Lyrics
James Cathey: Programming, Main Synthesizers
Catherine Lafuente: Vocals, Additional Synthesizers
Arsenio Santos: Guitar, Bass
David Shetterly: Mixing, Mastering
Music and lyrics by Zen Debris unless otherwise noted
1) Muezzin (4:56)
(instrumental)
2) A Little Point of Light (5:12)
a little point of light; a sigh
sparkle and shine
a glimpse of endless blue; you,
the weight in your pocket; I,
the pebble slipped inside, beside
a finger that slides
I will not weigh you down, down
carry me far, carry me beyond
the pale; the restless feet glide
over ships and sails
The weight, the rock in your pocket; me,
carried long beside, slip inside
the heartbeat sings true,
the weight is endless blue;
the weight is me and you, we rise
over wind and gale
I will not weigh you down
A whisper, a frown; the
pressure of sound
a little point of light.
3) Baptizing Gravity (5:20)
i sang tears into cloth today/ i laid in the slices of sun/ that broke across the floor/ baptizing gravity.
i stood facing the shamaness/as endless steppe spun vivid and white/the strike of green apple/blinding.
what connection jolts the moment/from then into now/the mountains now lost/and mourning
it shoots down the divide/and anchors the spirit/ out of the body/and into the endless.
4) Djinn (5:57)
(instrumental)
5) Shelter (4:41)
Lyrics: James Cathey
Oh, back and forth
Oh, don't tear me down
Oh, for what it's worth now
Oh, don't come around
Find me shelter where all is forgiven
Find me shelter where I can hide
Find me shelter where I can lose it
Find me shelter where I can die
Oh, back and forth
Oh, don't tear me down
Oh, for what it's worth now
Oh, don't come around
Find me shelter where she is buried
Find me shelter where no one knows
Find me shelter filled with lies
Find me shelter where no one goes
Oh, back and forth
Oh, don't tear me down
Oh, for what it's worth now
Oh, don't come around
Never looked me in the eyes
Never could understand
Take my shovel and bury me deep
No one will find this man...
Oh, back and forth
Oh, don't tear me down
Oh, for what it's worth now
Oh, don't come around
Oh, back and forth
Oh, don't tear me down
Oh, for what it's worth now
Oh, don't come around
6) Foundry Orphans (7:10)
(instrumental)
7) ShivaShakti (4:08)
(My little swampy city rumbles,
monsoon season opens wide.
every day a thunder light show
bird hymnals float from the skies bird hymnals float through the skies bird hymnals float through the skies...)
Shakti sings, summer light.
Lazy stormsongs wind through the night.
(Marigolds float in the gutter
My feet muddy in sandles
Crabgrass curb, sidewalk path:
In the swamp i get lost in the brambles in the swamp i get lost in the brambles....)
(My little swampy city rumbles,
monsoon season opens wide.
every day a thunder light show
bird hymnals float from the skies bird hymnals float through the skies bird hymnals float through the skies...)
Shiva dances, all things begin.
Shiva dances, all things are dead.
(Marigolds float in the gutter,
My feet muddy in sandles.
Crabgrass curb, sidewalk path:
In the swamp i get lost in the brambles in the swamp i get lost in the brambles....)
ShivaShakti bent in embrace:
the monsoon drops land on my face.
Shakti sings, summer light.
lazy stormsongs wind through the night.
Shiva dances, all things begin.
8) Plankton (5:13)
(instrumental)
9) Radio Dawn (5:51)
Inside there is a well of tears
Where I've kept a space, safe and drowsy
With the kind of walls your back can slide down
When the weight drops out of your legs and body
It's an ocean inside me now baby.
In that moment where the mirrors fall off the wall
Open up your book of sadness
Girl I'm gonna saturate your pages
We'll float together in a mess of wet paper
Seaweed and saltwater
Washing up on muddy shores where we have to begin again.
Soaking in porcelain
How many times can I stare at my legs
Half-submerged in the water
How odd, this skin that covers us
The surfaces below our bodies
Warm wet hair on our backs
Soft lines and hard tiles.
I have the audacity to reach out to you
From a higher peak in the well
Cause we're glued together now
By the tears that flow out
And the rivers that never run dry.
I am a Nile queen
And you rise up from the Amazon
Muddy girls howling in the starry night
Touch down into those primal layers
Because I feel so small when I stop.
Baby rock me to sleep in your book of sadness
I will drown with you in my well of tears
If we can learn to breathe underwater
We'll wash back up on that mud someday
Awake, alive and again.
10) Area of Refuge (6:05)
(instrumental)
11) Scorpion Dreaming (6:28)
Lyrics: Ian Henderson
I believe that we are all stars and spirals and stars in spiral. I believe that there are only curves in this world.
