hard if I make it so
As long as I was underground I couldn’t hear the sound hiding from the worst parts of me Hid me from reality
It’s only hard if I think I can’t It’s only hard if I think I can’t I’m looking forward to that final day Where I can mean all the things I say The final moment and best test When the sun sets and mind is at rest A little left when the road is straight A picture frame for my final place A bitter means to a better end When you can be my only friend Frozen in place and filled with love And memories and thoughts I cant ruin A little left when the road is straight A bitter means to a better end
A lack of plaster, paint, and face Or lens of distance from a warm embrace A snow covering half hidden roots That melt at a sight and break their case Though my heart is worn with dreams A Never-ending desire is in me The hourly kindness, the day’s common speech And the happiness of each with each
The lost possibility That I ever could see Happiness on the face of On the face of some other me
EXPL: I periodically suffer from severe depression, a fact which is (or ought to be) immune to cliche despite its prevalence in certain musical subcultures, as far as I am concerned
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; Sartre "a sort of ..."; Yeats "worn out with ...", "lack of plaster", "snow covering ....", "the hourly kindness ..."
i had, not thought, that death had (undone), so many others starve while i am drowned aware yet trapped by my own lack
my head is trapped by the same ice that holds my body, the frozen water stills my arteries i can still see around, i can still see the suffering, i can still feel
water flows through its reasoned channels, i must find a way to put off this mental barrier i can't save everyone, so why save one, why not just save myself?
if i can't, who can, if i won't, then who will, my frozen body still moves i must try harder, to forget my self, play with my heart and not my head
you always have a way, of breaking through the ice it's up to you there is meaning in everything we do it’s up to you
inaction is an action
the only way (the only way) to save my self (to save my self ) is to save another (another) the only way (the only way) the only way (to save my self) is to save another (another) the only way (the only way) to save myself is to play with my heart and not my head play with my heart and not my head play with my heart and not my head
EXPL: this song uses an extended metaphor, I wrote it after seeing coverage on the news of the crisis in Darfur, a lot of people get frozen in logic and reason, (e.g., 'why put money into charities when you don’t know if that money is reaching anyone who really needs or if it’s being used properly?', etc.,) and it’s really easy to think yourself out of compassion, and while I do place a high premium on reason and logic and thinking, I think it is just as important to follow your heart - it also sums up my philosophy of playing music
Credits/Quotes: artwork - adam; T.S. Eliot "fear death by water"; Dante "i had no idea ..."; "play with my heart and not my head" doug came up with this
I was happier then Or was that even me Stream moves faster than Even different could be A Change of heart or just a whim?
Every time that I sit Every time that I feel Another he won’t have Was that ever mine to steal? Forward or back, progress a feeling of loss
My hand is stopped I am not ready Will it mean any? Will it mean any? Word I could say Thought I could think Remembering When I was that way I WAS THAT WAY!
But that was then and not now Another time another self This is him and that was me Pull it once and then you see I’ve separated myself from everyone
Am I any more justified Because a judge tells me I’m right Collective voice calling his name Condemning me and him all the same We live the same, we die the same, we all suffer
We are the same!
The walls speak through my ears I’m done for my own tears A witness to violent act Now I must remember the fact I am now the less His last word was 'confess' Just a button in a voting booth And now I have to live with that truth
EXPL: I believe capital punishment is wrong, I think it is a way of feeling victorious over someone, even though there is nothing you can do to undo whatever crime they may have committed, it would be ludicrous to release a murderer back into society where he or she could commit a similar crime, but it is just as ludicrous to think that killing them solves anything, all it does is reduce us as a society to their level, if unnecessary killing is wrong, then it is wrong, there is no excuse, and voting for those who would support it is just as bad as pulling the trigger yourself, just because that murder takes place off stage and out of sight and out of mind doesn’t mean that we all as members of this society are not implicated in it - Who knows why we act. From moment to moment there are a myriad of factors in every decision, every mood, impulse, desire, thought. What can predict which of these will manifest in action? There are many reasons not to judge others. Though the universe seems not to work on some sense of justice revisiting the sins of individuals back on themselves via karma, yet humans establish systems that purport to do just that. But in that revisitation, if that system, comfortable in its anonymity, commits the same act it has condemned, what justice then? If one could trace back the shock of realization, out from the heart of the criminal, through the neural network that once carried his murderous intent, out into the points of contact where society makes its mark upon him, cold metal without remorse, back down through the wires of power, both electric and dominating, created of vengeful hatred codified, back through a switch whose physicality hides its deeper meaning, back through the halls of justice, or at least of legality, through the words thrown against the stoic certainty of the law, black unalterable words on a page which give weight and action to the decision of so-called peers – which way would the path lead then? Would it lead to an impassioned moment, an impoverished sense of the future, robbed of possibility till it has siphoned off hope in exchange for despair, a lasting significance leant to the final in a long series of little mistakes, abandonments, soft suicides, witnesses of horror and futility, portions of paychecks spent on little escapes, choices which aren’t choices, society’s ultimatums, manifest destinies of the downtrodden, and all for the crime of a contingent birth, for did he not choose to grow up in a ghetto? Or does it instead lead to a finger on a button, or a checkmark in a box, next to a name that meant nothing but for the party with which it is affiliated, the promises of a speech heard only in soundbites, the inertia of incumbency, or some other random contingent chance that allowed misguided feelings of revenge to attempt to extract an abstract concept, justice, created by human nature for its own sense of completion or fulfillment, to make nature into a system with morality, and then to fail, as humans do, to apply its own concepts to itself, buffered from the ignorance of its failure by concrete walls, iron bars, armed guards, black robes, golden shields of moral certitude? When the path is so uncertain, the charge it carries so lethal, though some actions must be punished, dare we gamble with such thing so precious as life and then hide behind a system to avoid confronting the inevitable mistakes? When even one occurs, where does the blame lie? How far back does it go? All the way to a button or a checkmark ticked on a cold day in a booth in November?
