Sense of Scenery: Graphic Horror

‘Like Glass’

　

There are those nights of great rain

In some grand city

A rain that distorts time

For it’s impossible to be perfect in the rain

No matter who you are

And this bothers some folk,

Though they won’t know how to express it

Brave grins

They cringe

This city

A city you can never leave for you’re lost in it

Swallowed in the delusional neon stream

Great networks that whir

This spun yarn, unravelled in time

It reveals grand-city secrets if you place the hand

And the words rise like brands in skin

But these answers are riddled; encoded with calypso and marble

We are born together, and if you were to try and speak it to another

They just wouldn’t really understand

It’s like glass

These black shimmering pools,

They dance with life and light

You break with the eternal struggle:

Am I a completely emotionless fuckhead?

This deranged pursuit of satisfaction

The guilt pasted on the faces of numb patrons

Sheltering one another with each other’s own unique illusion

Unequivocally charmed by the kiss of python mother

Hacked to ecstatic pieces by the thunder of drunk father

We all embrace in the memory

And there we hang in stop-motion

Destined to repeat this dance again, and again, and again

To this exit of the end of the night

To the hard cacophonies of rain

These gargoyles of New York City

To brave the amber light, there are tilts to the driven water

To fall hard on the heads of men

Who stare drunk to the glass reflection of themselves

In these black eyes; collections of gravity

To stare directly back at oneself

Those behind you chase taxis to oblivion

For all you know, they’re off to another world

you vomit to the earth

And in this moment your reflection is shattered

Release, release, release;

all is once again

A blur

　

SD

06/04/11

 

 

   

‘Totems of the Seven Shrinking Worlds’

　

To be of seven is a window, clean

In the glass you can look right through

Out, inside the window of glean

Upon the glass a hue

And there wherewith you on winter days

The cold outside cures the gleam askew

The world, it grows; the wind, it blows

Your mind in flux and cues

To be of seven is the shadow cast upon the dead cement

As black as drains, in tunnel veins

Down the spout we’re sent

And nothing is but suffering inside the hearts of men

You hear the day in such a way

That nothing said is meant

The adult, it roams in moody drones

These giants of their own slurred realm

Tugs gravity and polar streams through thoughts they desperately drown

And Spring arrives in sequenced tides

In waves much like a dream

Your mother might take your hand, we walk

Through the dangers of the street

The houses are bone and the building’s, meat

The system connects with you

Where everything is shadow-cast

Under skies, this mysterious blue 

Something’s are for trafficking

Something’s are not for your eyes

Your mother’s hand, the warmth of Gods

The honey of the sacred hives

This language of the night topples upon

Your bed, it shrinks, it constrains

And everything will become less real,

Yet somehow it remains

And much like waves, seasons and tides

Upon it, the edge of knife

But the tombs of drains and tunnel veins

Will haunt you for the rest of your life

　

-SD, 4/15/11

 

 

I've enabled Space Oddity (The Nathan Adler Mix) to be downloaded for free from Bandcamp and Soundcloud.  Soundcloud is strictly in WAV format, and from Bandcamp you can download it in several different formats.

Here are the links, enjoy:

Bandcamp:

Soundcloud:

Space Oddity (The Nathan Adler Mix) by Sense of Scenery

My pet project is nearly finished.

I'll be making it available for download, which I'll be sure to post when it's done.

I've uploaded 'Paradisciousis' in the player above, and I'll probably finally get around to adding all the lyrics to the catalogue of 'The Disaster of Imagination' at some point soon. 

(Yes, I am that lazy.)

S.

The concept of suicide made a subtle, yet continuous appearance on U2's 1993 album, 'Zooropa'. I'd like to think of the whole concept surrounding 'Achtung Baby' and 'Zooropa' or more specifically, 'Zoo TV', as a kind of sinister story unfolding. This unfolding story has some sort of meeting between the highly poisonous, psychological connection of technology to flesh/mind, and the potentially deadly or constructive consequence of such. Be it for good or evil, I also noted a kind of 'window into the future', beneath the works, but then again, who isn't trying to seeing into some sort of crystal ball of their own construction? Well, I don't know? Perhaps some don't give much of a shit. Bully for them.

