The second single from the upcoming Initials B.R. album "Nine Lives", out August 24. "Nine Lives" is a math-rap exploration of agency, meaning, mortality, and legacy inspired by the Voyager mission, its Golden Record, number stations, Holst’s "The Planets," and the Maraṇasati of the Satipatthana Sutta's "Nine Cemetery Contemplations."

BUY & STREAM

Bandcamp: https://initialsbr.bandcamp.com/track/three-piece-suit-get-down-single-edit
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/three-piece-suit-get-down-single/1401048276
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DVW4C5H
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Bzqisfb5mpxx53oso34afeuuehu&tid=song-Ttaha3dfk24kdoiiwkwvg5lep2a

LYRICS

(for Terra Firma) 

Whenever I get the last call, 
whatever it is I’m in for, 
from whomever severs the frail cord, 
and wherever it is I fall, send me off 
sharp with the sartorial regard 
hardly afforded me in the cause 
of flossing this tall drink-of-water when 
dressing my cadaver in the morgue. 

I'll be on that drab, metal slab, 
packed in a black bag, passed in the lab. 
Lay me on that black fabric and wrap 
every apt limb like you would a cast. 
Mark it with a chalk pencil at lengths 
like they made the chalk stencil on pavement. 
So when the last day's on the wane 
I'll be rocking tailor-made in the grave. 

Find me with that 
Flat fold in the breast pocket, 
A silk square for the pop when I'm in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down with the 

French cuffs crisp on the wrists 
and a B.R. etched in the links for my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 

Fresh-wound Grand-dad’s watch 
With the alligator skin band copped for my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down with the 

Spread collar on the neckline and a 
half Windsor in the tie when I'm in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down. 

See I've been a man in clothes thirty years, 
rarely felt a moment's comfort in the gear. 
Always had an old-school wardrobe vision: 
couple suits, set of shirts fitted. But you'd better 
do a justice to the clothes if a 
made-to-measure bolt's getting sewn. 
See, I'm giving up the ghost and the devil's in the 
details on the host. 

I don't want no makeup on the face. 
Paint ain't but a clown's layer on the cake. 
Blue-grey hues stay on the pate. 
Grace in the pall. Plain as the day. 
Get me out the cage that awaits. 
Plenty time for a fate in a cave. 
Lay me on a bier framed for the case. 
Let the leather tan sunbathed in the rays. 

Give a little splash of cologne, 
fresh dab of the eau, a waft in the tomb, 
scent for the graft memory to proof 
when the spades set clay on the roof. 
Sooth, any good suit in the grief's 
Just a better butcher paper for the meat. 
But, see I'm rocking the fit for keeps: 
bespoke PJs for the long sleep... 

[CHORUS]

Find me in that oak coffin in deep muck, 
sarcophagus bolt-run, 
encased in cement plug, 
dumped in and locked up. 

Find me with my lids clutched fast to the cap, 
eyes sunk 'neath the round plastic, 
skin slipped and the face slack, 
front gums caulk-packed. 

Find me with that jaw sewn through the palate shut, 
back cavity cotton-stuffed, 
sutured up, brains sloshed 
in a pitch black skull cup. 

Find me in that embalming fluid, in some nice 
dilute solution, stewing in juices, 
floating in that bath pickled, 
marinating in that cask liquor.

Nine Lives

Three Piece Suit (Get Down) [Single Edit]

Three Piece Suit (Get Down) [SINGLE EDIT]

(for Plouton Eubulius) 

Do what you have to. Fasten the gaskets and 
suck through the tubes 'til you move through the vacuum. 
Track out the backwash. Cap what you can't mix. 
Axe what you tried but you can't fix: factory business. 
Dismiss everything. Edit all featherweight medicine. 
Poets have naught but to disturb festering edifice. 

Challenge the profit and coffers and balance 
the talent and auspice with action and office. 
Don't just promise. Pledge and deliver all lofty 
Get what you want if you act up and ask for it often. 
Shore up and shoulder the portage. Cut off the 
cord from the cortege. Float through the ether and orbit. 

Lose what you have to. Downgrade. 
Giant gas mass ain't safe from redaction in deep space. 
Face that you'll rue Fate. Pace with a scalpel. 
Grief is a ghost in the speech as you mull every mouthful. 
Haul off and upend the gurney and gradually 
advance the ranks through the tiers of the tourney. 

