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about

An odd word, as a noun referring to a common variety of bat, as an adjective meaning "late-blooming" in English and "of the evening" en français. All are applicable here in different ways, although the second sense is somewhat ironic here.

Despite the metaphorical snarl and overall wryness, this is maybe the most earnest song on the album. It's ultimately a song about the creative process and how misery and boredom can become the fuel for art—or, conversely, put a damper on it when it becomes as taxing and meaningless as everything else. That the refrain alludes to one of the key repeated phrases in Thomas Ligotti's "The Bungalow House" is no coincidence.

And again with the not-quite-a-sing-along coda which is some obscene number of vocal tracks deep. I suppose it fits to end on what is nearly a personal cliché at the end of a personal song.

lyrics

Wrap your wings 'round the callow breeze,
scream pitched so high that they cannot hear,
but they know
and they feel.
Wrap your arms 'round the felon wind,
fly so deep that they cannot see—
Would they know?
Could they feel?

Night is young, night is tender;
day is short in faded splendour.
Life is long, we misremember,
ripest fruits unfit to render.
But in all candour…
I don't know what the matter is.

so I trace the perimeter of my bed-frame
grasping to frame the interiors of my skull
eyes worrying the shadow-shapes in doorframes and on stairs
mind's-eye worrying the doggerel of foreign miseries and trials
when not simply white noise cloudy sky and static grey

I should sleep all day because there is nothing worth getting up for.
But should I sleep all day then all the night will stretch before me,
and there is nothing to do and nowhere to go and no-one to know—
no, there is nothing to do and nowhere to go and no-one to know.
There is no-one to tell me otherwise—
there is no-one who could tell me otherwise.

(know I am, that I am, another useless layabout.)

where do you think you're going with your life?
what do you think you're doing with your time?

(hello, who's this?
hello, it's me, who's that?)

Another lonely evening in a crowded world;
another lonely evening paring lean from fat.
I chase the phantoms to the corners of the page;
I search for snappy lines and clever turns of phrase.
I crave the bittersweet like belladonna pouring from my mouth—
I could use some belladonna for this headache coming on too slow…

(i don't go out in the sun for fear of the rain)

Have you ever had experiences with isolation?
Have you ever had experiences with indignation?
Have you ever had experiences with humiliation?
Have you ever had experiences with social deviation?
Have you ever had experiences with self-abnegation?
Have you ever had experiences with ostracisation?
Have you ever had experiences with suicidal ideation?
Have you ever had experiences with dissociation?
Have you ever had experiences with self-mutilation?
Have you ever had experiences with…?

credits

from Christmas Wishes, released August 12, 2017

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about

Silence and Secrecy Pennsylvania

Purveyor of fine musical curios, grotesques and arabesques since 1 January 2014. Mostly just one weirdo in a literal attic.

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