orphan factory

If My Ribcage Had a Hinge . . .

2011-10-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on kind of a bittersweet whim. You meet someone special and it’s easy to get the misguided notion that they can save us from ourselves. Good thing she’ll never know. Amen.

I Could Be Good Again by The Orphan Factory

The Two Young Lovers Beat like a Pair of Wings

2011-09-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

Ennui coupled with a sort of peripheral dread often invades the hours and days. These are, perhaps, the illusions some of us must contend with. Last night I found an old man staring at his own image caught in a spoon at a local diner. He sat that there mesmerized as though the history of his entire life had suddenly erupted from the recess of that spoon. I left without ordering.

My penchant for walking all over Los Angeles is a kind of derelict meditation. Not too long ago I stumbled from downtown LA back to my apartment in the Valley. A 14-mile trek on a Saturday night that did little to quell the inexplicable longing that manifests like a drum beat behind all that useless sinew and bone. Sometimes it's hard to remember that I grew up in rural Idaho among rolling wheat fields and scattered pine trees.

The delicate machinations of love have become a maze and a mystery in this city. I lack any precision in this endeavor. A real sweetheart of a gal once sat in my truck and told me that I'd built a wall around myself and so, a long while after we'd become an unrecognizable distance toward each other, I wrote this for her:

The Image of The Sea

she won't listen to me,
though I beg, though I plead.
and the image of the sea
high above this crowded street
is of the water she and I were
meant to see.
i wish i could take her hand and leave.

i've burnt my candles down to the ground,
i'm not the one you need to have around.

please listen to me,
there's so little left to dream
beyond this image of the sea

and i'm drowning in this city
we can't seem to leave.

old men whisper
in this restaurant
like the leaves
from a fallen tree.

and the two young lovers
next to us seem to beat
like a pair of innocent wings.

who knew you and I
were meant for such great things?

i've burnt my candles down to the ground,
i'm not the one you need to have around.

please listen to me,
there's so little left to dream
beyond this image of the sea

and i'm drowning in this city
we can't seem to leave.

is that ash outside
or is it snow?
it's much too dark
for us to know:

i'm drowning in this image,
i'm drowning in this image,
i'm drowning in this image of the sea.

I Could Be Good Again

2011-08-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

This City of My Defeat

2011-06-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

The Fever and The Fret

2009-12-06T00:29:00.000-08:00

The somnolent haze of the early AM hours offer only fatigue and a kind of melancholic stupor. Ceilings and walls become panoramic scenes of memory and loss. Once you start counting, defeat can only be measured by regret. 'a liar and a thief' is a song I recorded in my apartment a few years ago wherein I tried to exorcise this dark (the recording can't be helped, neither can the vocal take):

a liar and a thief (2007 bedroom demo) by the orphan factory

Strangely enough, it's these lines from Keats' 'Ode To A Nightingale' that triggered the writing of the song:

"Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret . . ."

Amen.

Swan Dive

2009-11-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

I suppose we can't amend the past with an empty wish. I've spent a fair amount of time building monuments out of regret. The great Northwest poet, Richard Hugo, is a bit of a salve in the malaise of memory. Maybe, I relate more to his work because I grew up in rural Idaho a couple of hours south of the Canadian border:

"Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did... "
(from Hugo's 'Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg.')

I've tarried a bit in rather unsavory places perhaps to remedy the inscrutable ache. It's only a live sketch, but I wrote 'Swan Dive' as kind of a sad joke. If you've ever found yourself, years down the line in your life, somewhere you never imagined, sunk like a ship in a derelict sea, maybe the song will make sense:

swan dive by the orphan factory

Hugo continues:
"Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You're talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it's mined, is silver
and the girl who serves you food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall."

Amen.