Huff the jet fuel. Flirt with permanence. 
Stoke the casks to explode through the cracks in the firmament.
And when, at last, you've the callus to hazard the 
backlash, gather the last few rations, stand up 
strapped in that spacecraft cabin, and blast off launch pads, 
cast in that pitch black cavern. 

Do what you have to. Pack in. Suit em up. 
Lay it out gracious: "Thank you. Time's up, motherfuckers." 
Sever all life-lines. Pipe through the white light. 
Get it on. Tell it all. Tell 'em off. Tell 'em all: Shit, I'm on... 
Cloud nine. Cloud nine. Cloud nine. Cloud nine.

Cloud Nine (Heliopause)

(for Neptunus Redux) 

Dig where I give my Vertigo mind: 
Here’s where I was born and here’s where I died: 
A life on a line, time on a space, 
defined by the case and enshrined to the ages. 

The arc spins out to the edge where the bark ends. 
Sap in the cracks is advanced through the target. 
Tapped is a cross-cut trunk ticking years off of 
Rings in the rough… Nine-teen eighty-one: 

Young buck, I was given to the music that my family 
tree dropped: lean vinyl leaves, lopped clean, caught 
neatly in a simple white sleeve and received in a 
triple-seamed piece of relief. I'm released. 

Now I leaf through the timelines, ripe in the limelight, 
lean through long limbs, hyped on the High Life, 
primed for the prime time, charmed bonsai, been 
making up for training the roots in a vinyl lining. 

Dig what I’m into. Get into the lens when my pen pushes limits to the ends. 
Can do attitude spinning like black planets do, cutting wax with the groove. 
Lend me your ears. These hemispheres take latitudes then flatten into plates. 
Needle on the cue of the song: make it fall. 
When you ask of the Magic Eight Ball, I break y’all off. 

Get the gist of my language. 
My fangs tap sap sanguine, black amber splash, a draught dangerous. 
My mark is upon Sycamore roots, last of the tribe like Fenimore Coop-, 
Building a plan for the loops like grouping the Jupiter rings through a lens in a loupe. 

Redwood routes go in to out. And when the LP spins it goes out to in. 
So with the wax rewound, the sound bends the rounds and curves space to trace it where it all began. 
See, the first track rides the longest black lap but the last runs half as long at just as fast, 
‘til it yields to the pops and the cracks and the lock-groove grasps at the circuit at last. 

Dig what I’m into. Get into the lens when my pen pushes limits to the ends. 
Can do attitude spinning like black planets do, cutting wax with the groove. 
Lend me your ears. These hemispheres take latitudes then flatten into plates. 
Needle on the cue of the song: make it fall. 
When you ask of the Magic Eight Ball, I break y’all off. 

(B.R. makes ‘em get up on the wax like— 
Big Rig makes ‘em get up on the wax like— 
Bedroom makes ‘em up on the wax like— 
Bankrupt makes ‘em get up on the wax like—)

Magic Eight Ball (Rap Wax)

(for Ouranos Panypertatus Daemon) 

All praise to the righteous, 
pyrite might turned finite Midas, 
Sky writers on night fits, 
Fine tuned types on that grind ignited. 

Shining. Diamond islands of light. 
Hype on assignment. Science of life: 
mine inclines to boast elastic reach 
then hone skillcraft for masterpieces. 

Camphor cool in the candelabra. 
Handles looped on the amphora. 
Mantle groomed for the amber opera. 
Samples tuned to examples of. 

Speed through the breach where the sirens tempt 
and peak ’til you peace in that ambulance. 
Seek answer in each breath. 
Breathe easy when there’s one left. 

I lay the ground beneath. You don't take that from me. 
I sew the scraps with seams. You don't take that from me. 
I lace the sound with speech. You don't take that from me. 
You don't take that from me. 

Man magnanimous, take that ope’ 
Bag right. Handle it. Raid that sack 
Closely. Probe. Dismantle. Then proceed. 
Short sheets catch Zs. Don’t sleep. 

Load that locus. Crack Code Black open. 
Skeleton key crocus. 
Bone up and brace for the moment. 
Reduce and glaze with the potent. 

