1. |
Before Beginnings...
04:21
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I am paying for my sins, for which I didn't try to repent. The earth will purge itself of me. God, grant me strength.
Decimate the land and cast us back into the blackened sea. Take anything that could be saved and rend it. Rend everything to debris.
Ashes come to ashes, reminds us of the dust we'll be. Decimate the land, scatter it back into the sea.
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2. |
Driftwood Ashes
06:26
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Up to my knees in sand from bags that broke four months ago, I wade in drifts of debris.
You could trick the eye into calling it late-season snow, with street after street poured down with bleach from the sea–poured down ground shell whiteout.
There's no mark the eraser won't seek. There's no depth the erasure won't reach, and it disappeared me.
This was a town. Now it's a forcibly abandoned storehouse of collective memory. You just can't see the roof or walls, and not a soul would touch the key, save me.
With every step, another unintended breach of privacy. I pass homes cracked down to foundations, their insides out and torn apart like their birthday cards, discarded mail, children's toys, vacationers' sandals, abandoned shovels and pails.
I see too much. I see my love undone.
[I see you busy your hands every way that you can.
I bet you pray your mind follows suit.
I wonder how much more of it you'll stand.
Do you honestly believe you're not too late for this rescue?]
I waited six months to come back, enough time for me to believe I was on my feet again, and that I fended off each wave of guilt strong enough to rend the last of their National Guardsmen.
Occupied with a tender exercise in peace of mind, I dropped a letter in the waves and said, "Everything is as it must be; you can't change what you won't know."
[All the while with some mawkish, maudlin ballad being scripted in your head! You couldn't see the sparks scatter-shot through all the smoke you blow, so it starts, and it burns.
It burns for days as you watch from screens and cry your futile miseries, pouring driftwood ashes into your own heart.
Let me know when it gets to be too much. I'll be waiting to see you come down. It won't be long now.
You know a place no sting of light can touch. Why don't you run to it?]
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3. |
Jealous Neptune
05:57
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[Jealous Neptune wants a toy boat.
Jealous Neptune wants a model summer home.
Jealous Neptune never had the chance to learn to share.]
Teased and taunted by his stronger brothers, all heaven-vaunted, Jealous Neptune learned quick that life is far from fair. That lesson he carried with him as he hid whatever he could get his salt-burned fingers on,
and old habits die hard.
He grew up in time and felt he had it all worked out: he was master of his own world and he wanted not, though could never quite trust a soul or figure how he could move on from all the little things piling up
until Salacia split for Brooklyn, pawned her wedding pearls at Luna Park,
shacked up with an investment banker and kept poor Neptune in the dark. When she left for good, oh, he was a man about it, he kept his grudge and festered in his sunken bungalow in the Jersey shanty slums. He spent each day collecting what others throw away 'til he remembered how good it feels to take.
"Nobody pulls the wool over me! Nobody makes a fool of me that way!
Nobody walks away so easily if they know the price they'll have to pay."
And so now we pay.
Jealous Neptune wants a toy car.
Jealous Neptune wants the boardwalk.
Jealous Neptune drives a wall into the shore,
screaming.
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4. |
The Broken Line
01:05
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The salt of the earth, the salt of the sand - third generation daughter of the boardwalk stand.
You know a place no sting of light can touch, so run.
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5. |
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I knew a boy with 100 names and 1000 open windows in his mind. I found rest against each frame and, looking out, I saw a million different views of summer days
until, suddenly, he turned into a man and I was abandoned to my decimated isle, shaken: a girl who won't wake until the nightmare ends,
and it won't end–not 'til everyone drowns, not 'til everything burns down.
A fool who still petitions grace from an imagined savior hand. Now I learn a little better every day what he meant when he said 'forsaken.'
Your voice is fading; your face, already fallen through.
A year of vigil spent with loss before I lost the name it was attached to.
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6. |
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Despite uncounted months of silence, still, I wait for you to say it: that you got just what you wanted from me. Despite the weight of the curse I'm under, I still walk quiet... and are you happy? I tripped and fell, without a sound, through the blanks in your story, so
here's your ferris wheel on fire. Here's your roller coaster into the ocean and my carousel in ruins where the ground collapsed,
where I tread in ghost steps, locked in time with the forgotten. It's hard to look alive when you feel so haunted with your voice: fading, your face: already fallen through. A year of vigil, wasted loss, before I lost the name it was attached to.
And I shudder, I suffer, as the loudness of absence trails me– it deafens, dulling like a shadow. So sickened, 'cause when I see you, I choose to
with your voice, fading, with your face, so soon fallen through. A year in vigil, wasted loss, before I lost the name it was attached to.
On a September afternoon, I ended my circle at the start (by the sunken pier) and I let all 100 names part, taken from my hand by the esurient sea. All those empty envelopes from some other town, I scattered the stacks and I believed it would free me.
But three days later, the boardwalk burned and every licking flame said: "You can't forget so easily! There is no redemption here."
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7. |
Longboat Oar
06:08
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Staring out over a land now barren from my slouched stance on the deck, I was spent. I couldn't waste another second stuck in a rut the way I was, so I hollered for a change of course instead: too many hours spent aiming sail for the ruins and the wreck, so I set the skeleton crew to lash me to the post as I began to make pretend that you were dead. I was astounded by how simple it was to convince myself of it.
In my head, I set a blanket by the marker I'd made for you, and I threw myself at the foot of this man-sized monument with a likeness derived from a single shaky memory snuffed to smoke by a thousand midnights between now and then, and ever since, I saw a specter in you whenever we spoke.
With a quaking cry, I carved marble for the one I lost and I carved more for the one who never was, and I let him die. I sunk him down, down in the deep, and he never stopped or looked me in the eye and I never said whether or not I... and we never sang a breath of a goodbye.
I laid down all our letters and sketches and wept for some months. I completely lost my mind. I walked out into traffic with the blinders and the headphones on, looking for a way home I knew I'd never find. Made it back hours later to burn my guitar. With the last bit of skin shed, I began to build myself back up again: I felled lumber for stronger struts, unwound strings untouched, armed and ready to sense in the wind a start for a new story, something to test my arms with all the rowing it would bring.
The longboat oar still hangs above my fireplace with its strong rope and beautiful inscriptions from when we needed one another, and on my weaker days, my fingers still climb to trace their graceful forms (the way the old songs get tangled up in my branches now and again),
but I can always hum another tune, and when the winter comes
there'll be beautiful, beautiful kindling once it's less important to remember how it all was back then than it is now to stay warm.
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8. |
Rite
04:16
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9. |
...After Endings
03:57
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I am paying for my sins...
I'm sorry, now you're paying for them, too. If I'd have learned my lesson sooner, I would have been strong enough. I could've taken the hits without you.
They say lightning don't strike twice, but I wouldn't bet on it. You wait and you see.
Burn all I love back to ashes, back to ashes.
Nothing greater we will ever be.
Take the dust of what once was your hope, your will, and stand beside me to scatter the spent offerings of us into the sea.
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The Electric St. Lucy Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The musical life and times of an aspiring something-or-other in Pittsburgh, PA.
Working toward something new and better to share here, slowly but surely.
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