Lyrics

Side A 

Untrue in Headphones

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?” 

Mystery Pt. 2 / Ashes Over the Pacific Northwest

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. 

(Ashes Over the Pacific Northwest): 

Ashes 

over Haystack Rock, 

over Rocky Butte, 

over Mount Tabor, 

over Skidmore Bluffs, 

over Gas Works Park,

over Whatcom Falls, 

over Orcas Island. 

Wane into It

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. 

“There is no time.”

Will we wane into it? 

“There is no time.”

Remain in aftersound. 

Telepresence

(The sounds of my family conversing near the Truckee River.)

Side B

Gabapentin

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.

Blue Light Glow

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: 

@ @ @@ @@@, @@ @ @@ @@@

Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 

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. 

Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

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…”

Side A (Otay:onii & Drowse)

Sudo Beast (Lyrics by Lane Shi Otayonii working with the composition by Kyle Bates)

Finding the beast

Find the line to be

I find it hard to see

clearly

Fighting with that beast

Fighting on the line with thee

I found it hard to be

hard to believe

Holding the beast 

Stepping into thee

I found it hard to see

hard to speak 

Clearly 

It’s landing it’s landing

It’s landing it’s lining

I am late but anyway

It’s landing but anyway it’s a dream

It’s a dream but it’s played in many ways

No goodbye with your (Lovers)

Some carried the smile from your friends

Through the black hole I found my way

come find me

in a coffin 

lying with that beast

Open, Alone 

(Continued) 

Side B (Drowse)

Second Self

(wild boars, violins, pachinko machines, synthesizers, field crickets, piano, distortion)

Weak, Sleeping 

So now it’s gone, 

I drank too much again.

You were the sky

I can’t stop sleeping in.

You won’t say a thing

or show me your pain,

because that would be weak 

and you want to be strong.

Sometimes I drink it all,

and drive with blurry eyes at night,

hoping to change my life, 

to forget your moonlight. 

I should’ve shown everything, 

couldn’t give what you need,

because I’ve always been weak, 

and you deserve to be strong.

Side A

Imposter Syndrome

(The sound inside of an airplane in the middle of the night.)

Between Fence Posts

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.

Shower Pt. 2

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?”

Bipolar 1

(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.

Physical World

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.)

A Song I Made In 2001 With My Friend Who is Now Dead

“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.”  

Side B

Arrow

If I take it out my life’s a mess on the ground, so I keep it hidden close.

Oslo

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:

“                                                           ”

Internal World

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.

Betty

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.

“Don’t Scratch the Wound”

(The sounds heard laying under a gray sky by the river in Blönduós.)

Pt. 1 (Fog in Air) 

Inside the clouds: 
gray emptiness for miles, 
ice patterns under feet. 

Internal heat 
left over from the river-- 
exhale fog in air (fog in air)

Pt. 2 (Knowing pt. 2) 

around what’s not me. 
You’ll never know 
what I mean. 

What heat? 
Self-betrayal then detachment. 
Burning knowledge then acceptance.

Pt. 3 (Replica) 

I’ve confirmed it, 
so back to the city I go, 
replica born from the snow. 
Gaba version of me, mirror self

Pt. 4 (Birdsong) 

walking around 
saying what’s expected 
until that fog rolls in over the mountain (again) 
until the world is distant and clouds meet sea-- 
until the world is indifferent, that birdsong: “free”. 
When city lights fade-- 
well, I like to dream.

Side A

Small Sleep

Grief, fear, sadness...a lot of fear.  

Quickening

In your car, parked
cold air
flows through
your mouth: 
the dream of a friend’s
hand on your head growing cold. 

Death Thought surrounds me: 
not death untimely, 
a wasted life, 
the bad person
quickening inside of me. 
“We taste anxiety.” 

So rain burn through my throat, 
bring Small Sleep, 
on you she floats. 
Withholding she holds me. 

“I’ll be where you’ve lost yourself.” 
“In your emptiness I swell up.”

(Body)

He came up and said: 
“something’s wrong, something’s went wrong, Kyle’s not responding he’s not responding.” 
Then I came down there and you were just like staring straight ahead… 
So I just grabbed you, threw you in my car. I worked at the hospital so I knew all the codes to get in. I pulled up, I drove you there, and as we were driving there in the rearview I could see that your--your little body--you were starting to look up and to the right...

Rain Leak

One way that you can calm the fear: 
say what you want to hear. 
“It’s raining again.” 
Drunk by my friend’s side, 
we watched my father open wide. 
“A branch that cracks in the wind.” 

Oh let it be known
that I’m afraid. 
Oh let it be shown: 
Death Thought eats my days. 

