1. |
Imposter Syndrome
01:44
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(The sound inside of an airplane in the middle of the night.)
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2. |
Between Fence Posts
05:26
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Fence in Winter
overgrown
and closed.
Four sides,
nothing enters--
just silent snow.
Trust that it won’t open up;
seasons change and it remains untouched.
Inside black
vines wither
as they glow.
You are the moonlight
shining in
between posts.
Trust that it won’t open up;
seasons change and it remains untouched.
The sound of death surrounds it all the time,
though flowers sometimes spring up on the vines.
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3. |
Shower Pt. 2
05:10
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Cloud eaten by the air;
For months
bile spilled from throat,
‘cause I don’t trust anyone:
it rains a little less.
I’m still afraid of death;
I’ll “take every pill that I can find.”
When I’m drunk at night
stumbling in that light
the sky speaks:
““You’ve “learned to hear like
a psychiatrist”
your self-faith is a
mask that hides you from: --”
--I want to be alone.
The air smells of images,
so I eat some snow;
in sleep my mind is glimmering.
Disconnected from reality:
where meaning finds me on it’s own.
“What is it that resonates in us?”
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4. |
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(The sounds heard while walking to an empty music school under the freezing sun in Skagaströnd.)
He’s not human,
a fire in black and white:
my internal uncanny valley,
fog around half formed memories.
Can you feel the lack of warmth in the sunrise?
All the fields are freezing up, reflecting so bright.
Bipolar 1:
definition is a mirror.
So I’ve been running half my life,
alone with voices in the night.
Can you feel their floating warmth in the night sky?
All the fields are swelling up, giving new life.
He believes in a god sometimes:
the truth beneath the world he finds
when he writes these songs--
fence posts to protect me.
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5. |
Physical World
05:35
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Growing, shrinking,
I don’t take care of it
‘cause it’s “what’s inside that counts”,
and I’m scared of it--
the way it binds me to the “physical world”,
how it reminds me:
life’s a leaf in October.
But there’s no “physical world”--
there’s “no inside or out”,
air flows through the mouth
and into the blood
I wanted to see
in the third grade:
tiny
medieval sword--
from my grandfather in Spain--
into my stomach.
Without pain
or discovery,
through screams she found me
so no insides came out.
I wake alone at night
with my anxious heart
running wild in my chest,
a reminder
that I have a body,
so it thumps harder:
“- - ---, - - ---”
(Panic attack.)
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6. |
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“It was before I met your mom, and I’m going to say I was probably about 28--and you’ve heard this story, but I’ll tell my mom. I was lying in bed and I had my face against the wall and I woke up in the middle of the, like early, you know, two in the morning. The whole room was just lit up, like sharp light, and I was looking at a white wall, turned away, and I thought: “oh my gosh, what did I do, leave the light on?”. I turned my head to go turn of the light and over my bed hovering, probably about four feet tall, was this glowing, like sunlight bright, sort of head and shoulders shape leaning over me--”
“But it had a human figure?”
“--kind of a, but uh, like a blobby human figure, not facial features. I sat there and I immediately thought like...it wasn’t like fear or anything, just absolute, like, frozen, like: “am I seeing this, am I awake?”. I sat there and slowly it disappeared and got dark, and I got up, just to kinda walk around the house, just kinda collect my self.”
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7. |
Arrow
02:20
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If I take it out my life’s a mess on the ground, so I keep it hidden close.
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8. |
Oslo
04:23
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Free in narrow alleyways
that block out sun.
Portland
in air,
(question:) “evil” on tongue.
Darkthrone in headphones,
climbing stairs
to the gallery
Phil sang about in “Soria Moria”.
I prefer Balke, Stetind in Fog:
no humans,
it transports me back
to that mountain.
(Outside Astrup Fearnley
sun shines down.
A book in the grass
while people laugh nearby--
a storm hits,
we all run,
plastic chairs fly,
and I smile.)
Later at Helvete I’m further back:
thirteen years old, alone with headphones,
sound blankets my mind.
Like pills now.
In that basement chills come,
feeling stronger than art.
Youth and memory--
that sound once spoke to me, it said:
“ ”
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9. |
Internal World
06:04
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In silence thoughts are born,
stories that die with us:
gates to the internal world.
Let them open up.
Why do we fear our selves,
muffling silence with cold blue light?
Who are you
without the things you buy,
and the posts you like--
without the people you love,
alone in bed at night?
Projection,
story of my life:
silent judgement,
waisted insight.
Waking up
warm in the morning to
images
pouring down from the sky:
they’ll fade out when you die.
March 2016,
Haystack Rock in cold air,
high on ecstasy.
Seagulls in rain,
you didn’t want to see
your parents:
the love would be too great.
Dad’s getting
into boxing,
mom’s got cancer on her lips, (“the way blood is shown”)
sister’s depressed in Canada,
I’m right here:
just mind and this.
Old pain in the family:
fresh paint on the canvas.
Tears freeze on the mountain:
avoidant attachment.
Waking up
warm in the morning to
images
pouring down from the sky:
they’ll fade out when I die.
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10. |
Betty
05:36
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Betty you lived your life as an artist;
do you remember
showing me
where sky meets lake?
Watching you watch the light fade,
I knew we felt the same ache:
To see the through the mystery,
or maybe just get some insides out.
You never pictured you’d live to watch
your own body giving up.
Your hands shake too much to paint;
Alone at 93, all thoughts and memories.
Know that I found love,
she’s an artist too;
she faces the world openly,
shining through
just like you.
“Well just to do it, not to be recognized so much as just to get it out of my system. You spend a certain amount of time doing it, and it’s satisfying, but I’m not a true artist.”
“I dunno mom, you’re a pretty prolific painter, you painted an awful lot of paintings in your life--”
“--I was at one time.”
“--Thousands.”
“At one time.”
“Over the course of your life I’m saying there were thousands of paintings you know, probably.”
“Well I had children to raise.”
“Had you not had children, you might have had a whole different course in that regard.”
“Maybe.”
“It was a dream but I dreamt it was real.”
You are and you’re right here.
For a moment it’s bright here.
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11. |
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(The sounds heard laying under a gray sky by the river in Blönduós.)
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drowse Portland, Oregon
Headphones.
drowse recommends:
Unravels By A Thread
by Lula Asplund
Hypnotist who I met at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.
go to album
Kelp speaks to me. Sad and experimental like Drowse. Musical freedom. I teared up during the chorus of "Falter" while watching them play last week: "you are changed."
go to album
August creates slow, warm songscapes. He has released a wild amount of albums since starting the project last year and I'm in awe of his work ethic. Also, my friend Alex from Sprain plays on this.
go to albumIf you like drowse, you may also like:
Portland shoegaze that plays, as the best representatives of the genre do, with huge, hollow atmosphere against intimate observations.
go to album