Okay, so as it turns out, we'll 'likely' be releasing the New Order cover within the scheme of the new EP, given that it seems to fit nicely, and it's good enough to merit a release in that regard. The new songs are coming together nicely, and at the risk of sounding cliche (gasp!), they're likely the best thing I've done thus far, objectively speaking. Tentatively titled, the 'Green Languages', EP, 3 songs down, 3 to go?

Explosively yours,

Sean.

 

 

 

 

As a rule, I believe most covers are rubbish.  I've grown tired of hearing some band completely butcher something that was perfect in the first place.  So if we DO do this, well, I have some big-time work to do.  I never would have thought I would be deconstructing this song down to its basic elements and rebuilding it from the ground up. I had a fascination with this song about 10 years ago, and here I am, once again, mesmerized by it. I'm studying this particular "Perfecto" remix, for it emphasizes the bass line better than the original (which is my central focus, for it's fantastic), though it's about as late '80's/early '90's Dance as you can get. Imagine that ripped out of it, and more guttural, *boomy, bigger, and perhaps darker . The video quality isn't all that great, but the video itself is fantastic (a more quality version.) I think the opulent aspect could have been taken one step further, in exaggeration: in colour, still shots of un-touched meals, cutlery, many angles of statues, exotic knick-knacks and immaculate gardens. We'll follow many rich fucks, throughout the drama, but there would be much more in the way of vacancy, or "empty-ness." The last scene would have been a woman who has committed suicide in her massive bath, rather than a woman crying. If I had the money, it would be filmed next week.  All that bullshit set aside, how am I going to do this is probably something I should spend more time on envisioning.

- sd.

‘Frozen Music’

　

It was an aging midday when I entered my building

And there I began to notice the floor

Upon it were textiles, patchworks, and dreams

A million miles from their origins, lost in the encoded mathematics of history

Upon dark ochre walls in dim candle lights,

I could see the wall paints: these painted layers brittle, they're now spider-web flakes

Chamber violin

Chamber cello 

This inevitable break-up of surfaces and its reality

Fluttering away like everything else; off into the void of vacuums

Subject to laws and corrosions

Completely mocking my philosophies and poetry:

Anything I try to rationalize; to safely categorize

Her tiny, cold hands, her hot, impatient breath

With its total, systematic, ever-constant, slow disintegration of everything I know and love

I’m shocked at the complexity of this enormous puzzle of lost information

It’s as meaningless as ghosts, it says

I’m still trying to come to terms with the crumbling of everything

These 659’s, the 1530’s, the 1845’s, the 1937’s, the 2010’s…

 

I couldn’t take the elevator, for it was flooded

A man in a long grey coat, and blood-red cap, stood waiting

He told me that Eastern elevators are bigger and flooded much more often

I was hypnotised by the rushing waters flowing out of its locked, heavy door

Walking, this building is large and wide

Many rooms lead to nothing more than vacant, immense concrete spaces

Open expanses and massive cracked pillars

We are not Rome, but rather a cheaper imitation; many fickle imaginations

All have dreams of primeval powers, these visions, these alchemic emotions cling

Sometimes I’m surrounded by many earthy-brown greens like in swamp or forgotten bog

Sometimes I’m surrounded by the suggestion of darker blues: a haunted iridescence on angles,

Or a slight suggestion of intense emotional undergrowth; to travel deep, deep enough to see these dark blues

 

Hallways remain a dried-blood red

These capillaries, these caves of passage and travel

I come to a dry elevator

The elevator takes me down with in a slow-motion, cruel tendency

Every cog-work, corroded in age

Every link or gear, rusted with abuse

We descend down, down, down

Open doors, past more and more rooms that I fear to investigate

We are now aware of an urgency to leave

The whole structure is ready to collapse

I reach the basement, and I get the feeling that I know it well

An open broken passage I can see on my left

There stands a girl who says nothing

She may wear white or red wool

In a plain dress, she has much more to offer than visual appearances

She doesn’t speak, but I know exactly what she means

I exit the elevator and take her urgent hand

She leads the way along the sides of passage and we’re outside

I note her curled, young, strawberry-blond hair that bounces in the movement

She doesn’t turn around again and we’re navigating debris/wreckage: safe

 

sd-08/22/10 

 

 

 

‘The Deserving Right of Anyone’

　