Credits/Quotes: artwork - jared; Joyce "I was happier then"
See ourselves for who we are Or either side of what we were The place I stand is not new Because others have stood where I am too
Our thoughts inform the choices we see And Actions remind us we are free To be more than just moving parts A pump is more than just a heart
If we were all suddenly somebody else We all have broken parts, we need to fix our hearts
The one I watch is suffering The tables turn and it is me Without love of my fellow man Surviving isn’t something I
Our thoughts inform the choices we see And Actions remind us we are free To be more than just moving parts A pump is more than just a heart
The broken heart of someone else Is another chance to save myself A reflective stare into another’s life Me in his eyes
If we were all suddenly somebody else
EXPL: a common theme I keep returning to is the absolute humanity of other people, a heart is more than just a pump, and yet only a pump at the same time, - we can see others as object, or subject, or something in between, and not realize it – a ‘heart’ is a symbol of the essence of what it is to be some one, and it is really hard to put yourself in that position, not to see it as though it were the object that our language and our cognitive shortcuts may find it more convenient to conceive of, but to really see things through another person’s eyes, to reverse your own subjectivity, but I believe we should try, so much violence and hate results from a failure of compassion, of a real effort to understand our fellow man – it is funny though how sometimes an idea can look good on paper and then when you sing it, it feels a little cliché and a little cheesy – but does it make it any less true? sometimes I think our limited recording budgets and schedules have been allies in the maintenance of our sincerity
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; Joyce: relation of heart to pump; Joyce "if we were all suddenly somebody else", "me in his eyes"
this is the snazziest song ever (repeat)
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie;
A thousand glowing orbs on a darkling plain moving quickly through but never escaping
Enforced distance by a radius of concrete, to each their own private place of peace
Afraid that the end is near or that and end to the next sale is come to pass, a lost opportunity to sell myself or sell my friend
No man woman or child an island but a continent with swirling winds to then connect us all and then throw us far away, ALP prefers the sea
EXPL: ALP stands for Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses, she is the prototypical female, a symbol of all femininity, and she is imagined as water which falls from the sky as rain, flows through rivers into the sea, is evaporated into the air and falls again, in an endless cycle, man is HCE, Here Comes Everyone, he is the island, the land over which ALP flows, ALP is about flow and continuity, HCE is solid and isolated, ALP is about freedom and chaos and becoming, HCE is about order and being - Driving home from my mother’s house in suburban Tulsa into the less affluent area in which I live over a bridge of concrete raised from the earth like a circuit board of rigid paths to follow, determined ends and gates of logic set out before me by my countrymen, tributaries and rivulets exiting into pools of security, I see ALP in the sky, Anna Livia Plurabelle, all that is feminine, fluid, falling as rain upon the surface of HCE, masculine monument, rigid in his order, dormant in complacency, barely cognizant of the chaotic life-force that continually passes through caverns and canyons, grid-like across his impassive body, she escapes to freedom in the sea, open, mixing and mixed, omnipresent, collective - only to evaporate and return again. In the broad landscapes of suburban commercial wasteland that America becomes and is becoming, the machines we rely upon and the pathetic substitutes for capillaries which they traverse sclerotic with oil and the sweat of the disinherited provide us with ever thicker intimations of safety and excuses against responsibility to buffer ourselves against the pain of interaction, the acknowledgement of interdependency, of common humanity, increasingly perceived only through glowing boxes, seeming intrusions into our homes that maintain reassuringly convex glass limits, walling off the simulated humanity trapped inside, allowing it only so much of a foothold, tethered by a power button imagining control or the possibility of muting the wholesale auction of the estate of the American dream, images consumed and discarded, and forgotten, but for the last flicker of the screen as we retire to our peaceful forgetting cradles, a bright flash illuminating the arid, rigid, rotten, concrete cores of egoconcentricity
