1. |
Untrue in Headphones
04:05
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To hold ambiguity
in dreams diverging
on that Amtrak
in the Northeast.
I’d opened up
just long enough
for your flash flood
to overflow
the endless river
I’d fallen into
for a second time that year.
Now I flow
in the abstraction of memory:
gin in the bathroom,
Untrue in headphones,
trying to fall asleep.
I’d completely lost my mystery—
I’d been seen—
when you asked,
“Do you really think you know me?”
You stated sternly,
“We are not the same.”
So let’s lean against this world
pushing different ways.
We’ll ask,
“Do you really think you know?”
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2. |
Mystery Pt. 2
05:08
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That old fence blew down,
hollow vines were filled with sound,
and I can’t believe
how much you echo in and out of me.
I’ve been losing mystery.
Space inhales the air I breathe.
Snowbells are blossoming,
no place to place my insecurities.
So I stumble around:
therapy and self destructive tendencies.
I’ve been losing mystery.
Space inhales the air I breathe.
Blue van, white hills, bay and sea,
I know this is good for me.
Midnight, Oakland, December 9th:
two over a burning light,
ashes blowing through the trees,
I hope this is good for me.
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3. |
||||
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Ashes
over Haystack Rock,
over Rocky Butte,
over Mount Tabor,
over Skidmore Bluffs,
over Gas Works Park,
over Whatcom Falls,
over Orcas Island.
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4. |
Wane into It
05:06
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|
Once a week
I wake up
and remind myself that I
am going to die.
Death thought, it keeps me kind:
when I wane into it
I don’t mind
blue cruelty washed with sake
at night.
You might trace paint chips
in the atmosphere,
assigning (sine waves to flake) data from on high,
hide sound
in a grate at Times Square,
make sound characters,
die,
then people care.
I care, you drank like me.
Wild hair bobbing.
Maryanne,
you heard things
dancing
with past selves.
Asking—
absurd, meaningful, and clear:
“There is no time.”
Can I wane into it?
“There is no time.”
I’ll just wane into it.
“There is no time.”
Let’s all wane into it.
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5. |
Telepresence
04:32
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(The sounds of my family conversing near the Truckee River.)
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6. |
Gabapentin
04:48
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Will I do it again tonight?
Swell my face, sweat my sheets.
Gaba to act alive
for your watchful eye.
30’s on its way.
My strung up blue beads
are salt in air, scrolling,
that bush on 33rd,
a dead gull’s wing:
your images control me.
Control me.
Control me.
Control me.
He did it alone one night:
put a bag over his head,
gasoline smell.
My uncle,
he told my dad,
“I’m just like he is,”
after Thanksgiving.
His disease,
My strung up blue beads
a stinging rash spread cross my back,
are salt in air, scrolling,
I won’t love like that.
Strung up blue beads,
a dead gull’s wing:
gabapentin to act alive,
your images control me.
30’s on its way.
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7. |
Blue Light Glow
04:17
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Caressing shadowed silver,
bipolar blue light glow,
we all fuck computers,
eating sky and snow.
I lie facedown
on that gray couch,
I lash out.
You feed me Ativan,
the world calms down.
We hold each other,
your blond hair gets in my mouth.
“Time, which changes people, does not
alter the image we have of them.”
Internet collapses time:
@ @ @@ @@@, @@ @ @@ @@@
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8. |
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I want to fly so far away that I’m forgotten,
to remain impressed in those I never knew.
Magic glue,
disappearing and cementing,
strong and hidden: self-extending.
It’s easy:
“I know no one
and no one knows me.”
Is knowing actually a real thing?
Is it all just thought and feeling?
In aging our memories shrink,
in others our memory grows.
Early 2010s:
I didn’t live in Bellingham;
his broken nose: a rhizome root.
My crooked face is ash in wind.
I didn’t blackout each weekend,
no tears in soup or oldest friends,
no life before this moment,
a memory of a memory:
a story of self controlling me.
In aging our memories shrink,
in others our memory grows.
I’d be devoted to distance,
if not for aging parents;
boxes in the attic,
mold forming in absence.
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9. |
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19, Washington, hungover all the time.
Parker sent a creation:
Italics, Veritas Veritatum,
and showed me Ableton.
Guitar met computer,
obsessed with Replica by Oneohtrix Point Never.
MDMA, mood stabilizers, whatever.
I moved home to
Portland,
wrote a comic and songs to sleep on.
Sometimes it feels like I’m done:
I was Drowse
before 21.
“I have some memories, a few memories. One was a car accident I was in. We were in the rain going to Kansas, just back from South America, and I was climbing from the back seat to the front where my parents were, and it was raining, really raining. There was a truck up ahead of us in the rain at night and my father went right into it. And so I was in the top of this middle…partition, and I went flying through the windshield. Everything was muddy and I was in this muddy ditch. And I remember my father calling for me ‘cause he couldn’t see me. So he found me–I must have been the only child in the car at that point. Someone on the road stopped and took us into the nearest town to a doctor. My father sat out in the rain in that rumble seat while they looked for a hospital. They took me in, and they brought the doctor to the home, and I had this cut on my forehead and I guess they had to sew it up or something. And they promised me if I’d just shut my eyes…”
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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."
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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:
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If there's a better way to stay sane living in a place as messed up as the American Midwest than listening to Chat Pile, I'd love to hear it. While I'm waiting, I'll be listening to grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg on loop.
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Angelic ballads floating on earthshattering walls of noise. visceral live experience.
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Portland shoegaze that plays, as the best representatives of the genre do, with huge, hollow atmosphere against intimate observations.
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