Empty Nest

6 days ago by @knobbyneggins815

Liner Notes

#indiehiphop? #dud #firstrottenfruits #drumloops

I went back and numbered all of my songs, because this track here? I don't think it has a place on this album I'm putting together. Honestly I was expecting a "dud" song to hit earlier, so it being in the back half of my 2nd FAWM is not something to whine about.

This track is sort of all over the place thematically. A week or so ago I put some pre-made drumloops together and added some organ and keys and then proceeded to write a hip hop track that kinda just meanders about and becomes something else by the end. I'm not in love with it because:

1. Drumloops. All the way. Nothing against them being used, but here, beyond some cutting and pasting and fading in and out, it's pretty stagnant. Because I didn't program or play MIDI or via keyboard, it just kind of...doesn't feel like it's my own? This is my own problem, of course, lol

2. It doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the project. It's not the hip hop part, I had a lot of (relative) "fun" writing these lyrics, but in an album about grief, the fact that the song kind of stumbles into being about my mother is a little fortuitous, but mostly meh. Speaking of which...

3. My mother deserves better. If she gets a song, she deserves a full song, not something that, in the mania of FAWM, sorta "ends up" about her. She's been through way too much to have half of a weird indie rap song gloss over her life. I'll show her this but it still doesn't feel good enough.

Ultimately I decided to post this here because it's within the spirit of FAWM and the "go with your gut" writing style it pushes. I went with my gut, and I think my gut was wrong on this! And that's okay! They can't all be winners! But by the end of recording it (especially the chorus') you can tell my heart wasn't in it. It also happened to take quite a long time to write the lyrics because of syllabic structure and what not, so it's firmly in "Sunk Cost" territory. Ah well! Moving on!

Lyrics

Verse 1:
Caught in the same loop,
Stuck at the same pace,
Circle the wagon
Or the drain,

It doesn't matter
When we end up in the same place,
Just waiting for lines to catch up
To the time on our faces.

Time's up
The second it hits the sixty
When you wind it up,
But it's a zero when the hourglass
Dries up.

A minute ago we both were dancing on a red line,
A short story in a long time.

I used to chase dreams,
Now I can barely sleep.
Begging to wake up,
Buried in the autumn leaves.

Non-apologetic for autonomy
Cuz dying for your art for a living
Is a false dichotomy.

I try to remember the sounds within the melody,
All the syllables and nouns and etymology
Bleeding co-dependency
With motion in the poetry.

It's all ephemeral
Like the fiction in a melody.

Chorus:
"I dream of the outside, but I'm
Breathing in this emptiness.
Why does every sweet little bird fly away and
Lead me to an empty nest?"

Verse 2:
I remember when I was a kid,
And never thought that I was wrong,
I just rolled down the hill and ran
Back to the top.
Now I never fucking feel like I'm enough.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm made of;
I've got the logic of my father
And the morals of my mother,
And the face of them both,
And I'm not ashamed of it,

But there are days where
The Heart and the Head
Are tidally locked
And I'm lying in bed
And I wanna get away from it.

I'll never be a rock star,
I'd never have the guts to make it that far.
It's hard enough to play it off
And keep pretending that my music
Isn't something that I'm halfway proud of.

But at the end of the day,
All the ways that I think,
And the things that I say
Are inherently based
On the way I was raised,

And I was taught to keep moving
For the ones that you love,
So for that,
I'm bound to be a good son.

"I dream of the outside, but I'm
Breathing in this emptiness.
Why does every sweet little bird fly away and
Lead me to an empty nest?"

Verse 3:
As you can tell from my confessions,
I'm a pessimist.
I'm a pacifist.
I'm not a fighter like my mother,
That's obvious.

She kept her head above water
Through abuse and through poverty
And I choose to always honor that.

She met my dad and gave me a great life,
She taught compassion
And what was wrong and
What was right.

She needs to know that I can see it,
She needs to
Feel it and believe it.
She needs to hear it.

Even when your parents died,
When your husband died,
When your daughter died,
You kept going.

You oughtta know that
Ava's growing into someone
Who can make.

We were told "life's not fair"
And then we proved
That we could take it.

So when I'm down
I try to shake it off,
Cuz you've been through enough.

Now as bad as it gets,
You're not alone,
You gave me life
And a place to call home.

"I dream of the outside, but I'm
Breathing in this emptiness.
Why does every sweet little bird fly away and
Lead me to an empty nest?"

I won't leave you to an empty nest.
I won't leave you to an empty nest.

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