OLD DEATH

About The Video: Directed & edited by Kyle Garrett (). Cinematography by Aaron Fagerstrom. Kyle only wrote a few weeks ago, we hit it off, and between him filming & editing on the West Coast and me filming myself (begrudgingly) here in Brooklyn, he whipped out the whole thing in like a week. He (and it) is simply great. About The Song: First, I’m joined here by Jeff Lipstein (original wrens drummer(!), Mercury Rev, Sandy Bell etc.), who played & recorded the drums on this song and others - fantastically. Old Death is, like the rest of the album (coming 2024), sort of a sequel to the meadowlands and like that one, is about time, how one chooses to spend it, what those choices cost. That means for me, the song (and album) is also about making the album itself. It’s about death, maybe obviously, but it’s really about my dumb life. And because so much of that life, over the last decade especially, lined up weirdly well to the Odyssey, it’s all sorta hung on Homer’s narrative framework (unlike say, Ulysses, in my case it’s all very non-fictional/auto-biographical). However like Ulysses, every song is written in a stream-of-consciousness mode. Or for me, really more of a stream-of-memories: that time this happened, that other-time-this-reminds-me-of happened etc. Hence, the parenthetical dating throughout the lyrics as those memories pop in&out. So basically like, unlike, like and then unlike Ulysses - ha. Lyrics: INTRO: (Invocation)... [2013:] ex-girls sing it from my mouth / (please) advise, any old crushes “Jupiter xli, help“ / (I’m) marooned on Wildwood(’s) rushes what follows: lowest points, sad-ventures, bits of my horse victories / [2010-2019] I’m stuck on witching hour work my own boys won’t know // (if the) meadow-lends itself to war / (and) wrens, (to) set cadets going [2019:] and if ten years pulling at the oar’s been / for eight carols to rowing [c. 2005:] and if easy laurels catching crowns’s how I had dumb hope / this would go [2010-2019:] (then) how damned each day I am undoing done songs “so that...“: VERSES: [Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger headline 1901]: (the) Wind Runs Sindia Aground Here [1978-1996:] as the same wind once kissed our own house’s wrap-around [2003 & 2016:] cancer bit you(/me) into halves / a fox into the rabbits [1982, 2003, 2020, 2021 & prior & future:] Old Death enters from the left / the crowd screams in approval some by knife / some asleep / botched doctoring / drowned and blood, blood, blood (witness) Oold Deatj handing out his card / (and) hearts stop as it’s handled Linotype / Roman Type in Chancery Hand read, / “run, run / if you’re able“ [1989:] while, by same winds...(I’m) back to the island that I started from BRIDGE: [2010-2019:] this song’s worked in denial [20__?:] that our young won’t soon toss the first trowel over us [2013:] 1:00am here replaying cards work to retake beaches I’ve lost Will I steer home solo by stars after Ilium / albums [when...?:] answer, “no! no! no! no! no! no! no!..not all of us.. [2019:] singing, “up! up! up! up! up! up! up! CHORUS: [2005:] first desk / first pet / first not-a-band at home [2010:] little comes quick/ (at) 46 / I quit / to the boats.. [2000:] / this hitch / this lift / (I) met Juan at Metrodome / he and I kissed / [LEAD VOC:] that night under the Perseids / oh Death / look, I’m done // [2008-2023 etc.:] Scene flips: / Fish sticks / five-foot Dimetrodon isn’t it bliss? / Oh, kids / oh, life / Ithaka! (Ιθάκη) // from said wars / to bed years / (it’s) our one gun in this fight /// NEW POST-C: [April, 8th 2014 10:10pm:] the wind whips oaks over veranda [1981:] in the same way wind kissed our old house’s wrap-around [2014:] 10:00pm here Brooklyn by stars / (&) faded laps of shuttles that lost [2003:] (the) week that mom went blacked out the whole horrors of poor Columbia // OUTRO: [July, 2010:] (this) record’s starting with regrets / (life’s) a short tour then show’s over [1964:] the stopwatch that started in years [2024:] ends in days no one moment replays / no one moment replays / and the goals have been moved anyway // [2010-2019:] to spend it all working mics more & more seems a waste [2008:] a baton-pass to kids the best way that it’s faced [2021:] and besides all the work gets erased // [1981:] I cut the proms and played Red Clay then all day (I) failed school [2013:] now I pay / and there’s more on the way... [1980’s-1990s:] default(ed) loans, neglect(ed) friends, [2002:] and never did call to say... [2023:] show me the secret way...