I was once a baby boy

And everything was brand new

Does splay strands for mother spider

All drenched within the dew

Where a grace would come before me

In mother’s protective arms

And warmth would hold me in her

All safe from any harm

There in eternal micro seconds

A passing in these dreams

Shores broken for their passage

A delicate newborn cream

And I was once this baby boy

The joy within a pair

The gift bestowed upon them

Adrift upon the air

With lines that connect formations

In patterns in the sand

In rings that spiral centre

A new member of the clan

And no matter who you are is wrong

And you can be what you are

There is absolutely no wrong answer

There is absolutely nothing to fear

You are this peaceful shelter

You, our golden dawn

Life would have no meaning

Without the come and gone

As babies grow their wonder

Through honeycombs and glue

A shell of wax behind them

All broken and askew

This growth gives names to monsters

This growth is now an art

To navigate the elbows

Of our drifting limbs to part

Like fractals multiplying in membranes

A rigor for the cue

To learn your beautiful language

To saturate within the hue

Where ends begin and end

I’ve spent a life here thus far

But I hope to never forget

What we really are

I was once a delicate baby boy

My mother’s brown, curly hair

The scent upon my father’s blue shirt

I was once never even there

 

 

‘Through the Green/*/Red Light’

　

And you knew there would be no return

To the comfort of the home sweet home, cracked window breeze

And you knew there would be no coming back

To the uniformed vistas of endless opportunities

Within and without your skin

Lays heavy upon mind

Everything is vanilla

Everything is wine

Relations have a unique method of destruction

For what has integrated itself into molecular convolutions

Such tiny structures like the skeletal woodwork of newborn chickens

I am surely in awe to admire

The mouth is always dry in this virgin dissemblance

I hope to never try to control too much of my cowardice

And then the floor drops out

And you’re suspended, naked, pronounced and called upon

For a few moments, there you hover, entranced

Everything is alive

Everything quivers at undeniable speeds

I’m working my way within the outskirts of you

But I can’t promise a sequence of trespass

For there are no visions to calculate

The great mysteries of you

The foot steps on pavement

In the direction of my greed

The absolute power of you

I’m found out

The heel clicks, onward rhythmic moon

From behind the clouds

In the side view reflection

You made your complete impression

Enough to leave a mark

And as I wipe the blood from my brow

I shake in the face of your love

Here is the indescribable power of this moment

You shake in the aftermath of whatever briefly recognized you

 

 

‘Disfigurines’ (First Draft)

　

It’s a stylish hell for Jezebel

Where everything always blooms in light

Frosted frames for your dirty face

Behind closet doors and vaulted wombs of pride

What do you want to say?

What do need from me?

What do you want me to say?

Is this enough for you?

Disfigured for life

It’s thirteen bells where the children pray

You’re ashamed, you should be ashamed

Close the good book on the black machine

It burns the elegance from beneath the eyes of hate

What do you want to say?

What do need from me?

What do you want me to say?

Is this enough for you?

Disfigured for life...

You don’t have the right

To paint me with your pain

 

 

 

‘Plexiglas’ (First Draft)

　

Where the key to the lock

Would evolve to the latch

C’mon

Here is your end

(You’re the only one)

With the fear in your eyes

Sent alarms through the night

C’mon

Here is your end

(You’re the only one)

Now, I’m not the same

And I know you’re not ashamed

But, c’mon

Here is your end

(You’re the only one)

And I know I say these words

But there’s lie between the tones

C’mon

You’re the only one

This is as cruel as the sun

As we light up the past

As she parts her soft lips

The bled divisions of the sand

This is as cruel as the sun

That flows upon her skin

In illuminated waves

Bring me back to life

Where the teeth of the key

Would engrave itself to me

C’mon

Here is your end

(You’re the only one)

On the arc, on the curve

In these fragments of

crystalline rinds

C’mon

Here is your end

(You’re the only one)

I am the whore, I’m the vain

You are the mindless driving rain

C’mon

Here is your end

(You’re the only one)

Against the glass and the glands

In through doors, and out of holes

C’mon

You’re the only one

 

sd/07-08/010

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

 

　

 

 

 

　

 

 

