This is a little bit of a different piece. This was done in collaboration with a family friend to go along with a written piece. The music is very much intertwined with that writing so I will be putting it here for you to read and interpret however you wish...
Reigning Again – by Jeff Frymer
Countless years have passed, yet still we are here, bound to a regressive creeping night that fastens us to history. We stand in the dark as disillusioned sentinels looking out at sodium yellow streetlights that illuminate our ghostly gazes; our jaundice pallor reflected back to us in a rain-specked window. Witnessing eyes draw sharply on solitary raindrops as they spatter into focus, joining their peers precariously moored to the glass by a minefield of misguided tenacity. One by one each drop yields its anchor. Gravity overtakes them and they journey carelessly down the windowpane, absorbing the lost, the misguided, and the vulnerable as they shed all sense of individuality.
Unintentionally artistic, their kinetic palette paints the collisions of cold clear tributaries. A hidden serenity wends its way down the glass, the rendering peacefully scored by the droning white noise of the storm. Rain falls unremittingly, and no one raindrop considers itself the cause of the impending flood as an ozone-scented must fills the air with the dread of life about to be obliterated. Cloudbursts from billowing giants malevolently pour down from the dark skies. Thundering growls goad the cultish mass of hydraulic lemmings to “Go, go, go! Fulfill your destiny.”
In the lightning punctuated darkness, beyond the safety of the glass, “they” become the mindless torrent, filling every cracked sidewalk, overwhelming every swale, and swelling to saturation every fissure of the earth. Mordantly transformed, they become the mudslide of devastating self-deception eagerly drowning every last bit of detritus in the maw of its metallic-tasting ruddy flow. Tearing violently at the earth, the erosive mass gains size and menacing momentum, preparing to destroy all things living in its path, to leave in its wake a slickly marred landscape running red with the blood of its lifeless victims. And finally, no longer without purpose, they exclaim with decisive hubris, “We are the flood!”
A growing army of sandbags quickly crowd together and silently pass word, “They’re coming. They’re “ALL” coming.” Forced through a venturi of outrage and desperation, each bag binds so tightly to the other that their fearful trembling evades perception. Weighing heavily on each other’s shoulders they stand in grainy protest, guardians against the darkness that marches upon them. Dire rumination fevers their thoughts, that their numbers are too few, that their positions are ill placed, that their efforts are far too late. And still they lean into the fray in hopeful solidarity that together they can make a difference. “This time,” they pray. “This time will be different. This time, we will stem the roiling flow of bloody-handed ignorance.” This is the time we will right the wrongs of reckless governance that threatens to wash away our humanity, covering it in a blood-stained sea of sociopathic fear, hate, and greed. THIS time, WE will win.
credits
released September 2, 2020
Produced, Mixed, and Mastered by Forrest Messerman
Written by Forrest Messerman and Jeff Frymer
Artwork by Amy Heis
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