White Noise across my chest, 
under my eyelids, there’s no rest. 
“Small sleep is too weak.” 
And I can “still feel the sting in my hand
from when I hit” him: 
“A pipe that springs a leak.” 

Oh let it be known
that I’m ashamed. 
Oh let it be done: 
Death Thought eat away. 

Dream kills Death, 
Death kills Sleep, 
Sleep kills Death, 
Death kills Dream. 
Dream kills Death, 
Death kills Sleep, 
Sleep is Death, 
Death is Dream. 

Oh let it be known
that I’m afraid. 
Oh let it be shown: 
Death Thought eats my days.

Klonopin

The snow outside, 
the pill I take to hide from life: 
the way it blankets my mind, 
it’s hard to describe

With slowing heartbeat, 
the way it erases what’s beneath, 
the way it thaws slowly, 
revealing

Muddy human shape imprinted: shame. 
Musty leaves and sadness, 
blame
my self-imposed detachment: 
internal passion, eternal absence. 

With slowing heartbeat, 
erasing the self beneath. 
When it thaws slowly
is that me? 

I look down wistfully, 
stumble around aimlessly, 
nothings found in daylight, 
it dims, I cover myself. 

“Again, alive.” 
“It snows every night.”

(Bedroom)

...friendships, my family, um...Try to not let my mind ruminate too much. At one point in my life my mind was ruminating too much and I had to get on some… 

...neighborhood street. Then I came over and I asked your dad “where’s Kyle” and he said upstairs. So I went upstairs and you were standing naked in your bedroom with a knife in your hand. At first I didn’t see the knife ‘cause your back was to me.

Death Thought

(Instrumental)

Side B

Two Faces

Cold side of the pillow, 
marking on my cheek: 
loyal in my cold life
so sadness doesn’t seep out
I go to drink
to warm my soul or whatever’s inside: frightened animal. 

When I’m cold I’m closed: 
someone broke my nose at night, 
blood ran through the valleys of my face. 
Looking through the mirror
I couldn’t feel a thing: 
outside
without meaning. 

The pillow’s warming now, 
most flip it around. 
I want to feel the heat
pass right through my cheek; 
flow to ocean dark and swirling
to thaw a self emerging. 

Face warm and yearning, 
sun and meaning filling everything
and me
with love for everyone: 
when I hurt others
I drink spilling meaning so I can sleep. 

“Two faces have been shown
in your reductive songs
you want simplicity. 
Bipolar binary. 
Inside more selves are swimming, 
surfacing, it’s never ending.” 

I sat watching the leaves
blow in the autumn breeze
thinking of that baby we almost had. 

A self created me. 
I drink for times when life’s beneath is shown
burbling up, bursting the self I’ve known.

Put Me to Sleep

You woke me up, 
placed me in
small ribs
firm and strong. 
Breathing in your breathy voice, 
I grew, we were bound. 

“Awake and alive
caught inside
your airy sound, 
I don’t want to get out.” 

Run fingers through
short black hair. 
Put me to sleep. 
Death Thought
far away, 
no one else does that to me. 

“Young and warm, 
your arms, 
they wrap around, 
I don’t want to get out.” 

“It's in the shape of your body around me.” 
It's in the way that your dog crawls in between. 
“The time we played guitar, 
Rose City park, 
we’re in it deep, it’s not a dream.”

Knowing

You’ll never know me without a seizure at age four: 
absent eyes, ambulance ride, life: a closing door. 

No, it doesn't work like that: 
we don’t lose ourselves in other people’s worlds. 
“We” is always “me” and you’ll never know. 

Sterile smell, fever state, the spirit’s sprawl across the floor. 
Brain that’s dyed, breakout of hives, grief for their first born. 

No, it doesn't work like that: 
experiences press heavy against life. 
I know that “we” is always “me” and you’ll never know. 

“Go toward the enormous absence of form that is sleep.” 

No, we don't grow closer: 
weighed down, honest face from others we all hide. 
I know, “we” is always “me” and I’ll never know. 

You’ll never know me if you haven't known the sound
of paramedics in the house, carrying your father down: 
his slurry speech, his fearful eyes, half his face a drooping frown, 
your fearful heart and your relief to find he’s still around. 

“Go toward the enormous absence of form that is sleep” 

You’ll never know me if you haven't tasted tears
over mother’s youngest sister and your best friend, it’s so clear: 
at all times, in every moment, death blows in the air
she cries in soup, I lie awake knowing someday we’ll be there.

