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PUBLIC TERRA FIRMA

by Drew Silverman

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    “PUBLIC TERRA FIRMA” is a micro-narrative set to a loop-based jump-cut audio journey.
    *** EACH CHAPTER IS TRANSCRIBED INTO THE LYRICS FOR THE TRACK. ***
    *** Each download comes with a PDF version of the story.***
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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of 2 Steps, Journey (to the center), PUBLIC TERRA FIRMA, Maps, Dust Often, and Beginner's Mind. , and , .

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1.
Overture 01:02
“Please come in, take a seat. I’m boiling some water for tea; would you like some? I know you’ve felt like something is afoot, and you’re right, so now is the time to breath deep, clear your mind, and get ready for your next step. But first… drink your tea, be gentle with yourself, your journey will not.”
2.
Leaving the encampment was the simplest but conversely most difficult decision I had ever had to make. I had learned that many agreed with me, but more despised me and my view of the lands, and the faithful wouldn't speak up. My satchel felt like a phantom appendage lost in time, with a slightness that inspired deep despair, the lack of weight serving as a reminder of how little I had there, and what little I had to keep me company on the journey ahead. ... ... ... ... But for some reason in that moment, it felt okay that all was not okay.
3.
Day Terrors 03:25
Small masses in the distance felt like any new beginning might; ripe with possibility, but an easy mental sidestep brought the fear of failure rushing in. I came upon one of these masses, an obelisk rune towering over me, goring me straight between the eyes with a sense of immateriality, all actions and choices I'd ever made of an entirely inconsequential nature. It wasn't wrong. Well, at least my actions were less important than the actions of the whole. The biome was what kept balance, in a beautifully chaotic way. As a part of the biome of course the consequences of our actions are real, but as my grandmother always told me, stake too much of yourself within your own trip and you will be rewarded with a lifetime of repetitive, violent confusion. How can we insure a healthier nervous system for our organism? It seems, the more important question is: how can we convince everyone, even though it may mean momentary inconveniences, that considering the creature as a whole is more crucial than any individual cell contained within it? Can the sheer majestic presence of something that has existed long before you and will exist long after you inspire such feelings of connectivity? Or perhaps, that all the matter in the universe has always existed, but has been reconfigured in a multitude of different ways to make you, me, this obelisk, that satchel. What story might work best? Maybe if we can enter this mindset without fear, a true acceptance that understanding will always be a journey worth taking, but not a destination worth relying on; perhaps then the wonderous body of this beast, this creature, this mass of cells could take our breath away and reinstall the breath of the universe into our starved lungs. "DAMNIT!" A Turbulent just attached itself to my ankle. I woke up two hours later, no recollection of the interim. A Turbulent brood gathers up on the hill almost out of sight. They're never fully out of mind.
4.
My first night was surrounded by the kind of natural beauty that has inspired a calm in me since early childhood, however the taste of gunmetal and the pulse of machinery clouded my mind and body. I tried to find the connection to the green, the trees, the mass of natural emotion that was begging to envelop me, but have I come too far, or perhaps strayed too far for that sense of connection to hold meaning anymore? Religion in any organized sense certainly gave, at times, a beautiful narrative to believe in. When you believe your core is solid there’s a sense of calm that washes over everything, truth is of no consequence… you have faith. Much of the time I find more solace in the ruins of those frameworks than any new version of salvation that has been served up to us… but still the pang of misalignment eventually stings through any momentary comfort. Can there be faith without inflexibility? The paths seem to all be tools; in the most artisanal hands they show no immediate cracks or seams. But the closer you look, when you magnify them, you see cracks, pixels, splinters, humanity, organisms, single and multicellular; the hands of an artisan are still human perfectly imperfect. The singularity feels more like an emotional and cultural genocide than any grandiose gateway to utopia. What would this new creature be? A forced virulence, endless replication it’s only intention? Is that truly all existence has to offer? “I’m never going to get to sleep.”
5.
"One." "Two." "Three." "Four." I count when I'm anxious. Steps, trees, clouds... obelisks... I have to count out loud. I suppose it's because of the physicality of it, like I'm letting pressure out of my skull. It grounds me a bit in uncertain times. I'm walking through the field of obelisk runes, feeling the same feeling got when I encountered the first one. I wonder in that moment how others deal with anxiety. I hope in that moment that they too, have a way.
6.
