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Pretender

by Young Weather

/
1.
Sea Hair 02:38
I pull you like sea-hair That jails your face When you break the horizon I was busy getting lost in Strands of you drape across Perfect things, no things And I resent your occultation: Confounded by a screen, Instead of the moon
2.
Up these many steps You will find a change in clime Don't mistake the ache For a rhyme Heaven is for estates And young lovers And we are no longer Either Up these many steps You will not see the light But you might find a change Is better than a fight
3.
There was a heart inside Kicking one time, two times Grown tired of mine, I asked for yours It seemed grotesque to ask: To see through the eyes of another Without first stealing their eyes Gravity belongs to massive things And massive things are terrifying It takes so long to learn a story In love, do I hold my hand up like an arrest In love, do I press your heart, While breaking your chest Building a love incommensurate To its own circumference; Unequal to its own requirements
4.
Seem 00:40
Everything has a seem And it’s time I fall asleep. It’s time. I wake and read. It’s there. I take and eat. Everything has clothing for dreams Wherein I had better thinking Where my friends still took me drinking Where we still roamed the earth
5.
Magnificat 02:09
What dread must kings receive From your globed stomach, ripe with promise? That the future will lie with the least of these, And bear children who’ve no lust for their products How did you survive the holiness of your friends Who, no doubt, sighed relief at your trip? While you dragged your belly to David’s town, They could finally get on with suckling the law. We've no memory for this unremembered song: Lost stars to the gravity of men He's planted the ages in wombs disgraced, Where the powerful are turned to dry seed: Employees now to the winds they always just watched; Sold by the things they have always just bought.
6.
Picture-Bent 01:44
Once that was us Lithe and light haired Curfew-clipped but Hardly ever scared Once that was us Smoking on the quays Uninsurable but, Unafraid of bodies Naming the birds And not caring when They spirited away Assuming we would follow them To NY or LA Or that was never us? Clicking our eyes At the sloping glass At The green and grey While The escalators play At letting us pass
7.
Only the soil can hear it: the work of the Spirit Under filament, hearkening All parishioners to marketing. The sharp lip of the casual spade, Cut fencing of the fire God made. Hemlock-sipping, A court of trees; If you're looking for what’s lasting, Look to these.
8.
Faith walked in, fatigued, Exhausted of agency. Came to terms as if My desires were an equal party I'm a strange creature: contingent, With at least three heads to not lose.
9.
A Script 01:29
Do you have a script? I'll send you the article. Do you do well to hum along? We still say, somehow God is up, Hell is below. Do you remember anything of innocence? We try to sing, but the ash just falls on our tongues.
10.
Demigosh 01:57
You thought you were God because you knocked down what the people built You thought you were God so you spilled the blood of lambs and became a pestilence You thought you were a god but you were only what God made man
11.
The metaphor was once complete For the unseen ghost, the Paraclete Fire, fully fire: the tongues of heat No sex, no location, no proper name No sex, no location, no proper name Fire, fully fire: the helper flame All this time you were to blame Hidden under green sea and black earth Hidden under green sea and black earth Taking our homes while growing the coast No body to destroy no time to think Fire, fully fire: the unseen ghost, the Paraclete
12.
Vectors 01:04
The vectors of your body Navigating the earth I’d follow them if I could Over the red land into these Yammering, humming crowds, Of optimists and hunters All crossed in concern Tumbling down the hills I’d go in the cold Because it tolerates this failure: Makes it tolerable I cannot escape this plain land But you give it features There no mountain shoulders No infinity of water The trees are as mismatched and dry as a tangle of cables Helpless things are easiest to understand
13.
Soul to Size 01:30
By keeping You out of our material They have You where they want me And me where they want you I'm not here to ruin anything For better saints The size of my Invisible soul Is the size of my Material brain Whatever is sown imperishable Will be my planted name But my soul is tired Of colliding with its border: The water and current Of my material frame
14.
You've been here longer Endured the pavement And the tar clouds The look of a middle of a life In the middle of a brow In the middle of the Grass patch and grey bench Staring off towards the cranes Don’t look too hard At the distance Which is really the future Which is really nothing But a return To the spit-stained pavement Around the split-veined tree How much longer?
15.
This park was always a dark closure in the trees Now there's more to see And it's paralyzing When you realize Many others have loved This island into worlds And done it better than you Now I see too many things, and all of them at once What mercy it would be To remember you To remember touch What mercy it would be If you answered me I've been doing all the lifting And all the bending And all the breaking
16.
Blame 02:20
We buried our shit Too close to the river Now we point our fences At one another’s distance Balancing our breath And bills coming due No one is my neighbor, Not even myself A symmetry of years Is easy to game No one is righteous But no one is to blame
17.
I talk to the Lord like he’s one of my friends And like my friends I never get to see him Ghosts that promise to text next week Faces on my screen, but “sorry I’ll be working!”
18.
We hymn Thee from our guts From the weakest point of trust Though the light only annoys Our honesty’s employed We put no store in certainty Nor worship any coin But carol with mirth aplenty For Heaven’s great rejoin To the kings’ most eager pawing At the very clothes of the poor The King over kings is already crawling On a a dusty Nazarene floor

about

Pretender is a collection of poetry read through effects pedals. Recorded in late 2020, these poems are refracted through noise, sonic gestures, and delivered with the adornment of effects pedals typically intended for tonal material. Everything is performed live, and there was only standard EQ/dynamics post-processing (i.e. no recording software tricks...this time). The poems range in time from 2017-2020, reflecting not only this shattered past year, but the stories from years already fading into memory's fog.

Each lyric is purposefully blurred into the textures surrounding it, but an accompanying PDF is free with the album to help decipher words as needed.

"Our
 poems
 formulate
 the
 implications
 of
 ourselves, what
 we
 feel
 within
 and
 dare
 make
 real
 (or
 bring
 action
 into
 accordance with),
 our
 fears,
 our
 hopes,
 our
 most
 cherished
 terrors." - A. Lorde

"Say what you please, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing how things are. (And when you see that, there will be some things that you won’t say)." - L. Wittgenstein

credits

released January 8, 2021

Sounds and Words by Dustin Ragland

Copyright 2021 Six and One Half, Doesn't the Other?

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Young Weather Atlanta, Georgia

Young Weather is the project of Dustin Ragland & various collaborators in both studio and live settings through the years. Wrapping ambient electronic sound with a meter-hopping acoustic rhythm section - all around allusion-heavy lyricism.

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