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how many whales there are in this world

by Ghost Dads

supported by
Claire Durant
Claire Durant thumbnail
Claire Durant this got me through many 3am-fire-alarm-induced panic attacks my freshman year. thanks, guys Favorite track: Household Warming Party.
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1.
I was the earth and the soil under your toes. We worked together pushing against the soles of your shoes. They were weathered from the load. A tattered leather holding up the bone. Well I guess you've got your troubles, I've got my own. I was a lightning bug cupped in your hands. Your skin was ragged, bleeding from the land. We slowed from greater speeds than were ever meant for man. I just hope that you'll be able to understand. I understand. You were a moment I can't quite explain. An abstract feeling others thought was strange. A fleeting sense of orientation and silent pain. I want to go against the grain, but I'm not sure if I'm insane I think I've lost the part of brain that lets you know. That lets you know.
2.
Held to down in ink; swallow away. I drown it it in the sink to repay. Holes in doors you punched inside my dreams. But will it bleed? I guess we'll have to see. You grind inside my teeth; charming decay. I wear the clothes you need to love me anyway. Piss me clean. Mark me, I won't leave. We fuck and fall asleep. I kill you in my dreams. Always. Remember when you kissed me on the mouth? What slipped in, I'll never let it out.
3.
Native 01:16
You came in with a wicked flash, left me in a long zombie trance. I don't think I understand what you were saying when we put in pants, it made my head feel real bad. I don't think I like that. We conduct our coal, starve forever in the general pose. We spoke in closely interwoven prose. We conduct our coal, harsh and clever in the native man's clothes.
4.
5.
Home. warm in our shame, tired. She kissed me, humming my name, singing, "I'll try." But we showered, filthy and shaking, terrified. And we sat there draining our eyes, going blind. I want to walk to the place where you cried and walked me through the first time that you tried to die. And I grabbed your fingers and choked them with mine, and I made you promise to never again. Well, you promised to never again. Well, here I am at your hospital bed. Please just promise to never again.
6.
Skin cold, warm for clothes, but all told you burn the most. And your car can barely move. I think it's too far and far too soon. The bathroom nightlight dimly glows. You say it's too hot to keep on clothes, so we'll eat Cheerios out of dirty bowls while ladybugs keep flying through the screen and out the holes, and the TV's on. Your pinky's tendon can't extend. I feel this as you absentmindedly play with my hands. The sheets and blankets stick too much but we lay here as our skins continue heating up. I take your shape. You grab my sweaty hair. The broken AC spits out water, forgets we're there. And as we draw this war we never fought you roll around to touch my face and say I'm drifting off, but your eyes won't close.
7.
We research the deepest color. Faces faded, I will find another. Tender juices, wine stained sweatshirt. I'll run through the dark to find a mother. Chemical investigation. Swallow serum and question my creation. Oil painter, paint this friction for me. Our distractions breathe our blissing, empty pockets leaking no resistance. Our mothers dream in ocular gestation. We invent new tools for aviation. Hollow dress code, hollow fashion, hollow industry truths the honest attic. Wrap in sinew, douse, and hover. I will love you. I will call you brother. Patient pacer, poison your insides with light.
8.
Alveolus 03:56
Playing musical chairs with my father's ghost. I think I know what I'm saying when I say I love you the most. Climbing up the stairs, up to a fatherly host. I think I need you for more reasons than you're ready to know. Oh, I feel so one-sided. Oh, it's just so hard to see how I'm real. This serum will make you feel like you're alive, but you're a spirit. It's synthetic. It's a lie. (And we can't breathe when we're hurt, and we won't speak just to be heard.) (Would you stay through all this ghosting, settling for it?) (I can't discern me from you. You'd said we'd float right through.)
9.
10.
"I am." 02:28
Fell asleep with the lights on again, and woke to a note that read, "I couldn't sleep. I need some cigarettes." I spit blood in the sink again, and wrote out a note that said, "The dayglo you dreamed in is oozing out my skin. I've stopped letting people in." I lied when we fucked again. She asked, "Are you good? I said, "I am. I love you, I promise. Now let's just go back to bed." I dreamed that I died again. I dreamed I did it with my own hands. It's not the falling that scares me, it's how desperate I am to land. I'm afraid of who I am. She said, "Liam, just go back to sleep. I'll be here for you if you're here for me."
11.
(Postcards from Nova Scotia Four walls of fog rubbing against two sides of the boat; the diesel engine shutdown leaving us, twenty empty vessels in one full one, bobbing blindly in the Atlantic. “Try listening,” a voice, the guide’s out of nowhere, says. Whale listening, then— we’ve paid to listen to whales…. Like pyramid smelling or symphony seeing, not a trade wind, generally, to tourist satisfaction. But make do we must, and so lean into the soupy silence like figureheads on sinking expectations. But all I hear is the slop of water in the bilge, a furtive potato chip, a man farting somewhere on a fishing boat, until a child finally asks, “What are we listening for, anyway? A splash? Some kind of song?” “For something large and genuine,” that voice again replies. “And like anything large and genuine,” it says, “you’ll know it when you don’t hear it.” Ah! Like death, then, and love, mercy and sacrifice, too; like deceit, grace and denial; what fathers don’t say, all that Basho didn’t write, the only thing Beethoven, finally, could hear. Oh, Dear Mother, I think you told me, though I never heard, how many whales there are in this world.) (Fishermen wait Vessels bob The ocean is, content to just be as it always has. as it should We know this But what is it to be its breathing face? Its cleansing teeth? That thing we cling to when we forget that dinosaurs are real? The feeling of sated unknowledge that comes; that holds The only god we can see, and so we scramble onto boats, praying to just maybe be in the vicinity of something we can't believe The thing that keeps marine biologists awake as they drive back through the dark to their homes every night, counting on their fingers, again, and again, and again.) (Light bends and leans against me Fingers trace underneath and between my eyes These contours we question and create Our center we detach and displace)

about

"how many whales there are in this world" was written and recorded over the course of 2014 in various times and places throughout New York. It took us five months longer to release than we anticipated, so thank you to Dad Culture Records for their support! We are proud of this so you should listen to it, and that's all she wrote, babe.

CASSETTE RELEASE TO FOLLOW IN EARLY 2015:
dadculturerecords.bandcamp.com

credits

released December 31, 2014

Ghost Dads is Eddie Maurer & Liam Kingsley

Eddie Maurer - Acoustic Guitar, Voice, Spoken Word
Liam Kingsley - Banjo, Voice, Spoken Word

All Music & Lyrics by Ghost Dads, except for the bass parts on "Steeping," "Fumbling," & "how many whales there are in this world," written & performed by Izzy Payero-Cabral

Album released via Dad Culture Records
dadculturerecords.bandcamp.com
Mixed & Mastered by Mike Bruns of Dad Culture Records
Recorded by Eddie Maurer & Liam Kingsley at Dad Cave & mom cave

Album Art by Devyn Halter

"Postcards from Nova Scotia," was written by Christopher Kingsley. It was read by Barbara Keenlyside for the spoken word album "What The Truth Can Do." The poem and recording were used with permission from the author on the track "how many whales there are in this world."

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Ghost Dads New Hamburg, New York

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