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Emerging Markets

by Erich Zann / The Shrander

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1.
These red-capped young turks in their murdered out Range Rover, with various fierce terriers surging forth. They've spent all day idling shitposting in this café, but their doppios become pot shots after dark. Are all souls redeemed by blood? Is all blood released by time? Jesus, these bastards, who were so clearly labeled fascists by giant blinking signs in several noble gases. And yet we set them loose to razrez our neezhnies, to grab us by our sharps, or our yarbles, as they please. Are all souls redeemed by blood? when all blood’s released in time? However many years in a comfy stupor. Drowsy with the glut of life slid down your gorge. Now revived for a buzzing second by an unexpected glimpse down the shirt of the world as it bends forward to pluck you.
2.
It tracks your stats! How many REM cycles this year? How many nights awake in abject fear? How many million tears shed in how many beers? How many paychecks until you go clear? How many somethings did you say after you’d seen? How many bugsplats on your LCD? How many days lost to your dumb ennui? How many paychecks till you’re OT3? How many coming wicked things have pricked your witchy thumbs with their illicit friss— On how many secret juntas did you sit? In how many trumped-up trials were you complicit? How many holy cheeks have you kissed with how many clubs, how many pipes, how many fists, with how many tennis bracelet karats on your wrists? How many black kids have you stopped and frisked? With how many brands have you engaged? Against how many machines have you raged? How many days till you will ache like I ache? How many paychecks till you’re OT8? How many misdeeds seethe underneath your scrubbed public feeds? And how many steps will it take to walk into the sea?
3.
So many hours, sick of crouching in this darkened bay. My burning quads, the icy deck, unintelligible thuddings from the companionway, my shaking hands. It came upon us in the dark. A derelict hull blotted out the stars. An ancient curse from a faraway place, a ravenous stowaway that came in silence for my crewmates one by one. Time and space deformed by unseen shapes. Shelter in place. Someone will find this ship of ghosts — my metal bolthole, my huddled bones — and wonder about my final moments with that thing out there and me alone in here, alone alone alone. They will not know this is a ship. They'll think it's just a normal school. They will not notice the pinhole breach in the bulkhead where my spirit squeezed out and flew to the stars. Time and space deformed by unseen shapes. Shelter in place. Send your mind to the black sun that inhales all black thought. Out in the hall he...nevermind. I'll leave it in this black box for you. I hope it won't seem too forward of me. I just won't need it anymore.
4.
A blaze of eyeshine at the end of the hall — is it merely your beloved dog? Is it a frightened deer, is it a wounded fox that found a shelter in your second bedroom's darkness? Is it something larger? Is it something sharper? Is that bright tapestry backlit by fear or hunger? Does it bide it's time or does it pine for the comfort of a friendly hand along its flank? Although you know you closed the back door, although you know he often lays there, although you know the house around you has never harbored feral beasts, you still detect a thrill in the air, you still detect the pong of a deep lair, you still suspect the boards you stand on still swear allegiance to the trees. And what's that dark smear down the length of the wall? Is it merely your long shadow falling? Is it the gory trail left by some crippled prey held in the dripping maw of an insatiable thing? The window lets no real light in, all you have is those two circles, the tenor of the mounting silence, the flavor of the air to guide you. Is your dog in the room? Is a wolf in your dog? Is a man in the wolf? Is a dog in the man? Does he mean you harm or does he need your help? And how long will you stand there? How long will you stand there? Will he rise on hind legs? Will he walk your way? Will he embrace you? Will he speak your name?
5.
In these streets I've always known: a rustle, a flash, a dry twig crack, breath held before the dawn. When I'm gone, will you still shrug your gear on and range out in widening circles, to find your quarry still eludes you? Flight's not my way, but you know I might be swayed to go. In these streets I've always known: a muzzle flash, a dry bone crack, breath held before the dawn. We'll fall, flooded with cortisol and splayed out on this flattened landscape, alive with the awful possibility: we've always been this way and if you're giving us a choice we'll take the dregs.
6.
Go in Peace 03:08
How could we think we were done with you? How could we think we were done with you? You grow like shadows from our shoes. You grow like shadows from our shoes. And we know men like you, you eat all that's good, you roil like termites in once-strong wood. You tell us tomorrow is bright. Tomorrow's your favorite lie. Well tomorrow the sun will still rise, and it could still burn out your eyes. Our hope is not dead, our hope is not dead. We still hope you will join us, and if you don't then we hope you will go in peace. Far away. Down these long blind alleys, under these low low ceilings, we've been building something. We've been building something. In the parallel city, wherever two or three are gathering, we'll be building something. We'll be building something. And I am the wild machinist, I am the wild machinist, let's be the wild machinists, let's be the wild machinists. Our hope is not dead, our hope is not dead. We still hope you will join us, and if you don't then we hope you will go in peace. Far away. And we'll take all of you because we love all of you.
