Microphones in 2020-Microphones

[ti:Microphones in 2020]
[ar:Microphones]
[al:Microphones in 2020]
[by:]
[offset:0]
[00:00.00]Microphones in 2020 - Microphones
[07:38.99]The true state of all things
[07:49.43]I keep on not dying the sun keeps on rising
[07:56.97]I remember my life as if it's just some dreams that I don't trust
[08:03.53]Burning off layered thick
[08:07.06]A cargo that I haul
[08:10.16]Wounds and loves unresolved
[08:16.41]I wake up with the sun in my eyes
[08:24.33]The present moment tries
[08:30.60]But now I'm back where I was when I was twenty
[08:37.80]Crashing through salal alone and mumbling
[08:43.38]One moment thinking I'm wise
[08:50.76]And in the next one I writhe
[08:57.95]Trying to re-remind myself of something learned then forgotten
[09:05.71]Countless sunrises burying the things
[09:10.21]I'd figured out the day before
[09:14.22]Like that I probably won't find shelter
[09:17.89]In the arms of any other person
[09:21.84]Though I will try
[09:25.19]Again I'll deny
[09:28.40]The blanketing sky
[09:31.12]The thing I just realised
[09:33.99]For probably the millionth time
[09:38.61]That walking with my knees trembling
[09:41.87]Is the true state of all things
[09:58.83]The true state of all things is a waterfall
[10:05.29]With no bottom crashing end
[10:08.65]And no ledge to plummet off
[10:11.49]Full of debris and flowers never not falling
[10:19.17]And in it we swim and fall
[10:25.23]Sometimes beside
[10:28.72]Often apart
[10:34.85]It's just chaos heaving
[10:41.51]I wake up with the sun in my eyes
[10:49.29]Beneath present moment skies
[10:56.26]Squinting and wondering how I got here
[11:03.37]Going through the contents of my backpack
[11:09.89]Shaking out the dust to bring some empty space back
[11:16.76]Filling a long merch table with artifacts
[11:23.33]Looking back to see if I could draw a map
[11:28.67]That leads to now
[11:33.10]I remember where I was
[11:46.45]When I was twenty or seventeen or twenty-three
[11:59.18]The disinterested sun would still rise every morning
[12:04.97]Same as now
[12:08.51]Dawn was loud
[12:10.01]I took my breakfast to the couch on the porch of the punk house
[12:17.43]Coffee and low tide smell and my life stretching out
[12:24.04]Spending hours each morning reading poems and staring off
[12:30.51]And then snapping back to urgency I did my dishes
[12:35.77]And then I would sprint
[12:39.80]To the studio again
[12:46.58]Spend all day and night digging in
[12:52.09]Distorted bass spliced tape
[12:54.60]Singing lines like："There's no end"
[12:58.98]And"I won't look for you in my room"
[13:02.84]About my friends
[13:07.71]I checked themicrophones@hotmail.com like once a week
[13:14.53]I would drive out to the ocean and not tell anybody
[13:21.04]I watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in a dollar theatre in Aberdeen
[13:27.92]It was a rainy matinée 2001 Sunday March 18th
[13:34.10]And in the parking lot afterward
[13:40.59]For a few minutes in the rain
[13:48.25]I stood glowing with ideas
[13:51.13]Of what I might try to convey with this music
[13:56.52]At that moment my mind flashing like a blade
[14:02.07]A twenty-two-year-old in flip-flops
[14:04.56]Running around in an empty mall parking lot
[14:07.95]Lost in a martial arts fantasy
[14:11.38]It looks ridiculous now
[14:13.62]But the truth is that alone there
[14:19.34]Something was formed
[14:25.27]The way they held themselves upright with tea in the opening scenes
[14:31.85]A warm formality spines straight and feet planted wide
[14:38.88]Untipoverable like the bamboo'd undulating hills
[14:45.90]Walking slowly making eye contact and gliding
[14:52.41]The sound of empty wind when they sword fought weightless in the bamboo
[14:59.05]With a purity of heart that transcends gravity
[15:06.05]Leaping off the mountain into ambiguity
[15:11.32]Falling slow
[15:18.67]As the end credits rolled
[15:26.70]I decided I would try to make music that contained this deeper peace
[15:33.77]Buried underneath distorted bass
[15:36.94]Fog imbued with light and emptiness
