CICADA

by Bess Bird & Violent Butlins

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about

A collaboration between Violent Butlins and Bess Bird.

Dulcimer and electronic guitar recorded in one take, on one mic.

lyrics

CICADA

We have just turned seventeen.
The sun is speaking.

She urges us up, up.
We must leave our slumberous sucklings
and our dreams of silent music,
rolling swelling notes between us in the dark,
We need no longer imagine their sound.

We are pushing through the earth
and our selves are multiplying.
It starts with a faint chitter but then
our voices grow stronger, we fill the forest
with our chorus. We bend the light.
We are flying! We have always known.

But then dark shapes are falling on us.
It seems that the sun also warms
an army of darkness. Witch-wasps,
vampires, devourers of song.
It is our voices that draw them.
Yet we sing on.

We sing on. They would take us
back beneath the ground
and feast, a slow, bleak end.
But we are so many and we have always known.
We sing on.

By Morag Wilson (c) 2021

credits

released October 9, 2021
Words written by Morag Wilson.

Morag Wilson - vocals and dulcimer.

Eva Gnatiuk - electric guitar, backing vox, recording and mixing.

Photo by Eva from 2013.