TEXTS
Distorted Rap Choir Anthem
Water Prayers (an ode to Drexciya)
Mask is the surface
Water Me (an ode to Drexciya)
Fictional bodies
Final Anthem
Distorted Rap Choir Anthem
I know it might
Feel as if I’m coming
I know it might
Feel as if I’m coming on
I know it might
Feel as if I’m coming
I know it might
Feel as if I’m coming on
(x3)
Reverse engineer
anything you fear
Everybody in tears,
Anywhere but here
Chalice in the air - Cheers!
Skinny-dip in stardust, if you dare
Fingertips and strings
hanging from the air
Onyx in a trance, who's the puppeteer
(who's the puppeteer) (x4)
So beyond finite,
timeless infinite
You know what I like let me tap that
Come as you are, come as you are
(And) Tap into this realm,
where the glitch at...
Point…
(written by BOИSU, Cherish Menzo and Shari Kok-Sey-Tjong)
Water Prayers (an ode to Drexciya)
Can you hear the whispers
Telling us their secrets
Treating us like creepers
Keeping us sleepless
Can you hear the explosion
Of voices from the ocean
Songs full of emotions
From a time without a notion
Homeless, Boneless, Careless, Formless,
Homeless, Boneless, Careless, Formless,
Can you hear the whispers
Telling us their secrets
Treating us like creepers
Keeping us sleepless
Can you hear the explosion
Of voices from the ocean
Songs full of emotions
From a time without a notion
Homeless, Boneless, Careless, Formless,
Homeless, Boneless, Careless, Formless,
Aquatic feedback in my dreams
Submergent streams under the sea
Their radio is a submarine
That plays Sunday at 6:16
Corpse under the sea, corpse under the ocean
Slogans of erosion, slogans in slow-motion
(written by Camilo Mejía Cortés)
Drexciya was an electronic music band from Detroit. They were active in the 90s, combining a degree of anonymity and underground/anti-mainstream aesthetics with mythological sci-fi storytelling to enhance the dramatic effect of their music. "Drexciya" is an underwater land inhabited by the unborn children of pregnant African women who had been thrown into the sea from a ship used to transport enslaved people. These children adapted to breathe underwater in their mother's womb. (translation GRIP)
Mask is the surface
I thought I was deep in but the whole time I’ve been caught in my own reflection on the restless surface…
It feels like the surface always keeps on changing
Mirrors as sculptures, symbols, portals, to see into different worlds, different realms, realities and galaxies….
Let him get a sense of the real, they say
A point after which nothing can be the same
But the real is also always arriving….
We should go to the moon
To be masked astronauts in outer interspersed images of colorful garb
We wear the mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
This debt we pay to human guile
A mouth with myriad subtleties
Let them only see us when we wear the mask
I’m lost in the dark….
Fragments from Ephraim Asili’s poem ‘Points on a Space Age’, 2007, 32:42 (in ‘BLACKSPACE: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture’ by Anaïs Duplan)
Fragments from ‘My Virtual Pussy, My Artificial Lungs’, a conversation between Juliana Huxtable and Anaïs Duplan (chapter in ‘BLACKSPACE: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture’ by Anaïs Duplan)
Fragments from the poem ‘We wear the mask’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906)
Water Me (an ode to Drexciya)
Water me, will ya
Cradle me safely onto the shore
Tomorrow won’t see ya
This passage is weighing on you way too long
Consider the fact that the waters will take ya, the elements won’t forsake ya
A breath before you go under the lighting and thunder, this newborn’s a wonder
If we plumb the depths to the fundamental black
The heavens may be beneath us
This gives me the creep(us)
Weep(us), lead(us), see(us), fet(us), feed(us), believe(us), grieve(us)
I feel as if she might be vanishing
Yet, the future predicts something promising
An aquatic flower that keeps on blossoming
No connection, hacking or gossiping
She prefers a liquid life over a digital life
Where the day can still turn into night
Surfing underneath the starlight
Now she is one, one to become, a myth
Anonymously, the air the soil
The matter in our ecology
(written by Cherish Menzo)
Fictional bodies
Fictional bodies
Blur out the boundaries
Body is a planet, body has migrated
The future can only be for ghosts and the past
Come see me, come see me
Come feel me, come feel me
We crash, then we collide
Like a homicide
Come see me, come see me
Come feel me, come feel me
(x3)
Fictional bodies
Blur out the boundaries.
Body is a planet, body has migrated
The future can only be for ghosts and the past
Take our tongues, take our heads, take our lungs, take the threads
Blacks to the future, onyx in a trance
Speculate, speculate, speculate
Supernova into a black hole
Gravitate, gravitate, gravitate,
Breath us in, breath us out
Till we roam up to the clouds
Levitate, Levitate, Levitate
(x2)
(written by Cherish Menzo)
Final Anthem
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
Feel, I know it might
Feel, I know it might
Feel
I know it might, Feel
I know it might, Feel
I know it might, Feel
I know it might, Feel as if I’m
I know it might, Feel as if I’m
I know it might, Feel as if I’m
I know it might, Feel as if I’m coming on
I know it might, Feel as if I’m coming on too strong
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might
I know it might, feel as if coming but I’m just too slow
Running in between the the meadows, dreaming of a future home
Pixelated frames of gravel
Clouded memories in double
Swallowed by a lucid bubble
Going way too fast we tremble…
Fleshy cyborgs to the battle
Rainy days upon the cattle
Lyrics on the blurry travel
Watch us how we soon unravel
(x3)
A dark knight hurray
His horse runs away
A split cracks the way
Leaving no gold on this plane
(x3)
Now they’re full on display (x7)
Molded figures of clay
Marching proud in parade
Will the fiction decay (x5)
Will the fiction re - rev- reve - rever - revers - reverse
Reverse engineer anything you fear
Everybody in tears, Anywhere but here
Chalice in the air - Cheers!
Skinny-dip in stardust, if you dare
Fingertips and strings hanging from the air
Onyx in a trance, who's the puppeteer
(who's the puppeteer) (x4)
So beyond finite, timeless infinite
You know what I like let me tap that
Come as you are, come as you are
(And) Tap into this realm, where the glitch at...
Point…
(written by BOИSU, Camilo Mejía Cortés, Shari Kok-Sey-Tjong and Cherish Menzo)