Credits/Quotes: artwork - amanda; ALP - Anna Livia Plurabelle from "Finnegan's Wake" (Joyce); Donne - "no man is an island" (from Meditation XVII); Arnold - "on a darkling plain" (from Dover Beach)
An altruistic act or just greed, my motivation is questioning, am I the selfless one or thinking of my own glory in suffering
My actions are never clear
I need to question everything that I do, Deep inside I know I should follow the golden rule always
If I get something out of it is it wrong or is it just always that way
My actions are never clear
EXPL: this one is pretty straight forward, but basically, it questions whether or not anything can be truly altruistic, can any action ever be done purely for another person? when we do something for someone else we might get a good feeling from it, we might expect something in return, whether by general karma or specifically for them, we might even perversely enjoy being underappreciated, human motivation is such an amorphous thing, and the brevity of this song hardly gets at the core of that, but it raises the issue
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; the golden rule - Mathew 7:1, Analects 12:2, Udana-Varga 5:1, Mahabharata 5:1517, Sunnah, Talmud Shabbat 3id, Tai Shang Kan Yin P'ien, Dadisten-i-dinik 94:5
A moment of security and an assurance of hello
The unreasonable yes when the world says no, Any imagined heaven includes you
Fulfilled desire of one always true and the constant affirmation of value in your deepest you
Without want of being wanted and a loss at any lack, honesty combined with fantasy, no thought of holding back
The breakdown of all reason and a sympathetic truth, a heart filled with terror at the thought of a world without you, my mind is overflowing and my life is stepping down because a friend means showing the world is less without
EXPL: everybody has a different idea of what a friend should be, and often its even different ideas, because different friends mean different things to us at different times, this was one attempt at an answer, I think ultimately, for me at least, friendship is an issue of security, of knowing someone understands you and accepts you for who you are and will be there for you, that when it comes down to it, they care, and you care back, that you would rather have them in your world than not
Credits/Quotes: artwork - tim;
It's ok to say "I don't know", it's better than "they tell me so", But "I'm afraid to make my own way" is more than I can say ...
But I don't know what I should do, Help me I'm lost in the absence of you
EXPL: Socrates is famous for saying that a wise man knows that he knows nothing, and Operation Ivy had a similar sentiment, people tend to take the opinions of others, and make them their own, despite having no thought or reasoning behind their decision, we can’t all be researchers in every opinion we have, but there is nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know” and withholding judgment, admitting you can’t know everything and don’t need to
Credits/Quotes: artwork - tim; Socrates - "The wise man knows what he does not know", "To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know" (from The Apology), the wise man knows that he knows nothing
Seeing dawn at the end Of the days long night When tomorrow seems Possibility But happiness is today Not then but always Now now now
An unexamined life Interrupted by a call Awake alert unsafe Anxious towards it all Once you fall Human nature’s upon you You slip an inch And the ticking takes its toll
Timidity becomes conventionality And life’s whims and vanities Middle aged mediocrity And deluded hypocrisy All confidence and bluster And sure without knowing The will you can muster To just keep going
To face the hours And the hours after that
If life could be simple If life could just be (But what is life without a mind The possibilities and choose)
EXPL: so many people these days have childhoods and teenage years filled with hope and expectation that later turns into a boring job they don’t like stuck in one place, not creating, not living, not experiencing, just existing, that’s the American way these days, despite the incorporation of countercultural pretensions, the story still goes - find a girl and marry her, have 2.5 kids and a dog, work 8 to 5 and make money so you can spend it - is that really what life meant to us when we were kids? But it’s not so simple either, because quite frankly what are the other options? All we have for sure are hours and hours and at some point an end
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; Virginia Woolf 'Mrs. Dalloway'
Cry and you cry alone Smile and the world is with you The people part of home And the doors keep closing Lock you in or out Suffer the same The people part of home is The emptiest thing
Every Friday buries a Thursday Forget each one, keep your eyes away
Not so much what is said A skin holding a soul, a heart, a head Effort, sympathy breed dignity Only connect!