Beyond the runes, there was a terrible stretch of land, pulled apart, drawn and quartered. Shards of earth jetted up like a spread rib cage positioned around a pulsing light, fully exposed to the smoke and soot swirling above, as if vultures circling a carcass. It felt like an impression of humanity etched on the face of eternity, giving the impossible to comprehend a familiarity, even if only a morose one. As I approached the distant gore, I couldn't help but think about those back at the encampment. Those who felt ceaselessly content with what they see unfolding across our land. There was always some declaration of a great plan from a great man, an absolute truth that required no further investigation. Here's your wild west, it mustn’t be tamed, ruination be damned. I guess their treasure is in heaven... My chest hurt in its presence, it felt like with each step closer I was opening up as well, the black soot an analog for the pressures of modern living swirling around our consciousness, ever present. No, we don't want to die prematurely, no we don't want to live without the ability to travel far and wide, no we don't want to exclusively hunt and gather, but the idea of losing this only true, observable connection with our gift, this body, this creature for the simple err of impetuous hubris feels... Tragic.
7.
The cackle of lives lived differently cuts through the smoke, the mass at the center of Gaia's chest cavity burning white hot with a nacre glean, needing no exact definition in the presence of myself. Myself, the presence of humanity's infinite rough edges. My senses couldn't process it fully, but it was an amalgam of primordial goo and a diamond sense of violence. At the precipice, the smoke above was a swirling hurricane, negatively charged, staying removed from the intensity below. As if two magnets polarized against one other. The vertebral ribs shone with a faint glow that somehow communicated understanding. The steps below beckoned.
8.
Warm Void 01:17
The feeling of surrender was terrifying. Terrifying in how good and right it felt. I fell in. A continuum of consciousness dizzyingly whirring by felt as if it would take my skin, bone, sinew, my body, this body with it. The cloud of thoughts included my own, but did not end at the depths of my head cage, each new rumination flecking away pieces of who I think I am, and what I think I'm made of, until I am nothing. I am nothing I am possessed of everything This is not god, this is shared solicitude. When the particles settled on my deconstruction, the space I found myself in was pitch black darkness, in all directions, ad infinitum. A pool of light begun to melt into the landscape, a luminescent mass of amber, slow in the way light is not, giving weight to the particles around with its unnatural unfolding. In the center of the puddle of light, a waterfall begins to form, I slowly walk into the light, and into the waterfall...
9.
Strands of muscle were now strands of water, tightly wound with the fabric of the cascade. The creature was manifesting art. This was a journey into new foundations, new understandings, new glorious ways of being compassionate. Is this necessary? Is this art? Can art be necessary? Why should it be and who designates it so? Don't drown my art in grotesque gasps for meaning. When you choke my ability to journey into an unknown world, you choke the journey of all who seek, all who dare. When you choose where a person can go, because “necessity” lives there and there alone, you have dismantled her inner world, compartmentalized his experience, and shackled them to what you believe "is" instead of allowing the exploration of what could be. Once you've dismantled the inner world, how else would it manifest than a destructive lashing against the outer world? The new is not the enemy, ill intention is the enemy. The pain felt generationally and passed down like a virulent artifact hidden just out of plain sight, but deeply poisoning the veins, kept beneath the floorboards. BLOOD IS RED BLOOD IS BLUE BLOOD IS GREEN BLOOD IS BLACK BLOOD IS
10.
Where have we gone? To the ends of the earth, the heights of our galaxy, the depths of ourselves. When so many have had different experiences, what now? Can not only mutual compassion make all of these vastly different lives work together, accept and potentially even understand each other, even if only on a surface level? Our natural world is a powerful, mind-expanding drug and the same rules apply: there is no reverie for the setting without the set. The organic and synthetic have solved so many sizable problems, but only one has the power of compassion. But oh joy! The one who has the power can gift it to the other with little resistance. We can't stop progress, but we can give the opportunity for all to benefit from it. We are truly not at the end, but the beginning. "Drink your tea, be gentle with yourself, be gentle with others. Our journey will not."

about

Produced and Arranged by Drew Silverman
Story by Drew Silverman
Art by RodrixAP (www.flickr.com/photos/rodrixap/)

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“PUBLIC TERRA FIRMA” is a micro-narrative set to a loop-based jump-cut audio journey.

EACH CHAPTER IS TRANSCRIBED INTO THE LYRICS FOR THE TRACK.

Each download also comes with a PDF version of the story.

This project was intended to put the impulse before the cerebral, to be made quickly (at least, my version of quickly), and a concerted effort to not hinge on doubt or over analyze intention.

It was exciting to have worked in such a different way than I usually do. Using a loop-based program called Output Arcade I played and arranged impulsively. After making the ten pieces of music that would comprise this project, I wrote a chapter for each to be read while listening.

I count this as a love letter to how the natural world can shape our decision making and inspire compassion.

Please enjoy this short story of adventure and discovery, inside and out. Then go outside!

YOUTUBE READ-ALONG VERSION: youtu.be/LGUgNzwmrVA

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released November 9, 2020

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Drew Silverman Austin, Texas

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