Yes, I have been listening to a lot of Diana Ross.  I love the sound of that old drum/room sound.  You see, they would record the drums and whole rhythm section as one complete entity, and not independent from each other.  I feel as though the two were felt to be unconsciously united, and naturally, they were treated as one.  Instead of 20+ tiny seperate, specialty mics, you would probably have 3 or 4 room mics giving that flavour of a natural, more human room sound.  I would suppose you add a little reverb to the drums, and although you have a subdued impression of the drummer, it would sound as though the drums were fitted to the bass, which I assume to be of the stand-up variety.  You combine that with a piano, and you have a fully formed rhythm section, plugging into that 'wood' sound.  Where is that 'Be My Little Baby' connection, where one would instantanously feel a connection with the music, envoking a true feeling of love-loss or making you want to fall in love the instant you heard those words, across the chambers and residual heat in some darkened twilight on a magical summer's night?  I would love to meld the two sounds to meet in the middle somehow.  But after-all, you can never reproduce history; and even if you try, you're just simply counterfeiting something sacred; trying to suck out the honey of something that isn't yours and never was.  Therein lies the boundry of inspiration and parasitic theft.  Modern drummers have that harder hitting crutch, whereas the melody of simple pop song dynamics treated the drums in the full spectrum as united with the bass and piano, instead of one being the strict backbone of another. 

Sean.

 

 

‘All Grown Up’

　

House plays Silent Night on his piano in the low light

On some vacant winter night in the antiquity of meditation

I sail through the visions of a familiar face

Of one that I dream and I now know is my only salvation

There wields a great open page

Upon staffs of misery and twisted bars become self-medication

And

Revolving doors of voyeuristic lust; peering through the keyholes

Into rooms of enchanted ideal and comic book tits piercing fine thin leathers

Such as a child

There’s magic in the pornography of silk wet dreams

And

Hidden messages

House continues to play Silent Night on his heavy, black piano

Under weighted keys of wood and cream

Smoke issues just under the surface of the snow

Milky faces and hard worn skins of family and future lovers

Clad in the hands of God and lacquered warm woods

A wool coat scented with her perfume

Of the girl you have yet to know

And she’ll give the gift of life meaning in ways of no clustered chord; of no barbed note

Your infantile head would swoon like a drug

And upon her warm cheek you would kiss

And you’d likely grow up for once

 

 

‘The Paraphernalia of Loyalty’

　

So you finally see the idiotic loyalty of trying to sustain your former lives

And it’s the salesman giving you the handshake for your return investment

And it’s the watch you get after 50 years of service with its ups and downs

Like embryonic jars and moulded statues of clay

Like the dust that settles in the 4^th dimension of a room

Such is the netherworld of the fly

You can spend a lifetime filling up this museum hall

Little by little the echoes and reverberations change pitch and tone

You run your hand across the hardened surface of a memory

In the ritualism of moans and murmur

The formaldehyde of rhyme and reason

Such observations to keep one from looking skyward

And everything in here gave to you and took from you

For what you mistook bronze for gold

In every certainty of youth begat the shape of old

In all your hopes to close relationships in a fools sentiment

You want nothing more than the eternal infection of wounds

SD　

 

 

‘Archaic Surfaces’

May 14, 2010

　

There was an incident with a massive levitating python at some point, but I don’t remember the intricate details or environment. All that remains is a vision of this giant creature all sprawled out and rigid, curing, as if undergoing fossilization. It was terrifying at the time. Snakes have wondrous heads, especially the larger ones. They seem to command respect. Their design is exquisitely perfect for their means, as they perfectly unite their essence with their specific territory. Weighing hundreds of pounds, they wield their bulk in divine symmetry with the foliage, as mocked, flesh-like limbs, curled around the dark undercurrent of the jungles and mysticism. Too often their secretive, mysterious behaviour has been grossly misinterpreted as evil, likely since the dawn of the sub-conscious human mind. For all of our myths and legends regarding this amazing creature, that in itself says something grand, at least to us and us alone.

From there the next thing I remember is worthy of writing down, cause it was riddled with a hysterical sense in my heart; perhaps it was a feeling of momentary, lunatic behaviour.

