Another Digital Diary

The basement smells like wet cement and old electricity like something tried to become a home here and gave up halfway through We drag our equipment through the narrow stairwell anyway knowing it will scrape, knowing we won't apologize for it

Someone taped over the broken light with a flyer from last month's show the ink already fading like it regrets being printed Names of bands no one remembers anymore layered over each other until they stop meaning anything at all

We set up in a circle that isn't really a circle more like an agreement that we willface the noise together instead of pretending it comes from anywhere else

When the first note hits, it isn't music yet It's an interruption A refusal A hard break in whatever quiet the world was trying to sell us

The amps crackle like they're alive and unhappy about it Every sound feels too close, too personal like it knows things about us we didn't agree to share

Someone is already screaming before the song starts not words exactly, just pressure released in a direction It makes the air feel thinner like we've been given less room to exist in

We didn't ask for clarity We don't build towards resoluion We keep moving forward anyway because stopping would mean hearing ourselves think

The drums don't follow structure, they fight it each hit like a reminder that time is not something we belong to Guitars tear through the mix in jagged pieces like they're trying to escape their own strings

There's sweat on the walls now, or maybe condensation or maybe just the room reacting to the noise like a living thing It's hard to tell where we end and it begins

We used to talk about the meaning between sets Now we just stand there breathing hard pretending our lungs aren't filled with the same unresolved static we just poured into the floor

Someone drops a cable and doesn't pick it up right away No one stops No one can afford to interrupt the momentum not even for something that matters

The lyrics don't tell stories anymore They don't explain They just arrive in fragments half confessions, half accident like they were never meant to survive the throat they came from

And still we push louder as if volume could replace certainty as if distortion could make truth easier to hold

There's a moment, small, almost invisible where everything locks together by mistake Not harmony Not peace Just shared impact A collective weight pressing down on the same fragile point in time

Then it breaks again

It always breaks again

Welcome, to this, oh so perfect world.  In our ugly looking oysters, we've got pretty, pretty pearls.  Where the billboards glow like heaven and the flags all proudly twirl,  But behind the closed doors it's pretty normal to abuse a little girl.  You can grab her by the hair, and give her a good hurl.  Let her lay there on the cold tiles where she slowly curls,  Into a little ball while her dizzy vision spins and swirls,  And they'll still be able to say, "Oh, what a lucky little girl."  But she better keep her words inside her pretty mouth, If they leave her pouty lips everything gonna go south.  She'll be thrown outside, she'll fly out the door, hit the floor, And she'll have to leave her father's dusty little house, Follow behind the "crazy" woman—his ex-spouse. In this wonderful place, where in the streets the lights are flashing red, People blame the little girl, not the one who forced her into bed, Not the one who whispered dirty words into her innocent little head. 

Everybody seems to wear those rose-tinted glasses real tight,  So that they don't ever see the monsters walking in the night,  Stalking what they own, all the girl's their owed, right?  Ignore the blood spilled on the tiles, ignore the names spelled out in the files,  No man up here goes to trial, you can try to make him but you'll fail.  Here, a rapist has committed much, much less of a crime,  Than the woman or the girl who aborts his unborn child in time.  He'll get about nine years, or, most of the time, even less in jail,  And she'll get the rest of her life feeling a little pale.  In the locker rooms they laugh, "At eighteen she hits her prime,"  Like a carton on a shelf that somehow spoils after time.  Any later than that and she's "expired," "past her use,"  While old men twice her age are still excused for their abuse.  And only men are ever really "worked down to the bone,"  A woman could break in half and still be told to carry on.  God forbid a woman's bleeding—now she's "crazy," now she's "mad,"  Must be hormones, not the decades of mistreatment that she's had.  Send her off to doctors quickly, she's "too emotional to speak,"  Anything she says is worthless for at least one bloody week.  Funny how the world's worst horrors mostly started up by men,  Yet somehow women get called "hysterical" again and again.  If he's got a bunch of children, he's the one to hire.  Because apparently his wife's labor makes him more admired.  But the woman with the child is somehow unstable,  She's only ever useful setting dinners on the table.  People talk to her like she's fragile glass or disabled,  Like motherhood erased the dreams that once made her capable. Yeah sure, ancestry tests can only track the mother's blood,  Science says she's the only one identifiable, bud.   But go on, good sir, about your "legacy" and name.  Though she's the one who bore the risk, the sickness, and the pain.  She carried every heartbeat while her body tore apart,  Yet somehow you still crown yourself the keeper of the heart.  No, no, nobody here's in denial—what's denial anyway?  This place is perfectly healthy, that's what all the headlines say. Just ignore the frightened daughters taught that silence is polite, Ignore the bruises hidden underneath long sleeves at night. Ignore the priests and politicians preaching "family" and "grace," While women learn survival means to shrink themselves in place. Welcome, welcome, to this shining little world, Where monsters wear nice suits and every flag is neatly furled. Where freedom means obedience, and truth's too dangerous to tell, And the people screaming loudest swear this place is doing well. Anyone who dares object will be drowned in a dark, damp well. What a gorgeous civilization, what a dazzling modern whirl— In our ugly looking oysters, we've got pretty, pretty pearls.