1. |
I'm a Dying Medium
03:18
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I still remember patiently playing games with a nosy doctor
who quoted William Carlos Williams on a wheelbarrow glazed
with rain water. I said "strangely I can feel this courage
shining from the Morning Star down through a sunrise to
which it doesn't lend a hand and plays no part of"
My life feels completely out of sync I wanna know how did I
end up turning 21 in the year 2010. I'm lost and I don't
know where I am or why I'm terrified of everything on the
internet and feel safer with no phone
I never wanted a little screen with some directions to be
shown, sometimes I just wander a bit too far and like a
skinny dog I run the whole way home
I heard you lost a week or two of your memory cuz you tried
some obscure benzo you ordered off of the Silk Road. You
crashed your car and lost your job while I worked mine for
60 hours and swam the depths of sadness for killer overtime.
I guess it was worth it, I toured a bit and got too meet up
with some friends, but do I deserve this? or something
better? or something worse? I guess it all depends on who's
asking the question...
Is it some naive kid who grows up to be an anarchist or his
dad who still gets up at 4 AM at least 6 days a week? I'm
kidding you not he comes home each night at 7
My life feels entangled by the past, all the cheap nostalgia scattered on fragments of video tape all dubbed to VHS
*Credit to William Carlos Williams and Erowid trip reports for inspiration*
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2. |
Sorry, Atahualpa
02:33
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Don't confess all your plans just now, you're a fool if you don't think she will sell you out. Discretion and professional courtesy can be waived in matters of the state. And she doesn't bite on the hand that feeds with its claws trained hard on anyone who bleeds, it doesn't matter who believes you. It matter what would happen to them if they let you get away with it.
All the temples are in ruins now and all the armies turned to dust, while those strong people did what they wanted to do, the weak suffered what they must, and then it echoed into the hallowed halls all the awful thunderous sound of Spanish steel and Spanish guns... Atahualpa's litter drops him on the ground
And that monolithic evil that you sought to overthrow it is older than the ground that you're standing on, it's older than you'll ever know, so your nation will walk down the Trail of Tears, all your children disappeared never to be seen again. Athenian sails crest the horizon and you know exactly what that means.
*Credit to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" (by way of John Green) for inspiration*
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3. |
Drainage Pond
04:02
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We saw this movie about dragons, it got such terrible reviews. You can imagine the chaos of six teenagers, nothing to do, in an empty theater. Who would've bothered to remember it at all, six years down the road?
Some fast food restaurant that sells chicken sandwiches and not much else, some adolescent experiences turbulence, beyond all control, and he had only just found these few survivors and not much else. With everything to lose for the first time it matters but some disasters are unstoppable.
And he saw a monster in front of his reflection. And these are the pictures you keep when you're in waist deep, climbing over the guard rail to the drainage pond behind the ampitheater, so you can sneak out to some escape into a sea full of parking lots
I hid behind the used book store, called some friends from class to pick me up, and then suddenly you're in front of me looking silently determined and we're face to face when I feel the wheels swerve but this is not the car crash that I deserve
And you start kissing me for some unkown reason and then we're behind the grocery store in the woods I used to sing about but we don't live in our memories these days and your face gets murkier every year. I lose all of you people one by one I swear you'll all be pictures in a yearbook before I'm done
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4. |
Bad Examples
02:53
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I was too young to go and fight in that new war, I didn't know if it was a curse or a blessing, all these kids are coming back home from Iraq now, glassy eyed as hell and it's so depressing how we said "Oh it won't be like Vietnam this time, no you won't be remembered that way." Free cheeseburgers at the local restaurant, half price admission to the matinee.
And that school finally let go of that teacher who wouldn't talk about Harriet Beecher Stowe, she said that book was exaggerated and there were parents who were sad to see her go, cuz they teach us by bad examples.
