Making A Ring Around the Atlantic

A ring around the Atlantic CD designRecording A Ring Around the Atlantic (2011-12) offered a chance to create richer arrangements than I had previously, and experiment with layers of music. Peter Gabriel records, with their cathedral of sounds, were one reference point in our studio discussions.

Cellist Gordon Withers pointed out that Atlantic seems to sit in a world between popular and classical music. Take track six. Messages Across the Atlantic begins with a sparse piano line and vocal, then adds string instruments, drums and choral vocals in an uncommon blend of styles. We made a conscious decision to exclude electric guitars.

Messages gives way to Very Very Suffer, a field recording of me playing a nylon string guitar on a rooftop in Guatemala City, with the attendant sounds of birds and a plane passing overhead. This is matched to a second recording of a friend, Abu Kamara, speaking about his life in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The chords transition into The Hard Path to Peace, which features a jazz rhythm section made modern pop through electronic manipulations.

Peter Maybarduk "A Ring Around the Atlantic"Atlantic is meant to be heard as an album, straight through; even with an A and B side (the latter beginning with “Conjured Lights”). There is an industry trend toward making songs as loud as the technology will allow, even for songs or moments within songs you might otherwise think of as naturally quiet. Atlantic is mastered with quieter points. This technique gives songs room to develop and lets our ears rest; to enjoy silence before a dynamic build.

Peter Maybarduk "A Ring Around the Atlantic" I’m back trying out new musical directions again now, toward a future fourth album tentatively called Trans-Pacifica.

Thank you for listening. — Peter, November 2012

A ring around the Atlantic *

(second round)

*Written by Garrett Wright
and Peter Maybarduk

Hey, I’m always combing Lumley Beach
For abalones, artifacts and more
And I watch the tides the way I’ve watched your mood swing
And their constancy is comfort on the shore.

I’m living a ring around the Atlantic in rounds
And you’re living a life that’s too erratic to be sound.
And you ask me, “Are there ever second chances for two?”
Certainly, for those who do not mind to take a few.

Hey, I’m always culling Chincoteague
For taffy & shark teeth & things
I should have seen you long ago in the sea
In the secrets low tide reveals and the gifts high tide brings.

Good tidings, I’m a ring around the Atlantic
And we are bound to intersect
It’s a matter of mathematics we’ll be found.
Every person is a song who waits to be written, written down
And you’ve waited long for this duet
Because your judgment was never sound.

In the second round…

Are there ever, are there ever second chances in this life?
Certainly, for those who come to the coast another night.
Every person is a song who waits to be written, written down
Wait a bit longer for the coda I’ll come back around.

In the second round…

Sound

Minneapolis December 2008,
Brussels / DC June 2009;
Quito March 2010
and many other places over years

Light
Looking from Lisbon late at night
And not a guide
Shall you find.

Rise
With a most uncommon life
At the inquiry
Take pride.

Hey sister, if you’re a prisoner
Of a system that tears you down
I’ll be right here, I’ll be right here
With the sound when you hit the ground.

Hey sister, if you’re a prisoner
Making your way out
I’ll be right here, we’ll be right here
With the sound when you hit the ground.

Time
Looking for purpose for our lives
In reports
In the lines.

Strike
With unaverted eyes
Appear at the inquiry
An unquiet mind.

Hey sister, if you’re a prisoner
Of a system that tears you down
I’ll be right here, I’ll be right here
With the sound when you hit the ground.

Hey sister, if you’re a prisoner
Listen and let it out
I’ll be right here, we’ll be right here
With the sound when you hit the ground.

A ring around the Atlantic

(first round)

We live a ring around the Atlantic, coast to coast.
And we see right through the static, don’t you know?
And the end of all our travels*
Unveils a pattern of control
For the first time we will know
A ring around the Atlantic, coast to coast.

We live a ring around the Atlantic, and its lows
Through markets the drug companies control.
And the interests of interest in
Capital clothes
William Hearst has a ghost.
And he’s writing again at the Post.

A ring around the Atlantic
A ring ‘round the Atlantic
A ring around the Atlantic, coast to coast.

We live a ring around the Atlantic, coast to coast
Economies of knowledge enclosed
And movements for access
Gather; oppose
Citizens of control
A ring around the Atlantic coast to coast.

A ring around the Atlantic
A ring ‘round the Atlantic
A ring around the Atlantic, coast to coast.

A ring around the Atlantic
We see right through the static
A ring around the Atlantic, coast to coast.

* See T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”


Messages across the Atlantic

Bogotá 2009,
and a trans Atlantic flight to Brussels 2010

I may feel at last
In privacy of night.
A stoic failing
On a trans Atlantic flight.
And I dream of mortality and light
In the Sea of Tranquility tonight.

For
I passed up a rose, and
Lying in repose
Await the ends I
Chose.

Gray regime
Presses on my spine.
Boys of Bogotá brandishing their knife.
And I dream of mortality and light.
In a sea of tranquility tonight.

