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1. |
Elements of Mind
05:56
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What is a memory?
What is a mind?
The sensations
The perceptions
The ideas
The recollections
The reasonings
The emotions
The desires
The imaginations
And the acts of attention and of will
These appear to be, at first glance
The elements of mind
Unformed
Chaotic splatters of paint
Decades embedded in brain fiber
These tiny swatches of pain
Ttched onto the mind’s blank canvas
Once unmarked
Now molded into imperfect forms
Like raindrops on life’s camera lens
We strain to recall or is it avoid
Still
We remember
The scent of white pine
Soft earth giving underneath bare feet
Dances celebrating equinox days
The strident cry of the jay
Quiet peace holding love’s hand
Nothing
Yet everything we have
Meandering minds reflect
Discordant images in
The flickering mirrors of our lives
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2. |
Building a Memory
03:30
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(When you have a memory
You don’t retrieve something that already exists fully formed
You create something new)
I’m sorry, your memory is not available right now
Please leave your message after the tone
I remember you
I build you anew in my mind
When I picture your face I recreate it each time
I paint your smile first
The way your lips parted, lopsided
You tried to hide it
Do you remember me too?
Do you reconstruct or undo?
It’s like composing a song about me and you
And when you try to sing along
The notes are all wrong
But it feels like it’s true
(Vividness does not guarantee accuracy)
(Memory is an artist as much as it is a scientist)
Do you sing in tune, alone in your room?
Does my voice fill your ears
awakening parts of you asleep all these years
As we build each other back to life?
Neural paths we rewrite
And if we get the math just right
Will these memories grow wings?
Take flight?
(Memory is about the present as much as it is about the past)
But what is a memory?
It’s not a box with a top
And a lock I can pick or take off
It’s a new story
And once the beat drops I can’t stop
I make it up as I go
Even though it seems so real
The tiny hairs on your skin
I can feel them
My neurons replay the same flickering reel
And I view these old movies
That do nothing but prove we have history
Moving these old mysteries
My mind holds them like truth
(Vividness does not guarantee accuracy)
It’s just these brain cells
Ingrained in the stories they tell
Taking my senses on a senseless adventure
Without intention
Necessity my motherless invention
Spining yarns peddling dopamine
Necessitating intervention
Because this fix fixes nothing
(Memories are changed by the very process of reconstructing them)
Memories are changed by the very process of reconstructing them
Message complete
If you are satisfied with your message
Press pound
To erase, press 1
Message erased
Goodbye
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3. |
A Portrait of Memory
03:54
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We come around eventually
In the auburn light of a burnt out season
The absence of that one love
Compensated by overgrown lavender fields
A silver brook carved through time
Like someone knew what healing was needed
Ahead of our foolish bodies
The water is cool
Reflecting your finest moments
Gems scattered spontaneously in the hazy evening heat
Ripples running off to that obscure horizon
Where we cannot see past our conscience
Only hear an echo of all that came before
It sounds like warm ochre grass under bare feet
Her white linen dress skimming salt waters
Rose wine being decanted from fine crystal
While our minds ride
The violet breath of the universe
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4. |
Fragrant Memories
04:41
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It’s just a memory
(As a perfume doth remain
In the folds where it hath lain,
So the thought of you, remaining
Deeply folded in my brain,
Will not leave me; all things leave me;
You remain)
(Not only the learning of the scholar
But the inspiration of the poet
The genius of the painter
The heroism of the warrior
All depend upon memory
Even consciousness itself could have no existence without memory
There could be no consciousness of change
Memory, therefore,
May be said to be involved in all conscious existence
A property of every conscious being
100 billion neurons
Thousands of pathways
Hundreds of memories
But only one you
A construct
A fable
A picture of ink spilled on the table
I’d erase it if only I were able
But all I can do is bathe in that ink
Your name is all I can think
(As a perfume doth remain)
Constructs and contrasts
You’ve gone but your memory lasts
And I die a thousand neural deaths
(In the folds where it hath lain)
Brain damage in the darkest depths
(Other thoughts may come and go,
Other moments I may know
That shall waft me, in their going,
As a breath blown to and fro,
Fragrant memories; fragrant memories
Come and go
Only thoughts of you remain
In my heart where they have lain,
Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining,
A hid sweetness, in my brain
Others leave me; all things leave me;
You remain)
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5. |
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(Oh if I could go back
If I could go back
To when you were young…)
I came home from a tough school
On a spring day
Thinking life might get better
And discovered my sister’s shoe
On the roadside at the bottom of the drive
I picked it up
Walked home
Only to discover my world
Would never be the same
(I miss your small voice so much
Sometimes I think I can hear it)
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6. |
Time Isn't Real
03:45
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(The theory of relativity
Is intimately connected with
The theory of space and time)
(She found herself falling down
What seemed to be a very deep well
She had plenty of time
As she went down
It was too dark to see anything)
(Time is unreal)
We perceive time but can we
Believe time?
It’s got me contemplating on the same thing on and on perseverating
Out I climb
With nothing but these rhymes
But even then I’m only masquerading still these neural tracks are fading down the rabbit hole like vines
The tag says drink me down like wine
Bottoms up I’m feeling fine
I forget about time
I forget my own mind
Everything is future present past
I suture up these wounds so fast
But still I’m bleeding why does nothing ever last?
I guess it’s true
It might blow your mind
But I’m telling you
There is no time
(Theology never holds itself
Apart from mysticism
For any long period
And almost all mysticism
Denies the reality of time)
(But alas for poor Alice
When she got to the door
She found she had forgotten the little golden key)
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7. |
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The human mind is the only thing powerful enough
To question itself
To question the universe
How did we get here?