[15:41.11]I kept on driving out to the ocean
[15:47.44]It was raining so hard I was wet wool caked with sand
[15:54.39]I watched the dunes migrate slowly
[17:02.98]Lost mind in the tall grass
[17:06.82]And slowly the sound
[17:11.04]Of roaring waves returned
[17:15.07]I rose
[17:18.17]I returned to my station wagon with a wet face
[17:24.85]Extravagant solitude invigorates
[17:31.65]I drove back to Olympia clear-headed
[17:36.31]Temporarily
[17:38.16]And went back into the studio to resume whatever this thing is
[17:45.31]This spooling out repetitive decades long song string
[17:51.88]This river coursing through my life
[17:55.40]These wild swipes at meaning
[17:59.58]And now I circle back to look into the spring
[18:11.40]When I was seventeen
[18:15.38]It was 1995
[18:28.29]I put the name"Microphones" on the tapes
[18:31.25]I would make late at night after work at the record store
[18:35.71]I was already by then a couple years deep into this weird pursuit
[18:43.42]Playing drums copying lyrics out to hang them in my room
[18:50.14]Until I started making my own embarrassing early tries
[18:55.75]At this thing that sings at night above the house
[18:59.93]Branches in the wind
[19:02.17]Bending wordlessly
[19:08.92]I wanted to capture it on tape
[19:23.95]At first I called my recordings a different name
[19:30.63]I called it"The Microphones" on the third cassette I made
[19:36.13]Because I loved recording and the equipment seemed to be living
[19:41.51]And it sang to me like static interference
[19:45.92]From the small AM radio station down the street
[19:50.51]Night in Anacortes in the mid-90s oil tankers rumbling
[19:57.45]I stayed late recording every night
[20:01.04]Then I drove back to my parents' house
[20:04.67]My headlights through the trees along Heart Lake Road
[20:11.75]Winding down the dark slope
[20:16.62]Beneath Mount Erie
[20:20.07]I was already who I am
[20:28.95]A bottle of India ink masking tape
[20:34.22]Julie Doiron Tori Amos Cranberries Sinéad O'Connor
[20:40.81]Eric's Trip Red House Painters Sonic Youth This Mortal Coil
[20:47.90]Kurt Cobain had died
[20:50.85]I had my driver's license and a girlfriend
[20:54.03]And we'd cling to each other and dream that anything's permanent
[21:01.23]Even back then
[21:04.05]The beast of uninvited change
[21:08.25]Insisted itself in
[21:11.09]And look here it still hangs
[21:13.78]But when I was young
[21:16.24]Young
[21:17.60]I'd go driving in the rain
[21:24.23]I saw Stereolab in Bellingham and they played one chord for fifteen minutes
[21:31.99]Something in me shifted
[21:34.29]I brought back home belief I could create eternity
[21:39.87]Leaning the guitar up on the amp taping down organ keys
[21:46.22]Feeding back forever distorted waves of cymbals oceany
[21:53.01]Slowly starting to try the move the words beyond
[21:58.27]Mere melancholy
[22:01.84]Into something that rings
[22:09.08]True and old and useful hopefully
[22:12.69]But when I was seventeen I sang
[22:15.78]In the moment hurt romantically
[22:19.28]Grasping in the dark
[22:21.77]Like："Shadows of the moon"
[22:27.71]"On the back of the car seat"
[22:36.33]"Where she sat once"
[22:39.91]It's not that bad but I know I wanted to go deeper beneath pain
[22:53.66]Beneath the human
[23:09.57]Is it because my parents barely had any money
[23:16.12]And preferred to leave the baby in the garden
[23:22.96]That I grew up to blur the boundary
[23:25.76]Between myself and the actual churning dirt of this place
[23:32.49]That it feels normal to me to speak with the voice of weather
[23:38.24]To build and move into a mirage
[23:42.80]Made of songs cascading down a rock face in a homemade myth
[24:05.97]Even deeper back into the mist
[24:09.79]When I was twelve or thirteen
[24:12.68]On a family trip
[24:14.41]We hiked down a steep bluff to an ocean beach in whipping rain
[24:20.22]My little brother's clothes got wet from playing in the winter waves
[24:27.14]My parents made a fire of smokey driftwood and we huddled in
[24:33.73]And took his wet clothes off and held him naked above the flames
