Lyrics
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The trench coat comes kicking in. 
Clocks and watches for time spent. 
So much for my final sin again. 

Looking up, wondering what is true. 
I heard that me and you killed the man in the moon. 
Flying past, the ruins are smashed, 
Like glass hitting heads in a puzzling draft. 
The air breathes through my skull. 
The signs tell you that this is null. 
Thoughts lost in thoughts looking straight the foreigner. 
See a dangerous door behind the man in the corner. 

Please save us all from him. 

I’ve been reading the messages on other people’s walls. 
Brilliant plans thrown up until they fall. 
Barely more then bone skull smashed against the stone. 
You’ve fallen from your throne and hell declares your home. 

Today I’m much weaker then before. 
The mirror’s wondering who won the war. 
Please save us all from him. 
Please save us all from him. 

And the trench coat comes kicking in. 
Clocks and watches for time spent. 
So much for my final sin again. 

So much for my final sin again. 

I guess this means you win.

Save Us

Lyrics:
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Grab your guns we’re headed off to war.
Everything is different then before.

Oh man it’s 1931,
Depressions growing greater and the grain is gone.
Soon shots ring out on a far away field.
The wounds getting bigger and harder to heal.
Shipped off far across the see,
Not sure who you are but about to find out who you’ll be.
Falling from the sky bombs hit the ground.
Silence is the sweetest sound.

Grab your guns we’re headed off to war.
Everything is different then before.

Notes coming home from a homesick child,
Sent away in his darkest hour.
Songs once sung about your smile,
Have all but morphed into desire.
Stand up strait and get in line.
As long as your heart beats you’ll stay alive.
This is for the freedom of our land,
And for that you’ll gladly stand.
Falling down, you can’t get up again.
Blood red poppies beside your head.

Grab your guns we’re headed off to war.
Everything is different then before.

Unblamed are the unscathed,
Hiding mind under mats while there mouths yell out,
Bias truths that they know nothing about,
Stealing words from the devil himself.

Grab your guns we’re headed off to war.
Everything is different then before.

Oh man it’s 1945,
The boys are yelling out the war has died.
But that sound will never silence the cries.

Grab your guns we’re headed off to war.
Everything is different then before.

Grab Your Guns

Lyrics:
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Under the shadow of this tree, I sold you and you sold me 

A letter to the future from the past, I live here in worlds of Wax. 
They’ll take the one thing I have left and they’ll make me one of them. 

Freedom from speech, Freedom from thought, the past is forgotten and memories are lost. 
Hide your thoughts they’re not allowed and you can’t recall how to write them down. 

Under the shadow of this tree, I sold you and you sold me. 

The past was destroyed the voids, all this truth is useless noise. 
Writing secrets no one can know, dawn with the demons row on row. 
Almost all will not suffice, you must give in what is your price? 

Under the shadow of this tree, I sold you and you sold me. 

Tell yourself I don’t Exist the truth will all be lost in myths. 
Replace nonsense with less, forget it all and go to rest. 

Under the shadow of this tree, I sold you and you sold me. 
Under the shadow of this tree, I sold you and you sold me.

Worlds of Wax

Lyrics:
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Here they come again selling truth for sin.
Hear them coming in, can’t hide in this bin.
You wonder if this is all.
You hear they make you fall.
You hear they’re six feet tall.
And then you hear their call.

Welcome back to the crap and the Maniac.

Notes swaying, being hung.
Lost hopes have no lungs.
Songs sung in different tongues,
Sound like madness to the young.
You’re so far up you cannot rise,
But still falling down. Goodbye.
You can’t understand these cries.
When did truth turn to lies?

Welcome back to the crap and the Maniac.

Maniac

Home Sweet Something

Brooklyn Avenue

Lyrics:
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I dreamt I woke up hoping it was just a dream,
As I jumped into the sea with rocks tied to my feat.
But I survived the water because it was not that deep.
Then was stuck between life and death unable to be free.
And in a trio of my ignorance my heart, my soul, my mind was spent.
And everyone who passed me by quietly asked themselves ‘why?’
Now I remain without a face so I can’t cry my years to waste.
I do not think the light has gone, but I have yet to see the dawn.
Reality it cuts me deep, but it’s my mind that makes me weep.
Here’s the road that brought me here, it was paved with your tears.