Contort the voiceless speech into the meter 
Piece that lead through the teeth and when the eager 
capsule, charged and electric in the ether, 
ports through the pre and then red lines meters, 

Hold heat casual. Speak so sheep 
freeze when this upright animal bares 
steel wool mandible, channels the beast, 
and feasts on flammable meat. 

I lay the ground beneath. You don't take that from me. 
I sew the scraps with seams. You don't take that from me. 
I lace the sound with speech. You don't take that from me. 
You don't take that from me. 

I can tell how it happens: 
bright lights strike in a vacuum, 
flash through cracks in the cabinet, 
bone white skull catching synapses 
exploded to fragments, 
lapsed and exposed to the abscess, 
cast in the pull of a magnet, 
dispersed into endless blackness. 

So I can tell how it all ends, 
all of the effort and passion, 
all endurance and passage, 
dashed to the fragile annals of past tense: 
All motion and language 
torched in the flames into ashes, 
fraction, footnote, food scrap, 
footprint, figment, has been. 

And for all that action 
scrapped and disposed in a trash bin, 
no promotion or pageant, 
only gasps in that crass end. 
And you won’t know when it’s happening. 
And you won’t know when it’s happening. 
And you won’t know when it’s happening. 
And you won’t know when it’s happening.

God Is Seven (Man Magnanimous)

(for Saturnus Devorator) 

Thank you for patience while you wait. 
How can I be of service today? 
It's sounding like you hit a bitter break, 
a little bad luck, and floundered in the wake. 
Anyone in your position quakes when this 
game of chance has gone and raised the stakes. 
Maybe I can help you find a way 
to bear and pass this infernal weight? 

I'll assume that you're familiar with 
the range of services that I'm prepared to give. 
Never fear—the cons are utter myth. 
Stretch your legs and live a little bit. 
All you need to know is what you want. 
Make a list. Check a box. 
Run the costs. Cut your losses. 
Bear the load. Slough it off. 

Anything you think you can’t afford 
can soon be yours with just a simple signature. 
Revel in the blessed peace of mind 
that falls in line with having anything you want. 
But just remember when we've run our course 
that you won't forget me on the other shore: 
Nothing's free in this world—just some lines of 
credit that you've got to pay for. 

You've got six feet to the flatline, 
Six feet to the endzone. 
Six feet til the flesh lies in that fresh pine 
and you're dead and gone. 
In that six feet you can have anything 
In the world you could ever want, but— 
You've got to be willing. 

Frankly, I'm surprised to see your call. 
Glad to see you gave a second thought. 
Callers often balk at modest flaws, 
easily succumbing to a fear of God, 
afraid to draw the lines toward the fault 
when the fact of the matter hazards all: 
You're in a maze with a minotaur, 
and this ain't a place you can safely walk. 

Face it, the simple twist of fate's even 
hardliners stand to fall from grace 
when they finally parse the law in all its cases 
and stretch the leash to put it through its paces. 
Measure up the academic's proof 
And you'll find the logic's just a clever ruse: 
Beg the question then contort the rules. 
What exactly do you have to lose? 

Everything. Me, I merely let the 
puppet feel the weight of lighter strings, 
get a taste for the finer things, 
save the days from a spate of waste. 
As they say the world's a stage. What's the use in 
suffering someone else design the play? 
Write the action that you long to see. 
Leave the messy ending up to me. 

All I need is your consent. Proxy for 
the signature is in the fingertip. 
Lock it in with just a simple gesture. 
Lift a digit up and press the 6. 
But just remember when we've run our course, 
that you won't forget me on the other shore: 
Nothing's free in this world—just some lines of 
credit that you've got to pay for. 

Do not neglect debts that you owe. 
Do not forget tabs that you run. 
Do not get out of jail free for none. 
Do not expect rest for those bones. 
Do not pass GO. Do not pass GO.

The Devil Is Six (Six Feet)

(for Iuppiter Elicius) 

What’s the haps little man? 
Little sun? Little sand? 
Beach bumming on the edge of land? 
Little limbs catch a little tan? 
Freedom and the ease to laugh, 
Splashing where the waves crash. 
One finger on the hand stretched for 
every annual span you have. 

