12. Risks

If you feel you’re wasted
and you’re wasting away
Well, you might want to consider yourself no one

Found you abandoned
But now I guess that was wrong
It’s such a privilege to misstep when you’re painfully young
I haven’t been in this kind of situation in quite a while
So bear that in mind and go a little easy on me

Slow down
Is what they said
Slow down
You’re letting this all go to your head

What’s your angle?
Better to leave it alone
It’s complicated
Just avoid looking at the screen of my phone and protect your own
I’m always hunting for new material to use against and to bruise my defense
When it can’t be found I create it from scratch
Can you really blame me for that?
Oh, you can?
I take it as an attack
How did we get here?
Is it worth the trip back?

Maybe I better
Slow down
Not everything is a jab
Slow down
And you don’t need to grab at

Everything that you see that may latch on to your need for
Curling like a fetus on your living room floor.
You’re in darkness at the moment
Eventually someone’ll come and drag you out
But for now you’re just a skeleton
I know the drill but feel myself starting to crack
I write fiction and then I read it as fact
Nerve-wracked and overfeeling
Heartbroken and still reeling
I haven’t slept well in a month or so
Maybe I…
Yeah, I should probably just go.

Well,
Calm down
Think you like losing your mind
Calm down
Would you just look at the time

It’s Six months on, and that’s been more than enough.
May have needed it at first, but fucking pick yourself up.
Can’t see much of the world from the vantage point of your window

Know you Worry about the way that the public perceives you,
but trust in the statistic that they don’t even see you,
like a chain smoker talking about needing to quit
You could’ve done most everything if you just took risks


I’m wasted now so I can’t be sure,
but I think I had a good day today
Anonymity, my old friend!
It’s been so long and it’s a pleasure to have your company again

I am no one. Do you read me?
I am no one. Can you comprehend?
For once, I’m barely thinking about anything
For once, I can let the hair grow down the front of my face
I can roam wherever I want to
I can eat, sleep, drink, I can shit however I want to
Cause I am no one
It used to be the most harrowing thought
To be no one; To be all that I have got

Please don’t break me out
This is how I would want to go
Please don’t heed my shout
I’m relaxing the undertow

Risks

11. Alpha Flight

Don’t know how you trust I’ll do the right thing
I was three quarters of the way to the wrong one
Life won’t end, just see the picture in widescreen
Help this lost soul who can’t call it over and done

In your bedroom now, the tension is tightening
Far away from where I learned about days like these
You and I both know the world is a frightening place
Sometimes when you’ve got people to please

And I can’t shake this expression that seems like
I, I’m the new sucker here in town.
It’s difficult; impossible to ignore that I was thinking about your wedding gown.
But that just doesn’t feel right
Oh, it just doesn’t sound right
I’ll never tell you any of this at all

I get the feeling that the gap is widening
If I don’t do something now I’ll be alone for a long time
Can’t fathom living in a world uncrushed by
The constant pressure from the other kind


So here I filibuster.
Cause that’s all that I can muster
and it’s got a certain lustre, doesn’t it?
A near stranger in my arms
Who’s gauging if I trust her
Which I read as stifled laughter, so I flip

I never used to succumb to this
But I don’t know who her mother is
And that’s an improbable new sensation
How are we to make any real connection
If I haven’t known your face
If we’re not from the same place
It just won’t work and I’ll be left to shovel through ashes again

So now you see why I can’t do the right thing
I overthink and wind up doing the wrong one
Just bang my head until I end up finding
Another lost soul who can’t call it over and done
Or I die

Alpha Flight

Dread

8. Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?
 	
I know I didn’t say I was comin’ down
I know you didn’t know I was here in town
But bay-yay-yaby you can tell me if anyone can
Baby, can you dig your man?
He’s a righteous man
Tell me baby, Can you dig your man?

Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?

7. Mineral King

Matching paint up to apartment walls
Same shade of beige the landlord recommended
It don’t behave the way, say, blue or green would
But it’s lukewarm. And we’re lukewarm.

Deloused and friendless here in mid-north Cali
Not San Francisco, not quite Silicon Valley
It’s by the airport if you know where that is
Say ‘Oh sure. Okay. I sure do, yeah.’

Mineral King
Stay inside, avoid the dream
This is my Mineral King
Tear it down, return to scene

Isolation to maladaptation
Is it honest, are we good to go?
Startled email. One week paid vacation.
Feeling high till I was feeling low

Mineral King
Stay aligned, forget the dream
This is my Mineral King
Lay me out, return to being

When up is down
You’ve just gotta start wasting your time
That’s the only way to find out
That you’re okay losing daylight
That being coiled up
Bursting at the seams feels fine

When I am working I am somewhere
A stable boy
No heart or mind to bear

When I am focused I can tune into
The weightless, drifting, conditioned, cycled air
When I am home I write to-do lists
Tape post-its to my door

I mounted my TV last night,
Then watched it plummet to the floor
I watched it plummet to the floor

Mineral King
Close it down, ignore the dream
This is my Mineral King
The weird realization there’s no one on your team

Mineral King

6. A Funny Thing Happened To Me Today

A funny thing happened to me today
While I was standing waiting for a bus to come
I started thinking about all the things that I’ve never done
All I do anymore is look at my phone
To make it better
My mind suggests a walk home
Googled something within a matter of avenues
And I cursed the day I was ever born

But that’s just me
I make it hard on myself
Unnecessarily, or so it seems
Could it be
That I may thrive
On catastrophizing
Everything that happens in my life?

