We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

The Cosmos According to Your Closed Eyes

by SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Download includes complete instrumental version and jpegs of original paintings by Veronica napoli created to accompany the album for the release show September 13, 2013.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Gorgeous orange sleeve design befitting of a frame. Buy two and hang up both sides. Includes Digital release with all the bells and whistles: complete instrumental version and jpegs of the original artwork by Veronica Napoli to accompany specific tracks.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Cosmos According to Your Closed Eyes via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $12 USD or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 7 SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of New Vision feat. Insight (Chicago), Edgar Allen Poe Dameron, Jaws of Life After Death (Produced by Khid Genius), The Environment (Political Climate Crisis), SEE MORE EYE JACK, SEX TAPE (Or My Response to Our Morbidly Underdeveloped Sex Education), and The Cosmos According to Your Closed Eyes. , and , .

    Excludes subscriber-only releases.

    Purchasable with gift card

      $23 USD or more (50% OFF)

     

1.
My theory of time and space: Time is infinite, nothing that happens within time is separate from anything else that happens within time its all happening right now, it’s our experience that’s singular space is infinite, there is one space, and nothing is independent of that space it’s all just like a frozen, three dimensional painting that lives and breathes our whole lives are like streaks of paint in this picture every nano second, every experience, just a pixel and we can’t see it, because we’re so stuck on our selves on these dots in the static pointillism, limiting our point of view Welcome to the cosmos according to your closed eyes
2.
Ofrenda 04:37
When I pass, My essentialness drifting out of reach, I will look back Longing through fading eyes To sculpt a look of implore into my last expression This is what it will mean: Try. Our world is haunted Lost souls clamber for redemption in the back of our minds and in the peripheral of our daily lives These are the ghosts of marginalization and sing an unheard chorus of our deepest human regret With my life I try. I will ask the same in death. Do everything you can to leave one less bitter phantom behind Live your life fully and know that you’ve done right… Not just right by you or your family or your coworkers or me. But by every living soul you share this world with. Do right by the world itself Now, I understand…this is no simple request But think of a hard days work, or a particularly busy month or year and how getting through that last stretch just feels so good. Try. Know that you tried. And when we pass, let ours be the ghosts of forward motion Do this, and we can communicate with the color of dreams And they will honor us with distant memories of a future once imagined The sun sets on a cool-warm day in November Tangerine light slipping through a strainer in the sky Somehow I have just left this place But I am returned And it is not as I remember Funneling down on a cosmic wind from some distant universe, I arrive to a small house Familiar, as if from a dream, half remembered This is not my home, but I get it This is where it’s supposed to be There are candles and the sweet smell of conchas, pan de muerte, canella con leche, and mole Inviting smiles of skeletons welcome me to this flowery fever dream I land at a strange ofrenda Huge and intricate Small and blurry It is an offering as big as the world yet perceived as an alter… Yes, there is food There is a photo of someone who looks like some kind of alternate version of me grey yes, but not altogether just an older me… Yes there is sweets, comics , my favorite drink even a stash of records I thought they’d never find but there is more there is a hand print in the earth below the fingerprints and life lines stretching out between ofrendas tributaries of intention and will rivers that my flow deepened over time tributaries reaching to every corner of the world that is your potential and that is my request upon death to return a thousand years from now float down on the falling autumn leaves and see the most magnificent ofrenda I could ever imagine this world
3.
Her pregnancy was a tumultuous fault line sticky with heavy air and a tall glass of lemonade. Ice cubes on temples and cramps like tremors of a forboding quake. She was mother as rich as ripe soil of a damned river bed but opposite, and golden from the inside. Even her migraines must have felt like the tense whirling of a Singing bowl. The sinew of her writhing frame disguised redwood, fighting to stay in character- Almost laughing at the absurdity with the other trees in the hot summer breeze. Her smile a horizon's thick blood orange sun, undamaged by the dark ooze of coming night. Bold enough to drench you with emotion but not to blind you, because that would just be too self indulgent. This mother earth of a woman gave birth like the pressure of volcanic rock creating new continents. And thus a boy was born a mountain of a man. This is where I have to point out something about how tall tales are told. Like all legends, myths, religions, and poetry, they exaggerate a certain, innate truth. This mighty boy John turned great man John Henry was actually an average child of weight and size. It was his in eyes, the center of a presence like the sun of our solar system. All things a pattern around his gravity. It is true that at as an infant he could not be held by cradle, playpen or fence, and that you could see specs in the air above his home from around the town of Talcott West Virginia; family pets juggled for fun. True that at the age of five his footsteps broke the panels of his home and that as a teenager those specs in the air became local livestock and that he would empty whole lakes with the leaping shout of "cannonball!!!". True, indeed, but it wasn't his size that caused these