Grab a cup, fill it full. 
Stack em up, then improve. 
Towers and a wall and soon 
channels and a moat to loop. 
But in the center core you pushed 
to dig the deepest hole you could 
to send a friendly message through the globe 
to all your Asian analogues. 

Silly goose, don’t you know the 
earth’s core’s just an iron ball of 
molten metal lava that’ll thaw to 
liquid ore any solid arm. 
If you knew a thing about geology 
you wouldn’t waste your time at all. 
Save your strength for something 
like the task we’ve set before you to resolve. 

But don’t touch anything. 
Don’t break anything. 
Don’t add anything. 
Don’t say anything. 
If there’s an issue with it 
better get used to it kid. 
This is how it is. 
There's a lot of years that you’ve gotta live. 

Young man, what you gon' do? 
Kick dirt 'til it grows food? 
Live off land and turn wood? 
Build a home with your own two? 
Freedom in the leaves and grass? 
It's greener than a lack of cash. 
Five fingers on the hand stretched for 
every annual span you have. 

Get a job. Learn the rules. 
Make a name then improve. 
Build a stack of checks and soon 
pay the rent and debt accrued. 
But shuttered in your room you gave 
the words and music that your raised 
the gravity to trebuchet 
the listener away to outer space. 

Idiot, don’t you know the 
world turns on a pecking order 
oriented to the floor who best can 
navigate to working up the ladder? 
If you knew a thing you’d saddle up 
and get in line. What you think, 
every man with a five iron 
drives arcs through the skylines? 

Just do what I tell you. 
Just move when I let you. 
Just use what I sell you. 
Consume what you're meant to. 
If there’s an issue with it 
better get used to it kid. 
This is how it is. 
There's a lot of years that you’ve gotta live. 

Man-made. Manhandled. 
Manifest. Manacle. 
Manage. Mangle. 
Mantra. Mandible. 
Mansuetude. Manic. 
Manqué. Manuscript. 
Manual. Manual. 

Handshake. Flat slap. 
Clenched fist. Strong grasp. 
Push off. Give dap. 
Come here. Stand back. 
Clapped palms. Tight squeeze. 
Restrain. Release. 
Manual. Manual.

Man Is Five (The Child Is the Father of the Man)

(for Mars Ultor) 

Fuck it, I lick off in tandem sixteens, 
ignite tantrums, violent miscreant firing pristine, 
Pollack on blitzkrieg. The canvas is VisQueen. 
The paint is the grey meat. I’m slaying these MCs, 

spraying these clean sheets with carnage. 
Dispatch targets with quicklime parlance in 
Partlow rowhouse apartments, rolling bodies of work up in carpet 
and dumping them in the garbage. 

Watch when I cop to the motive, 
cock back the magnum, concoct the opus, 
unlock the savage explosives and rock these 
cabbages open with accented ordnance. 

The marksman turns marks to carcasses, 
armed to the teeth, beefing peace-keeping cordons 
with a street-sweeper, carving these artists up like cadavers, 
raising the bar on that 4/4 caliber. 

You don’t pave roads to row in the same boat. 
You don’t spray folks and mope in the pathos. 
You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. 
You don’t take “No.” You don’t take “No.” 

You just pack (four-four) and blast (four-four). 

Fuck it, I build a fire out of bat-shit; scrape brown guano out of 
caverns with a hatchet; strip the volcanoes in the 
desert with a cactus, pissing upon the mixture, 
charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur up in the tincture; 

grind the black powder in the mortar with a pestle, 
and pack the black magic in the belly of the vessel; 
grab the barrel and put a hole through your temple 
with sharpened number 2 pencils implanted up to the ferrule. 

They put the hands in the air ‘cause it’s automatic. 
Somebody screams “Hell yeah” ‘cause it’s automatic. 
The crowd moves out of habit. Pushers take the 
Credit for the rock when the crack is in the addict. 

I take the muzzle recoil to move butts, and this mess is 
simply a method to let you know that your number’s up. 
You gun runners up rock stock polymer. 
I float steel in that 4/4 caliber. 

You don’t pave roads to row in the same boat. 
You don’t spray folks and mope in the pathos. 
You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. 
You don’t take “No.” You don’t take “No.” 

You just pack (four-four) and blast (four-four).

