To Help Stay Here

[tohelpstayhere]

Minute to minute. And in the hard ones, working to remember this feeling from the other day. To remember, to hold, and to carry it. And to let it envelop.

[thepianofarm]

Morning carries its cloth in its arms to dress you. See the certainty of you revealed, as well as the parts made more uncertain from the dark that gains its definition from the light. How it is a fist that holds flowers, how a truth reveals more lies, how a pocketknife unfolds. How the earth below your feet shakes and shakes, and you do not know if the shaking is the ground or your legs and regardless of which, you attempting to stand straight. This broken earth is out of your control. Your legs are not. The morning and its light is out of your control as well, it will always follow itself to you.

[tohelpstayhere]

No, it's not. It really, really is not.

COA: "But that's okay."

#JK

#ButFR

#ButJohnKennedy

#ButFranklinRoosevelt

[tohelpstayhere]

1. My compass is cracked. From soft hands. I don't know if I gave it to her or if she offered to hold it. Feels like the same thing. Is it it my responsibility because of giving or hers for holding? Or no one's? I don't know what it is I feel, so don't really know what to let go of. This also feels like the same thing. How anger & love are in the same fabric, or giving up & peace, the same coin. It's like being in the sea, it is touching all of you but what part of it are you not touching? Everything so far & so close at the same time. I don't like the idea of no responsibility for actions. I become wet when in water. I fly by turning myself into the wind. My movement moves a body at rest. The compass still cracked. I keep trying to fix it or find another one.

2. How odd a circumstance to be legitimately crying and laughing at the same time. Not crying from laughing, but crying a good healthy heartbreaking cry while laughing because of a courageous and very hilarious occurrence. "How strange it is to be anything." How strange the calm and disruptive light in opened spaces.

3. That the brain remembers to let go, that the heart may follow in such.

4. Above the ceiling if this world there are gods watching this human drama. It is a comedy and tragedy at the same time. All that you think is real is not.

[tohelpstayhere]

I played in the dark

A few things on the track(s) below:

1. Been working and reworking this first track since arriving in Portland last week. I feel it maybe becoming too precious right now so time to put it up as opposed to holding it tight and laboring it into the ground.* Thoughts to take to heart in other areas of my life as well.

2. I often have lots of versions and variations of different beats an/or songs, partially due to continuous exploration/indecisiveness and partially because one of the things that excites me about artmaking is taking elements already in existence and making something new out of them. It's why I love the editing and crating aspect of writing poetry, because that's where the shaping happens and because it's not an empty space but with objects you get to play with and turn over in your hand and find new meanings inside of them. Thus when making music I might hear one little bit of something I'm already working on and see what it sounds like if I take that part and make something new with it, and then again, and  again, and again, etc. etc. etc.

The first track here was with drums I already have in a previous post, and didn't even realize  it until I listened to them both back to back. They're pretty different musically though

3. The words are kinda in a similar vein to the above note. These lyrics have been on my computer for a long time, or at least the majority of the front section. I keep returning to them to see how they fit with new bits of music (and also because I'm often too undriven, i.e. lazy, to write new stuff). I was surprised how much I liked them with this beat, so sometimes indecisiveness reveals itself to be patience in disguise. The second track I posted is from an even rougher song from spring/summertime that uses the same batch of lyrics, so thought it might be interesting to share two tracks that are very different musically that use much of the same lyrics.

4. Realize, I don't know if I like using the word lyrics to categorize these words, as while I sometimes write things specifically for music, I don't feel I approach the writing of the words through the lens of "penning lyrics."

5. Oh semantics.

6. Oh semantics indeed. Without semantics, we don't get to further discover how we and others view the same thing and that's an exciting part of being on the planet.

7. And a tiring part :)

8. Something for me to sometimes remember: "If we feel the Unspeakable and then try to speak of what we felt, we sound like fools. But if we feel the Unspeakable and don’t speak, we feel like ingrates. I’m inclined toward gratitude. So, foolishly, I speak."

9. As with previous posts there is more I want to do with this and aspects of it I'm not comfortable with and aspects of it I really like. I want to do a better job with the piano sections but hard to do that on the road with only the computer, need to wait till once back home with a more proper keyboard at my disposal. Same thing with wanting to see what some guitar/banjo-type strings would sound like underneath.

*Though as I've been listening to the song nonstop for the last few days and it felt a little more comfortable on my shoulders, I thought I'd take advantage of an empty house and rerecord the vocals, even though I just posted it :)

[tohelpstayhere]

Turning towards the day before it comes in

Good morning blue tree & fire window. There are many things I want to say goodbye too.

  Sometimes I return to houses I once loved people inside of, to sleep, beside little round flowers so yellow, & almost white.

I have loved three girls inside this one.

& have loved my quietness through many nights alone inside it as well.

  Have sometimes awakened with the dark morn holding the yellow flowers against my cheek. & sometimes with the white. Sometimes I wake to the coffee pot talking, sometimes to the tea kettle singing, sometimes to the house moving as if it carried people stirring inside its heart. In houses I have woken with the morning turning the pillows into bone or into unnamed saints, content to simply look back at me.

 With the day's sword gentle in its work, parting the dream from the dress, the shadow from the chalice, & everything outside the door stirring, turning towards touch, or at least the promise of such.