Sadness pulls apart The days and the hours And makes each sorry A sneering mockery If we could just take ourselves And fill the shoes of another And extend sympathy Beyond obligation
Every Friday buries a Thursday Forget each one, keep your eyes away Momentum deceives us, and lets us see Forward While keeping sideways to the periphery
Not so much what is said A word an act a thought or a deed An impenetrable cloud Concealing connection that we need A single soul Left behind or forgotten Is the death of us all An implicating 'sorry'
'I’m sorry' just doesn’t cut it 'I’m sorry' doesn’t fill the need 'I’m sorry' is for those who do something 'I’m sorry' doesn’t mean a thing
Every Friday buries a Thursday And I’m sorry you’ve wasted your day
EXPL: so many people say “I’m sorry” when you tell them about something bad in your life, it’s great that they want to express sympathy, but it’s become a rather stock response, it’s a way of moving along the conversation so as not to dwell on something ‘negative’ and thus I believe it is cause for question, there is no way to understand fully what another person’s pain is, what they have gone through, and to say I’m sorry is as much as to say “I’m required to express sympathy, but really you should just move on, because I don’t want to dwell on this, it’s bringing the mood down” this is not always the case, but often, and really, if this person is a friend, I just think you should care more, “I’m sorry” is for apologizing, it’s for when you do something wrong and you try to make amends, the appropriate response to the suffering of a friend can be so much more than a mere conventional expression of sympathy which may or may not be genuine, you can ask more about it, you can ask if you can help, you can really try to understand what that person is going through, you’ll never fully get it, but there is value in the effort, and people do need to move on and move past their problems, but just ignoring them because they don’t directly affect you doesn’t do anyone any good, it marginalizes and belittles their experience, sometimes it is really important to stop and look around and understand what has happened and what is happening before you just blindly move ahead in the interest of a good time or getting away from the unfortunately sad but also actually meaningful areas of life that we all must walk through
Credits/Quotes: artwork - jasce; Joyce 'every Friday buries a Thursday'; Forster 'only connect', Woolf 'not so much what is said'
that could be new acres a new sign but its all speculation five and dime of my least favorite instincts contemplating the mark on the wall
but I gave up and gave in true to my sense of hope in telling the lie
I can see sitting still as well as standing up the worst part of knowing is all that you don’t know I can see sitting still the worst part is deeper than I the worst part of seeing is knowing you can’t ask why
EXPL: sometimes when an event happens in your life, you don’t know what to make of it, maybe an opportunity appears, maybe something that seems negative, maybe not, but in any case, something not welcome, this was just musings on that sort of thing, the unknowability of life’s events, and the idea that one should not presume to understand life as it is happening, and certainly not rely on gut instinct predictions of the worth of a potential action
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; Virginia Woolf 'The Mark on the Wall'
To say of anyone that they are this or they are that To hold them under The surface ripples and waves and drifting anythings That shield the bottom Shade anemones the flowing curtains that buckle under Currents and encompassing tides But still live despite the efforts of the swirling winds Air we need to stop with water
Value anything By a life preserved
A comment and a superficial mark Like a wave, the force, not the water
If if get it all wrong, if I see just a face And not a person Mistake distortions, for solid meanings And hard sentiment If I get it all wrong, if I feel the waves Against my self Or I could start listening, and stop assuming And enjoy the view
EXPL: this is yet more of me trying to get at the whole issue of how to try and understand other people, even though it is so hard and indeed impossible to really do that, there is the person in front of you, the real flesh and blood, but then there is something entirely different, beyond and above that, the wizard behind the curtain, the pilot at the controls, the essence beyond the name and the face, it is impossible to sum someone up, to encompass them with a description or a way of thinking about them, or a label, by one right we are our actions, we are the effect we have on others, but the reality is that there is so much more beyond all that, I keep trying to get at that something, maybe someday I might understand it better
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; Forster 'Howard’s End' - 'force, not the water'
Wherever I sit I die in exile From the life I never had The life of the body
Effects less than obvious And decidedly wrong Imaginary worlds breathe and stand And take a life of their own
A culture of I wish I was And an inner life to match My mind is set on the goal Though my feet stray from the path But I must retrain And find new shoes And walk away from this hell Of self-loathing doubt
EXPL: I grew up (and am still to an extent) fat, very large, and I was marginalized for it, I didn’t date until several years after high school, there’s a lot of us at the margins of life, those who don’t fit in to the idea of what a boy or girl, man or woman – I am uncomfortable with how conflicted I am about that normalcy and the areas in which I differ from it, because it has been a source of drive and creativity, but it has also made a lot of choices for me in my life that I might have done otherwise
Credits/Quotes: artwork - matt;
i followed tracks, traces, and visions, down the path i was told without revisions, but when i finally found the end, it didn’t complete me, it only deceived me
i thought that i’d just live a normal life and settle down with a house or a wife, so they say, so it goes, but it didn’t complete me, it only deceived me
i thought the only point was to make points, settle them out and remove all doubt, but when it comes to the point, they didn’t complete me, they only deceived me
if you think you’ll find some puzzle pieces, you’re selling yourself short, because you’ve got all the pieces, because you’ll never be 'complete,' but you don’t have to be deceived
a spur, a trace a mark, an outline in the sand, a rhyme is arbitrary words, and form is emptiness
form is emptiness and emptiness is form
so they say, so it goes, they didn’t complete me, they only deceived me, i still can’t find my better half
my own better half is not a separate thing, it’s an unfulfillable desire. i’ll never be 'complete.'
