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Two Sticks & Six Strings (2009)

by Apologies, I Have None

/
1.
100 Club 02:25
100 Club This night was what we’d all been waiting for. Impatient hearts beat fast, a symphony of emotion and electricity. That congestion that you can count on that delayed our every breath was cursed with all the strength we could pull together. Tonight I’ll sing along with my favourite songs and for a moment feel saved in 6 strings and drums. May every night kick off like this, in spite of the traffic lights and doubting minds. Shine it out, a beacon of light, you can’t deny a hundred fists in the sky. Shine it out, a beacon of light because we are unstoppable. When they say this is on its last legs I’m lost for words. We would have lit up the fucking city if you could tap the energy. I will never understand how can this be dying when we’re still alive.
2.
Bent Strings 04:08
Soak up all the strain and cast out all your old complaints. She didn't work this hard to give up and let death stake a claim. 20 years, 1 month and 27 days. Is this all she gets? A striking realisation that the cross she had to bear wasn't half as heavy as the burden that now hangs around her neck. I won’t miss this when it's gone. What is there to say? Another fumbled consolation cuts the air but seems to fail in every way. You can't sum up in two lines the cost to a mother that outlives her child, so why bother. A solemn promise that times a great healer, from someone that could never understand quite how much that she needs her. I guess it takes less time to formulate the answers to all the questions why than it does to understand them. I'm not talking about experts, medicine or science, there's folly in believing these things will ever satisfy her when memories of a body strapped with wires leaves her lost. I want to scream until my lungs bleed "I'm glad your son died on the cross", but i bite my lip and hold my tongue because everybody needs a safety net and i think she chose the right one.
3.
This headache pushed me out the door, down the steps onto the street where that midnight bitter cold was waiting patiently for me and as I walked across Mabley Green looking for pain-killers or alcohol, the city was alive when I thought it was asleep. A sundown is the signal for a working minority who sleep through daylight and start shifts in buses and markets and fields and factories, but these hours will take its toll and spirit will give in. At what point did we decide to live like this? At what point did we decide we were going to give in? I feel so lucky that out of my window I can see green in this grey city but those lights up in the distance that peek over the canopy remind that there’s one person for every light shining out these towers, making patterns in the sky. It’s not just the working class tonight. These streets won’t clean themselves and these petrol pumps need filling up. Who’s going to drive the bus to take us home? We rely on one another; one can’t exist without the other. It doesn’t matter what you’ve got because we’re all in this together. And we’ve all got a rope that ties us to home. We’ve all got aspirations; desires to put certain plans into action and I will crack on. I won’t let this city swallow me up or this headache slow me down, I won’t let this fucking headache slow me down.
4.
I see the need for reminders burnt into the back of your eyelids - ‘Don’t get caught up and caught out by time’. You can’t blame distance when a lack of respect and resolve is the culprit and I know you don’t have that many angles to cover that much of the time. Have you got someplace you’d rather be? Is there something more pressing at hand? Well you’ve got your excuses, “it wasn’t me, it was the fault of my memory and I’m sorry” but this apology it benefits no one, least of all the wretch of a man from who this apology came from. It doesn’t. Has every step you taken since not been heavier? Has every breath you taken in not seemed coarse and unrefined? Has every sense not been dulled and eroded, every problem been amplified? You can forget this but you can’t leave it behind.
5.
At the centre of it all its just atoms and reactions, electrical impulses and attractions that pull ourselves together and keep everything ticking over. And all that we know is what we picked up a along the way through every triumph and every heartbreak, through every moment of clarity, for every time we let fear stand between who we are and who we wish that we could be. You made me promise that I would let you know if I found myself struggling to cope. How can I lay that on you when you’re struggling yourself? It’s times like this that nothing seems to change. You are her eyes and legs now so she can keep her strength. I used to hold on to belief that things would work out in the end. All that we asked for was to stand on our two feet and stop relying on this family. As myelin unfolds and days get much more difficult, hold on. There’s no shame in hoping for a miracle, because this recovery would take more than just chemicals and time. Despite your shaking hands you worked so hard for us, and I’ll remember.

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released April 1, 2009

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Apologies, I Have None London, UK

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