How comes the world to be here at all?
(How comes the world to be here at all
Instead of the non-entity that might be imagined in its place?
Apart from man
No being wonders at its own existence
When man first becomes conscious
He takes himself for granted
As something needing no explanation
But not for long
For with the rise of the first reflection
That wonder begins which is the mother of metaphysics
That the non-existence of this world
Is just as possible as its existence
The philosophic wonder thus becomes
A sad astonishment
And like the overture of Don Giovanni
Philosophy begins with a minor chord)
(The bodily organ of the mind
Is a thing of physics
That collection of matter
Which is called the brain
In it, mind and matter come together
As far as the mind is concerned
It must be admitted that no study
Of its own operations can give the least inkling
On this question
Any more than a study of the words of a telegram
Would reveal how a wire came to conduct them)
(Matter only exists by contradistinction and opposition to mind
If mind did not exist
Neither would matter)
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8. |
Dream Recursion
04:49
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(That all the material composing the content of a dream
Is somehow derived from experience
That it is reproduced or remembered in the dream
This at least may be accepted as an incontestable fact)
(All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream)
Which peculiarities though generally observed
Have hitherto defied explanation
Yet it would be wrong to assume that such a connection
Between dream content and reality
Will be easily obvious
The dreamer is therefore in the dark
As to the source which the dream has tapped)
It’s not our fault no one ever told us
Where we go when we dream or when we die
It’s all the same place
Of waiting and begging on bended knee
Have I drawn pictures or curtains this time?
No matter
I still chose wrong
I dreamed the poem back to front
And I ended with a feather undipped
Even yellow wood can die from Frost
And no meter can contain your eyes
That read the poem backwards too
What if all our stories began with the twist
And we read and read until the first page?
Until we didn’t know the characters or plot anymore?
(All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream)
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9. |
Depression is...
06:06
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Standing under a billion star sky
Yet only seeing the dark of night
I didn’t know what was wrong
My doctor asked me how I felt
My answer was
Restless, anxious, sad, hopeless, and worthless
Depression is feeling paralyzed
Depression is the eternal feeling of your heart
Being chipped away one piece at a time
In the most painful way imaginable
Depression is the loss of our ability
To find the words for our heart
Depression weighs with the gravity of Jupiter
Depression is a life eater
Depression is loss of hope
An abyss that takes hold of my true desires
Depression is a too long cluster of cloudy days
A memory that won’t go away
Being the one that folks forget
The end of the road, rough with regret
Depression is living in a box made of fear
Year after year after year
Depression is emptiness
Depression is uncertainty
Depression is a motherfucker
Depression is choosing to be alone
It is never wanting to heal,
Not the way the world wants me to
It is pills and therapy
I will never believe in
It is a life locked behind invisible bars
A permanent deferment of reality
The orphan soul with no identity beyond a poem
It is wanting to end my life
Depression is completely and utterly immobilizing
Depression is sucking the life
Out of everything and everyone you know
Because you just can’t be satisfied
Depression is a thief
It bleeds you and takes everything
Depression wears a smile one day
While it puts a noose
Around your uncle or your best friend the next
And no one wants to talk about mental
In between mass shootings
Depression is a capsizing ship in a peaceful sea
Depression is starting over again and again and again
And each time, each iteration you just compound the loneliness
You asked me to describe depression
I point to the open mouth of the cave
What if pain was a zero sum
And it was collective like ancestral memory?
We’d pass it around but it would forever be
Pain will never die
We know this
It will only be shuffled from body to body
Let me take yours
I don’t care if it hurts
I’ll treasure it, for it is from you
I’ll hold it
I’ll smooth the edges until it glides softly downstream
It won’t go away
But if we share it
It can be beautiful
Depression is
All of us
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10. |
Cut
02:02
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For the longest time
I thought meaning
Lay just beneath the skin
Not deeper inside
These scars
These tracks are a map
Of my search for life
But now when darkness hangs
Upon my horizon
I read poetry
And quietly slip into another world
Into a wonderous world of beauty and truth
Where I never have to cut myself to feel
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11. |
Safe Now
03:01
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Safe now / I tell myself
At least once
Every day / Like waking
From a dream world / I held
All the sharpest things, fast enough
To bring blood / Lost
In believing I was wrong
In remembering and keeping love / Safe
I am safe now
I tell myself
At least once a day or whenever I need / A ritual
Of burning relics to mix
With earth and watch rise
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12. |
The Weight of Empathy
04:07
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The little girl who has trouble reading faces but can hear her schoolmates laughing
The figure in the sleeping bag
Huddled near sewer vents
The bird who calls and calls
But can’t seem to find her nest
The failed mom and pop shop and the family you don’t see who lost their dream
The woman who puts on a brave face for her children, even as her own mother is dying
The boy who spends every afternoon doing theater
Because there he can be anything, even a girl
The man who reads and reads
And writes and writes
Until his pen runs dry
But at the end of the day
Must return to his non-fiction life
I love them all
I carry them like smooth stones in my pockets
They are heavy and it’s too much sometimes
But I fill my breath with each of them
And when I sing
When I sing, they are my harmony
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Iambic Beats Los Angeles, California
We have so many titles. A few of mine are: scientist, poet, writer, singer, mom. I like to think I live at the intersection of music and words and always asking questions. A goddamn lovely place to be.
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