Allready

I Bear This For Love

I recorded this years ago, with lousy equipment, just to get it down. I can't remember why, but my bass wasn't working, so I actually recorded bass by taping a mic to the body, and just having it resonate that way. And there was a air conditioner blowing on the mic at some parts, but for all its flaws, I have just fallen so in love with the recording, I don't think it will ever be done better. It has all the heart of it, and all the soul.
lyrics
Memories come easy, but the past never sleeps 
The earth is warm, like the vines she creeps 
Through my mind, but its not how you think 
As I write my memoirs in india ink. 

And I presume to put this all aside? 
We'll go our separate ways, like everything's alright. 

Thinking it out, if its not to be 
Dipping my pen into the black sea 
The story is sad, the story is sweet 
Her long dark curls my calligraphy. 

And I presume to put this all aside? 
We'll go our separate ways, like everything's alright. 

See her for a day 
Before she goes away again, 
It never seemed alright to me 
To watch her fade away again.

India Ink

We know that all the cells in the human body have a common ancestor, the very first cell. They are family, and they know it; they have a strength in numbers unmatched by any single cell. 

The human collective is a body of its own, though sometimes it feels like the body is asleep, like there is no unifying stream of consciousness, like we are all just isolated microbes, milling around in a primordial cultural soup. We become of one body, a single organism, when we listen, when we lose the division between ourselves. Then our conversation becomes the stream of consciousness of a new being, a being who feels all that we feel, sees all that we see. 

Written and recorded in 12 hours, pretty different style from anything I've done before.
lyrics
All the cells in your body 
Are waking up, waking up 
All the cells in your body 
Are waking up, waking up 
All the cells in your body 
Are listening, listening 
All the cells in your body 
Feel it all, feel it all. 

We are the cells in the body 
Waking up, waking up 
We are the cells in the body 
Waking up, waking up 
We are the cells in the body 
Feel it all, feel it all 
We are the cells in the body 
Listening, listening.

Listening

These Lovely Bones

As usual I sit on something I've recorded it endlessly critiquing it and planning to change it but get lazy and eventually just release it.

This one draws the myth of prometheus, to think about consciousness, the "I" in its and its many forms throughout human history, imagining a new form it might take, the unbounded "I".

Prometheus

Lyrics:

Either we are one, or not at all
Either we are one, or not at all
       I keep my distance
Either we are one, or not at all
       I keep my distance

A thousand layers, each one to hide the one below
And at the centre, the things that I don't want to know
Can't let you closer, to the things I don't want to see
I'd die to keep safe the thing that's killing me
I'd die to keep safe the thing that's killing me

But I can't fight gravity
      Can't fight gravity
Take a step, get a little closer, get a little closer
     Can't fight gravity
Take a step, get a little closer, get a little closer

Can't Fight Gravity

Great little live version of this tune played a while back with Evan Cottrell. Miss that guy.

Lyrics: 

You're walking away, I'm looking back at you
Seems I only take a step if you do
Moving forward moving back, I get afraid I'm losing track
See you through the open door, but I can't feel you any more

But I don't wanna be your moon, but I do
And I don't wanna be in this room, here with you, but I do
And I don't wanna be mad at you, I never do

Good hands, always point the way in
Good hands, turn a fire to a flame in
Good hands, hold steady the trembling heart
But whose hands am I in?

I guess I'm in my own hands now
I guess I'm in my own hands now

With evan great version

She Is Near

This is a re-release because I realized there was a problem with the original release. 

Anyhow, this is a song about the present situation we find ourselves in: in a world built out of language, on the scaffolding of the earth; in a body, that finds itself paired with a mind that seeks to narrate to it what it is, to make sense of itself and its situation; in relationship, in the position of needing to be in a way that allows others to be. The song tries to take the form of being what it calls for - it is simultaneously a story and an real and irreducible object about which many stories could be told, all of this being one such story, which I do not see as being a privileged one. What is your story, and how does it open up the world for you and for others?

Lyrics:

Begins with a need, a prayer for deliverance 
“An attempt to get out without knowing where to go”   
“It’s not a lack,” a hole to be filled in  
It is the aching “of being held fast” 

If I could “[give] back to things, their toy-like uselessness”  
Unhand the world, to the song of a child afraid of the dark 

But we’re in the game
So we play by the rules
The ones we were born to  
And we tell the truth
And we make ourselves here
In this conversation
And “we pay the price”
And live by its reason 

Now I’m falling down a well, always already
Intelligible given, the world is laid out for me
The souls that it gives us, lay hold of our bodies 
And it unburdens us, so we give ourselves over
It lets us hide, “[our] sheer visibility […]”
Our nakedness, in fullness, solidity” 
“[Clinging] fiercely […] to the threshold of future”  
Remake the world we already picture 

And if that doesn’t work for you
Here’s my indifference
“My day in the sun”
And your disappearance.  
But is this the way?
Double down on our stories
If I need it this much,
Where does that put me? 
Do I make you to be,
A prop in my play
Do I just give in to the things
You want me to say?

And now you disturb me,
Shake my foundation 
“You are my anguish, surely,
You are opaque [to me],
[And] who is this you
That resides in me?” 
The one I can’t shake, 
My alterity 

 But now while I am open
If I can stop and listen 
 “[Our] body is a being of
 two leaves” .
“Less a color or a thing, 
But the difference between” 
Where I can take my place 
Even as I bend
An enfolding doesn’t hide 
And a hiding that gives way 
 “Illuminates all flesh
 Not [just] my own” 

And if we’re all of woman born
We can find our wild state 
Un-fear of the inside of the fruit 
“First music from first voice of love 
It fills your breast with an urge 
To come to language 
Launches [you with] force”  
“Shot through with streams of song”
In the rhythm that laughs you [along]”  
“Which beats between the going out […] 
And returning” 

Because “this is how she arrives,
Vibrant, over and again”
We’re forever here
 At the beginning

Harmonies by Bronwen Olson. For complete references, sources and quotations in the song, email me: nddyck@gmail.com

Here at the Beginning ft. Bronwen Olson

Through my music I try to share the successive worlds I create and occupy which open one after another into each other.

Nathan Daniel