7.
Two nights ago I heard them drag their sticks along the hall outside my door. Next morning there were gouges a half-inch thick in the walls and in the floor. That afternoon I suited up and I waited in the foyer for their call. I've never met the dusk with such hunger or been so gutted to see the dawn. I've never been so far away from everything I know — I'm still at home. A quiet moment, at rest by the fire. Dinner cooking. The early formal experiments soon give way to a looser expression. Designer objects liberated from their aseptic bourgeois prison. A painterly spray of Murano glass and blood-soaked packing peanuts. Rothko prints transform to glyphs smudged on the walls in soot. Your knockoff Noguchi coffee table will burn just as well as books. Newfound freedom, at rest by the fire. Dinner cooking. This machine was designed to kill you, and it's working. Stop trying to fix it. Stop trying to fix it. Stop trying. To keep yourself from starving in this place you must be willing to draw blood. I heard his frightened panting, I heard his master shaking where he stood. I let them see me coming, it didn't do them any good. Back to normal, at rest by the fire. Dinner cooking — roasted Alsatian.
8.
Crawl Away 03:38
Crawl away in shame now, you cannot do otherwise. We saw what you said, we heard what you did. Like a house built with still-wet bricks that slump as you lay them, like a scree-covered hillside that calls itself a trail. A smoking heap left behind, ticking as it cools. A grave left uncovered for the ease of the ghouls. You Terror, you Erebus, you ice-mangled derelict lost with all souls in pursuit of max ROI. What have you done to his eyes, you maniacs? Kept the tie tack but let your membership lapse. Hide yourself, hide you from this machine's vibrant hum, before it takes you sideways. But everything's OK: your suburban PD deploys LRADs on MRAPs while you enjoy the au pair. Your terrified error, your comforting lie — but you can't be a racist, you've watched all The Wire. And motionless, stuck in the tarpits of talking points... Why not disappear? Why bother holding on? Why not just let go and slide down this verdant incline, towards the waiting bamboo spikes. Hide yourself, hide you from this machine's vibrant hum, before it takes you sideways. A man who made comfrey tea with foxglove mistakenly lived long enough to hear his wife say "You've killed us." Hide yourself, hide you from this machine's vibrant hum, before it takes you sideways. Last verse in the chapter of your long betrayal: 4 horsemen, 3 horses, 2 squabble, a gunshot. Still we will arrive in traditional fashion: slick with the gore of all those that crossed us, be they man, woman, child, beast, or drone.
9.
A sharp rap on a marble counter, a dull thud on a marble floor, three seconds of silence, a rush for the door. Dark shapes pour forth from dark corridors with heads-up displays and Kevlar armor, and they'll block all the exits and then order you to disperse. What's a person? If not a heat signature? Blue at the edges, red at the center, a cloud that dissolves when enough force is administered. I don't know anything except whose side I'm on. Back in the kennels they filled me with protein, they showed me your picture, they told me you'd hurt me, they trained me to bury my teeth where they'd meet the least fight. And I thought I was happy to be part of their pack, to feel that roiling black chitinous mass at my back, to keep them from harm, to make straight their path. But now I see that wildness should have occurred to me earlier and more frequently. See me bolt towards the tree line trailing my lead. I don't know anything except whose side I'm on. A sharp rap on a marble counter, a dull thud on a marble floor, and you know tomorrow you're gonna be sore. One hand placates, the other digs in — you can see it rummage around under your skin. If it finds what it's looking for maybe they'll let you go home. But you appreciate the impulse to obscure when you're trapped between the pitbulls and the pure: so many teeth, so many teeth, so many teeth. I don't know anything except whose side I'm on.

about

I spent 2017 tossing all my dark thoughts into a well, and then I hoisted the bucket up and retrieved this album. It's full of songs about militarized suburban police departments, wearable fitness tracking devices, alt-right assholes, school shootings, and other modern hauntings. It's no fun at all, but maybe it can soak up some of your dark thoughts too, so that you can go about your business.

credits

released February 23, 2018

Written, performed, recorded by Zach Hooker.
Mastered by John McCaig.

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Erich Zann / The Shrander Seattle, Washington

"His blue eyes were bulging, glassy, and sightless, and the frantic playing had become a blind, mechanical, unrecognisable orgy that no pen could even suggest." — H.P. Lovecraft, The Music of Erich Zann

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