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The Things My Father'd Done

from Attic & Cellar by aeroplane, 1929

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lyrics

The Things My Father’d Done

When I was young,
my mother took me out behind the house
and she told me of the things my father’d done.
She hissed in tones of tapped telephones:
measured, weighted, hushed.
I stepped back, held my ground as the world spun.

And I was afraid.

When writhing redness burned the west,
his marching dusky silhouette,
oildrunk, with slaves and scalps,
told spoiled oceans, nuclear clouds.
And sprouting tall as prairie weed,
I squinted, shuddered—still—to see,
with bullion rattle and baron sneer,
my story stalking ever nearer.

And I was ashamed.

I had a bad dream where you talked in your sleep
and your smokingblack secrets, you spilled them to me,
and I wept for the days before I knew not to breath in.
Now to wake or to sleep or to look or to blink are both treason.
It’s all treason.

I found the tree, laden with books,
pressed to mouth forbidden fruit
and took a look, peripheral,
at conquered ideas, stifled truth.
Then fire rent the fragile air,
and the crescent moon was hanging bare;
gods tumbled down the attic stairs
so I packed my things, lit out of there.

And I was okay.

But I had a bad dream where you talked in your sleep
and your smokingblack secrets, you spilled them to me,
and I wept for the days before I knew not to breath in.
Now to stay or to leave or to scoff or believe are both treason.
It’s all treason.

And I knelt beside the riverbed,
felt the dizzy wrens wing my fractured head,
gripped my bloodstained name in my cracked left hand,
chose a swirling mouth and I threw it in.
But the ancient thing floated to the top
of that watery sheet (history’s blot, unwashed)
so I reached back in and I snatched it up—
a genesis and a revelation.

_________________________________________

Credit

Tim Donahue – trumpet
Jacob Eli Goldman – double bass, bass guitar, marimba, crystal glasses
Noah Goldman – electric guitar, pedal steel
Rob Hallberg – clarinet
Alex Mazzaferro – voice, acoustic guitar, piano, electric guitar, marching bass drum, lead pipe
Wil Mulhern – drums
Sinai Tabak – flute

credits

from Attic & Cellar, released July 1, 2010

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aeroplane, 1929 Springfield, Massachusetts

aeroplane, 1929 was a band from New England. Between 2005 & 2010, they released two albums & two EP's on Topshelf Records. The band consisted of Alex Mazzaferro (vocals/guitar/keys/lyrics), Jacob Goldman (bass/keys/recording/arrangements), Noah Goldman (guitar/pedal steel/keys), & Wil Mulhern (drums), plus friends like Julian Veronesi, Chad Jewett, Dave Van Witt, Alex Syner, & Peter Federman. ... more

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