Musician
The horror and the beauty of nature crash over a broken mind.
Verse 1
It's warm
And the sky is a gunmetal grey,
The air is full and hot and oppresses
Everything.
Something crawls,
Something pupates,
Eats the last flesh of its host
And breaks its skin,
And spreads its wings.
Chorus 1
Oh summer rain, I hear you popping down upon my roof, yeah,
I step outside, taste your wetness on the air,
I raise my head, you wash the dust from my eyes,
Oh summer rain...
You brought me back again.
Verse 2
It's close:
There's a strangled note hidden in the gargle of the stream,
My every breath is infested with life,
The very air is stained green.
Something in the moss that coats the floor
And in every heavy spore
And in the aching of my jaw,
Ohhhh....
Chorus 2
[repeat]
Middle eight
It's in the multitude of webs
Spinning from my head
And from my clothes.
It's in every hatchling insect nest,
It's bursting from my chest
As I decompose.
Verse 3
In darkened places beetles churn,
And the ceaseless stirring of the worms;
The respiration of the earth.
Serrated susurrus of ferns
Replicating in my eyes;
I dive
Through fractal patterns to the very dawn
Of time.
Chorus 3
[repeat]
Outro
Cycles of feasting and rebirth and slaughter,
Endlessly retching the wetness of sod,
Sightless and heaving, your sibilant daughter,
Through split lips she whispers the sixth name of God.
The origin of this song was playing around with some samples with my friends Stan and Leroy, some years ago, now. There was one blasting, driving, Latin track we put on a loop that inspired me to write an early draught of the first verse and chorus. We never did develop it any further as a group but when, years later, I started to play guitar, I remembered the rather whimsical lyrics and fleshed out the rest of it. In the process, it became a much more chilled listening experience.
The idea in my head was of the horrors that can overwhelm you when you start to really pay attention to the universe -- and the simple things that can bring you back. The specific horror, here, is the sense of self-loss as an intimate woodland/wetland scene begins to unfold and spread and multiply into your senses, your mind, and even, seemingly, your very body. And then something as simple as a swift, summer shower suddenly breaks the spell and resets the universe.
The verses are where the mind is drawn down into the terror of nature; the choruses are the spell being broken and the emergence back into light. The outro I added quite recently. I didn't want the song ending on a positive (the chorus) because, well... That's just not how reality works. :) But just descending into another verse seemed like a cop-out. So I tried to unify the terror and the beauty with a more numinous incantation. In nature, ultimately, we see good and evil, truth and deception, beauty and horror; and in the combination of these apparent opposites, maybe we find the divine. Or maybe it was just a freaky trip. :)
I recorded this song in the big music barn on my friends' land, where they hold the Luddstock Private Festival. There's a babbling brook, shaded areas where moss silently drinks the moisture that drips from the overhanging trees, the distant sounds of agriculture and the wind... All-in-all, pretty much the perfect place to record a song like this! Thank you so much to Mark and Dawn for the opportunity to record, there.
Oh, and if you're at all curious about what a collaboration between my friends Stan, Leroy and myself might sound like, check this weirdness out: Dark Day.