I find myself crawling into dark pits not unlike mining pits. Deeper and deeper I descend, with various companions, though I didn’t remember inviting anyone along. I come across at least a dozen or so pools of crude motor oil at the bottom. I navigate around them with a single companion that I disregard, and stare into one at the edge. I’m given the notion now that I’m an oracle of some sort. I want to see the future in the surface of the oil. (I’m taking a wild guess here that I’m conjuring a metamorphosis of the recent oil spill off the coast of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico) So I crouch down and stare into the swirling rainbows of the Earth’s distant past. Movements dance around like the gaseous clouds of Jupiter. Instead of seeing the future of humanity, I receive a powerful feeling that someone is trying to curse me. Someone I knew/know? I’m not sure. But I remember telling my un-invited companion that I should probably kill whoever tries a curse on me. Is it a type of self preservation making itself known here? Is that the future of humanity? I can’t say. Any prophecy is generally useless, because it has no certainty embraced in any standard. It’s purely blind faith. Any recent doomsday-like prophecy in the media, I can’t help but laugh at, considering how long we’ve been spooking one another with goofy prediction/visions of a bleak future. That’s like saying that “someday, something bad will happen…” Oh, really?!

　

‘The Murder’

May 17, 2010

　

I’m at a deep-woods shack made out of spare, mismatched pieces of scrap lumber. The building itself is an eyesore, cluttered inside and out with garbage and various hoarding, but the forest is massive and beautiful, bathed in summer sunlight. The smell of cedar and vegetation is unique to these majestic trees. I’m just outside the door of the shack when a giant murder of crows fly overhead. They come in waves and take up residence in the trees in the immediate area. One after the other, the dominant members of the fleet have their hierarchy, as they segregate themselves slightly from the rest of the group. They’re the leaders of the pack. The others, in a chain of command, stay close behind, like members of a vast social club. They chatter and squawk among themselves. In the moment, I’m reminded of the alien nature of the human, in a sense that we may seem so different from every other species, yet at the same time we aren’t but constantly feel as such. Sometimes our insecurity is uniquely present, but at other times, we are juxtaposed with an arrogant over-confidence, with our need to dominate the surface of the planet, ourselves, everything. Is that due to our insecurity of time and place? Will that always be? Has it always been? Probably not. The deeper we hide inside concrete environments of light and disillusion, the more terrified we become, it seems. Should we revert into the past and live in ancient ways, once again? Ha, ha, no, I don’t think so. Do I have any viable suggestions? Nope. You can never go home, I suppose. Can you smell the blood of defeat and sacrifice in our past. All that pain to error, error and error into successfully reaching plateaus, out of the plains, and out of the caves. Our fellow animals that scavenge around us, and much like the crow, they offer no consoling warmth or sympathy; the black eyed, voyeuristic beads of the silent witness. It’s no wonder to me that people consider/considered these birds to be Gods.

Suddenly it’s night, but the forest is illuminated. A skyscraper sized cedar tree is centre in my attention. I’m in awe of its presence. It’s almost other worldly. I have to crouch to my knees, because I can’t understand what I’m seeing. The tree has been hollowed out by a team of people at some past point. Inside is a smaller tree, though no less impressive in size, as it’s hung from ropes inside its skeleton, as a kind of demented pendulum. Fashioned bells of small trees are tied together at the very top of whole structure. A rope lay before me that I yank on and it sends the tree into a spasm of movement that I have a hard time trying to explain. The sound it makes is deafening and is obviously a momentous attempt to communicate with some sort of higher power, whether that be with ourselves or the un-communicative surroundings that have always just silently watched us for as long as we’ve been here. The creation of God: A deep sense of loneliness. How could it not have been any other way?



SD

 

‘Lionesses Caveat’

 

I find myself standing outside in the back parking lot of my work. It’s dark, and it’s autumn. I’ve been drawn there by the noise of hillbillies in giant, rebuilt cars with V-8 engines. They race around the parking lot and make smoke with their tires. They take runs at a ten foot fence and are somehow propelled over it. Sometimes they make it, other times they don’t. I’m not sure if more people join me as a spectator, but I feel presences beside me. Two hillbillies in an flat orange (which reminds me of decay) monster with some sort of black non-sense words scrawled on the sides take a run at the fence and falls short in a slow motion crash. In the cabin of the car, as they spin upside down in a mess of glass and metal, I can tell they’re laughing but embarrassed. A ‘voice’ tells me that their father’s never paid attention to them. The voice says that this oversight is a poison in men. It undermined their potential, keeping them forever locked in a fight with themselves to rise to standards that will never be fulfilled, because there’s no-one around to validate them. I say that was years ago. The voice says it doesn’t matter. If they’re not embraced by their father’s in youth, it would take a most adaptive search in intelligence to accept the absence of validation. So it’s about moving on, I say. It’s always about moving out from the centre, the voice says. More cars start to show up, racing around in angry chaos. The parking lot smells like gasoline and burning rubber. Among the noise, to my left, a lion and her cub appear. They gravitate towards me, but the mother is extremely cautious. I don’t question why. I assume she’s desperate. I try to lure them closer, as if to say, I’m trustworthy.

