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Now and Then (or, The Cul​-​De​-​Sac)

by kyōto-me

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CZ. Pertz
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McLean Glover
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1.
Cross 05:16
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When I Tried to get away They sent in a battalion Of self-proclaimed neutral women Uniforms embellished With ropes and medals And on her left breast A large black cross This is the new face of the centre of a cross This is the new face of the masses lost Botox’d and with a new coat of lead paint Are all of these yuppie straight white woman saints Imprisoned By the look you give when you hear my voice Why do you care Who the fuck am I to you Witch bitch Made me the boogeyman Scapegoat in the bathroom I am your civil panic The roots were formed right between the lines It was right underneath your nose this entire time Harry was a Hitler Youth and loving every second Harry is the teacher of your kids, caters every lesson You Trapped me in this cage You and your regime Just kidding All the kids Taught to hate my guts The parents Blindly follow Fearmongering to manifest your new reality Supposedly, apparently the writer of the century How gorgeous to see your hubris die like all that’s in your book How beautiful to see you fall apart due to my looks The crux of your agenda is oppressing all the youth The irony of taking back the message in your work Beloved cultish dumbass who thinks she matters more But X-ray Twitter fantasies show she’s just an ageing bore
2.
Yearn 07:45
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I am the burden you keep hid I am the troublemaker kid I am the total embarrassment You wish that I would sacrifice My happiness to live your lie I could not be any more clear I am so much more than queer How could you say that you love me When you only love what I was previously I’m so far gone from what I was Come to terms with who I am now Who I was always, but not allowed You could’ve had much more time to cope Yet always bottlenecked by your selfish tropes I’ve known since before my paradigm shift I’ve known since before he took his final hit I’ve dealt with all this know-it-all shit You don’t know the half of all I’ve seen in me Stuck in the box of what you perceive Stuck in unrealistic fantasies Stuck in a past that was never me You can call it love but I know the truth Whenever I talked on the phone to you The greeting was always the same The greeting was always a false name I’m an autonomous human being I am living out what’s best for me Give a fuck what your generation thinks I’ll live this way just for the disarray Make you uncomfortable in the day-to-day Change your mind if you want, it won’t affect me The rest of your kind will be dead soon anyway (Bridge) My frustration, endless My sense of self-worth, unspooled Threaded through the eye Sewn into a frayed sweater Full of holes If pulled, comes apart And offers no protection From the eternal winter Yet I grasp it Desperately, and yet to no avail Trying to capture the warmth Of a childhood marred by drinks Still, my love is 404’d Supposedly unconditional But this is the impasse line The stubborn, bitter pill Never get your fill Sugar’s running dry Didn’t wanna pry If I still hate the mirror Is that a reflection of me Or is it an echo of What I always see The slight silent disdain When I walk down with a skirt on The numbing dulling pain Of the way you were raised So telling, it is Just how shallow love can be A change of language here or there Can spell out a decade-long rift I’m so far out in the cold At least I no longer have to hide When winter ends, so too does hibernation And yet, here I am My busted Marshall amp My green guitar again Stuck in my room again
3.
Woke Chocolate That Hates You 03:24
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Did you hear the news Woke Chocolate That Hates You Eats away at you This is what they want They are not like us They want to kill us They want to take away All our security Come into your house Change all your pronouns So you have no pronouns What even are pronouns? Doesn’t matter now Mustn’t think, must act Take your righteous weapon Enact what God hath planned “First, do no harm” they told you Throw all that out the window They want to change their bodies Next thing you know, it’s our kids Predatory behaviour You know what they say, bad apple Taking that risk, a death wish Us or them, us or them Us or them, herm or fem Us or them, us or them Herm or fem, us or them Saw one in the park Seemingly nothing But I got this feeling Right here in my gut None are innocent I know, I know what’s right I’ll let the sins of few Weigh down my whole worldview My holy sacred book It guides with blinding light Proposed democracy Always theocracy One nation under God Indivisible Indivisible Don’t fuckin’ make me laugh “Love thy neighbour”, He told you Throw all that out the window God forbid, one person Wouldn’t be God fearing Which side had the agenda? Are these lyrics ironic? Am I begging for human rights? Us or them, us or them Us or them, herm or fem Us or them, us or them Herm or fem, us or them (ad-lib right-wing nonsense) “Grasping at straws”, I tell you Throw prejudice out the window Yes you’re a cis, and I’m trans Who is the other people? Which side had the agenda? Theocratic government Taking away our freedoms Us or them, us or them Us or them, herm or fem Us or them, us or them Herm or fem, us or them
4.
Cul-De-Sac (Wendell Redux) 09:49
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We grew up tight-knit Delivering baked goods to our neighbors And as samaritans we cleaned their yards Wearing garden gloves, picking up pinecones for quarters We had high-top cons laced to the top eyelet Chewed-off aglets and frayed threads They never looked good until after their first summer After they’d been coated in mud from the rainier days We grew up on the outskirts of poverty Not scraping by, not uncomfortable Situated purely in the middle earning our keep, so to speak I never understood why my parents wouldn’t give me baked goods To give to our new black neighbors Our neighborhood was ungentrified, as far as I remember it was stripped of all yuppies Like a pocket of time still based in the 30s Like something out of To Kill a Mockingbird With hushed but tangible racism We grew up with our neighbor’s dogs barking day and night Without a care that they did so, because we grew up tight-knit We spent summers sans shoes to try and be like hippies or hobbits Drinking sodas only on special occasions and lemonade the rest of the time Licking large jawbreakers that lasted aeons Reading manga under trees in the backyard Every stick of bamboo a javelin Every animal a mythic creature Backyard filled with unrivaled mysticism and wonder A treehouse infested with japanese hornets A wooden sword snapped in two We grew up losing minifigures in the grass and sand Digging holes in the grass to try and find geodes Collecting ziplock-bags-full of precious gemstones That we hoped to trade in for cash profits We planned out our allowances, down to the last penny Washing dishes, shoveling snow, like we saw in peanuts comics We’d go to sunday school, indoctrinated into wholesome white values But didn’t care much for scriptures so we’d draw out massive battles on paper Every park a wonderland Every river and brook a rapid No, I wouldn't say I'd go back I don't think anyone would know me I don't think they'd understand, just what it is That makes me who I am I don't think they can walk a mile in another person's shoes, Can't even find theirs We grew up getting lost in the woods every november Trudging our way back, frozen to the bone in our light winter clothes Being greeted back home with Kraft mac ‘n’ cheese in those little blue pots With oatmeal and peanut butter cookies Jumping on trampolines Riding ATVs Killing time, waiting for Thanksgiving For Christmas For birthdays Playing the Zelda soundtrack through a busted junk CD player Syncing our imagined attacks to the melodies Twelve pulling into cul-de-sacs armed with assault rifles Busting up crack dens We grew up sheltered from all cartoons deemed unchristian We weren’t allowed to play Pokemon, cuz it had evolution We look back on all this and laugh at just how ridiculous The cult of christianity can get We had to hide our passions from our parents If they found out we liked what was “feminine” it got pried from our hands Repressed creativity, depressed ego, some fought for our rights to like what we did Others fell victim to the endless reassurance that what you love How you love Who you love Is wrong We grew up comfortable We grew up happy We grew up blissfully unaware And then we grew up