things, it was his presence. Imagine the weight of a sunrock living and breathing and playing and laughing in the atmosphere of our little blue earth. It wasn't his size imposing itself on his surroundings, it was the gravity of his will...all things bending to it, heavy as the sun itself. In this sense, to look at this man and his story reveals a legend not of strength but of gentleness. His compassion for the family of workers that surrounded him was only surmounted by his efforts as an organizer; first in slavery, meeting in dreams with Harriet Tubman and conspiring with The Underground Railroad and the recruitment for John Brown’s raid. This force of nature remaining in slavery, throughout the war, only to see that others would be free – and later, once free himself, when big business swarmed to take the rightful stock of the proud workers he knew and loved; A good days work, respect and proper compensation and a humble place to call home. Now, the rest you know. He fought to prove mans worth over machine, mining through Big Bend Tunnel and in doing so, died. Or so it is told. You might say he lives on to this day. There is another legend that speaks of his ashes, only becoming ashes after a slow burn of ten days and ten nights, were spread over the railroad tracks where he built his path to greatness; learning the depth of a days work when applied fully by ones mind body and soul. It's said that these ashes, indestructible and so fine as to be invisible to the naked eyes of science, are in all the winds of our globe and rush to the aid of any true statement or courageous act. That said, walk like John Henry. Choose your hammer, choose your mountain and let’s get to work.
4.
There is madness in the air A sick mess of furious confusion A yard I don’t recognize, anger and flames and terror a synchronized torrent of frustration and pain I calmly traverse this nightmare’s landscape with a low center of gravity Palms connecting at my chest, guided by a direct, slow intention Patiently surveying the grounds and intuitively making my way to the heart of it all I enter a door and it erupts Mundane objects hurl themselves weapons in the quick, heavy air I stay low and focused, under the radar of this malevolent, swirling chaos Floor boards split, splinter by splinter Spatters of sparks sputter and singe my flesh There are screams and roars and anguish As I bleed closer and closer to the heart of this tortured home A thoughtful medicine searching for the cause of this illness I make my way down the stairs uncertain as they are Attempt as they may to keep me from this open nerve of a basement There is a woman as terrible as the most wretched sea storm A hurricane of discontent and aimless contempt She is blind fury unleashed upon us I breathe deep and slow as her empty gaze turns on me I stand and offer an unseen gesture The scene gives pause in its treachery And in the fraction of an instant, She glows a vivid orange that seeps into my eyes and mind and my heart Her smile defies the blinding light She is beautiful And I awake
5.
Once to awaken Twice to incite Thrice to again be cast from the light 3 - I will perish with my proudest foe Find defeat in my victory The blackened sky turned over, spilling oceans upon us all I will drift into that darkness unafraid Might slipping from my grasp, from my body I will find bravery without superiority Strength without will Will without proof 2 - I will be poisoned, and deny a life as such 1 - Our collective arrogance will crawl from fiery pits to avenge its humanity A humanity stripped by its clawed, flailing hatred of us A humanity I defend, encourage, and love I will fail weakened, tired, and bruised But until then, I will ever land blows to those who sew doubt, Disillusion, and fear Those who would manipulate with these deadly strings Urging an ugly growth They will not find rain from my soul rather lightning from my eyes thunder between their ears They will know why a hammer is And why storms are revered so Once to awaken Twice to incite Thrice to again be cast from the night There is evil in this world whispers from poisoned ghosts that grip grudge like clubs Hands that know not touch Haunted dreams that pass beneath them Visions they feel no connection or responsibility to One must let go to let in But they have forgotten how You can remember…retrace your mind to innocence There is time Your calloused heart still beats There is warmth in your veins So can there be ease in your mind But you must… let… go… If you can not Should your hands become limbs of a tree that bears loss, Should cold reach your epitome, your heart beat metallic, And your eyes glaze over deepest despondent… Should you forget the hallows of this place, commit that emptiness upon innocence and forget who keeps watch you will know why lightning strikes Once to awaken Twice to incite Thrice to again be cast from the light In the final destiny of the gods, I will fall, my hammer relinquished to the two ancient trees A seed until the new firstspring when the gaping darkness inhales again I pray the two grow to strongest light through the darkest soil of firmament To a mighty star with grip enough to grasp and heart enough to heal I pray with every strike of myself, Every effort of my will That it be as such As I am Until Ragnarok
6.
Interlude 01:14
7.