EXPL: people have this idea that you are supposed to look for a soul mate, they call it their better half, for those of us who are single a lot that is just insulting, it implies we are somehow half of a person, which is just not true, some people look for this sense of completion with a nice house, a wife, a good job, 2.5 kids, or achieving political ideological or religious goals and none of these will complete you, the definition of desire is that which is unfulfillable, you can’t make yourself whole, it’s impossible, nothing has that power, no one has that power, we are all composed of diverse drives and shifting identities that we perform and live sometimes at our choosing, sometimes arbitrarily, but to think that there is something out there that like a rhyming word is going to create meaning for you is just an illusion, rhymes are arbitrary they don’t actually mean anything, and thus they are like those things in this life that make some goal seem meaningful by setting up a soulmate, or a dream job, or a dream car, or getting laid, or whatever the hell it is, the goal should be to recognize the illusory nature of all this and learn to be comfortable in your complexity, confusion, “incompletion”
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; metaphysics of presence, trace, spur (Derrida); so it goes (Vonnegut); emptiness is form, form is emptiness (the heart sutra); using Lacanian notion of desire
becoming instead of just being and looking instead of just seeing, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, performance is a means and an end, an identity isn’t something to defend, for is emptiness and emptiness is form
the simplest answer is the question itself
i don’t need categories to think for me, to write my thoughts for me, to live my life for me
if i inherit my name, my bank, and my faith, isn’t that enough given to me? to think i understand reality or how things should be, opinions aren’t something to receive and neither is an identity
EXPL: Becoming, in the philosophical yet still rather simplified sense, is to make things your own, make stuff, make yourself, become who you want to be, constantly become it over and over and never just sit back and imagine you have some consistent stable self and identity but instead to constantly reaffirm it and reassert it
Credits/Quotes: artwork - katie; becoming as in Deleuze & Guatarri; emptiness is form, form is emptiness (the heart sutra);
from nothing we came and to nothing we will return ad nauseum
i become who i want to be
a stone moves no water and feels no wind, it displaces the air but it takes nothing away, leaves a small footprint, just a trace in the sand
look for the path and tread lightly there, feet make no marks, and lungs long to breathe no air, eyes focused on both the east and the west, all the fires that you’ve made, and all the bridges yet to burn
and if you think you have a right to ask the question is always the same we must tread lightly and if you think you have a right to take in trust just think of all the people that came before
form is emptiness and emptiness is form
EXPL: with reference to ecology, the best thing is to leave a small footprint, in other words not to pollute, to change the surface of the earth to meet your needs without regard for everything and everyone else, … this can be extended to everyday life, when you act, you should be considerate of others, impose yourself less on them, and I am only referring to the small little things of every day life, not necessarily political action, because while I think you should be respectful of other’s peace and quiet and thus not modify your Harley to achieve the sonic impact of a small airplane, I do think that we need to be able to address each other and hold each other accountable under political terms rather than just sit back and let the world be taken and ruined by those with the will or the negligence to do it
Credits/Quotes: artwork - tomoe; karesansui - Japanese rock garden; trace in the sand - Derrida, Sunny Day Real Estate; emptiness is form, form is emptiness (the heart sutra);
instrumental
EXPL: a teleological interpretation looks at events or actions not in terms of the (often physical or material) causes but instead in terms of what greater destiny or purpose they were "meant to" fulfill. this is generally how lies are sold and barbarous actions are justified. manifest destiny and that.
Credits/Quotes: artwork - tanya; adapted from "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" by Joseph Wright of Derby
Changing place won’t change your mind all you do is lose your place Start over with even less than before and even more certain fate And no peace
Go west with the promise of new faces Go west young man
Go west and escape if you can Go west young man
Go west and seek solace and peace and come back an old man
Go west to avoid your defeat and come back a defeated man
You seek the sun you get blinded by the possible From leaf to grain of sand and then you reach the sea You run out of ground, you’re forced to turn around To face the fact of you and all that’s left to do
Leaving is losing, no lessons learned Leaving is choosing, defeat well earned
In search of real experience a purpose in progress A sense of direction and a steady well stayed hand I know what I want why can’t I just do it I know what I want why is it so hard to try?
EXPL: when you grow up in the Tulsa punk scene, it is very easy to assume that your musical life would be much better on one of the coasts. we’ve lost a lot of individuals to san diego, new york, and other big coastal cities. the possibilities seem bright in comparison to the modest numbers and talents of such a all Midwestern city as Tulsa. and though I did not move in search of bohemia or hipster havens, I at least shared the hope that, when I moved to California for grad school, my musical options and possibilities might open up a bit. on the contrary, all I found was a scene beset by all the same problems that Tulsa had. indeed, from what I’ve gathered on a few trips out east, the story is about the same, with the addition of a plague of jaded and insular cliques that have apparently seen one to many bands. it’s hard to find fault with their attitude, though, because I have to admit that after going to countless shows over the course of 16 years, it becomes rather hard to maintain the same vigor and enthusiasm for new music and new people. in any case, while my trip out west had more than a few hopes pinned to it, none of them bore fruit and I found myself thinking that I could have accomplished more if I had just stayed in Tulsa and made a life rather than hoping to transplant into one. part of this is just my own personal attitudes and quirks, and I should have known better than to think that I could stand such a large metropolis and somehow end up meeting people to play music with or even to have engaging conversations when I have no ability whatsoever to interact with strangers and no energy to spend more than a couple nights a month in public. in any case, this song is about that drive to escape, and the dream that a change of place will come with an improvement of one’s life. I don’t doubt that some may move from Midwest to metropolis and find happiness, but I question whether the move was necessary, or whether the move was the sign of a deeper commitment, or a deeper fear, that in the end was the true proximate cause