[24:40.34]Smelling like smoke and salt on the drive home
[24:45.26]Surely this experience explains something about whoever it was
[24:53.45]That sang all these songs
[25:04.49]When you're younger every single things vibrates with significance
[25:11.55]Gazing at the details in the artwork of a 7-inch
[25:18.36]Devouring every word in a zine
[25:22.12]There was barely internet
[25:24.94]Meaning gets attributed wherever appetite bestows a thing
[25:31.58]With resonating glowing ringing out through a life
[25:38.46]What from these times do I carry with me still
[25:45.07]The things I survive return repeatedly
[25:50.07]And I find again that I am a newborn every time
[26:08.33]When I wake alone in the dark
[26:16.08]Again I swim
[26:24.19]Out into the lake of the heart
[26:31.42]And in
[26:39.28]Mm
[29:17.99]When I got back to Olympia from the ocean
[29:24.30]I woke up early before dawn to start recording
[29:31.23]The things I wanted to communicate had to do
[29:36.58]With finding out how to break out from seeing
[29:40.08]Only the inside of reflected ocean on the sky
[29:45.65]It was early 2001 and I was almost twenty-three
[29:52.55]I'd finished recording The Glow Pt. 2
[29:56.46]And I was either always on tour or setting up a tour
[30:01.77]Always running voracious thirsty
[30:05.39]I'd go out to the lake with friends
[30:07.80]Swim out to the middle and dive as far as I could
[30:12.30]Down to where the water gets cold with open eyes
[30:23.06]We'd go up on the roof at night and actually contemplate the moon
[30:28.72]My friends and I trying to blow each others' minds
[30:33.17]Just lying there gazing young and ridiculous
[30:37.19]And we meant it our eyes watering
[30:42.33]The moon without abstraction
[30:44.99]Then became a floating ball of a rock in outer space
[30:49.85]Not a sticker or a light or a hole through black paper
[30:55.91]We were making food and records and paintings
[30:59.35]And walking around beneath a real infinity
[31:06.15]I felt my size
[31:12.63]That brief dissipating shock of looking into outer space
[31:19.18]And seeing just for a second the bottomless distance pressed against my face
[31:26.90]My little mind trying to write it down zooming out
[31:32.92]A faint yelp lost in a thunderstorm
[31:36.95]Sufficiently small thinking on the geologic scale
[31:42.87]Making the voice of mountains
[31:46.14]Reaching beyond my old concerns
[31:49.33]From when I was seventeen in 1995
[31:59.73]All the layers of life
[32:05.80]Glint in my flashing eye
[32:13.36]Simultaneously
[32:19.35]And at any moment we could die
[32:26.53]And so with urgency
[32:33.56]I keep a candle by my side
[32:40.07]And watch it disappear and glow
[32:46.88]At the same time
[33:01.09]The weather moves across the land and doesn't have a reason
[33:08.12]This rippling uncertainty beneath our bones
[33:14.31]Is still
[33:16.59]The true state of all things
[33:37.91]It was at a truck stop in northern Italy
[33:44.59]I was on tour playing drums and always wandering off alone
[33:50.32]Squinting into the setting sun
[33:54.67]My notebook filling
[33:58.27]I was touring living on an alternate plane within
[34:03.64]But set apart from this life
[34:06.09]Where people wake and work and don't self-uproot each day
[34:12.93]Instead we passed through the towns like criminals
[34:16.91]I was so gladly included in this rare world
[34:22.27]This moving cult of groundlessness
[34:26.49]Roomless moving awake
[34:31.66]Across that parking lot recognition of the same
[34:42.21]Another touring American band
[34:45.45]Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
[34:47.35]All dressed in matching track suits and sunglasses
[34:52.18]Grizzled and silly
[34:54.18]A kind of Italian tour costume
[34:57.46]Blending in but not really
[35:00.84]And their playfulness with persona
[35:03.85]Liberated me with permeability
[35:08.37]I thought"Who is it even that sings
[35:12.75]And who comes to life
[35:14.71]Between the ears of the hearers in the rooms at night
[35:19.43]And how can we all get deep"