The police start to show up and I lure them into my workplace. I appear to be alone with them now. The cub is about the size of a small kitten, and I can’t get over how miniature it appears to be. The mother is vastly larger. The mother begins to play with me as if to test me out, which is exactly what cats do. She’s rough and erratic. She scratches me up a bit and tastes my hands. She’s not entirely sure what kind of cat I am, but I think she determines that she’s safer inside this building. Faceless people start to show up and play with the cub. Every time they touch it, it becomes covered with all sorts of grease and chemicals, turning its fur from light, white/brown to soft black and a kind of multi-coloured makeup. I’ve noticed that I have done the same thing to the mother. A burning kind of panic builds up inside me, and the next few moments take on a different behaviour. I begin to try and coax them out of the building. I realize that nothing here is safe, and that by removing them from the building, I can somehow free my conscience of everything; of knowing the grand pollution of everything that occurs ’out there’. Questions are now answered instantaneously in my head. My head says, what the fuck is with the destructive element in us? A ‘voice’ says, the fear of darkness is instilled in your genes. You've spent millions of years in the dead of night, hiding in the forests. Your fancy tools of destruction bring you comfort. You may protect yourself from animals and humans at the flip of a switch. I say, take those away? You’d be nothing, again, but don’t be so judgemental. You didn’t create the machine. The machine evolves in such dimensions that its languages and applications are hard to decipher. A cause and effect could have many varied purposes. But nothing comes back once it’s gone. I finally persuade the mother to the door with extreme difficulty. She appears angry with me. She appears to understand that I’m kicking her out to fend for herself in the Great Black Uncertainty. The cub is the last to trot past me. It appears sick and weak. The more it was touched, the sicker it appeared to have become. I feel beyond angry and powerless to do anything about it. They leave and I shut the door.

A fucking scumbag/rube of a co-worker I used to work with about eight or so years ago appears at my side, but I don’t turn to regard him. He says that they’ll be dead in a couple days. He seems to be happy about this as he joyfully pops a cigarette into his mouth and laughs in that rat-fuck way he had always seemed to pronounce. I come to a tiny back room with a small black and white TV (with spurts of pink and green colour?) where my father sits and watches people in third world countries eat their own feces. He shakes his head at me and says that this is terrible. I’m in a trance-like state and it takes me a while to verbally agree, but I feel distant, like in a high of THC or Codeine. I walk out of the room but I can still see the broadcast. Over a radio in the centre of the building, a programme is playing clips of nineteen forties music. A radio show programme beings. It states that Jack Kerouac died from being exposed to too much background radiation. The host says that this is a similar death to those who have spent too many years in high altitudes like that of pilots. I can see the radio show on the little black and white TV behind me? I can see waves of background radiation in pink and green pulsing sheets of dust-like matter, jetting out into everything like weather. The host says that there are many types of radiation: as varied as the light spectrum. He says that there’s even such a thing as dark light and it’s the heaviest of radiations. He says it’s comprised clots of radiations: dense and misinterpreted particles. I become aware of the white noise scattered across the little TV screen and coming through the speakers of the radio. The host says the more distance you cover in the upper atmosphere, the faster you die. The radio host’s voice, though sounding like that of an older man, is energetic and passionate. He goes on to explain things I can’t remember. I do remember feeling that the host was a man I could trust, because he wore his emotions on his sleeve. He wasn’t a hiding man. He was urgently trying to connect the dots; and thus, to not only find others like him to communicate with, but more importantly, to diminish the fear of the vast, violent nothingness that surrounds everything that is slowly ending.

 

SD