Mike Shiflet, excerpt from split LP with Keith Fullerton Whitman (Amethyst Sunset, 2010)
At the very top of the tree some small bird perched alone. Wind makes sound and often gets louder the more one hears it, crescendo, an orchestra tuning up gaining focus. That bird. Too many leaves. What part of a tree is hollow? Or hallow?
The bird blurred a line from there to the small fence next to the lean-to where no one almost never sleeps. Save an occasional bat. It has been a hot summer with endless days of rain, just a few hundred miles north of the city island, century’s boat just found there, skeletal hull linings bearing time and life. The skyline’s gone but the port is open and people are still sailing.
A cricket relentlessly embraces the heat with drone, pitch consistent but the wind and distance deflect it and it bends. The pitch twists. It pitches. Like the boat, despite the boat’s growth into the earth, the earth’s growth into sky. Someone said that if the sun had hit the wood it would have immediately disintegrated.
As things grow silent the bird still flutters. Twittering anew against the cricket’s field. They both relate to their distance. A shape persists in the sky of clouds and rocking tree tops, which though they always seem to be there show different colors every day.
If the bird closes its eye, will it still see the shapes, and what spots of light will splay across its darkened screen?
(Limited LP release. Find it directly from Amethyst Sunset or Mike Shiflet.)
Side 1: Keith Fullerton Whitman: live analog synthesizer
Side 2: Mike Shiflet: live guitar and oscillator
A follow-up to yesterday’s reaction to Keith Fullerton Whitman’s side.