about

Now, and Then. Or, The Cul-De-Sac.
Life is cyclical, no? It is circular - with the passage of time, one might find themselves treading over the same ground they'd sworn was covered years prior. We all go around, and around, until the Cul-De-Sac spits us back out when it all ends.
Themes of recent times, themes of the past 5-10 years. Including:
Cross - our letter to a certain writer (read: bigot revolutionary), and those who choose to continuously support her works, and therefore, her.
Yearn - the yearning of being oneself. The complicated nature of something that should be simple. Deconstruction of binary becomes more a necessity with each passing day.
Woke Chocolate That Hates You - did anyone else see that stupid bastard commercial? Woke Chocolate that hates *you*. Yes, that's right, the other people, they hate you! They're the other people, not us, and they *hate* you! So you had better hate them back.
Cul-De-Sac (Wendell Redux) - our brief introduction to what Wendell was at the beginning of Paradigm Shift was, well, brief. In fact, there was nary a lyric to be found; and so here we are treading over the same ground, speaking of how the then impacts the now, and how the now relates to the then.
Our proudest work to date. We hope you enjoy.

credits

released September 24, 2023

all instrumentation performed and all production by kyōto-me

artwork by Alexis Bishop

Special Thanks:
Emma Wheeler, Kevin Bishop, Ian Hutchinson, Megan Wheeler, Jennifer Bishop, Oliver Walsh, Lane Arcane, Trenton Dearman, Mouk Mada, Matthew Callaway, Maiko & Shunji Irokawa, Madeline Pennington, Crayola
and our fans, for their continued support. We love you.

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kyōto-me Aurora, Colorado

kyōto-me is a collaborative project between multi-instrumentalists Alexis Bishop and Evangeline Shadden. Formed in the spring of 2018, kyōto-me have been working together to produce tracks based around genres such as Noise, Experimental Rock and Shoegaze. ... more

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