For
The ends I chose are
Lying in repose
Await, awake
I Know.

The hard path to peace

2009-2011

After the end of leave
Fumbling with her fatigue
And little time for talk
With my lover in Iraq.

Under the eagle’s beak
Let’s live creatively.
Why do we fall for speech
And easy talk of peace?

And in the law, a low
Where all the killers go
We follow.

Far down the hard path to peace
Are we so quickly appeased?
We wait, we hold to belief
Far down the hard path to peace.

A new tour and no end
Over Afghanistan
We give a prize for peace
While the eagles eat.

And every perfect speech
Works to our conceit.
And each idea’s end
We lost as we slept.

And in this high terrain
Might we escape
The refrain?

Far down the hard path to peace
Are we so quickly appeased?
Once more, love, unto the breach
Far down the hard path to peace.

Far down the hard path to peace
Far down the hard path to peace.

New disabilities
Folding up her fatigues
We keep a reverent peace
‘til the laying of the wreath.

I’ll deal with my grief
But can’t we choose
Not to believe?

Far down the hard path to peace.
Are we so quickly appeased?
I waste ‘til I lose belief
Far down the hard path to peace.

My father‘s garden

Reston, Schipol,
transatlantic flight 2010

I’ve no ambition when I come back from afar
I only want to sleep and hold you in my arms
And sink into my father‘s garden
And sleep ‘til everything’s forgotten.

You’re deeply in your books, carrying your charge
Captive & captivated by Russian writers‘ yarns.
And I will sink into my father‘s garden
And sink ‘til everything‘s forgotten.

It’s far too late, far too late
For God and all his charms.
It’s far too late, far too late
To hold you in these arms.

Entropy‘s arrow we follow fast
Everyone integrated in elegant math.
And everything plays to a plan
When I’m quiet I can almost understand.

But it’s far too late
For God and all his charms.
Sinking in, sinking in
And everything is what we made
And cannot make again.

You will walk with your husbands in the park
The Russian writers tucked under your arm.
And I’ll sink in the garden
In contempt and contemplation

Sink in the garden in some dire meditation
Sink in my father‘s garden gone
With God and all his charms.

Dear, silence

April 2008,
Bogotá y Barranquilla, Colombia

Dear
Silence hides in your throat.
Here
Sirens sound
But no one takes note.

We hide in a shroud.
Say it out loud.

I don’t know, I don’t know.
I don’t know, I don’t know.

Dear
Violins
Quiver and quote.

Here
Violence
Gets out the vote.

Tigers and tyrants alight
All men are tied.

I don’t know, I don’t know.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
I don’t know, I don’t know.

Even the smallest thing
Ruins a life.
Even the greatest thing
Matters but little in time.

Even the greatest thing
Might not save your life
Even the smallest thing
Might measure greatly in time.

Even the smallest thing
Might save a life
Even the greatest thing
Matters but little in long enough time.

I don’t know, I don’t know.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
I don’t know how this ends.

Dear
Silence hides in your throat.
Here
Sirens sound
But no one takes note.

The great state of Maine

January 2005,
Andante

Mixing drinks in unmixed company
For men who are all mixed up and yet no more than me
And I can try to understand
But I’ve always been your straight man, it’s all I know to be.

In the great state of Maine
You still got silence all inside
I get scared for you, brother
Won’t you find some northern lights?

Behind the bar, working bareback
A thing of beauty, a thing.
The ones and fives are tucked in so deep
And you’ve tucked yourself way down as well
Too deep too reach.

In the great state of Maine
You’re the standard, stand-up, we all wait for your sign
You’ve learned how to fight back but sometimes you’d rather hide.
You still got silence all inside
I get scared for you, brother
Won’t you find some northern lights?

I walked you hand in hand down to school on your first day
Call it a promise – oh so hard to keep
And there’s much I might have done differently.
It’s hard to see you hardened and hard to reach.

I’d still like to hold your hand
But it’s not my life to lead
In the great state of Maine
There are no billboards to read.

I’d still like to hold your hand
But it’s not my life to lead
In the great state of Maine
There are no billboards to read.

In the great state of Maine
In the great state of Maine.

Touched by fire*

I said – she is touched by fire, the dead and the divine.
Broken wings across the wire, she’s clipped and then she climbs.
And I’m the idiot for hire, saddled at her side.

I can’t shut the door! I can’t shut it off!
I can’t take it off! I can’t take it!

She’s touched by fire. Across the wire.
She’s touched by fire. Across the wire.

Fire.

A toolbox, a screw and set of wires, she’ll take apart all time.
She’s got – a chaos theory mind, she’s capital for crime
We all stand right by her side
And bathe in blinding light.

I’m taking off! I’m risking all! I’m running all! I’m running!

Touched by fire. We stand beside her.
Touched by fire. Across the wire.

Fire.

* Title taken from the book “Touched with Fire” by Kay Jamison.