Automatic Four-Four (Blaster Canon)

(for Terra Firma) 

Whenever I get the last call, 
whatever it is I’m in for, 
from whomever severs the frail cord, 
and wherever it is I fall, send me off 
sharp with the sartorial regard 
hardly afforded me in the cause 
of flossing this tall drink-of-water when 
dressing my cadaver in the morgue. 

I'll be on that drab, metal slab, 
packed in a black bag, passed in the lab. 
Lay me on that black fabric and wrap 
every apt limb like you would a cast. 
Mark it with a chalk pencil at lengths 
like they made the chalk stencil on pavement. 
So when the last day's on the wane 
I'll be rocking tailor-made in the grave. 

Find me with that 
Flat fold in the breast pocket, 
A silk square for the pop when I'm in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down with the 

French cuffs crisp on the wrists 
and a B.R. etched in the links for my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 

Fresh-wound Grand-dad’s watch 
With the alligator skin band copped for my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down with the 

Spread collar on the neckline and a 
half Windsor in the tie when I'm in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down. 

See I've been a man in clothes thirty years, 
rarely felt a moment's comfort in the gear. 
Always had an old-school wardrobe vision: 
couple suits, set of shirts fitted. But you'd better 
do a justice to the clothes if a 
made-to-measure bolt's getting sewn. 
See, I'm giving up the ghost and the devil's in the 
details on the host. 

I don't want no makeup on the face. 
Paint ain't but a clown's layer on the cake. 
Blue-grey hues stay on the pate. 
Grace in the pall. Plain as the day. 
Get me out the cage that awaits. 
Plenty time for a fate in a cave. 
Lay me on a bier framed for the case. 
Let the leather tan sunbathed in the rays. 

Give a little splash of cologne, 
fresh dab of the eau, a waft in the tomb, 
scent for the graft memory to proof 
when the spades set clay on the roof. 
Sooth, any good suit in the grief's 
Just a better butcher paper for the meat. 
But, see I'm rocking the fit for keeps: 
bespoke PJs for the long sleep... 

Find me with that 
Flat fold in the breast pocket, 
A silk square for the pop when I'm in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down with the 

French cuffs crisp on the wrists 
and a B.R. etched in the links for my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 

Fresh-wound Grand-dad’s watch 
With the alligator skin band copped for my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down with the 

Spread collar on the neckline and a 
half Windsor in the tie when I'm in my 
Three piece suit. Get down in my 
Three piece suit. Get down. 

Find me in that oak coffin in deep muck, 
sarcophagus bolt-run, 
encased in cement plug, 
dumped in and locked up. 

Find me with my lids clutched fast to the cap, 
eyes sunk 'neath the round plastic, 
skin slipped and the face slack, 
front gums caulk-packed. 

Find me with that jaw sewn through the palate shut, 
back cavity cotton-stuffed, 
sutured up, brains sloshed 
in a pitch black skull cup. 

Find me in that embalming fluid, in some nice 
dilute solution, stewing in juices, 
floating in that bath pickled, 
marinating in that cask liquor.

Three Piece Suit (Get Down)

(for Venus Verticordia) 

You were born to a cold world, 
two brief blips in the script of this old girl. 
You were pranked by the body, 
Blood full of copies, brain going lossy. 
You were eight generations defiant 
to punch chads dumb and throw heirs to the lions. 
You were blind to the science, 
deaf to the signs of the sirens at event horizons. 

Bastards. Maniacal laughter 
hocks that hot popcorn for disaster. 
Planned for the future, braced for the ruse. 
Paid for a feature, walked in a spoof. 
The portent's poison and potent: 
Ignore the moment and go through the motions, 
take to the concrete and foment, 
or yield to enjoyment and opt to contort to the formant. 

The truth is the loom is a boon, a tapestry 
mapped for the few, apt to adapt to the muse, 
a sentence exhumed from the ruins, 
and woven to human cocoons. 
Make what you mean when you move. 
The task is a proof, a Rosetta Stone for the runes, 
tracks on the sand in the dunes where the prints show paths: 
Wherever two gather’s a mass. 

Face the facts: 
the mercury drop in the off-square die is cast; 
and the house don't play with the chips it has; 
the whole card sharp deck is stacked. 
Let these asses draw blanks while we draw the map 
and form fists where they ought to have formed a pact. 
But act fast. Go to. Poke through the mask. 
Wherever two gather's a Mass. Gather. Amass. 

