Wounds of Death

 

Her death reopened 

My wounds of displacement 

We’ll never speak again

There can be no replacement 

For good or for bad

the ones that had made you

At their hands you had suffered 

And that pain it had shaped you

Now I lie in dark rooms

With a lump in my throat 

Harder to swallow

Harder to cope

And though it makes little sense 

I feel compelled to hide this pain

To continue to mourn someone 

Full of guilt and full of shame 

I long for the windy nights

You lie in hospice care

I was afraid and alone

But part of you was still there

I’m left with an urge 

To visit your grave

It’s a day’s drive away

I’ll get back there some day 

There’s a piece

There’s a piece of me

In that sky

Wide open, pale blue

Formations of water molecules 

Hanging over you

There’s a piece of my spirit

Suspended there

Trapped between

Everything and nowhere 

        

There’s a piece of you in me

The thing that made me be

Degrading increasingly 

By degrees

There's some peace in me

Waiting for you

To encircle, envelope and encourage 

Like I could never do

Like I always wanted to

There’s some peace somewhere on earth

A small patch of turf

Next to your son

Steps from bamboo clanging 

And swaying in the sun

There’s a piece of me

Back there

A place painful to gaze into

But I am strong enough to care

I will clean your stone

When I visit you there

Static Sound Décor

Today I've released a new album called Static Sound Décor. A collection of songs I like to think of as rhythmic drone. On Static Sound Décor I consciously set out to explore the rhythmic drone ideas that had been at the heart of my 2020 release Experiments in Relaxation. In this instance I tried to keep a rhythmic center while the original motif spun off new permutations that were melodically related. I didn’t shoot for songs structures so much as air architecture; a space carved out that would hover in time that the listener could inhabit for a moment. The goal for these though is not necessarily relaxation or escapist by design so much as my past efforts. The goal here was more therapeutic and pretty much just for my own enjoyment in the act of creation. I've released this digitally on my Bandcamp and all streaming services, but also on CD. The CD version contains a couple of bonus tracks that will not be released digitally. I've also made a video for the first track:

Echoes & Endings

On May 6th, 2022 I'll be releasing a mixtape via my bandcamp site I'm calling Echoes & Endings. It’s a mix of unreleased material ranging from 1997 through 2007 with one song that was finished this year. The material ranges from my typical electro-acoustic instrumentals to earnest indie pop to ambient noise. I see it as an historical document and also as an examination of the duality of Hifi Envelope as a project with one foot in firmly in the esoteric experimentation and another deeply rooted in the pop tradition. 

Visit my bandcamp for more for more information.  

 

Or least of all, you

 

Of course there are no comments

No reactions good or bad

To the musings of the nearly talented

Shrouded in disdain

Longing for cold days

In the back alleys of sunny places

From decades long ago spent

In confusion and ecstatic joy

Only you didn’t know it yet

It wasn’t clear until

The illusion faded

Like now

Unable to parse out

Happiness from sadness

Need from want

But when the echoes

Become distorted remnants 

Of the strong signal

Surging through you now

You’ll recognize 

All of the beauty that was 

There in your grasp

In every breath

And sigh great fat tears

Of remorse 

Like now

Words and picture by BCFL

Light Lines

 

Ableist notions and excuses

Poetry distracted me from my studies

Guitars distracted me from poetry

Drums distracted me from guitars

Fatherhood distracted me from drums

Women and drugs distracted me from all of it

She distracted me from me

I distracted no one

And when I was finally alone

I was no longer distracted

Words and picture by BCFL