1. |
Big and Small
03:26
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Big and small want to be together
It could only happen out of doors
Only a meeting on the move
Circumnavigate
Only a meeting on the move
By circumstance
The necessary trips for business
Says small
The rare visit to distant family
Says big
Seeing each other in the spaces
That don’t exist
Like the security line up
At an airport
Waiting for a train underground
At a wrong turn
Like a folded
Map of the world
Temporary permanent
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2. |
43 Years
04:24
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I didn't see my wife for 43 years
We were each married to two different people
One in our minds one over the sea
Watching the others
Being together
I make up stories (of things we do)
I make up stories (together)
I send money to my wife
Write to her that I am fine, I am fine
I don't tell her about
I don't tell her about the walks in the park we have together
I don't tell her about our fat little children
I don't tell her about the midnight swims in the ocean
I don't tell her about the parties we throw for our friends
My shadow, alone, falls into the water
These sentences fall out of my heart
They miss the page, you miss your part
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3. |
Legacy
04:29
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North from California
Eastward from the sea
Labour from the orient
Riches that they seek
Purchasing a promise
With weathered broken bones
Told to look elsewhere to build their homes
40 years thereafter
Humiliation day
Footsteps of their fathers
No fee would let them take
Opportunistic pressures
Severing sacred bonds
Resilience had nurtured
Again the West had wronged
And through the night on tracks of steel
Containers rolling west
Travel over graves of men
The granite laid to rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts
Payed to pave the colony
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea
Oh for just one time
To complete the Northwest Passage
With glowing hearts they brought you to these golden plated hills
In your bag supplied
Dynamite and one last message
To send to all your family over the sea
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4. |
Technicolour Education
03:14
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American dreamers
Eating TV dinners
Those days rags to riches
Could be at your fingers
Mama wears her apron
Pops comes home for dinner
One day we will be there
American dreamers
Technicolour promise prosperity
Land of colour austerity
Week day evenings
Sit by the TV
Us mouthing all the words
Repeating what we heard
Put us inside the projection
Technicolour education
Exotic scene
Glued to the screen
English lesson
Childhood vision
Imported noise
Domestic poise
Technicolour education
Technicolour education
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5. |
Ghosts
04:13
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Ghosts inside of other ghosts
The soul of the town packed up and gone
Taking with it the memories
Now stored in basement photo albums
Out of place, buried unmarked graves
Washed away as the river rises
Imagine bustle in the streets
That once were paved with riches of mountains
You may leave us, we’ve been through worse
We will be fine, we will be fine
You know, we see ghosts, she told us
The day after he had died
She phoned to let us know
He’d come to her at night
To say goodbye
It’d come to be his time
After he had died
She comes to watch him as he sleeps
Waiting for us, while we wade through our dreams
We politely ask them please to leave
We gently, gently
You may leave us, we’ve been through worse
We will be fine, we will be fine
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6. |
Blue Gold Green and Red
04:21
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You are mine, I belong to you
Now is the time, get to know you
Through your letters, through your letters
Blue pen, blue paper,
Blue sky airmail
You are mine, I belong to you
Put a coin, in the mouth
Of the matchmaker
They say that we must
Gold gold promise
Gold gifts gold mountains
You are mine, I belong to you
Now I go outside, be part of the view
You are mine, I belong to you
Won't be told to hide, now that I have you
You are mine now and I belong to you
Once you leave me will I think of you
Green freedom, green ocean, green local jade
He is mine only in my memory
Too poor too shy but would always wait for me
Red lips, red regret, red the colour of my children's blood
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7. |
Bedroom Archaeology
03:44
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Will you let me bore you with details squeezed out of memories
Rain on the wooden stairs, crusty pear tree
Haunted basement microwaves
Big meals around big tables
Arms passing aunts reminding
Chopsticks shoveling
Home for lunch, walk to the park, robbery, piano lesson
Things shrink as we get old
Haircuts on the balcony
Weekend trips to the old house
We learn about you in the process of bedroom archaeology
And all the things you said, all the things you did, all the things you thought
All the things you read, all the things you hid, all the things you brought
All the things you took, all the things you cooked, all the things you loved
Learning about you
Bedroom Archaeology
Letters about money
Letters about what the kids were doing
Letters I couldn’t even read
They were written in Chinese
Sixty year old letters
Illegible to me
And to realize all this
Things I might have never known
And how much of myself will be lost to my children’s grandchildren
Will they even know my name
And all the things I said, all the things I did, all the things I thought
All the things I read, all the things I hid, all the things I brought
All the things I took, all the things I cooked, all the things I loved
And the kids say we don’t know what we don’t know
We don’t know who we don’t know
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8. |
Letters from a Child
04:17
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You were a sacrifice to us
The most familiar stranger
Had no practice saying the word daddy
It stuck in my throat when I tried
Thirteen years you were like a treat
A holiday that came to me
Airplanes take daddies away
All those airplanes filled
All those sad little girls
Writing letters
Letters from a child
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9. |
Vessel
04:37
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Me to you to we to you to us
Look inward
We're complicit
Determine us
Determination
Togetherness
Or separation
A token of future a token of the past
The myth of the gap, the parallax
We want to belong
Taught to follow along
Recovering our
Subjectivity
To us to you to here to now this past future is yours is ours
Look outward
Revisit
Emptyness nothingness
Be a vessel for this
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10. |
Everything and Nothing
03:08
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Lyrics by Anahita Jamali Rad
A landscape sitting out of place
Makes the past yet again
Appears as water
Sifts through space
Fills and empties
And I feel
Here or there
Read or written
Outside or inside
Self or other
Full or empty
Myth or memory
Real or nothing
Despite or because
The way language
Shapes our movements
Inscribes onto us this dislocation
They say it's history
Or a temporality
Textures of feeling leave you or I
Here and there
Read and written
Outside and inside
Self and other
Full and empty
Myth and memory
Real and belonging
Everything and nothing
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Only A Visitor Vancouver, British Columbia
Only A Visitor is art pop from Vancouver, BC, Coast Salish Territory. Visit us at onlyavisitor.com
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