surfacing - Fred Moten, Brandon López & Gerald Cleaver: Song Lyrics, Music Videos & Concerts

Fred Moten, Brandon López & Gerald Cleaver

surfacing

19

Social Science

surfacing was released on September 30, 2022 by Relative Pitch Record as a part of the album Moten

Song Details

AlbumMoten

Release DateSeptember 30, 2022

LabelRelative Pitch Record

Melodicness

Acousticness

Valence

Danceability

Energy

BPM148

OVERVIEW

LYRICS

Credits

PERFORMING ARTISTS

Fred Moten

Lead Vocals

Brandon López

Double Bass

Gerald Cleaver

Drums

COMPOSITION & LYRICS

Fred Moten

Songwriter

Brandon López

Songwriter

Gerald Cleaver

Songwriter

Lyrics

even listening some, while walking

around, while they try to look up

close, where tutti counters under

all over like tootie heath, like the

daze in grain, the specific gorse

in specific burning, giving, glare

again from boll to wisp, which

won't be the same as centering,

surfacing can only be reviewed.

eccentric landscape and recur

misbehave two or three times

in dragged approach and blown

in common wind and broken

weather. sound like some sugaree

complications of surfacing walking

around, our boots on, and take em

off, and put em in a row on the

porch, then shell some peas off

our delicate patch. surfacing is

different than facing by surfeiting

and forfeiting the terrible history

of face become surfacing, which is

the history of position, which confers

through circle in ongoing plait. it's

closer than that. prefering surfacing

to face so close that water run like

libba's hard row luxury,

light compression,

a tightening slice of lighted acre,

which bears the weight of our

delay. soft, breathable textile,

fibroid matt with blood from

hand in torture, all that blood

breathed by manchester babies,

all that blood drunk by the man

in mayfair, the vegetable lamb's

blood on branches, tied to the

whipping machine, trapped in

the drum machine, jewel set

in drum's whip topography,

baled in pools of blood mixed

by a pioneer, spun out by DJ

Gandhiji for protection and

remembrance, to demonstrate

subtle boom and fire,

to make do, and overdo,

and linger in this always being

overdue, always behind, arrear,

interred and double entered,

interminably indebted, which

seem like it do so much sharper

now than any deed for this

handing and tilling, this light

stepping on stolen land. what I

owe you? nothing, all, surfacing

all over the place, superficial, some

superfacility of passage, or passing

out past passage in surfeit, supple,

super supplement, subluxurious

wealth already given in po lil ol

making do's lil ol sharing in

coming, all forfeit in generate

handing over, in steady transgress

giving not enough, which is too,

too much.

the cotton gin

is inseparable in defacement,

in the blasted and unavailable

and disavowed portraits we let

the world see cause we can't look

unless we look so close it's gone

cause we gone cause we gone,

in seeing all in nothing all above

and below and aside, in surfacing,

in this fiery digging and hovering

thickening surfacing in tending

to it, dubbing and redoubling the

merger and divergent complicity

emerging in the way out of no

way we keep misplacing in all

that spinning and milling around,

tilling and mixing and weaving,

that purposeless spinning and

demonstrating always about to

go off, all but out of round in

how outness is always pending

in this hanging around, this offset

setting down, always all up in set it

off, tending toward getting set out

for the new thing, looking back

and looking around and bending,

spinning hid in the work and the

wake of the southern question,

does spinning negate the careful

brutality? it's just the sunshine in

your brutal uniform.

all that blood

is the engine. is that gin a computer?

that computer picks cotton. all the

magic is industrial. is your mac a

mckinney? nothing is but who's

digging, granting every wish, all

this combing in soufflé, as if a

bend was climbing in the thickness

of our flagrant dream, all turned

and spun in how we're trapped in

what we need, our gathering in

hunger, our murmuring in murder,

our holding on in being held.

yelling

across a field of ochre, in a tempo

we share, to turn. it's spring, and

yelling mixes, or new immeasure,

and the stripes are high-draped,

really yellow in that tender, evening

tree. what's the difference between

grounding and background? it's not

between them, but it is all up in

grounding and background, and in

their common engineering and

imagining, because the sound of a

field that's worked and played on

by a black family'n'em for a hundred

years makes owning a lie until, some

kinda way, it doesn't, in some kinda

so-called freedom, and then some

kinda way some nothing comes out

from something and plays all through

the work to play like it holds some

thing for us, for them to see, to hear

the burning of our giving it away,

making

laying sculpture down light blue,

like looking can't be felt but

sound. nobody

brought their box but they come

to see you give. they have, evidently,

so they want some more. they want

more demonstration, the circle, the salt

march, the charkha, the shaker, the güira

the engine, the garment in surfacing

sounding like groove thread burning

and giving, but it's not just that,

cause in the touch of these tables

you prepare, surfacing curves the

convulsion of our feeling and their

looking not quite close enough,

that convolution always surfacing

again so that there's still the heavy play

of surfacing. having worked through

break and console, surfacing describes,

tells out its own ekphrastic outline

out of turn, unplotted, burned in

giving, ain't no story ever mine, ain't

no spot ever belonged to me, no

map of all the intensities of either

edge, just a spot so real that its surreal

complaint, which differential presence

brings through all that weighing, never

close enough to feel or hear or see through,

all up on you at a distance while we're

on the ground, is that we demonstrate

surviving by spinning, which is surfacing.

Written by: Brandon López, Fred Moten, Gerald Cleaver

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