Through miles of jagged rock like a sky of broken shark teeth there is a pocket of earth and rock smoothed into a home a clearing with an air of humble majesty and the every day sacred ecstatic truth wrapped in the mundane there are two inhabitants here one, a custodian of sorts – a ragged man committed to a singular purpose and the other, an ascetic of the highest order - living wisdom and compassion there is an immense statue there of the greatest buddha soft, milk white marble contours the imagination into a smile just smaller, immersed and emerging from this supple colossus of knowing gentleness is a golden, shimmering figure like the sun snuggled in a comforter of fog and sky days pass and the old, kind worker tends to the dirt and polish and broom he is lava, slow but certain the enlightened one walks and sits, filling the newly dusted grounds with ubiquitous thought days pass in their clearing amidst the rocks and nothing changes, save where the dust gathers most and where the thoughtful old gentlemen begins with his broom days pass and an otherwise invisible fact emerges - these two characters trade places every day one always the custodian and the other always the holy man as if two sides of coin I am an observer on the wind of this quiet, magical place my presence a still water tension, my breath held as to keep this constant, silent peace suddenly, something occurs to me like the first breath to the drowning these are not days that pass in the animated amber of this experience, they are lifetimes centuries have lived and died over the course of this dream there is a gift in this realization that is not meant for my waking hands I learn something I cannot exactly bring with me as these tides of knowing and wakefulness wash over me simultaneously I am pitched out of this knowledge, Hurling through the last moments of understanding I hit the ground running My whole self aimed at this lost truth Strides of thought stretch toward that gasp of realization And I am still running
8.
In my mind, I fashion so many Hacendados of the 18 and 1900’s as the stacks of jeering pigs in angry birds. Appointed grubs, farming shit to roll in Laughing and drunk with their own delusions of machismo bastards of the Spanish, French and American imperialists Appeasing those who’d support or enhance their claims Trails of scum throughout the paperwork Land re-formed into stacks before them A seed grew circa 1879 in this fertilized earth Discontent, yes, maltrust, of course But also a tiger cub His parents were earthen monuments of love and strength Hard day workers of older ways, adjusting to modern life That modernity was oppression And this child saw it in every line of his parents’ faces In every dusty crack of their hands As if everything taken from the land and community around them Was simultaneously taken from their bodies, not their eyes Yes, the boy knew struggle from conception Inherited strength and learned the world quickly He was a new sunrise everywhere he visited A breath reset to this moment His visits lifted weight and lightened rooms, ranches and from the first sight of them burned heavy in haciendas The unspoken prince kingdom of a breaking town rotting in fast forward by fingers of manifest destiny A charmer, horse whisperer and bullfighter Playboy of depleted plains Rebel of his imposed world smile like a dagger in the heart Unsheathed with great care as swift as it was a noble weapon At 17, on some small adventure, a letter came His father was leaving him a bit of land, 9 siblings, a mother all of their hopes fell onto him like a tree on a wooded path he never thought about dodging it and rose to meet it hands first on a horse back to Morelos the cub was growing but hadn’t yet shown his fangs The elders of Annencuilco Scarred lions of withering food chain Fenced outside of so called “civilization” Aging Statesmen of the sugarcane plantations Wise, strong, righteous And worn by a lifetime of fight Their burned and bloodied efforts Heavy with imbalance and confusion of political process and the accumulation of wealth These majestic statues of worthy intent Gathered in a kiln like room Raising hardening hands before the townspeople Honorable workers as certain of their elders as rock and sun One hand to their hearts and one toward a new steward Someone who’d stand up for them Incorruptable, wily and fierce They needed a tiger this Native tongued son was someone you could trust quietest in the room loudest of loyalty words chosen and administered careful as bullets He’d let them pour when need be never holding back a pressing truth him. He’d work the facets of government Present indisputable evidence Do everything they presumed he was incapable of And as they sneered more and more away from the people And bent more and more obvious to the weight of landowners gold He roared...and was heard throughout Mexico They’d come to their newly attained land to find a tiger before a hoard of riders with guns A liquid pace of prowess at its borders Cursive in his movement “you didn’t do the right thing, so we did”
9.
All is silent. A silence as certain and distant as peace. there is a friend in my home who is not friend. This should be my old compa Jorge who would often visit, stay the night, rap and make art with me on the sides of buildings and over passes and banks. Not ever on anything independently owned, nothing without a purpose or a genuine question and nothing without art. Jorge laughs like fireworks look and there’s always fun around the corner of his smirk. A friend is here, but it is not my friend. He is disguised in a disgusting mask of flesh, swollen and puffy and it doesn’t fit his real face. A darkness peering from black eyes and I’m trying to keep it cool, casually taking in information of this rotten, bloated presence over my shoulder. I cannot face him. When I look back I am terrified by what I feel and my words fall like molasses. I slowly return to the task at hand. He doesn’t move a fraction, a vision of malice, fossilized in amber. I’m washing the dishes…eyes in my back like thorns, the most intense leer like the soft tap of spider’s legs that want in. This day is weeks and months and these years just a sunny afternoon outside. I come and go, I’m busy and I’m only stopping in to leave. This unfriend living in my home, with my family, my mother, my younger sister and our pets…it is a tepid but constant squalor in the downstairs… is this what happens to a dream deferred? I maneuver carefully through the bi-products of this spirit’s wretched intent with casual talismans…masks and drums and décor. I am cleaning and organizing. Washing the dishes again. Behind me he is a grotesquerie of intent, a masterpiece of some sick artist who’s left his greatest work to stand and watch…me. I tell him he can’t stay. He’ll be needing to leave immediately. I continue working on the basement’s floors (you can’t stay), shelves (you can not stay), cracks (you must), closets, (you WILL leave), and the walls…The walls are what stand out. I’m talking with my mom and kissing her forehead and just then I’m under her bedroom in the downstairs, right underneath where she lays and I’m hanging a mask. I know it is gone, there is a slow silence like the most beautiful new snow, There is light here and I awake.
