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Pitfalls, Revisited

from Best Dead Masterpiece by Sold Kingdom

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about

Five-part song cycle about several problematic interactions, which I didn't fully recognize as such until all these years later. Culminates in the overdue realization of my own susceptibility to danger. Part V, which I also call "Teresa," is inspired by the film “Looking for Mr. Goodbar." If I had to pick one track off the current album to represent my entire body of work, this would be it. Which is why it's frustrating that, of all the tracks, this is probably the one most afflicted with background noise from my amateur recording transgressions. But it's a dream of mine to perform this live with an ensemble one day.

lyrics

Pitfalls, Revisited

I.
A little part of me always transformed into my lovers
Love was the sublimation of myself

One said, "Cover your shoulder"
One scoffed at my little girl clothes
And I thought maybe they had a point
So I started a trashcan fire
Scared to speak a word
Lest it be twisted into unanticipated forms
Your misogyny didn’t recognize itself
Even thought itself evolved
It’s the one thing that I never miss at all


II.
First we felt like equals and you thought
My intuitive key changes were clever
Then when you were finished with me
You reduced me to a trope
Regarded me in stilted language
To put me at a distance

Some say I ought to feel you stole from me
But until I give up running for the beauty
I expect not to know love from vanity
To be left with only glitter in my sheets
Like each time Oscar’s golden, spoiled boy
Alighted in the cruelty of morning


III.
Hey - you made me what I am
Where did you go
Pulling the strings of the show
More determinedly now since I let you go

I still picture you
Alone at the end of a drink
In the shadow of a hand-me-down weight machine
Your forehead faintly lined
And the glint of the blue-grey steel in your eye
Dulled with daily duty
And sallow time

Tori sings of Bobby
Vincent sings of John
I sing of you, my sexless perpetual fantasy
Floating around like a Chagall
Teasing me
You assassinated yourself
And rose up like Draper
Like Underwood
Till I didn’t want you anymore
And for that I kind of hate you


IV.
Oh god how I wish I could hate
Wish I could hate
Wish I could hate

He with the accent and frosted tips
Who despises nothing more than obligation

Or he with the country boy aplomb
Raking weak minds
Into a congregation

I can tell what you’re like when you're alone
What made you cruel
What made you devastating
But you’ve built an arsenal
And planned my demise
While I’ve been here contemplating

I always heard you out just a bit too long
With the spiral cord twisting itself around my arm
In a stew of arousal and pity
I drink to the girl in the oversized glasses
Whatever made her do this for a living
I guess there's also a sliver of it in me


V.
Teresa you thought your vision was sharp
But you had an unrealized handicap
Like me piercing souls with my black-brown eyes
But behind thick lenses, stumbling into things
Delusions of power
Thinking I could safely breach their bedrooms
Throw my head back laughing
Toss my hair
Slice to their bones
And come out alive

Not recognizing the delicacy of my
Sublime crushable windpipe
Or that they could reduce me to
A screaming blue
Splatter of myself
Circling tinier and tinier still
Into oblivion

credits

from Best Dead Masterpiece, track released February 26, 2021
Lyrics and Music - L. Alexandra Manuel

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Sold Kingdom Charlottesville, Virginia

Soothingly brutal bystander balladry

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