Get all 15 Joy and the Big B releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of On Becoming Human (poems), Sounds from winter, Deep Listening (Poems), Acoustic doodles (unedited), Hallucinations in Reality (Poems), When in Doubt, Make an Album, Love Songs in a Tiny House, Adventures on the Inner Playground, and 7 more.
1. |
Mountain of Listening
03:25
|
|||
|
We sit here, you and I.
I speak words from an old mouth.
They emerge, thunderously, loudly, proclaiming with consonants and vowels of worlds unknown and stories untold.
My words are pregnant, they give birth to constellations and gravitational pulls. These words, sprouted from some mean earth, sputter mud and shatter glass. They sit in the middle of the room, fragrant with venom and incense and guts.
They dance together in alphabetical charm, swooned by the silent melodies of syntax and the constant hum of orthography and rhyme.
Mixed together in some unknown soup, my words erupt and bubble, emerging from the preternatural kitchen of belief and story, chaos and the yearning for truth.
They sit there, my words do, in the middle of the room. Across from you, who also sit there.
But you.
You are the cauldron of listening, your eyes hold the infinite and you are the bedrock of the mountain of presence.
Like a prehistoric dance floor, you let my words waltz and wiggle, flourish and jiggle, stampede and wrestle on your bare earth.
My words are sea birds in the vast ocean of your being and you, unwavering, settle in for the storm and the mirth.
I construct. You love.
I believe. You love.
I emerge. You love.
My words then become skinny, beacons of a language that once lived in the cavernous larynx and the meaty tongue.
Anorexic ghosts, they do one last twirl, one last shimmy and then land, dead, untouched, cadavers of a story that was once told and now is lost.
We sit here. You and I.
You, a mountain of listening, I a birthed child from the placenta of story and belief.
Around me, a massacre of alphabets, withered syllables, dying verbs.
We sit here. You and I.
You, a mountain of listening and I, an ocean of silence.
|
||||
2. |
The Bounty
03:19
|
|||
3. |
Circles
02:40
|
|||
|
An ocean of grape foam – an organic mandala of hips, ribs, cheeks and bellies: four women lying in the silent warmth of the afternoon hum – Being.
God first dreamt of the Circle while sleeping in a woman’s belly button.
It was in the deep valleys of a bosom that the Sphere told its first tales. Somewhere in the steep hills of a hip, the Earth began its rotation. And it was in the waves of a breathing belly that Magellan first sang the song of circumnavigation.
The afternoon hugs itself to these soft bodies, and a gentle sigh erupts – like a starfish burp – from the depths of this sea of curves.
I am before them and feel myself all angles and joints. Filled with A-to-Bs, tattooed with to-do lists, rushing and pushing, doing and fixing, valuing myself on what and how much I do, how efficient I am, how much I produce.
And Then,
I stop.
From somewhere deep inside the warm flower dough of woman flesh, in that place where orbs begin to spin, where straight lines become pregnant, where dervishes are drunk in elliptical intoxication, where Zeros go to gain weight – from there, a gentle invitation:
Come, lay down your burden. Listen to the wisdom of the seasons: There is a time for gathering, a time for building, and there is a time for stopping.
Lay your weary body down. Drop the weight of having to prove your worth. Come, drop all your doing. Lay down in this curvy sea foam
and learn,
learn the art of Rest.
|
||||
4. |
Snowflake
02:41
|
|||
5. |
Womb Series IV
02:13
|
|||
Joy and the Big B Portland, Oregon
Exploring the goodness of this deep, boundless heart through the loving connection of music as its expression. I am but a little atom in this cosmic symphony and this is the humble note I add to the orchestra of Love!
If you like Deep Listening (Poems), you may also like:
Revisionist
by William Ryan Fritch
featured on Bandcamp Radio Jan 27, 2015
go to album
Psychedelic Anxiety
by frances chang
The New York-based artist makes bedroom pop for hitting snooze on your phone’s fourth alarm of the morning.
go to album
disconsolate transceiver
by meant.
Brash experimental electronic compositions from this Tulsa-based musician heavy on serrated sheets of sound that hiss and scald.
go to album
Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin
by Eartheater
On her stunning new record, Alex Drewchin soars to glorious new heights.
go to album
The experimental artist's second solo album is filled with blazing punk tracks.
go to album
Recordings from the last 13 years of Buffalo, NY's avant-garde collective Cages, ranging from surreally beautiful to deeply unsettling.
go to album
Inside a Ringing Chord
by CAGES
This collective from Buffalo, NY makes haunting, expressive, atmospheric avant-garde work with a harsh edge.
go to album
