I’m feeling a little empty behind the eyes this morning.

Going back to Colorado and seeing friends was nice (with one party-ruining exception) and spending the holidays with my parents while my brother stayed out of the country opened my eyes to some stuff.

Yesterday, I woke up at 6, blogged until 11, picked up a camera in midtown at 12, picked up yet another camera in Chinatown at 12:30, walked to The Apple Store, carried the cameras to Webster Hall at 3rd and 11th and hung out there filming Bear Hands’ live show until 11, then I took 3 cameras and a handful of P2 cards to a guy named Matt’s house, where we exported the footage only to get home by, like 2AM, watched one episode of Battlestar Galactica and passed the eff out, only to wake up at 9AM today to work on a blog…that isn’t letting me access it.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

…is what I would have been screaming about two weeks ago. But something inside me that broke last December has left me with a bubble of emotion surrounding me that has little outward connection to the events that happen around me.

That or I’ve just adapted to the stress required to do all the things I’ve chosen to do for the next few months.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, something that has been a comfort to me in this interesting time is, equally unsurprisingly, one of my own songs.

I posted it earlier at ListenOrDont.com under the title 0101, when it was an instrumental binary track. Now, it’s included on The Solitary Vice (BETA), which was packaged with the year end, huge-ass-file, Citizen Nowhere Collection.

Every track I write gets shuffled in between ongoing projects to see which one if fits best with: new Citizen Nowhere, BSOD (don’t worry about that acronym for a bit), and whatever the collected tracks of Jess and I will ever be called.

Tai asked that I try doing vocals to 0101 for BSOD and what I came up with was something bizarre and too moody for BSOD. I knew it as soon as I finished it: I fucked up the vocals. Not that it doesn’t sound like I wanted it to, but I refused to stick to a melody, or a chorus. Outside of the distorted opening vocals (and that bitch of a harmony), it’s just riffing on a single loop, playing with cadence, tune and rhythm. When I wrote the song, I wrote a series of loop-able parts that I arranged to build to a chopped-up D&B breakbeat.

I got off the phone with Tai and told him I’d take another pass at it.

Then, I kept listening to it, which was my mistake.

Sometimes, I sit down with something to say and a song appears out of the ether to connect to it. This track, and most of the tracks on CN5 and CN6 were written as instrumentals and then technically beat-out to form vocals based on melody, repeating parts and cadence.

It just surprises me sometimes that I end up writing a song that expresses exactly how I’ve felt all along without paying much attention to the lyrics.

download link “I Feel The Change Becoming” by Citizen Nowhere off The Solitary Vice

There’s something inside, ‘cause I felt it kicking.
Our skin is pulled tight, and our rib cage is breaking.
I feel the change becoming.
I know that the moment if fleeting.
We’ve known that the mold is imperfect.
If you can’t beat it…
Evolve or become it…

Rise and Fall
The future feels so cyclical.
One For All
It’s hopeless, it’s happening.
We’re cynical.

Oh, God!
Who knew the metamorphosis went down like this?
Do you want to change?
Ok.
Go.

Inside me so long.
Changing me.
Gripping me.
Let it emerge, controlling.
Moving me,

It’s pushing, it’s pulling
It’s breaking me.
It’s living, it’s killing
It’s saving me.