So it starts: a strip of light
plugged into the bathroom outlet
so mom won't have another fall.

Please let it be the only time.

Man, you're wrong.
You're so, so wrong.
I've never heard such
a feeble argument before.

You lightly touch on logic
like you found a shattered key
that barely fits, will never
unlock another door.

You survey your thoughts
but they have gone completely wild,
saying you love this wicker chair
then hurling it to the floor.

And what's more, I'm afraid you're going
to find the failings in my perceptions,
the ones I thought were inviolable.
You'll see one loose thread
and pull the whole thing apart.
I know you enough to know that.
So I won't argue, I will give your wild,
malformed ideas free reign.
You've gone crazy, drop by drop.
But I will say nothing. I will admire you
from the distance we've created, unperturbed,
so my own arguments can remain ironclad, secure.

I know your story without
knowing it. Pieces of it
rise up from the general murk
and get picked out by the
spotlight. Your ideas are
dancing around, causing
some in the crowd to mock you,
others to clap along, nodding
their heads in time. What they
believe is the real you.

My question is,
who's moving the spotlight?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htEWLm1S_xg

We had apple butter
on toast at her place
as the snow drifted in.

She and her mother
had made it, from apples
they'd picked off the trees.

She couldn't
recall the recipe,
but her mother has it,
if we need it.

The astronaut left his
screwdriver on the moon.
Also, a silver wrapper
for cinnamon gum, and
fifteen gray footprints
leading to and from
his ship. (eight steps
out to the crater,
when he was carrying
the measuring equipment,
and seven steps back.)

From Earth, no one can hear
the lost screwdriver
missing its chance
to twist the next screw.
The gum wrapper does not
smell like cinnamon,
or anything.

The measuring equipment,
however, has become
a media hero.
But we cannot see
the astronaut's steps,
long after he came home,
in the sun's reflected light.

(music)
(screams)
The world's longest lasting
battery. One of the biggest

upsets in World Cup history.
In Las Vegas. They are
so short on guards.

The pressure of the spinal fluid.

Are you saying goodbye
or closing a deal? (laughter)
The cause of unforeseen
circumstances.

She's innocent.

(Spanish)
More than its fair share of snow;
in fact the most in the town's

history.

He was one of the best
gamblers ever.
(laughter)
According to
intelligence sources.

My old apartment parking space
was beneath a heavy, high tree.

She seemed to stitch blankets
out of her dried, curled leaves.

She would tuck my car in at night,
against the bristling, scurrying wind.

Each morning I'd break apart the cover:
crunching the crackling color she'd shed.

I just realized I still haven't gotten around to posting "punch through the world," the most dance-oriented thing Human Beat Box Light Show has ever recorded. Upon opening last.fm and experiencing again how slow, unresponsive and prone to bugs the Music Manager is, I remember why.

But I clenched my teeth and made it through. So below you will find a link to punch through the world. Originally, we were going to include lyrics on the song, but I think it stands fine on its own, unadorned. This is the first one of the first tracks we wrote that sampled Casio drums instead of just using a default Casio beat (we first moved away from default beats on Launch Pad to Nowhere). I really like this one because it features three distinct musical motifs that play out in a suite -- and this was all done on the fly. While I love our earlier stuff, after hearing this song I thought, "Oh my god, we're actually musicians." Well, okay, that's not entirely true -- I felt the same way about "Launch Pad," but "punch through" cemented it for me.

I don't actually remember when we recorded this. Sometime over the summer, I think? I know it was soon after Launch Pad was completed. Listening back now, I definitely see those two songs as a transition from the primitive but joyful Salty Senses to the unabashed weirdness and creativity of the Indefatigable Bouncy Castle e.p.

Enjoy.


http://www.last.fm/music/Human+Beat+Box+Light+Show/_/punch+through+the+world?autostart


By the way, for a while we were thinking of calling this track "Left Speaker Killer" because it blew out the left ear of both my and Jen's cheap old iPod earbuds, and it also caused problems with Matt's left computer speaker. Coincidence? Or did we let this happen for a nefarious purpose?

I just saw this on YouTube, and based on the charming hand-made video (and a follow-up "Look Inside! (TM)") on Amazon, I totally want this book of essays.





Those of you seeing this on Facebook, you're going to have to click on "View Original Post" to be taken to my LJ account to see the video. Those on LJ, isn't it weird that I'm giving instructions to view a page you can all see right now?



P.S. The author of the essays is a woman, so why don't they have a woman making the fingers walk around? As for a guy singing the song, that doesn't bother me in the slightest. They could have just as easily gone with a female singer, but I like the rough-hewn quality of his voice, sort of a just-woke-up-don't-really-know-what's-going-on vibe.