What ears you have— 
soft shells that corral where the waves impact; 
what eyes that espy through that fringe of lash; 
and canines that you ply on the prey you catch. 
What hands into prayer have you clasped to ask 
in the hour of need what you dreamt you'd have? 
With what arms have you held when you pled it'd pass? 
On what legs have you walked that elusive path? 

What bodies have wrapped in a helix math 
and then labored to grasp what it was they hatched? 
And what love will last, when the past is collapsed 
and bereft in the depths of a dark crevasse? 
What works have you left for the world to have 
long after your time has passed? And what sound is that? 
What music in what contract with what words 
on whose behalf? Well, I'm glad you asked. 

Face the facts: 
the mercury drop in the off-square die is cast; 
and the house don't play with the chips it has; 
the whole card sharp deck is stacked. 
Let these asses draw blanks while we draw the map 
and form fists where they ought to have formed a pact. 
But act fast. Go to. Poke through the mask. 
Wherever two gather's a Mass. Gather. Amass.

Wherever Two Gather (Mass)

Dear Listener,

In 2009, I began composing a follow-up to Initials B.R. called Nine Lives. What started as an exercise in math-rap became over time a much grander vision: an exploration of agency, meaning, mortality, and legacy inspired by the Voyager mission, its Golden Record, number stations, Holst’s The Planets, and the Maraṇasati of the Satipatthana Sutta's "Nine Cemetery Contemplations".

Each song bears a time signature or cycle derived from its track number. Each song represents a planet in the solar system along with its mythological namesake. (Yes, including Pluto.) Each song is a meditation on life and death from the perspective of a particular developmental stage. And thereby the album as a whole functions as a life in itself—a movement from phase to phase through our moment in the universe, drifting on momentum like a probe sent to study what makes a life well-lived and what does or doesn’t lie beyond.

Over the course of the nine years I’ve worked on this album, I’ve changed significantly. I got married. I learned a job. I earned my master's. I made a career. I discovered things about myself I never would have anticipated, but which make perfect sense in hindsight. Meanwhile, the world around me changed too, often in unpleasant ways. Family and friends became sick. Some died. Relationships fell apart. We witnessed again and again the tragedies of racism and sexism in America. World politics entertained and elevated the despicable. And permeating it all was the gnawing nihilism of sitting powerlessly at the precipice of environmental catastrophe.

It is a privilege to make music in these circumstances; I accepted it as a responsibility to make something significant. I took for my muses the polar sentiments of the Voyager missions: a triumphant celebration of the highest achievements of mankind, and a dashing reminder of the insignificance of our concerns on this miniscule blue speck orbiting aimlessly somewhere indistinct in an infinite cosmos.

In our lives, we strive to go beyond ourselves, to leave something that outlasts us, knowing full well that we are fragile, limited beings that will most likely leave no trace in just a few generations’ time. We call this “making the most.” And indeed "making the most" was very much the goal here. But "the most" is an abstraction, an ideal. Real human action is specific and definite. “The most" is but one of infinite possibilities whose impact we will never know. If the Voyager Record is a monument to human achievement conceived and composed by visionary authors of its greatness, it is also just a flawed mixtape culled from the crates of a misfit DJ collective.

So too with Nine Lives. Here are nine songs trying and certainly failing to capture things that are immense and timeless—the anxiety of anticipation, the endurance of love, the folly of vanity, the violence of invention, the burden of responsibility, the danger of desire, the steel of persistence, the legacy of heritage, the pursuit of transcendence—in moments that are small and tenuous.

I nevertheless launch this album at last—a small death in itself—because, for all our uncertain flailings, our arcs are ushered on by imperfect and incomplete gestures. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "We are all very near despair. The sheathing that floats us over its waves is compounded of hope, faith in the unexplainable worth and sure issue of effort, and the deep, subconscious content which comes from the exercise of our powers." This work has sustained me. I hope there are those among you whom it sustains too.

So look up, fellow voyagers. The end of life is life. Go Atlas. Go Centaur. Go New Horizons. We are here to make meaning, and to make something meaningful together. Do what you have to. The task is the proof: You make what you mean when you move.

Yours, B.R.

Initials B.R.

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