I believe that the Shape of the Universe is to a sphere as a sphere is to a circle drawn on the ground, that there is everything in anything, and anything in everything. That every part holds the pattern memory of every other part, the large in the small, the small in the large, and that we can take the pieces of our world, and see all the other pieces of our world, if only we know how to look.
And in the arcs of a planet may be the patterns of men and women. In the bones of a fish we can see the sigh of an entire civilization, if only we know how to look. If only we want to look. If only we dare to look.
Silence is powerful and dangerous magick. It is fear, it is isolation. It is denial stacked upon denial stacked upon itself again; so high and so mighty, yet frail. And the fall of the tower is the light of creation. The spark of the soul. In the rubble of the tower we will find the truth we were looking for. The thing we were building was the ruin itself. Order in disorder, beauty in brokenness. A coin forever turning in the air.
Waves and ripples and ripples upon ripples. The patterns in the air and the patterns in the mind. Expanding, touching one another, and fading into serenity as they are mellowed by age.
The time is coming when men and women will be judged not by the color of their skin, nor the contents of their character, but by the character of their contents.
Already there are moments. Moments taken for granted. The powers that be are the powers that are. The powers that are, are the powers that do, and the powers that do are the powers that can.
And they are searching, scraping, digging, into all of us, all of the time. They seek not men or women. They care not for bodies, places, things. They are looking at the small parts. They are searching through our blood, our urine, our thoughts. That is where their enemies lie. That is where their power lies. That is where their lies lie.
To believe this life is an illusion is to deny yourself to yourself. It is to ignore the illusory nature of the illusion itself. For there is nothing to deny, nothing in particular is hidden behind the veil, the curtain, the velvet rope. The world as we know it, the world some would call an "illusion", is so loosely understood as to be indistinguishable from anything else, if you look closely enough. To escape the illusion, to go backstage, behind the curtain, behind the rope - it's the other side, but it's no more real than the side you are standing on.
I believe in the layers of the onion, the petals of the lotus. The soul is not inside the body, the body is inside the soul. And again and again.
If you look closely enough at something, you can look into that thing, and in looking you will see that it was not a thing but things, arranged in patterns so dense you could not at first distinguish the one from the many. Like the dots in the letters in a computer printout. Or on a computer screen. And in each of those things, if you have the will to look, can be seen further arrangements of smaller things, in more complex patterns. Patterns of shape, patterns of motion. Look inside the things in the things, and with each successive step you will find that the one made of many is made of fewer and fewer things, arranged in progressively less identifiable patterns, the components moving faster and faster and farther apart. And if we could look deep enough, we'd find things whose patterns were so complex, and their components moving so fast, that they would finally have no pattern, nor shape. They would be only fields of potential. These are the realms of possibility. These are the people getting into and out of the Ferris wheel. This is what free will looks like.
And that is what free will "is"; if, after seeing and knowing all this, you can still use words like "is" anymore. Free will is true randomness. Chaos without justification or meaning.
Meaninglessnesslessness.
Anyone who has thought about this long enough and hard enough has realized this. Anyone at any time in any place, who builds their tower high enough, just to watch it fall, will find this truth in the rubble. These are the words that have been spoken for as long as there have been words to speak.
In every system of thought. In every age, there are heretics.
I am writing this now, because I want to record these thoughts. Because this is truly what I believe. The way to live in the world is to acknowledge every moment of our lives as a direct communication from all the things in our lives. All our experiences are the rippling shockwaves of countless atomic explosions, overlapping and intersecting - making shapes.
The world I speak of is the same world as chai and shitty jobs and jilted lovers. The world of tacks and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. And all of it is meaning, all of it.
I am writing this now, because this is how I see the world. Because I am not a man, I am a scorpion dreaming. Stinging myself. Poison tail lodged in my own back. Drunk, and feverish, choking on my own venom. Fueled, and dieing, in my own fire. The vision, the voice, the light in the shadow. The illusion and the dream, the fever and the fury. They are cycles in themselves, and of themselves.
So I sleep. And wake. As we all do.
The coin keeps turning in the air.
And I am writing this now, because it is true, and because I have never shared it before.
It is what I have known. I knew it before you knew me, and now I am sharing it.
All this I have known and all these things I have learned without raising a hand to another human being. Without disintegrating into chemical addictions. Without hallucinogenic drugs, without starvation, without mountain climbing or animal sacrifice or staring into the sun. Without excess, without abstinence.
All these things I have learned through knowing beauty and the truth that lies therein.
Truth in Beauty, Beauty in Truth.
Finally, I write this for myself, and for the self that you have known. For posterity. I want to be able to know that this is what I was before I became what I am going to become. Even if those two things turn out to be the same thing.
I am the scorpion dreaming, and time has come to pull the fire from my wound. I am dangerous now.
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