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I'll be the next to go // Surely, we'll see each other soon (feat. Dean Scordilis)

from no estamos separados by Massa Nera

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about

Spoken word by Dean Scordilis (vocalist of Our Wits That Make Us Men). We can't thank them enough.
Thanks to Anthony Webster as well, for helping us arrange this song.

lyrics

A flash,
a spark in your eye
that quickly recedes from vision,
replaced with
faces half-formed
and memories half-invented,
a dream-state masquerading
as your waking life.

You live with
vague ideas
concerning
limitless potential,
‘til you’re blindsided by
the passing of time
and realize you’ve run
out of options.

And suddenly,
you’re aware of
your mortality.
Death casts a shadow
over everything you do.
The present is intangible,
infinitely divisible,
out of reach.
A flicker of light
shows us where we’re
set to wander.

...

Outside a five-story tenement, in a city where it always rains,
a car waits.
On Mabbot Street, stumbling next to children shaken in
St. Vitus’ dance, we phase in and out of personas.
A clarion call sounds from miles away, the
aural embodiment of our collective unconscious.
I hear it all from my apartment.
We used to laugh about this.

So I return to that class, the one that used to meet by the lake,
the one we swore someone had drowned in.
You were there, sitting under an old redwood (I forget what we used to call it),
scented of soap, buttons bound with salt, speaking little.
Yes, your boyfriend wove through an infinite loop,
while you quietly dreamt of westerns,
saying “Okay, I’ll be part of this world.”

There were sirens passing St. John the Apostle.
I was up the street near the Temple Beth when I heard them,
not swept up in a terrible tremor,
for in the pit of my stomach I knew.
A waltz sailed through an open window and despite everything I smiled,
because I knew you didn’t die in 4/4 time.

I remember staring at constellations, wondering where forever went.
So you told me that everything flows into everything else,
that a shout in the street might be god or a note in the orchestra,
each wave passing faintly and faintly passing through the universe.

I return to that now, in this life of limited options.
You’re so far away, reduced to a handful of traits.
I know this will never be good enough,
but even though I can’t capture your essence,
(somehow I know)

We’re not separate (x2)
Hell may be other people, but then truthfully, so is heaven.
We’re not separate (x2)
This is but your first death.
I’ll keep speaking your name.



The latter half of this song is, in part, a collection of references/allusions to various works.
-"On Mabbot Street...St. Vitus' Dance" is taken from chapter 15 of James Joyce's Ulysses, in which Leopold Bloom makes his way to Nighttown.
-"Scented of soap" is an allusion to Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses, who spends much of the novel carrying soap in his pocket.
-"Buttons bound with salt" is an allusion to the lyric "Push me back into a tree, Bind my buttons with salt" from "Sawdust and Diamonds" by Joanna Newsom.
-"Yes, your boyfriend wove through an infinite loop" is an allusion to Molly Bloom, who, in her monologue at the end of Ulysses, embodies the concept of eternal recurrence.
-"Okay, I'll be part of this world" is taken from the theatrical adaptation of No Country for Old Men.
-St. John the Apostle and the Temple Beth are located in Clark, NJ on Valley Road.
-"Not swept up in a terrible tremor" is an allusion to "And the moment I slept, I was swept up in a terrible tremor" from Joanna Newsom's "Sawdust and Diamonds."
-"Because I knew you didn't die in 4/4 time" is an ode to the composer Moondog, who swore that he was "not gonna die in 4/4 time." He made good on that promise.
-"I remember staring at constellations, wondering where forever went" is an allusion to the line "so now I choke on yesterday when I was someone and I wonder where 'forever' went and how our 'everything' came undone" from Saetia's "Venus and Baachus."
-"A shout in the street might be god or a note in the orchestra" is an allusion to chapter 2 of Ulysses, in which Stephen Dedalus observes that god is "a shout in the street."
-"Each note faintly passing..." is an allusion to James Joyce's The Dead, in which Gabriel Conroy observes the snow "falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling."
-"Hell may be other people, but then truthfully, so is heaven" is, in a way, a refutation of Jean Paul Sartre's assertion (at the end of No Exit) that "hell is other people."

credits

from no estamos separados, released November 14, 2016
Lyrics written by Mark Boulanger

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MASSA NERA Linden, New Jersey

Loud sounds from New Jersey. We dance to the beat of a lost future.

Booking: massaneranj@gmail.com

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Fulgencio Bermejo
@fvlgenci000

Photo:
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@lionrevolt
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