the four-channel audio project i did for TIMARA's summer program concert, 2015. spoken words, of a sort.

words

DESTROY ALL FRESHMEN

written on what i had to work with, a paper plate, on camp trip in the now lava-consumed Kapoho shores. this song is a call to action, and a celebration of the potential of the mundane and the on-hand, much like those paper plates, to become tools of action and change. my first song, i wrote this right after hearing about Ferguson. I was angry but also hopeful, and wanted to use music to reach back out into the world and make some kind of change. the song is still just as relevant today, in a nation still awash of systematically instituted racism, xenophobia, and queerphobia.

Cardboard Shields

also written with what i had on hand over the course of a night, in this case a cigar-box dulcimer. this song is a direct channel into the angst and fear that was stirring in my struggles with gender dysphoria and my conception of my transness in my body, my home.

Black Sheep

many bouts of late-night restlessness have left me with a plethora of chicken-scratch ramblings across sketchbook paper and weathered receipts. this song was deciphered, best i could, from one of those songs scribbled in the dark, and is about songs scribbled in the dark.

Butterfly Wings, Why I Wanted to Sing

I wanted to play through this song in the current form it has taken despite my fever and end o' the year illness, as it was the prime catharsis I needed considering i moved out today of the house that lends its setting to this song, and really had to feel and steam vent weeeoooo≥

percussivepoetry