1. |
But Here (Instrumental)
03:43
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Sue Ann Harkey - piano
Robert Hinrix - bass, drums
Elliot Sharp - 3 strings
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2. |
But Here
03:41
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Sue Ann Harkey - piano, vocals, violin, cymbals
Robert Hinrix - bass, drums
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But Here
Past the smells of my youth
To the view of my present future
I couldn't have gone earlier
Not before the articulation
The delineation of the form of the form
The extremity, sorted them out
The filter is straining
It's exhausted now
Progress is unappreciated
One of everything, just one
It's time, it's time to go now
Now when and where direction, decision
When to articulate the articulation
Where our self-indulgance may be seen as discipline
Control, take control
Since we learned the process of our product
In our infancy, not in the midst
Of the spectacle capitol of the world
But here, but there, but here, but there
When and where all the ones who knew
That they had to leave as well
The other ones who left
Because of their extremity
They gathered n the extremity
In the converse
In the exchange of the extreme
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(This track, 'But Here' was written while I was preparing to move to New York City from Seattle in 1983. Audio Letter had been performing in Seattle for a few years by then. Back when it was a grey and sleeping port town which all the bands avoided on their west cost tours. The original Skid-Row. And we lived literally right on top of it. Our tour of New York in 1982 convinced us that that was the place to be. So I secured an apartment in the East Village to go to and rounded the tribe up for the big move. But before I left I recorded many of these tracks and finished them off in the co-op on E. 7th Street featuring access to Elliot Sharp's ragged old piano.)
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3. |
Looking Up The Avenues
02:51
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Sue Ann Harkey - acoustic guitar, vocals
Robert Hinrix - piano
Elliot Sharp - clarinet
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Looking up the Avenues
Looking up the avenues
See how it accumulates
From a distance, elongated
Faintly there they are
They disappear as you enter them
Why is it used as an excuse for everything?
Apathy, pride, extravagance, obsession, neglect
There's too much coincidence
For just mere chance
One canyonous perspective
People are all you have in the city
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(This track was written after I arrived in New York City in 1983. For everyone who has ever arrived in New York, no matter which epoch, finds The City both profane and profound. At that time half of the East Village were vacant lots and the other half were burnt out buildings. Struggle was the occupation of us all, just to survive Koch, Aids and Crack.)
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4. |
Duet
03:13
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Sue Ann Harkey - acoustic guitar
Robert Hinrix - piano
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5. |
The Homeless
05:35
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Sue Ann Harkey - bass, vocals
Robert Hinrix - piano
Bob Jenkins - guitar
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The Homeless
(An except from a piece by Art & Language.)
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6. |
Nothing is Something
03:07
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Sue Ann Harkey - piano, vocals
Robert Hinrix - bass, guitar
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Nothing is Something
Nothing is something
Something is nothing
Limited in motion and perception
To forward and backwards
Surface of the sphere
The universe in not expanding into anything?
Nothing is something
Something is nothing
But what about entropy?
The edge, the skin, the surface,
The here and there, and in and out
The one, two, and three, and maybe five and six
Segregated in terms of time
3°, 3°, 3°, microwave radio frequency 3°, 3°, 3°,
Expanding in what, in what expanding in?
Nothing is something
Something is nothing
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(This track is about Time and Space. That and Evolution, Entropy, Politics and Love were our main subject matters in our poems and essays.)
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7. |
When You Know
01:26
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Sue Ann Harkey - piano, drums
Robert Hinrix - bass
Elliot Sharp - clarinet
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8. |
Little Nitches
03:49
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Sue Ann Harkey - bass, vocals, percussion, violin
Bob Jenkins - guitar
Paul Hoskin - bass clarinet
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Little Niches
All these little niches of pride
In the face of the cliff
Justified homicide, genocide
It's not a class war it never has been
Because the classes are fighting themselves
Confined in the facade of power they exemplify
They are the threat they are controlled by
Revolutions are suppressed by former revolutionaries
Stop the sanctification of any attitude
The means and the study of making ones own space
Expansion simultaneously
Evolution = Entropy
We'll turn two people into one
And not be afraid of either one
Not afraid of either one.
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9. |
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Sue Ann Harkey - bass, vocals
Bob Jenkins - guitar
Jeff McGrath - drums
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We can only Perceive our own Perceptions
We can only perceive our own perceptions
Conclusions to what we see as the truth
Convictions to what we had already conceived
We take for granted our being alive
We have to sense the senses
The wills will willingly suffocate
Realm of reality resistance to rage
Mass reality which excludes most of reality
We have exiled our sense
(A delusion is real, the illusion within the delusion is real, only as an illusion, but the illusion within the delusion is real to the deluder.)
We can only comprehend the limited realities we exist it
Rather then the existing realities
To be real you have to work within the ordained formalities
They are victims of their own lust
Habitual efficiency, habitual inefficiency
Repetitive reactionaries
Of course its imagination
What else could it be
Intent, resent, involve, dissolve,
Consent, contempt, content, contain, remain, refrain
When and where does reality begin and end?
It is obvious that society is made up to make the individual adapt to it
Rather then society adapting to the individuals
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10. |
Raga Rif-Raf
05:30
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Sue Ann Harkey - acoustic guitar, 25¢ sitar
Robert Hinrix - guitar
Jeff McGrath - tablas
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11. |
Hermione
03:51
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Sue Ann Harkey - piano, vocals
Robert Hinrix - guitar
Fred Chalenor - bass
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Hermione
Hermione stands with her face and hands pressed against one of the big panes of glass out on the closed porch. She is humming, whimpering a little between the lines of music. Will I ever get out? Will I ever get out?. She places her body as close as she can to the rigid perimeter of her confinement. The world is barren on both sides; Hermione wished to prove this for herself. It might just be a picture, put there to trick me. as long as there is more then one side to this world....
The interface of pink cheek and icy glass. Her two fists balled up in her hair. That there's a dream rising, like the red fluid in a thermometer is almost plain, is certainly to be suspected. Look how it troubles Hermione's eyelids. See how her lips move, soundlessly? Who can believe that she is simply thinking things over? Elda's in the service room thinking. Valdimir's thinking at his desk. Hermione is being thoughts -- a confusion of words. A mix-up. But is she dreaming? The images are straight out of her life.
Hermione moves away from the glass. The strange music dims. She turns around, moving her mouth as though chewing. Elda approaches with the medicine tray...
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(This is an excerpt from a short novel titled Hermione written by Jesse Bernstein in Seattle. It was originally published in 1982 by Patio Table Press an imprint of Cityzens for Non-Linear Futures.)
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Sue Ann Harkey Seattle, Washington
Seattle - New York - London | free improvisation | prepared guitar | folktronica | weird american | indie | alternative | singer | songs | instrumentals | underground | DIY
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