I remember asking the woman at First Baptist, I must've been only 10 or 11 when I met a kid named Osman Yusafzai and I asked her if he would go to Heaven. I was reading ahead on my own time, it was all about loaves and fishes and anointing the sores on the feet of lepers and camels passing through the eyes of needles
But no one is keen to the irony all the disonance in the way that this city sings in the gated off neighborhoods with the golf course and the club house and the camera surveillance to protect our precious things
And oh I was born to believe in this vision and immediate authority and the way it's all painted, in the niceness of stop lights and four lane expansions and how my school of excellence shall never be tainted
Someone teach me to give in to the hubris, to follow the greed in my heart with conviction, somebody teach me I how I can stop worrying and learn to love this contradiction
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5. |
Demon from the Past
03:49
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This demon from the past it always shows up to embarrass you at the worst times when you're at the party feeling sociable and yeah you're all dead set on letting it all out on the dance floor but all your friends are in the kitchen doing shot shot shots with the demon from the past
Now it's such a cliche how they're all in there playing flip cup and he found all these slides of all your failures and regrets and he doesn't even ask to use the slide projector, he just sets it on up and now everyone there is laughing at your life
And a bad thing from the future heard that a party was going and gets blacked out Xanax, cuz mixing it with alcohol was counter-indicated. He can clearly see all that now, or he could at least if he wasn't dead
I think he got punched out by that demon from the past, I heard a bunch of people yelling but I couldn't penetrate the circle that they formed around whatever that was going on. That night was all bad vibes and that straw brought the camel down
None of your friends can hold their liquor like they think they can, "designated driver" they all cackle like hyenas as you ferry them to their beds, cuz everything's a riot now: you only danced to one song
I think you deserve better friends. I would've danced with you if we were just better friends.
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6. |
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Ghost of a planet who collided into us left all her bones up in the sky and you can feel them pull the water, we wobble to and fro head bowing to the sun, we need her like we need the weekend, we need relief from all this spinning around
So we wait until it's dark and you can see that shiny skeleton, it lights you like a lantern glowing from the inside until you tear off all your clothes and jump into that water trying to quench it out
And when the pigs show up for once you're not afraid, you know they're more intimidated by your naked boyd, their noses smell the free expression they can't access, and you watch their faces grimace as they swallow venom and saliva down
You laugh it off as you walk down the empty street, listening for the faintest rattlings of those fossilized teeth, the way they grind against the wind it almost forms vocalizations that say "you are not..."
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7. |
II. Intermission
00:46
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8. |
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True story, last New Year's Eve I passed out before the count down even started, now it's not a Thursday and there's no jet black hair dye, I'm not on LSD I'm just trying to be open-hearted
I might clean this room today with the help of "Betti Cola" or "Yank Crime" and we might sit in the dark in the middle of the kitchen drinking 40 ounce drinks we bought to help us pass the time, and you might get pissed off cuz you can't vote against the drone war, the foreign policy debate was such a joke, but try try try to keep the bitterness at bay. Please don't burn your own friends when we're all already choking on the smoke
St. Francis of Assisi marks the graves of the dogs that I was raised beside, and now the soul of Laser's treading water in a man made lake, in an afternoon that I have to believe God will provide
In an afterlife I have to believe his God will provide
And from the afterlife I still hear his funny way of howling out his last goodbyes
"You are not a failure and I won't give up on you"
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9. |
Fuck Depression
02:55
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There is not too much wisdom in all of this narcissistic self destruction, no matter what change you see it bringing on, it's not like immolations in Tunisia or Vietnam. There's not too much foresight in all of these dark premonitions that you're sure will come true in time, you don't live in the world inside your head, you can only go up in there to die
So is it just more self-aggrandizement if I assure that to pay you back how I would burn alive, to right the wrongs of my caustic self, to reverse the perverseness and to undo the damage dealt. How I built up a structure of meaning and hope and sent seismic waves bringing it to the ground, I don't wanna turn them inward now as this dramatic monologue is more broing than profound
And all of the scenery is laughing derisively at me cuz I can't remember the pages with the circled numbers in the book of 95 poems that I thought could signify everything back when I was loneliness inside of a falling leaf, when I was autumn and the rain, the rain, the rain
So if I blow up, leave a marker there written to someone else. Make it say "fuck depression, live life like you love yourself"
If I burn down let me grow green and new from my charred out shell and tell me "fuck your depression, live life like you love yourself"
*credit to e. e. cumming for inspiration*
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10. |
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Athens Horse Party Athens, Georgia
A DIY bedroom-based CD label from Athens, GA.
Athens Horse Party recommends:
Beast With Modest Nature
by Werewolves
If you like my solo stuff hopefully you will like Werewolves
go to albumIf you like F[_]ck Depression, you may also like:
supported by 6 fans who also own “F[_]ck Depression”
The best music that I have heard out of Georgia in 10 years.
go to album
What Kind of Pet Defines You?
by Werewolves
supported by 5 fans who also own “F[_]ck Depression”
go to album
This Calgary group makes goth-y post-punk attired in the brightly colorful arrangements of bleep-boop synthesized psychedelia.
go to album
Split Screen EP
by Walk Home Drunk, Comité balnéaire
This split EP from two France-based musicians is a gem, both artists recalling the glory days of slowcore in their heart-tugging melodies.
go to album
Strange Paradise
by Sarah La Puerta
A nostalgic record full of ambling rhythms, vivid imagery, and cotton-soft melodies tapped out on an ever-present ’70s synth-organ hybrid.
go to album