And I tell you it didn’t mean a thing to me at all.
So when I dig myself out of this pit I forget this stupid fall.
Now this is where the movie ends, and life it creeps into your head.
Screaming at your alcohol hoping it’ll hear your calls.
While plastic Christians sing their songs, they tell you you can sing along.
Go ahead but it’s all the same, especially if you never change.
And everybody cares but me, so please explain the urgency.
Yes, I can view your world collapse; you’ve disproved glue and live on wax.
So tell me boy why not look back, it should be good even with the past.
If you perceived it better then perhaps my boy you’ll leave again. 
So I left this mess as it came undone, my ignorance it finally won.
And now I’m back to where I was but I’ve forgot and that’s enough.


Finished

Over the summer I took a class on contemplative artistic practices, where I was challenged to develop a practice that worked for me. Previously, I had long made music as contemplative practice, without giving much thought as to why it worked. This began changing, however, while reflecting after going on a sound walk during this class. I found myself frustrated at what I heard. While inside I was overcome by the unnatural silence, and outside droned on with echoes from the highway and incessantly pulsating fans, deriving from the university. In reflecting about the experience, I purposely took the ideas of someone who had a more optimistic experience than myself. My pessimism was getting me down and I thought I needed another point of view. Instead of focusing on all the noise, they had focused in on a single sound, saying, “I listened to the wind in the trees and actually heard it.” 
      In my own practice, outside of class, I had begun going outdoors and listening to sounds, recording entire soundscapes with a dynamic microphone. Listening to these sounds later, though, they were muddled, and the inescapable reverberated noise from the highway dominated all my sounds. A little disheartened I decided to innovate, and switched over to using a condenser microphone. In contrast to a dynamic mic, a condenser mic only picks up the sound directly in front of it. This introduced a new practice to my contemplative process; I began deconstructing all the sounds I heard in a soundscape and recording each element separately. Instead of getting lost in the whole, and becoming frustrated with the noise, I listened in and found all the pieces of music that made up the whole. I listened to the wind in the trees and actually heard it. 
      The next step in my contemplative artistic practice was always going to be creating music with these recordings, however my process had changed. Where I once had planned to sample these sounds and make new rhythms, I now wanted nature to inform where the music would go. Human control had decimated the soundscape of the Okanagan over the last hundred years. Sounds that had been working in unison for millennia had been laid to waste in the name of progress. It seemed like a small, but appropriate, gesture to allow nature to take its place and inform the music once again. With Viki Kelly’s words resonating with me; “You don’t play by playing, but play by listening” I began creating with the sounds that nature had given me. The practice of Lectio Divino allowed me to gain insight from pieces I would have glazed over on a single encounter. With a different intent in each listening, many perspectives are taken and the readings became considerably more enriching. Out of Viki Kelly’s discussion my irritation with all the noise began to make sense, as she explained people are not ‘from’ a place but rather ‘of’ a place. This cyclical relationship between one’s environment and themselves suggest that the destruction of one cannot help but damage the other. Therein was the reason why I found music calming; it helped to restore the natural balance of sound in a place where noise was now a constant.

Contemplative Collaborations With Nature

Waves

Lyrics:
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It’s okay my dear, it just slipped under the veneer.
But from my glimpse I’ve noticed, the dark and fading focus.
Beckoning to fade from black, your heavy head will need some slack.
This year has come to turn find your place alone and you’ll get hurt.
I understand that you’ve tried just don’t forget to let the monsters die.

Beautiful blue eye, come closer to my side.
Beautiful blue eye, hold tight you won’t be thrown aside 

Dressed up in your pretty dress, a good smile traded for distress. 
But everything I try to say just looks too close to everyday.
Then suddenly out of the blue a thousand thoughts I never knew.                
In you I can see, my finer self as I could be.
Just take tenacity, hold fast to me, and I guarantee that

Beautiful blue eye, you won’t be thrown aside 
Beautiful blue eye, come closer to my side.

War with the Road

Beautiful Blue Eyes

This is the noise. A sound to contrast with the music. To try and pin the place where it would fit into your world, where the ideas collide. This is where what you see is covered by what you know. Right before you come to see you don't know, or you would if it weren't for the noise. Becoming lost in the spectacle, not seeing what exists between the seems. This is me; the music, not the noise.

Brayden Gerbrandt

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