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Eight Delicate Olives Slowly Chewed At Midnight

by Boy Without God

/
1.
Welcome 01:39
2.
Autumn Joy 03:45
Always knew I’d break these bonds and go to graze on greener lawns gauzy light on the passengers side and we are drunken without wine with the stress of joy in autumn a dirty fork in a greasy spoon the absent face of motel rooms dust mites dance like TV snow and we are simply passing through the weary joys of autumn we have hungry eyes for love we are turning out our pockets so that we may kiss the ground and the ancient roadside signs and we have desperate hands for bread we are digging in like wolves and the crumbs are falling out with our giddy drunken laughter we have all we own roped together in the backseat and the trails of the jets in the wild sky tear the endless blue apart and we are shining out in the dusk and lo the day is here we are shining out in the dusk and lo the day is here
3.
Breathe Slow 04:47
Can’t shake the feeling sometimes like I’m stuck on a conveyor belt And all the pretty young things and the stay-up-all-night fun things will not help as if proximity to hearts so raw could stem the endless tide of invalids and stars for all time well every heart grows on a stalk and every heart is planted in a row and when I want to understand the scope of what’s at hand that’s where I go and the proximity to bodies giving back themselves to earth can make me breathe slow The analysts agree we are a nation of the free and of the sad we worship our desires to the point that we can never live them out standing in the cemetery just maybe I can breathe that all out of my life If there’s one thing you remember when you’re humming this tomorrow to yourself there are more creatures living in the cemetery than there are the dead there are more creatures living in the cemetery than there are the dead
4.
Love do not despair. I know that the things between us are sent from eye to eye like diamonds in the dew-soaked fields in foreign countries while the sun is coming up and everyone is making coffee for the morning.
5.
There’s blood in the clouds and there’s blood in the telephone satellite voices It is just a game, do not flinch when I place the cold metal up against your skin Some bodies beg to be beat and some histories beg to repeat themselves nobody else can know the way the house burns from inside the shame inherent in the fire oh no no Extravagant cruelty with chocolate and cherries and you on top Almost walked out the door when you found out I wrote songs you said oh no I’ve been through this before but some bodies beg to be beat and some histories beg to repeat themselves nobody else can know the way the heart breaks from inside the love inherent in the lie oh no no A lie, a lie, a lie, a lie, a lie, a lie Just tell me how to want and I will buy buy buy buy buy A lie, a lie, a lie, a lie, a lie, a lie Just tell me how to miss you and I’ll try try try try try
6.
Sun Arbor 02:03
7.
everything is lovely here especially when it rains all day I am doing well these days, hope you’re okay an elegant table set in a darkened storefront napkins folded so precise and waiting for all the perfect dinner guests to act their perfect revelry while outside my perfect nose drips perfectly i guess i’m learning how terrifying loneliness can be last night i dreamed i was in a taxicab, we lost control we broke the fence we hit the wall and it all went black, I thought “surely this is it,” then I was standing on a busy street, without even a scratch even in my dreams i just can’t believe I will ever die even in my dreams i just can’t believe I will ever die the nipples of the manikins glare through their flimsy clothes it’s been so long since we’ve been warm together I’d give up the crooked streets and all the meals I can’t afford give up all the colored bricks all the people I don’t know just to know you’re listening. Are you listening? i guess i’m learning how terrifying loneliness can be last night i dreamed i was in a taxicab, we lost control we broke the fence we hit the wall and it all went black, I thought “surely this is it,” then I was standing on a busy street, without even a scratch even in my dreams i just can’t believe I will ever die even in my dreams i just can’t believe I will ever die are you feeling mythical as you walk down the hall of halls I hope you’re still on top of the world when I get home
8.
jailed in Little Rock on suspicion of communist sympathies chased with a pocket watch out of West Memphis It means a lot to you when I try I just don’t know how long I can do it Coked up in the sky with stones singing cocksucker blues and there’s no time there’s no time there’s no time i gotta move, i gotta move, I gotta move cause life is flesh not stone. in the passengers seat, you’re asleep in her arms on the road from nowhere I made some mistakes and there’s no time there’s no time there’s no time i gotta move, i gotta move I bought you a one-way ticket to Winslow Arizona and it rained like hell

about

this zip contains
• the eight delicate titular olives (the songs)
• eight pieces of art (one cover + one for each song) by painter Ty Williams
• a sweet photo of me yawning

A note on this digital EP:

Eight Delicate Olives Slowly Chewed at Midnight is a collection of home recordings that would in olden days have languished in the vaults. It’s composed of intimately recorded (read: demoed) instrumental one-offs and songs that I wrote and recorded in Copenhagen last fall that don’t quite fit in with the songs selected to go on my forthcoming full-length, God Bless the Hunger, and/or that I have forgotten how to play (numbers 1, 3, 6, 8, and the bridge to number 7, if you’re curious). Instead of leaving them to die with my hard drive, I’ve decided to pass them along to you.

Autumn Joy is mostly about nostalgic memories of touring (only someone who hadn’t been on tour for at least half a year could write this song). Breathe Slow I hated when I wrote it, but now I like it quite a bit. American Guilt makes the strange and probably inappropriate connection between the extermination of Native Americans and then end of a relationship. R. Frank & Son was written about the photographer Robert Frank, cobbled weirdly together out of actual quotes from him, pieces of a great Vanity Fair article on him by Charlie LeDuff, and my own extrapolations. Robert Frank is a brilliant photographer, by the way. If you do not know him you should immediately go look at The Americans, one of the most moving collections of art I have ever seen anywhere ever. It’s at the Met in NYC right now and if you are a New Yorker you owe it to yourself to stop by.

The zip file comes with eight, count em eight, lovely original artworks by Ty Williams (www.typaints.com). Print them out, put them on your walls, curl them under your pillow at night for good dreams, give them to your loved ones, write To Do lists on them, practice kissing on them when no one is looking. You know, all the stuff you usually do with good art.

love,
Gabriel

credits

released November 1, 2009

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Boy Without God Brooklyn, New York

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