A funny thing happened to me today
While I was idling sideways in my living room
I noticed every imperfection on the wall
Every particle of dust
And I felt the bigger picture
I thought ‘How do I fix it?’
How did I not realize just how bad the problem’s got
This would all be fine
Had I been a bit stricter
Conditions correspond directly with the way I fought

But that’s just me
I find the worst in myself
Commit to it
Yeah, I get into it
Could it be
That I may thrive
On catastrophizing
Everything that happens in my life

It doesn’t matter who disagrees
I’m fucking up all the time and that’s not wrong
I’ve learned to wrangle
Never to strangle
All of the forces that aim to do me harm
It’s all a part of me
It’s instability
I can’t kill it but that doesn’t mean I’ve never tried
It always comes back
It’ll always come back
Why not invite it and let it stare back?
It’ll always stare back
Just let it take me
It’ll just take over anyway
It’ll just take over anyway
A funny thing happened to me today
Just like everyday


A Funny Thing Happened To Me Today

5. Bloodwork
 	
The bloodwork came back only to read
A slight deficiency in Vitamin D
It’s gonna take more than that to begin to convince me

Bloodwork

4. Blizzard

Yesterday I walked outside
Someone was parked at the light
In a Camaro convertible
So I walked right back inside
Opened my apartment door
Equally vexing as it was before
And I realized
This is my life

One day it’ll be over
I’ll have survived
One hundred years of ‘Tomorrow I’m gonna get it right’

Have you ever looked around
Looked yourself up and looked yourself down
And thought “Shit.”
As someone who passes himself off as effortless
You really are quite effortful and stressed
Skeptical of anything that counteracts
All assumptions that you’ve set like cataracts

Try to relax.

There’s people right here on the earth who care about you
And that makes everything harder because you will it to be so.
There’s millions of different worlds lightyears from this one
While you guard yourself from having fun
What do you think they’re doing there?
Do you even care?

Back when I lived in a midwestern state
Blizzards and blistering cold lent permission
Not to go
You can’t do much when it’s 8 below
The sun’s down early if it comes up at all
It’s understood you’re not alone

City bus lines are crowded and complicated
Laptops glow and everyone’s suntan’s faded
But in California what are you supposed to do
Besides use your own neuroticism as an excuse?
I could be cruising Route 1 or staring at the Golden Gate Bridge
But I’m bleaching all my countertops instead

There’s plenty of cities and towns here
All different and they’re beautiful
As the Redwood Forest, the Gulf Stream waters, and you
Now we commence the convincing
The staggeringly difficult part
That this all has just got to be true
True for me, too

Blizzard

3. Analysis

The last time
I was comfortable
I was stopped at this gas station in South Dakota
Breathing lightly
Breathing open air
One full day left but I didn’t really care
I was all alone
Had a steady goal
I’d found my passion
Just so happens it was waiting in the west
When I remember that
I get a wistful look
It’s half nostalgic
Half disgusted
Because it’s so textbook

Here’s this kid
He’s got big dreams
Nothing will take them away
He doesn’t mind fluorescent lights
Spending entire days inside
and I hate the way that feels
When you don’t realize that you’re naive
Till you rewind the tape and see
How that’s crushed you
That you were never quite as free as it seemed

I’m a pillar
I’ve got it all together
I punch walls sometimes
I’ve got scars on both my hands
I can’t explain that
and if people ask
I say I got them playing football in the 7th grade
Cause I don’t like the impression it gives
Nowadays when you let on that your brain is lived in

Face it, kid
You don’t have much ground to walk on
But that’ll come
Just give it time
Do you still want it?
You know you want it.
It’s what you came for
It’s what you quote-unquote live for
So put up your fists
Don’t let anyone in
They’ll trust you then
They’ll respect you then
Is it genuine?
Who cares?

By the time I finished high school
I was insufferable
By the end of freshman year
Unrecognizable

Caring too much
Oversharing to oblivion
Made sure that folks were cognizant of conditions I was living in
I still do that from time to time, but I catch it now
And justify ‘It had to be, and this is how’
It’s weird and if I dwell it really bums me out

So, in turn, I ignore it which usually winds up OK
A stain, sure, but I don’t let it fuck up my day
The deprecation knocks but it’s belated
The murmurs in my skull remind analysis is overrated

When I was a kid
Did I imagine I’d have this set of predicaments and sins?
Given the choice to begin again
I wouldn’t, here’s why
On the surface I’m a lucky guy
Got a job, I’ve got a home
Got a gym membership
But yet there’s still a couple hours
Out of every 24
I feel like

Analysis

2. Fury Mountain

Am I fury dreaming once again or is this waking life?
I can’t decipher
Need an expert
One to fortify obsessions
Or disintegrate
To assemble some semblance of plan
Let’s start it all over

Am I fury dreaming once again or is this waking life?
I can’t decipher
Need an expert
But there’s nobody around
Who would be qualified
Who would be wont to assist
In the grappling of thin air allowing this to persist

Is that right?
That’s right, right?
Could be wrong
There’s no way that it’s wrong
Until you show me the evidence
I’ll show you this mountain of doubt

Fury Mountain

A single from "The Grand Spontanean" by Telethon, out now on Halloween Records. 

http://telethonband.bandcamp.com

Succinct, The Optimist

Telethon (formerly known as Fitness) are boy friends who make rocking tunes on the topic of modern living.

Telethon

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