2025 Spring

All my sketches/essais/sungword from this year.

2025 Thus

This is an "essai," or an attempt, to use Cézanne's words. It's part of an ongoing journal of my artistic practice where I reflect on aesthetic choices, share progress, and invite you into my world as I'm working things out. 

Perhaps it will become something durable someday. For now, take it as ephemera and interact spontaneously. See more on this at https://alexsilvertown.com.

Essai: I gripped it under my sweat

"one day, soon" by Tarune

written, produced, mixed and mastered by Giullian Yao Gioiello

one day, soon

Essai: Like fresh water at the zoo

This is an "essai," or an attempt, to use Cézanne's words. It's part of an ongoing journal of my artistic practice where I reflect on aesthetic choices, share progress, and invite you into my world as I'm working things out.

Did you see the big cloud raising its head?
Giving a warning . . . to everyone trying hard.

Perhaps it will become something durable someday. For now, take it as ephemera and interact spontaneously. See more on this at alexsilvertown.com.

Essai: Big cloud raising its head

This is an "essai," or an attempt, to use Cézanne's words. It's part of an ongoing journal of my artistic practice where I reflect on aesthetic choices, share progress, and invite you into my world as I'm working things out.

Perhaps it will become something durable someday. For now, take it as ephemera and interact spontaneously. See more on this at https://alexsilvertown.com.

Essai: I see you but I never guess

Written in 2025

“I caught a glimpse of the specter whom for years
we’ve been evading 
In the morning mist, where the sunrise cast its spears, 
he was just spectating 
and hesitating
To scatter back into air 

(Where you going? Where you going, little ghost?
In the morning, in the cold gleaming frost
After all this time, are you still lost?

Where you going? Where you going, my ghost?
In the morning, in the cold gleaming frost?
After all this time? Am I still lost?)

now i’m convinced that in these old river-runs-through towns
time is distorted
the water’s swift, and since it’s always hurrying on down
time in town moves slower
and all the lingering ghosts here 
 - as if held by ropes here 
so they dissolve real slow here -
are just the way it evens out

and that explains, yes
don’t you agree that that explains
the way we’re feeling?
it’s not the rain
no for too long we’ve blamed the rain
and our cloudy ceiling 

that explains, yes
don’t you agree that that explains
these things we’re seeing?
it’s not our shame,
no, there is no place for shame
in this new theory

after all these years, I am still lost

and that explains, yes
don’t you agree that that explains?
these things we’re seeing?
these things we’re feeling?
these things not healing?”

This New Theory (demo)

wrong body

This is an "essai," or an attempt, to use Cézanne's words. It's part of an ongoing journal of my artistic practice where I reflect on aesthetic choices, share progress, and invite you into my world as I'm working things out.

Essai: Why don't I know what to look through

chew toy

Written, performed, and recorded by Jake Allen Jones

Unchain your feet and hands
Fill my lungs with Daisys 
Wash my tongue in the fire 
Rediscover the beauty
it won't be long now

Old soul come join the dance
Made your house in a cactus
Wrote out a note with it's spines
Severed my lips with a last kiss
they'll grow back somehow

Limb

Continuing to share "essais," a term borrowed from Merleau-Ponty's writing on Cézanne in Sense and Non-Sense, one of my favorite books on perception. Look more deeply at this idea/my ideas at http://alexsilvertown.com. Thanks for your spontaneous and thoughtful spirit, world.

When every dream / arises like a problem /
clear and wet / then drips away

“Give me an example / When did they every crystallize?” / I ask
one dark afternoon / from the rubber of / my sad clown mask

I see you, I see you / and I repeat it /
for the pleasure / of knowing

I see you, I see you /
when I’m not thinking straight.

Essai: I see you when I'm not thinking straight . . .

Alex Silver is a folk experimentalist in the Portland, Maine area. Most of this material is from my "song diary:" https://alexsilvertown.com