Release Date: November 11, 2008
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Liner notes:
All lyrics were borrowed from people far more equipped to speak them ourselves. Some of them have been cut, arranged, and manipulated (only slightly, sometimes unintentionally) to cooperate with time of each song and to fit as well as possible with the movement of the music they accompany. It is our sincere hope that, in doing so, the author’s intended end product has not in any way been compromised.

All instruments were recorded at various locations around Chad’s parents’ house on Hanna Lake in Caledonia, MI between the 24th and 28th of August, 2008. Vocals were recorded at the warehouse a little over a week later.

This is No Sleep Records 013.
Brad recorded everything.
Troy mastered everything.
You (still) mean everything.
Thank you.

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy”

1. five
Liner notes:
All music written and performed by Chad on the following instruments: an electric guitar (in drop C tuning), a shaker, a tambourine, two pieces of bamboo flooring, his hands (used together), a piano, and his trumpet (from high school).

Guitar was recorded on an aluminum dock approximately 20’ off shore of Hanna Lake just before sunset. The rest was recorded in his parent’s driveway and garage.

Lyrics taken from 3 separate poems – me and Faulkner, alone with everybody, and the crunch – each written by Charles Bukowski. Sections of each were borrowed and ordered as one fluent piece by Jordan in an attempt to convey a specific overall meaning.

Lyrics:
sure, I know that you are tired of hearing about it, but
most repeat the same theme over and over again, it’s
as if they were trying to refine what seems so strange
and off and important to them, it’s done by everybody
because each must work out what is before them
over and over again because
that is their personal tiny miracle

like now as like before and before I have been listening to symphony after
symphony from this radio

makes me realize that certain people now long dead were able to
transgress graveyards

and traps and cages and bones and limbs

in tiny rented rooms I was struck by miracles

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men (they) drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big winners

it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don’t ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
thought of.

there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it has kept the rope from my throat

maybe it will loosen
yours

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

2. six
Liner notes:
All music written and performed by Vass on the following instruments: two electric guitars, one bass guitar (all in drop C tuning), a full drum kit, and sleigh bells.

At the last minute, plans to replace the metronome with Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” were dashed by a tag in the song that throws off the consistency of the tempo.

Recorded in the garage @ Chad’s parents’ on a Wednesday Night.

Lyrics taken from the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Read by Jordan.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. 
Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward the lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.
It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, it happens that melancholy arises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: “Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.”
“I conclude that all is well,” says Edipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted.
All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him.
The rock is still rolling.

3. seven
Liner notes:
All music written and performed by Brad on the following instruments: a Casio keyboard, a tambourine, some wood blocks, a cowbell, a full drumkit, his feet (used with the floor) and his hands (used together).

The entire song was structured around the drum part, which was improvised and recorded one night approximately three weeks ago. A dog can be heard howling at the beginning.

Lyrics taken from the first chapter of Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, in which mole decides to abandon his spring cleaning in favor of exploring the outdoors. Read by Jordan.

Lyrics:
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throats and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his small dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, and said, ‘Bother!’ Something up above was calling him.
So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, ‘Up we go! Up we go!’ till at last, pop! His snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.
‘This is fine!’ he said to himself. The sunshine struck hot on his fur, and, jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.
Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting—everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him, he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens.
He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping this with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as on trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.
The mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully. ‘WHAT a day I’m having!’ he said.

4. eight
Liner notes:
All music written and performed by Kevin on the following instruments: electric guitar (in standard tuning), bass drum (with one Deschler 116 mallet), snare drum (with stick), rim of snare drum (with stick), crash cymbal (with two Deschler 116 mallets), a tambourine, and a shaker.

Rhythm guitar track was documented via microphone twice – the first capturing the sound from the amp, the second capturing the sound of Kevin strumming. The lead was recorded directly into the mixing board. The bulk of the percussion was written on the spot after guitar had been recorded, and were performed shortly thereafter. Most of the song is in 6/8 timing excepting a section in the middle in 7/8.

Lyrics taken from the afterward to J. Michael Straczynski’s graphic novel, Midnight Nation, published in 2000 by Top Cow Productions, written by J. Michael Straczynski. Read by Jordan.

Lyrics:
1978. San Diego. I’d just come out the other side of a relationship that blew up…I was angry, and disillusioned, and ultimately self-destructive. I’d lost everything I believed in …I was as utterly, completely alone as I’ve ever been.

So I began going on walks.

I started taking late-night walks around the San Diego suburb I was living in at the time. I’d start walking early evening, and come back close to midnight, sometimes later. Walking and thinking and chewing over what had gone wrong with my life.
One night, at Fourth and E Streets, I got mugged and beaten by a street gang—sent me to the hospital with serious intimations of mortality. When the ER techs asked what my religion was, I refused to answer. I made my private peace with the universe, content with whatever was going to happen, live or die.

Then something happened. I got angry. I got angry because I still had stories to tell. So I fought back.

It took two months to fully recover. But two things came out of that incident. First, I have no fear of death. None whatsoever.

Second…as soon as I was well enough, I started walking again.

sometimes until 3 or 4 in the morning, through parts of town that made even street people nervous.

When people asked what I was doing out there that late at night, the only answer I could give was, “I’m looking for something.”
So I kept walking through some of the most dangerous parts of San Diego, before it got cleaned up, when it was still home to hookers and drunks and gangs and addicts and random violence.

Finally, one afternoon, I came to the same areas I walked through at night and I was struck by the dichotomy between that corner at night, and the very same corner during the day.

In the daylight, there were businessmen and kids and clerks, eager to get home to dinner and TV and family.

Then, later, came the night shift, the lost people, emerging from shadows and beds of pain to walk the same streets in search of fixes, money, and bars, gradually fading away with the dawn.

Two totally different worlds, sharing nothing but longitude and latitude. There was the nation in the day, and the nation at night, existing side by side but each fleeing the other.
A daylight nation.

And a midnight nation.

I saw a country bifurcated by more than just the presence and absence of light, but by lives cast aside and lost and uncared for; the walked away and the thrown-away on one side, and on the other, those who pretended not to see them, because not seeing is easier.
And I saw someone forced to walk both sides of the metaphor, to learn that the greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others, that there but for the grace of whatever god you subscribe to goes any of us.

And finally, I realized that I had found what I was looking for, without ever being quite sure what it was.

I found a story that would make my own life make sense again.

This story.

I still take long walks, and I still stop and talk to the people who stand at the corner and wait for something to happen to them, who wait for money to fall into a hat or a cup, who wait for someone to recognize their pain.

Because the line between the midnight nation and the place where I sit right now, writing these words, is thin and ephemeral and can be crossed in an instant.
And because the road to the midnight nation can be erased only through compassion.

I found my story, this story, on a hazy afternoon in 1978.
Now it’s yours. The keys to the midnight nation are in your hands.
What you do with them is up to you.

J. Michael Straczynski.
Sherman Oaks, CA
July 21st 2002.