Teedubyabee
The Argento-referencing title is a good signpost for the sounds within - eerie, claustrophobic, harrowing, haunted by turn. An intense experience & best wishes to Erica and her family.
Favorite track: Black Bile.
The door swung upon but no one’s outside
The stairs are creaking so turn on the lights
The ceiling’s crumbled and yet we survive
The cars keep screeching and we close our eyes
When the walls cave in
We close our eyes
Before you were formed from the Earth, I was waiting to find you.
I was meant for you, part of your soul.
And as you grew, as you grew, I fed you like a mother
And my thoughts became your volition.
And when you drown, I’m the morgen pulling you under.
I’m there with you as you sink into nothing.
What you perceive, what you feel is what I feed you
Like honey, like milk from the Earth.
And there are days, many times you tried to leave me
But I’m always there, your eternal companion.
On a trip in the spring of 2008, I woke up in a pool of blood. I knew it was coming. I started spotting days before. The doctor in the Swiss ER apologized profusely for their English. They asked questions and probed my uterus. The hurried bustle, mumbles and shouts in French and German, half heard explanations of tissue likely flushed away, the highly probable and common occurrence. The sounds were swelling and peaking, assaulting me. My womb had rejected this badly wanted pregnancy. I had held it at bay for over a year but was completely helpless in that moment as familiar waves of terror and sadness began washing over me.
A relative said I should find out what was wrong with me. They had many children and this had never happened. Pregnant again, I continued to bleed. I couldn’t sleep for fear of waking to another dead baby.
I friend found me difficult to be around. Why couldn’t I just get over it? Why did I want one anyway? The climate crisis meant that it would inherit an unbearable and over-populated Earth. And I knew it would be like me. My womb knew it, too.
Over the next four years, despite my body’s best efforts, I brought two children into the world. Exhausted, I felt as if something had sucked the marrow out of my bones.
I often had the uncanny sense that someone was standing over me as my infant daughter slept against my chest. I lacked the courage to open my eyes. By the time she was three, she described the old lady that watched her at night. Chills down my spine, I assured her it was just her great grandmother watching over her.
Fear and desolation haunted me as I carried my son into the world. Post-pregnancy, a hospital intern and supervisor surveyed my stress level and signs of depression. They smilingly remarked that some of my scores were high, thanked me for contributing to the intern’s growth, and left. The on-call OBGYN said they could write a script for another night’s stay at the hospital. I fought back tears and steadily remarked that I had not slept more than a few hours in two days.
“There is a great deal of noise here,” I said.
“Hmm,” they said and signed the discharge.
I floated through many months, my mind in a fog, drifting in and out of sleep as my toddler daughter learned to pour her own cereal and my son rocked and cried in the swing. I cried often and for reasons that were not always clear. I screamed at my husband and into the pillow, longed for sleep and solitude but couldn’t quiet my mind when I had it.
My son vomited up everything I could squeeze from my breasts. A colleague who had grown boys, resentfully held him while he screamed. They told me I should find out what was wrong with him. The first time my son punched a desk at school and said he was bad inside, the voice said, “You did this.”
The voice was always there. Raised in an evangelical family, efforts were focused on redemption from the unseen sin hiding inside me. They said even my thoughts were known. The voice was not the thoughts, the voice knew the thoughts and shamed me back into submission.
The voice sounds just like my own. It is there to remind me that I am grotesque, morbid, unworthy. It is the first to speak when I feel overwhelmed, to point out what I cannot do. It is there to reassure me when I cave and give up. It already knows I will fail. It is there to comfort me, reminding me that it is the only one who really knows me, the unseen corrosion on the inside. Then it bewitches me with an insatiable appetite for sleep and seclusion. I am in a fog, cannot write, cannot create, cannot be present. I am insulated from failure.
Sometimes I crawl out from under it. Slowly, clarity returns. I make eye contact in the mirror, write, laugh with my husband and children, reach out to friends, sleep undisturbed. I relax the death grip on the wheel, breathe into my core. I quiet the noise to a low hum. I reground with five things I can see, four I can hear, three I can touch.
I walk through the house at night, turning off lights, thanking the ancestors for their watchful eyes but begging them to let my children sleep peacefully. I tell the fear, the sadness, the voice, “Leave me alone tonight.”
credits
released August 6, 2021
Erica Burgner-Hannum - Vocals, Lyrics and Synthesizers
Terence Hannum - Synthesizers, Bowed Cymbals, Drum Machine and Vocals
Recorded by Terence in Baltimore
Mastered by Jake Reid
supported by 39 fans who also own “Mother of Sighs”
personal top record of 2017, in love at first listen. enchanting vocals and synths, mellow drumming & hypnotic bass. you really cannot go wrong with this one ❤ turning_ever_towards_the_sun