Order of creation: Frank Skillman, bass, guitar, art; Jack Perron, keyboard; Seanchan Owen, vocals, words, Michael Hurwitz, drums, percussion

Click 'Show more' below for words
-----------------------
What,
what am I now?
What,
what am I now?
Am I a dragon, 
or am I some freak 
of nature. 
Am I some god damn genius 
springing forth with ideas.
And ideas that everybody, everybody, everybody, 
yes, 
is waiting, 
is waiting, 
is waiting for me to reveal.
Is that, is it that what I am now? 
Yeah. Is that what I am? Could be?
Am I the sexiest thing, 
am I the sexiest thing that ever, 
am I the sexiest thing that ever walked the earth.
Look at my footsteps in the sand. 
Yeah. 
Even them, they, even those are 
sexy.
Yeah.
I just wonder, 
what I 
am now.
Uh, uh
uh, uh, 
uh, uh.
And what are you?
You ever give that any thought?
Are you like me?
Are you amazing, are you fantastic?
Do you look good? 
Do you, do you feel the day? 
Do you feel the vibrations of the people around you? 
All of them. 
All of them.
All absolutely complementary to your existence.
Oh,
Oh yeah.
Sometimes I cannot help myself.
Sometimes I cannot hold myself back, 
because sometimes I get these doubts, 
I don't know where,
I do not know where they come from.
Doubts that I might not be the most wonderful guy in the whole god damn world,
somebody who can radiate goodness out from his soul, 
from his heart, 
from his mind 
to everyone, everyone, everyone, 
and then, 
yeah, that's you.
Can you feel it? Can you feel it now?
How about now? 
Okay, how about now? 
Oh, come on. 
Give it a chance. 
Open up, 
come on, open up.
What are you now? 
What are you?
You're all closed up. 
You gotta,
You gotta free yourself. 
You've got to come out.
You've gotta visit me.
You gotta visit the world. 
You got to feel that you are beautiful 
because, you know what, man,
you really are, 
beautiful.

What Am I Now?

Order of creation: Michael Hurwitz, guitar, drums, percussion; Jack Perron, keyboard; Frank Skillman, bass, guitar, Seanchan Owen, vocals, words; Rich Simon, keyboard

Click "Show more..." below for words
___________________

Pork chops
taste so good to me
on an August afternoon.

I sit here
on the Prairie
looking at the coyotes, out there.

I see the sun setting far away.
I scratch my left leg
and pet my dog.

And I say,
what a wonderful thing
to be out here.

All alone,
on the Prairie,
the world is my toy.

I have to bow to no man.
(Except my boss.)
I get to do whatever I choose.

But still, I give myself pause
when I think back on my childhood.
When I ran away.

Was that the right thing to do?
What would I have become?
It just makes me wonder a bit.

My dad was an asshole.
At least I thought he was an asshole,
at the time.

Now I am a bit older,
and I see that
I have a lot of the same problems.

And my mom, well,
I'm supposing
she did her best.

It all looks different,
looking back.

But I had to get out
on my own.
I had to be a man.

That's what I wanted to do:
really get free,
live my life.

But then,
I have to wonder,
did I really have the brains to do it?

You never know
if you have the brains,
I guess.

I'm just going to be happy with where I am.

I've heard stories of other people,
some are great successes.
And some, well,…

They're probably
out on their own prairies
thinking about what a great life they had.

Can't live them all, I guess.

Running Away

Order of creation: Frank Skillman, bass/guitar, David Graves, keyboards/sound, Michael Hurwitz, drums/percussion , Jack Perron, synthesizer, Seanchan Owen, vocals/words, John Girton, electric violin - Art by Frank

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----------
I was driving through the country when I saw an old coal miner's 
shack on a dirt road.

As I was walking toward it I could see the waves in the wood through 
the window that had never had glass in it. I couldn't see the 
chilling wind, though, that had blown in night after night.

The rustic fire place imbedded with interesting stones which the 
coal miner must have found and carried home. I didn't see the many 
times the fire had not been lit for want of food.

The busted frame supporting the skeleton of bedspring which lay under 
the faded picture of Madonna pasted on the wall kept me from seeing 
the birth that took both the mother and the child.

When I got home I put all my pictures from my iPhone onto the internet. 
What do you see?
----------

Coal Miner's Shack

The Intellectual Monarchs (IM) group came together in 1995 over ideas about combining music with a philosophical, spoken base. At first improvisational, then later cinematic, the end result would depict life’s intellectually dispassionate yet fervidly disruptive (even comic) events in music and animation. Crafting words that captured his humanistic tugs lie at the heart of Seanchan Owen’s poetry which kept the group together via the web. Crafting cinematic sound evolved via the talents of musicians David Graves, Frank Skillman, John Girton, Michael Hurwitz, Billy Dunaway, David Hemphill, Rich Simon, and Jack Perron, who formed the crust of the post-2005 IM. Over the years, IM has combined musical styles: improvisational jazz, rock, fusion, pop, country, and classical to establish a growing body of cinematic sound and the animated, spoken word. 
Art by Frank Skillman.
Words/videos by Seanchan Owen.
Sound mastering by Michael Hurwitz.
Web work by Jack Perron

Running Away

Intellectual Monarchs

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