Credits/Quotes: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." from 1850 editorial by Horace Greely, quoting John B L Soule, an advocate for Western expansion as well as labor rights
Born as a whole human being, halves un-whole All the promise of conception, was a perilous deception Death was at the start if I only looked that far
Time moves the same choices less than sane seem so sensible All the promise of conception is a disappointing lesson Nothing follows through when you’re counting on something true
They could conceive but they couldn’t conceive of me I could believe in everything but me
EXPL: when we wrote the songs for hope, the idea was to write something short enough for a 7”, and not just 2 4 minutes songs, but to actually have something like a suite of songs that would fit together, and would be short, but somehow complement each other – I don’t know how well these songs gell, I ended up using a lot of certain jazz chord forms that I hope will contribute to that effect – any way, one of the upshots of this, of having short songs, is the inability to really flesh an idea out in lyrics. I felt like I had had a similar problem on the early recordings and that as things went on I had got rid of some of the vague and abstract nonsense that screaming and hardcore bands get away with on account of their unintelligibility or just brevity, but with ‘conception’ and ‘all’ I sort of regressed. there are still things that I like about the short form from a lyrical perspective, and sometimes that degree of abstraction can be a vehicle for portable applicability for whoever listens, and it’s also nice to have a vehicle for a simple but complicated or otherwise meaningful thought. in the case of conception, that thought was just that it’s rather unbelievable that my parents should have produced me. that they got together at some point 30 years ago and I was the result. and that I am somehow related to them, despite so many apparent differences. which only raises the thought that the maintenance and insistence on that difference may be just a vain pretention on my part, that I may have more in common than I care to admit, and that my own identity, my own uniqueness, really can’t be counted on as much as would make me comfortable. and that each conception, both of idea and of person, contains so much potential, and yet it is hard to deny or avoid the fact that so many of such conceptions turn out to be only disappointment
Credits/Quotes:
Feeling of movement sensory deception called forestalled postponed destination
Drawing on the walls forgetting as the truth? Journey forestalled predestination The continued reading of chance into meaning And rhymed nonsense for our insignificance
Promise conceived but merely deceived Equal empty but meaning the same Feeling and light trapped in the night Parenthetic desolation
The stillness is all The surface is all In this floating world We’re nothing at all
EXPL: everything I said above about the shortened song format applies even more so for this song. actually, all somewhat responds to conception. while I chose not to draw the picture specifically (though perhaps I should have), I had plato’s allegory of the cave in mind. to suggest that a conception has potential is to suggest that it is more than it is. thought and especially our thoughts about ourselves are ultimately just illusions that cover physical reality, and eventually death and nothingness. though we may find comfort in reading into the progression of this life or that the track of destiny or fulfillment or progress, ultimately human history and human life are each a parentheses which only have meaning for those of us within the brackets, and which will eventually erode away into the dust from which it came. in that light, to consider anything a disappointment is just as much as projection and a mistake as to consider anything fulfilling or meaningful. at least that is one way of looking at it. the interesting thing about this sort of philosophical perspective-izing is that you can interpret and ontologize into whatever best suits the attitude you already seem to have, to suit your mood in the moment, or your disposition as a person. (of course, only a very few over-analyzing morons use the word ‘ontologize’ or think of it that way when they do it. for most, it is spontaneous and thus immediate and obvious. while I value the ability to question, I also envy the ability to just accept.)
Credits/Quotes: 'floating world' - the urban lifestyle, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of Edo-period Japan
A Pamphlet pushed aside Some impersonal reply To the world’s indifferent slight
The only company that keeps me Is disappointed reality Lives spent in private meaning Time wasted keeping time
A voice afloat atop Currents of context Too much keeping track
Send out these feelings to the world My nerves against burning screens Signals crossed and prayers sent With fervent but futile intent
Chaos noise Confused by the echo Of a thousand souls Breathing in time The impossible duty to honor The solitary signs of each
EXPL: "Jemuel held a box of records in his arms. How many dreams did it contain? How many hours of hard work did it represent? … Who could put a price tag on something like that? Thankfully, Jemuel didn’t have to. He kicked open the back door and hefted it into the trash.” (from Cometbus’ ‘I Wish There Was Something I could Quit’) – I wrote hope while I was thinking about my proposed (and since abandoned) dissertation subject – zines. the sheer overwhelming quantity of these things is ridiculous. to me, at one time, and still to a certain extent, they represented what was so great about punk and the DIY scene. each person could be their own publisher, and the zine could serve as a form for their free expression and an experimentation with their identity and their ideas about their community, and that would interact with community itself. but then the reality, when you compare it to the countless pamphlets of religious fanatics in the late 19th century, for instance, is that this form has far too many obstacles on the road to that ideal. at its lowest, it is an idiosyncratic and disposable missive from some lonely being that none of us have the time or the interest to engage with. when you start to scale the idea of DIY up, when you think of it as the ethic and principal for organizing, for instance, just a city, and a small one at that, the reality is that not everyone can be a producer, not everyone can embrace this form of production and activity, because the resulting glut of expression would dilute and ultimately neuter the significance of the collective result. ultimately, each person would have to gain value from the act of production and *only* that act, because only so many would receive the positive feedback and enthusiasm of the community, and I’m just not sure that that feedback isn’t integral to the process. shouting in an empty cave is only entertaining for so long, just as shouting in a crowded cave in which every one else shouts quickly turns into a painful cacophony. any way, I could ramble about the contradictions and ambiguities and catch 22s for ages, but that’s the basic idea.
Credits/Quotes:
This intervention has the feel of déjà vu the record’s spinning forever locked in its groove a way of life reduced to a form stylized routinized to a shallow and shiny norm from revolution to cliché
just superficial stimulation
but what’s different? appearances change but there’s no progress in this apocalypse
everything that rises must converge all the meaningful surprises grow from within and stretch the threads of molded costumes copied, sinned, and said
rags cover neglect and decay veil desire’s all-compelling force generations lived through their eyes dissatisfied with any compromise
the searing balm of burning screens faith in sense impression for ironic equivocation it’s (just) culture, neither right nor wrong a place to hide, from considering
from revolution, to cliché, we lose our way faith in sense impression, ironic simulation so responsible in their noble stimulation
coming down to unchanged reality everything that meets must diverge patchwork king of limited domain stitched and sewn and overblown
EXPL:It is a lamentable and unavoidable fact that the punk, hardcore, and ‘emo’ scene(s) have been, to a certain degree, co-opted over the past several years. This should come as no surprise though. The twentieth century and after have been marked by a series of youth-driven and style-driven movements that simultaneously criticized and rejected society. Their outward manifestations tended to take stylistically distinctive forms and, since consumer capitalism loves nothing better than a new style as a mode of distinction to commodify and sell, these movements and their visual and verbal signs of community lose their novelty to a certain degree. Their unwitting and unwilling association with those mainstream variants that are mere parasites but that are none the less avoidable for being so causes them (the originals) to loose a certain sense of originality, freshness, etc, for many that will eventually lament the passing of ‘punk’, or whatever, often without ever having been there in the first place. The funniest of such mourners discount their own potential and real experiences simply because they found this lovely and living thing after the fact (or so they tell themselves). When the countless adolescents walk into their local purveyor of youth-authenticity in the form of the accoutrements of the movement, they encounter this culture in a form that is processed, mass produced, and most importantly divorced from both the tight-knit community and the progressive and radical politics that accompanied the introductions of earlier novitiates. OF course, none of this is new. It happened to the hippie movement, the beat movement, etc etc. And it will happen again. Half of this song is a description of and reaction to this process. The other half of it acknowledges the irony that style should be so important to these movements in the first place. We may reject that proposition as much as we want, but the reality is that when you tour, every house or venue is filled with a bunch of kids that dress the same, talk about the same stuff, and except for the postmodern-self-aware variant, tend to think of these things as authentic and unique. Personally, I think authenticity is highly highly overrated, at least in the form that it is usually discussed in these contexts. What matters is a genuine experience of and belief in the community of self-expression that punk and things like it provide for the groups of friends that create and revive it anew. When we get distracted by the aesthetics of it, we pay that spirit a disservice. And yet, that happens all too often. The dependence of the people involved on various forms of sensory stimulation – whether in the form of drugs or alcohol or tight jeans and other meaningless visual markers – indicate, to me at least, a little too much abandon to embodied and all-too-easy communities of physical and exaggerated separation from mainstream status quo, and too little self-reflective and self-aware dedication to the spirit of self-creation and discovery that (I believe) provides the ultimate value and meaning that has kept this particular cycle going over the years, despite the new forms it continues to take.
Credits/Quotes: title is title of book/story by Flannery O'Connor. ideas largely from Dick Hebdige and Thomas Frank.
Flirt with the truth through gentle irony avoid attachment and deflect in subtlety If I admit it, am I absolved? or acquitted of this middle brow, middle class, half caring, and half-assed, cowardly bravery
sharp witted and forked tongue, thick skinned, with mask on cutting to protect, to shelter and deflect this parade of cynicism is wearing thin
broken homes make broken bones, too late and so long just move along, why try to belong if community is (just) monotony? Are there worse things to be?
Where is fulfillment if this is my penitence? just stay what you are
to think and say, and just make do
these swords won’t help they only open wounds you can’t mend with irony the truth is in the delivery
just say it but don’t mean it just say it but don’t believe it just say it and hide in the irony
EXPL: I love ironic humor, but I have a deep sense of ambivalence about the way I and others use it. (This ambivalence is of course ironic). It frequently provides a convenient way to voice thoughts without endorsing them as a genuine beliefs, and that is fine if everyone involved, especially the speaker, knows and is confident about what those genuine beliefs are, but when any imperfection in the state of knowledge is present, then that irony constitutes a barrier to communication, and a often a means of expressing superiority over others, of excluding others, etc. These situations may be rather rare, but they can easily arise in situations where they might do some harm. For instance, David Cross does a routine about a dessert at a restaurant made of edible gold. He describes the labor chain that brought that gold from some mine in south Africa to the table in this rather posh restaurant near wall street in new york, and ironically and cynically voices the metaphoric social attitude contained in the act of eating something that could potentially feed the families of all the virtual slave laborers involved. Now, the bit is funny, don’t get me wrong, and the audience laughs, but then do they do anything about it? Shouldn’t they? I don’t mean to make this point too significant, but I think it is worth observing how ironic humor over an otherwise serious subject can defuse and distract and absolutely fail to motivate any action where one might otherwise want some. I think that humor plays a vital role in one’s life, and I know it can be depressing to be serious all the time, but I think that often humor serves as a steam valve for social anxieties and pressures that might more usefully be used to power progressive action. At the end of the day, the audience probably acted the same way they would have any way, with respect to those poor people in south Africa, but their laughter was a sign of their agreement with David’s own attitude towards the inequity and absurdity of this product. In that way, irony can also serve as a means of recognizing the people that are already in on the joke, as it were, and these people should be the easiest to motivate. I’m realizing now that I got off on a huge tangent, and this really has little to with the song at this point, but I still think it’s interesting, so it stays, and you can just stop reading if you want!
Credits/Quotes:
can’t trust the diagnosis when the symptoms are so conscious the skin is separating the touch is irritating ignorant of the scene of decay just look away and away
can’t find our better angels wings clipped by the weight of the details light footed well-lidded, unattached, and enwrapped and enrapt intention’s sole invention
and just because it was and it is and it will then it must have been yet we let it happen again and again
all men must be tested all order is agency all possibility and no responsibility as though history disproved morality
and just because it was and it is and it will then it must have been yet we let it happen again and again
where is the reason in this validation? in this victory?
EXPL: this song combines some of themes of the other songs on the recording. One of the things that I harp on about continually, because I see it in so many facets of life everyday, is the tendency of human beings to ignore and to assume the inevitability of the status quo, and to rationalize backward from the way things are to the way that they have to be. For instance, many assume that the American form of capitalism is necessarily the best form of society simply because America, which happens to have a relatively free market economy, has become so dominant in the world over the past 50 years. This isn’t necessarily the case, though. Just because something is a certain way by no means indicates that it will either continue to be so or that it had to be that way in the first place. I do place a lot of stock in systems theory and systematic understandings of social, economic, and historical processes, but if you think of the weather as a system, which it is, then try to think of what “the best” weather would be, or whether that state would, once reached, remain unchanged as the pinnacle of the weather system, then perhaps you can see why a systematic understanding of economic processes tells you nothing about what the ‘best’ economy would be. Economy is a means, and this country does not engage in meaningful conversations about the ends for which that economy should aim, especially for whose ends. People instead buy one of a few rationalizations of why things are the way they are, and this choice is usually dependant on the home into which they are born, and they get on with their daily life rather than take any interest in the world around them. This works well when one’s society is already on top of the pile, but as the US will likely find out soon enough, there is a very little separating us from the other side of luck.
Credits/Quotes:
A desert empty, hard, and mute some implied and maligning agent mere dust, soft clay, of eroding tides unsettling account, no balance to come in the pall of mistakes past
who are you to ignore the obvious effects of your actions? and ask the world to bend to your ignorance of other ends more exists without than is known within or spoken invisible but no less real, though forgotten our wills have mass
an epidemic of inattention content with meaningless negligence on a curved path, tethered and constrained wrought between collisions and propelled to escape
but man himself is a force of nature which counters all others and conquers so as to undo itself in its wake, risk values all reward so-called providence designs all consequence
the game plays itself
so it goes, and so it went
so it goes, and so it will, at the end
so it goes, and so it will, so it went, at the end, as it always would
the measure of man isn’t that which he hazards no hope in abandoning to shaping molding chance this alien land holds scars of man’s conversion does it manifest our victory, our destiny, or our barbarity?
EXPL: so this song is very similar in theme to ‘victory’ and it mainly ruminates on the dangers of inattention and willful ignorance of the consequences of one’s actions, removed from sight by barriers of geography, time, or just the highly staged and manicured storefronts of commerce. but I pulled some of the imagery from the book, Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, which is about a war party of sorts that makes its way through the southwest of the US and the northwest of Mexico more or less indiscriminately killing along the way. this journey is, as I read it, an analogue for the notion of Manifest Destiny, and along the way a character named the ‘Judge’ sermonizes on the need of a ‘man’ to estimate and measure his worth through the mechanisms of risk and danger. In other words, by putting one’s self on the line in a battle, by continually risking one’s life against a reward of equal or greater value (the lives of others, many others in this case), the gambler is left with a feeling of validation through victory, through survival – this is a close analogue of the meritocratic notions of conservatives in American politics. It is also a manifestation of certain ancient atavistic instincts in man’s pre-civilized evolutionary history. though we as a society often proceed blindly without consideration of our effect on other people and on our environment, our ignorance of those effects does not make them any less real. the history of this continent and its exploration and domination by Europeans provides a great lesson in this regard. A new world was for them little more than a new frontier to be tamed, not a new home to share and build. I personally believe in an approach to life that errs on the side of caution and forethought in all things. I know these aren’t necessarily your typical song-topics, but I think they apply to so many situations in so many diverse facets of life that they provide a salient and sufficient replacement for the usual romantic fare in song lyrics (and good riddance, I might add).
Credits/Quotes: 'blood meridian' - a book by Cormac McCarthy, some of the language of the book may be reflected in the song, but nothing directly quoted to my knowledge; 'so it goes' - Vonnegut