[35:23.89]The packaging distracts from the nourishment it wraps
[35:30.54]Fixation on the singer's face or on the band's name
[35:36.28]Keeps us groveling and blind at the edge of a sea
[35:46.00]Unsubmerged in the singing waterfall
[35:54.08]Looking for a door into The Mansion
[36:00.66]Taking this weird art project out into public
[36:06.41]Indulging in cultivated ambiguity
[36:10.54]About participants' identities
[36:13.93]Letting misperceptions hang
[36:16.87]Because nothing's really true
[36:20.35]With this imagined collective called"The Microphones"
[36:25.27]I wrote about climbing up and dying
[36:29.57]And then flying off as vultures
[36:33.89]And a universe beyond
[36:39.47]Innocent of the real air of death
[36:43.80]That awaited down the path
[37:01.11]At the very end of 2002 I took the Microphones name and crumpled it up
[37:08.25]And burned it in a cave on the frozen edge of northern Norway
[37:14.13]I made a boundary between two eras of my life
[37:21.25]A feeble gesture at making chaos seem organized
[37:27.85]The roaring river carves on laughing at my efforts
[37:34.38]While the idea of something called"Mount Eerie" engulfed me
[37:41.47]And time
[37:45.21]Refuses to stop
[37:55.65]Many many years later
[38:01.85]I heard"Freezing Moon" by Mayhem
[38:05.13]And these words jumped out：
[38:08.48]"The cemetery lights up again"
[38:15.38]"Eternity opens"
[38:21.55]And I say：
[38:22.75]"Nothing stays the same
[38:24.99]No one knows anything
[38:29.07]Someone else lives in the house I used to live in
[38:35.43]And soon it will be torn down or burn"
[38:45.47]And who would even want to live in a prolonged stagnation
[38:52.88]I am older now and I no longer feel the same way
[38:58.86]That I did even five seconds ago
[39:02.97]Watch me thrash around
[39:05.16]And try to gracefully allow the past to hang
[39:10.14]Like："No big deal"
[39:13.19]Bands that break up and then reunite for money can do whatever they want
[39:22.77]But it makes me glad that
[39:24.23]I am only this one contrary grump impossible to reunite
[39:33.53]Live
[39:36.81]The present moment burns
[39:51.08]I will never stop singing this song
[39:54.19]It goes on forever
[39:56.95]I started when I was a kid and I still want to hold it lightly
[40:03.05]This luxurious privilege to sit around
[40:07.27]Frowning and wondering what it means
[40:11.44]Playing with words
[40:13.60]And trying to prove that names mean nothing
[40:20.58]A finger
[40:24.28]Pointed at the moon
[40:27.57]Mistaken
[40:29.95]For something shining and true
[40:37.60]I never used to think I'd still be sitting here at forty-one
[40:44.32]Trying to breathe calmly through the waves
[40:54.15]But nothing's really changed in this effort that never ends
[41:00.90]When I took my shirt off in the yard
[41:09.15]I meant it and it's still off
[41:14.19]I'm still standing in the weather
[41:17.48]Looking for meaning in the giant meaningless
[41:21.67]Days of love and loss repeatedly waterfalling down
[41:32.92]And the sun
[41:38.35]Relentlessly rises still
[41:48.63]It seems like I'll never not lose wisdom
[41:55.75]Constantly relearning all the basics
[42:02.35]Never recognizing any faces
[42:09.13]Crawling out from under living layers
[42:15.64]Squinting in the light of the earth bathing
[42:22.49]Shaking off the weight of expectations
[42:29.11]Plus all this nostalgia is embarrassing
[42:34.84]So I walk into an unknown room
[42:43.80]Without a name
[42:51.88]So what if I label this song"Microphones in 2020"
[42:58.98]I hope the absurdity that permeates everything joyfully
[43:06.47]Rushes out and floods the room like water from the ceiling
[43:13.29]Undermining all of our delicate stabilities
[43:19.94]Admitting that each moment is a new collapsing building
[43:26.91]Nothing is true
[43:31.80]But this trembling laughing in the wind
[43:53.73]Anyway every song I've ever sung is about the same thing：
[44:00.45]Standing on the ground looking around basically
[44:07.87]And if there have to be words they could just be：
[44:15.50]"Now only"
[44:18.47]And
[44:19.03]"There's no end"