(Person)

...and the meaning of everything, you were seeing meaning in everything. And then you just kept staying awake and staying awake and staying awake and finally we went up to your bedroom--and you weren’t yourself you know? It was like a terrifying feeling as a mother like you don’t know this person, terrifying. And we went upstairs and finally your dad said… 

My mind was very powerful, I was like looking down, I was floating up looking down. And I actually felt very spiritually very strong.

Shower

Two faces lit by candlelight
speaking over food and drink, 
and drink, and drink, and drink’s insight. 

I’m the self I want to be, 
a city that’s not home, 
no other squirming around in me. 

Feel myself open up wide, 
beautiful, you sit across. 
Out spills that story: I’m broken
In
tale of loss of self I hide. (“You’ve been here before.”) 
Getting drunker, edges blur, 
look up, black sky: 

“You are one mind creating night. 
Across from you is everyone, 
and of course you are going to die, 
and this will fade, but that’s alright. 
There’s no light but you will see:---” 

---Smell of salt in air, of sea, 
wakes me from my solipsistic, narcissistic reverie. 
Clinging to things I can't express, 
I suggest we leave. 
As they fade we walk up the street. 

We take a shower to cool off, 
warm steam of bodies rises up. 
Away it floats, a person cloud
right through the window. 

The smell of soap and hair
rising above the city, 
meshing with the dark air: 
all the other human clouds, unanswered prayers. 

“Alive in your memory, living in the air
when you die is it still there?”

Break

alone, 
October, face in clouds lit by the moon

August: 
salt water down my throat
choke
on wet heat at night-- soft skin that’s been sundrenched

November, she writes: 
“you became that for me, mixture of image/memory” 

ribbon of sleep
slips through my hand
four I’ve hurt this year; am I who I am? 

not as frail as you think; 
you’ll break me
opaque and weak
you'll break me; we’ll break me


April I wrote you, only person I got back to
opaque and weak
you’ll break me; we’ll break me

Memory

(Lyrics by Maya Stoner)

lying in bed, I find an egg

I hold it to the light and see its insides

they're still there somehow beneath a pale shell that should’ve been broken by now

things like you don’t last too long

look at what the arborists have done

I’ve got no limbs, I cannot hold a thing

I wish you could’ve seen me back when I was strong

This tree is no place for an egg to find it’s home (no place like this) 

things like you don’t last too long


far away I climb a hill

make my way up a cement tower

where bad kids in uniform

smoke cigarettes and write curse words

you ask me to write to you

instead I sing this song

but not loud enough to makes its way

across an ocean or a field

you write

but not fast enough

to catch me

before I come home

i

(instrumental)

Side A

melt

above the clouds
carved out by black wires
snow melts beneath my feet

garbage heap
across the river
we quietly breathe in

my bedroom
waking from a dream
mind circles again

morning yawns
a birdsong
pill melts beneath my tongue

I sigh
slowly being buried
calm white haze
my body melts away

meaning

we all grow to doubt at times
slowly fall apart
unwind
becoming undone to find
we all feign life
sometimes

to wait, to hope
it’s hopeless
been broken
for a while

to make my life
meaningful
after realizing
the meaninglessness of life

absurd condition—aesthetic person

(you)

(instrumental)

Side B

awake

pick me up
on mount tabor

city mirrored in the water
getting darker

the liquid in
our glass

spin around
‘till lights are silent

as I grow older
I will erase myself

i’ll drink your wine

can you tell me the difference
between living and a dream? 
what does it look like— 
been living in a dream

when bodies almost double
and I’m almost somebody
and I can feel
that something
slipping from my chest

can you tell me the difference
between living and a dream? 
what does it taste like? 
been living in a dream

when colors lose their sway
and shapes lose their color
and i can’t smell
the bile
dripping from my throat

I’ll know I’m awake

something

feeling faint around others
hoping I’m just another

on my own: 
self imposed

bitter teeth, aching gums
open mouth, spoiled tongue

breathing’s hard when you’re young

“I used to be something
living’s turned me into nothing” 

I once had something
now empty feel nothing

“are you afraid of death? 

yeah. 

me too. there’s no way out of it. you’re going to die. I’m going to die. it’s going to happen. what difference does it make if it’s tomorrow or in eighty years? much sooner in your case. do you know how fast time goes? I was six like yesterday. 

me too. 

we’re going to die. you are going to die. what else is there to be afraid of?” 

I used to feel something
leaving’s turned me into nothing

I am empty. I am nothing.

returning

regret repress regret repress regret repress regret

leaving 

(instrumental)

needing 

I'll close my eyes--that's all I wanted

I'll rest my head--that's all I needed

waiting 

with ennui, with longing confusion