10.
Her headache began as a slow boa constrictor Romancing its self around her body from the bottom up Squeezing for sustenance from her supple, ripe mind This incredible pressure would pin her focus to a needles point A hair trigger aimed for good reason Efficient strokes of effort ---the only way she knew how to operate She needed to stay on point On task On call On egg shells and pins and needles The rare guardian against power, liquor and rage a blow to the head in defense of a friend at the age of seven left her this way hot, frozen pain her body folding toward sleep under the tremors that flushed her senses tremors like rail road spikes under hammer each blow driving consciousness from her immaculate grip flood gates would spring open and dreams would crash down on her the headache just the first wave of floodwater she would soon be submerged in a dam broken from her innermost sense of self just as the pain started as a boa and became a hammer and the hammer became water, so did the water become light a light that rushed through, within and beyond her a flow of information - images, ideas and vast emotion before long, figures walked to her from this light a humble girl with sharp thoughts and mindful tongue a queen, a general, a bold statesman devils, politicians and freedom fighters family not yet her own... familiar strangers and strange familiarity finally, a man as big as sassafrass mountain kind and austere bold and soft at the same time it was all just murmurs at first and she thought herself mad she’d wake up like she had seen a ghost that told her she’d better not tell and she didn’t, not ever… What she did do, was use what she learned from these visions That became a form of communication down the coast, through the south and into the north becoming a General in these dreams, strategizing with the other mighty spirits Discussing routes and opportunities, resources within the enemies borders and the perils of their risk They spoke of networks under the pointed confederate nose pleaded with enslaved minds on a white picket fence Convincing, compelling and not taking weakness for an answer She inspired and was inspired Driven by a light that poured through her like a curse With pursed lips she held that focus like a sword General Tubman indeed The Conductor Impelled by something she saw as god A divinity that coursed through her temples and flowed through her every move It doesn’t matter if it was god, hell, it doesn’t even matter if there is a god When someone is propelled by an energy like that, it is divine and it will not be stopped For every time that pain overtook her with that awesome light, She was refueled, refreshed and reintegrated into the fabric of our collective unconscious O’Moses they said… O’Moses, The General Conductor of dream, life and freedom
11.
How far out can you visualize our multiverse? Can you see where the infinite takes pause? What about the universe, galaxy or solar system? Can you see the sticky webs of nebula that streak toward the dust sputtered blackness oozing between the tendrils of our own spilled milky way? Can you envision poor pluto, the confused moon planet as it looks back longingly toward our sun passed the other precious, living marbles of ice, rock, gas, hurricane and ore What image is reflected in those mournful eyes of our moon? How far into this crystal ball can it see? Through the rolling and veilish clouds, the continents like paintings of mud, grass and sand, your state, mountains you could run your thumb over, your city, trees you could scratch an itch with, this block and street and doorway and another and there you sit... And what of within? How far does your inside go? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cool, billowing sheets in front of a fan and a slid open door Summer night below stars under weight of muggy air just before a thunderstorm Gathering clouds murmur on the horizon’, black-purple ink roiling in the midnight blue A father A child the size of his abdomen he offered magic with his affections “how much do you love me papa?” “hasta el cielo, mi’jo” with a finger through the ceiling and beyond the sky This is how I learned spiritual infinity from a man from traditions from people who first conceived zero.. As the rain fell cool before our makeshift air conditioning, I saw a river of lightning flooding over No, not lightning... Static White blue purple Running down the hill in the distance Through my father and over my head I almost drowned that night... Mommycita and I would swing on the shade of the screen porch Let thoughts fall on an easy breeze Spring bird soundtrack springboard for contemplation We are stardust… a firebrand on an impressionable mind liquid light between the creases I was in preschool, kindergarten Talking about the wonders of the cosmos And the inescapable mysteries of science I learned very young that it was more interesting and more practical to know what is not known, than to spew what is - I was never a good student, but I was a keen learner, sharpened by a worthy teacher sometime during high school, drawing whatever came to mind, I shared some with my mom She gasped – “I know where your blood comes from, and to see the connection between that and this...” I had never felt more connected to my cultural heritage before that moment And I never looked at anything I did the same way again From a very young age, I knew that I was capable of anything That the same atoms in my body come from the stars and so I have access to all the knowledge of the universe Later, a swan dive within Reaching Relinquishing Aspiring In the shimmering liquid darkness, A threshold, radiant with purpose I entered, heart in hand An offering of and to self My deepest spring, tapped into the pipelines of my heart
12.

