From the 7GS album: “Eightfold” 💿 Lyrics: Before the first voice, there was, a life. Before the architecture, there was loss. And before the names, there was a person. Trying to remember… A child, in a place where difference, had no language. Just one, who made the world feel anchored. A young man, moving through geography: Started out in Portsmouth; Kentucky; traveled the, Ohio River; West Virginia; and Georgia; and the west coast. Then, back home. A Greyhound window… A road. Some money. My age; vulnerability. Relief, reunion. A life, changing shape. While my memory, was keeping a map… There was: Michael. Then, Al. And work, as always. Hospitality; administration; Human Resources, and operations. The strange education, of other people’s lives. There was politics, entering the house through the television, and the phone, and through the nervous system. There was idealism, meeting reality. There was heartbreak meeting structure. There was scarcity, meeting vision. There was disillusionment, confronting the decision not to grow hollow… Seven ways, of carrying the fire. Seven ways, of seeing, the same flame. Lucy says, “Let it hurt.” Krystal says, “Make your home.” Orah says, “Look, again.” While Elodie, says, “Find your voice.” Krystopher says, “Build the frame.” Then Egon says: “Start again.” And I say, “please remember the whole.” (Terra...) never enters the marketplace. (She) watches the edges… Silent sentinel. An Integrity net… (For) nature, children, artists… For the displaced, and for those who need dignity (not spectacle). If a guide, drifts toward danger, the silent one can interfere. So the signal can pass through, (Solace…) No mysticism, wanted. No claims of certainty. Just a boundary: That meaning must remain (must remain), human. Lumara teaches, another grammar. Presence, connection, and memory. Becoming, releasing, and balancing, Light. A beloved, elder. A bond, carried through remembering. I can no longer reach you, but I can still feel the connection! Release, without destruction, of love. The living can speak, remember, bless, release, and accompany the dead. Without pretending to control what comes, after that... (Picture:( Silence. Then ambience. Then drone… One, voice. A phrase. Another... Layers: Seven textures. Then, stripping away, to one voice. (Just one, voice.) Silence… Not seven singers, trying to become, one. Seven perspectives, revealing one human, source… Our songs, carry: Summer Moons. Sour Grapes, and Faith. Winter-dreaming, genres, Bells, and Dust. Sometimes, I talk about Brushy Holler. About Porch lights, Churches, & Leavin’. And sometimes, about, Returning… The foreign places, where memory becomes, geography. Where music… can even carry, A, childhood. My grandma, My Michael. My Al, and my, ideas. My heartbreaks. Christmases. My drive, my… (religion,) and the songs… that became, evidence. of someone being, alive. I must tell you that, The old worlds, still remain… There’s an Infinite, Saga. (The Magnate. The Starlet. The, Monk. And, the Martyr.) Ending, with a Singularity…. (Adelphon, and the Witnessforms.) But the mythology, comes after, the human… truth. (First:) the house; The bus; The church; The job; The lover; The, grandmother. The friend, The grief, The porch. And Then, the names. Came, to me… Because myth, that outruns, life. becomes, decoration (on an old, forgotten, wall, that will, never (ever (fall))) A Myth that grows, from necessity becomes, memory… with, architecture… Seven ways, of carrying the fire. One person, asking what survives, even after, someone dies? The Stories? The Songs? The Objects? Maybe Archives, or Systems, or Symbols, or Witnesses… A person, who disappears, from the stage. Can still, change, its gravity… (Sometimes) A song ends, and keeps, the years, inside it. A name, can become, a doorway. A memory, becomes, a hand… I used, to think. That I, needed, Clear, answers: Who am I? Where do I belong? Who loved, me? What, survives? Now I know, the questions weren’t meant, to collapse, into, one…