[tohelpstayhere]

Am currently in Portland, and heading to Seattle tomorrow. Left Austin on Oct 17th and been having a beautiful and at times challenging but a really good and important time on the road. However, have not had the opportunities to continue work on the things I've been focusing on over the past few weeks. But a little time and drive intersect this morning to sit, with coffee and open spaces to put ink to paper and carve some bird & flower.

[tohelpstayhere]

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We sat on the couch in the old house off North Loop and I played this for you. It was around this time, October, two years ago. It was the first house we moved in together. We'd been there probably less than a month. The days were growing darker and the air crisper and dusk had that autumn feeling of fireplaces and sitting close. The song I played for you then was very different than this one. That one was so rough sounding, emptier, more jagged, with sounds rougher and sharper than I know you like to hear, that even though I could hear what I wanted it to sound like, it wasn't yet there but I wanted to share with you what I had been working on and was excited about. And you sat patiently with the headphones on and listened because you love me and were excited for me to be in love with the making of things. I don't know if you liked it or not. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. Maybe it was too sharp on your ears, your ears which are so sensitive. Maybe in spite of your soft listening you liked it just because my fingertips were on it (just as I love to hear you play piano, even when you were self conscious and felt like you were messing up, even though all I could hear was my wife making music on a beautiful instrument). I left the song for a spell, so long that I had forgotten I had added things to it a number of months ago. Things I liked and that were unexpected. So I rerecorded the vocals and played with it some more. Made it a little bigger, a little softer, a little uglier, a little more beautiful, and put an ocean into it. The movement in the music sounded like waves to me. Or maybe I just miss the ocean. Many things I miss while out here. Your quiet and beautiful hands. I think of them, holding a book or your ankle curled against you. I think of your red coat. Here in New England, the trees are on fire but do not burn. It is lovely. 

[tohelpstayhere]

[tohelpstayhere]

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I intended to work to day on this comic about a flower and a bird man but upon arriving at Thunderbird to do work, there were no tables to draw at, so returned to reworking this track from several moons ago. I tried rerecording the vocals but ultimately the things I liked about the old vocals outweighed the quality of the new recordings, so stuck with them, mishaps and all. And instead started fucking with them as well as adding more music. I think I worked over them too much and lost something, and I also would like to add some sampled talking somewhere, but perhaps at a later time.

The page a prison The page a window with bars The words knotted like sheets to climb down upon The page the night Words a bed to sleep in A bed to hide beneath it The page white as the cow’s ghost Words was a seat Sitting upon the stool milking when the seat broke I broke the other leg Shot it when it couldn’t race no more Threw it on the fire to keep it warm Did the same with the door The drums the horns The ones of the Saint that was bruised but still blown And when the Saint buried himself inside the telephone Told him I’ll call you back Then I put him on hold Wrote him a note with my sister’s name on it Left that home––just started running from it The river was boiling over Swallowed down a teacup of it Fell in love with the burn But burnt by the love of the oven My tongue black From licking the parts that gave me pain Throwing thorns in my paws Bald as my belly My belly bald as my heart By my own tongue The sun a bullseye The arrows my arms Every single day Was right on the mark Every single day Just left another scar Every single day Was a longer walk on a path that took me from my Ma

[tohelpstayhere]

[tohelpstayhere]

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I made this a while ago but like most of my music, once I've figured out how I want it to sound I leave as is and go on to the next thing. So my hard drive is filled with music that ranges from 20-80 percent completed, but rarely if ever fully realized. Not that track is done. But I been wanting to rerecord it for a long time, so did such, changed some lines/sections and added extra instrumentation.

[tohelpstayhere]

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I like maybe half of this. Maybe I like more of it. But the parts of it I don't like i don't like in greater quantity than the parts I do like. So perhaps it equates out to half. Most of the dislike circles around my voice. Not so much my voice but rather how the rhythm infused by my singing capability (or lack thereof) makes me unsure of whether I like or dislike the words. But so it goes? I tire of choosing where and when I hold onto imperfect things. I want to take my hands away from all of me.

[tohelpstayhere]

Starting

In 2006 I lost my best friend to suicide. This wasn’t confirmed until 2008 and the grief from this contributed heavily to me then spending many, many, many months at the bottom of a dark well. I was finally able to push myself out of it and with the help of another person’s heart was able to heal. I now find myself once again treading water in a well of grief. A different well, but one I fear is a deeper one. I am not unique in this, there is nothing special about my grief. It is something we all experience in and throughout our lives. And yet as huge a part of being human that grief and sorrow are, these are things we do not, by and large, know how to deal with and approach, much less the mental and emotional despair that comes with them.

I don’t feel in danger of hurting myself, but I know that I could. That if any of us could. And one of the things that makes this more likely is the isolation we sometimes find ourselves in, due to feeling like if we voice the darkness inside of us this gives it shape, when in truth, it gives us the clarity to face it with a clearer perspective.

This aint a cry for help. Not a soapbox for personal melodrama, nor a pedestal to tragedy. I want to exit the heavy and negative pieces of sorrow that my path to healing has no place for. I wish to engage in a conversation with my self, in order to make sense of the light and dark at conflict inside my heart. And in an attempt to be honest and open about things many of us go through, use such as something that holds me accountable to myself, while bringing focus to my thoughts and giving me some place purposeful to direct my grief towards. Something that serves as a daily (or hopefully semi-daily) reminder that there is no shame in stumbling and falling, but rather this is part of being this thing called human. Hopefully it can serve as something similar to others as well.