about

Twin Cities hip hop artist, poet, activist and educator SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE releases his new spoken-word album, “The Cosmos According to Your Closed Eyes.”

The album, made possible with funds provided by the VERVE grant, intentionally breaks from the current wave of Twin Cities slam poets, forgoing the highly structured, sometimes formulaic, narratives associated with the form for a more musical, less regimented approach. Equal parts mythic and working-class, intimately detailed and big-picture-conscious, the project is See More’s first spoken-word project in a long history of quality musical releases.

As a producer and as a writer, See More’s influences color his work in subtle and surprising ways. Indeed, perhaps the best way to wrap your head around this project (aside from just listening to it, of course), is to read the acknowledgments/thank yous:

“To Rumi and Hemmingway, Miyazaki, Kurasawa, DJ Shadow, Neruda, Castaneda, Pharaoh Sanders, Guillermo Del Toro, comic books, MN weather, quality food and drink, late night conversations on rooftops, undiscovered life forms, and you.”

credits

released September 17, 2013

Written, performed, produced and recorded by SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE.

Cover art design and Photo by SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE.

Art by Veronica Napoli.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE Saint Paul, Minnesota

SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE is a Xincano MC, Producer, Spoken Word Poet, and Social Justice Educator. His work explores mythology, science fiction, spirituality, and the paranormal. Find SEE MORE in a cypher or a seance, pushing conversations about social justice, singing for strangers in a living room, or sharing culture, tradition, and craft in a classroom. ... more

contact / help

Contact SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE, you may also like: