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Songs of Desire and Belonging

by Cole Blu

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1.
Midlake 03:34
Oh forlorn lover, in summer, unfurl - like some vast, florid map, unfurl. we’re distant lands, touching somehow, a gently rocking boat; sweetly rippling borders. and in this airborne moment, we’re two forms suspended, and opaque architectures shape your shadow - If I could still all motions, and listen, quietly, perfectly, I’d descend into that delicate, dreaming realm of our breaths, in sync for an instant - hand in hand with the infinite. Oh, sleepy protectors of two gentlest solitudes, geographies are shaped within your trust. The water is a mirror shattered by our falling; silhouettes night-swimming in July - all skin speckled with moonlight, mid-lake; silence but for our breathing. July 2016
2.
My dear, I’m afraid I broke my shadow with each step down the mountain, on a sixteen-mile hike away from you. Flanked fir, granite stairs, hand-carved and mossy with abandonment: the path was a walk through strangers; crowds collide with me and every impact steals little shards from my shadow: tiger’s eye reflections spilled like soot into dusty streets, into wand’ring pathways weary between peaks My dear, like a desperate ant or a fearful soldier, in that expanse of delirious forest, I’m drinkless and long past dry - Noontide, the waxing sun always washes that southern shadow from my back, but evening, from the north, speckles the steps ahead, over roots and under stoplights (as do stars painted at night unbleached by the city glow, empty), but I follow like one blind to starlight, with an outstretched hand (but here I’ve seen it before, there’s nothing blocking it from me save myself, and the silhouettes I paint on that northern path, looming in moonlight). Looming and luminous when the southern sun strikes in morning, but for all emotions I’m neither here nor there, and a little lost- July 2015
3.
light, orange like incense, like escape; it’s all I wanted. And a bird of broken mirrors perched on the wall by your bed - I’m remembering reflections like shattered glass on slate: your truths were seeds grown to flowers of fantasy, dried into incense and youth into incense and youth At twenty and twenty-one, white walls could orange be lit; branches silhouette windows and walls. Winter-thick dusk! With every gust, I let cold of ten thousand trees, bareboned, heavy, whitely whisper old hymns. They blur into your dreaming breaths: nearby lie cathedrals of concealed limbs. cathedrals of concealed limbs. Shaking sanctuary, the soft-singing broken-mirror remembered calls past incense, even red clouded vision; your words sing “Wine will warm your eyes to orange, orange will warm rambles sown, Sun will warm my florid shawl - these nights, I won’t bare my snow-cloaked bones.” I’ve forgotten my own oak bones.” empty, we were, beneath it all (Clouds, hollow, fleeting to touch) you were the bird perched on your wall (and I’d cut my fingers digging for depth) Stilling the spinning, pausing for words, nodding past my trembling hands: “I fall asleep with each step through night; this room’s all orange-incensed dreaming. I never thought it could stand the springtime; that I’d inhale all seeming of broken birds or bones - of broken birds or snow-cloaked bones.” even the light through broken mirrors. Fall 2015
4.
All Wings 06:12
All wings and needy arms float lightly, bathing in the glow of a melting candle, slowly burning, beautiful and bright on a winter night, wax cascades on wax, sensuous and slow And this starry-eyed moth creeps ever closer, enchanted, I’m sure- And once, all hair and needy legs crawled quietly in my childhood attic: a lonely and longing caterpillar, lost and hungry among old hewn beams, and old pictures of young people - but crushed leaves fell from my hands, and, sated, he slept through colder seasons- The moth and the butterfly emerged at once, all midnight wandering and fragile tragic limbs cocoon and chrysalis split open, all wet wings and aloof antennae, and distant lights - Candles burned behind moonlit fogged windows of a cheap sedan on a backroad, all hands on windows and whispered warmth, and how we flocked- the obscured glow tantalized eclipses; the glass pane harder than to bend for water, or to reach for low branches; Tantalus! Tantalus! Upon the barrier, we broke ourselves. Shattered wings, falling fragmented glass of ornate chandeliers on backroads, falling, falling, or on glassy hardwood, breaking, breaking, All broken candles and melted waxes; the roaming fires burn in your eyes consuming mountaintops, the glow an open blaze; by moonlight, these dirt roads tantalized me All wings and greedy arms float forward, erotic in the glow All needy grabs towards burning flames - mine, mine, mine - mine, mine mine mine, But you were a burning candle, all cascading, dreaming waves And no matter how slow your burn, in time it will show All wings and greedy arms catch, with smoke and red All wings and needy grabs burn, and fall to the floor All wings and needy arms writhe, and flutter, and squirm no more February 2015

about

With thanks to everyone who's helped along the way.

credits

released January 22, 2021

Cole Blouin - all instruments and vocals, recording, production, mixing, except:
James Robotham - saxophones on Midlake
Mario Fabrizio - drums on All Wings
Jon Starks - drums on All Wings
Brian Stuligross - very subtle violins in just intonation on All Wings

Recorded at homes in Jamaica Plain, MA, and East Winthrop, ME, in winter/spring 2020 (Midlake) and early August 2020 (all others) with additional recordings of Jon Starks and Mario Fabrizio in Boston, MA, June 2018, and Brian Stuligross, Roxbury, MA, late May 2019.

Mastered by Bradford Krieger at Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, RI.

Elodie Saint-Louis - art design and photography
with additional photography by Aidan Meyer-Golden, Aliya Ultan, and myself. Prominently featured among the layers are the trees of central Maine and the M train as it runs through Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York.


Dates & Locations of writing:

All Wings: February 2015, in Oberlin, Ohio
Between Mountains: July-August 2015, East Winthrop and Carrabassett Valley, Maine
Of Broken Mirrors: September-November 2015, Boston, Massachusetts
Midlake: July 2016, East Winthrop, Maine

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about

Cole Blu Brooklyn, New York

NYC.

Interested in the poetics and broken narrativities of memory.

Songwriter, producer, guitarist, composer.

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