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Neither Nightingale Nor Lark

by No Little Sparrow

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1.
I wish I was a little sparrow And I had wings and I could fly I'd fly away to you my lover And when you'd speak I would deny But I am not no little sparrow I have no wigs, neither can I fly I'll sit right down in my grief and sorrow And let my troubles pass me by Come all ye fair and tender maidens Take warning how you court young men They're like the stars of a summer's morning First they appear and then they're gone
2.
3.
What bird sings to me when I am alone at night? Whose voice do I hear but my own Crooning someone else's hollow lovesongs? Listen to the bird, his masculine ritual of desperation, all stolen beauty And for all our disapproval still we learn to steal This is no longer a game for me when I know real love exists How dare I ignore it because it doesn't fit into existing stories We must write our own
4.
I remember the rooster who lived next door to you Crowing at an hour that hardly felt like morning But the sunlight was there too And I acted the perfectly devoted partner as you went to work And still this was not enough once you had had a piece of me Once I'd written a song about you, now make it two, make it three Now, color everything that looks like romance with distrust And the very wise refusal to believe anything Unless it could be stated and enacted constantly forever and always I have finally learned what I wish had been instinct To run deftly away from anything resembling love Because its very definition is lies
5.
6.
The crows have found my village and all the death in it Even the mockingbird is gone, found somewhere that's still green Nothing but a murder lives here with me

about

In late May/early June 2015 I found myself working with this material, originally as background audio for my friend's goal of recording an audiobook (which thus far hasn't come together). I made one piece for that. I had about an hour of mockingbird song I'd recorded from my bedroom, and of course a lot of cello & vocal source material from my existing songs. I used various techniques to slow those down and drag them out so they wouldn't be harmonically or lyrically distracting, but still texturally interesting. I used other birdsong recordings for tracks 1 and 6, while tracks 2-5 more or less use the whole sequence of mockingbird, in order. The lyrics I wrote basically automatically, taking inspiration from the lovelorn bitterness of the folksong Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens, and of course a reference to Romeo and Juliet where the young couple, sneakily in bed together, argues whether the bird singing outside is a nightingale or a lark.

This album is kind of a follow-up to IDTWS, which I released as Unwoman: unwoman.bandcamp.com/album/idtws

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released June 15, 2015

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No Little Sparrow Martinez, California

No Little Sparrow is a dark ambient project from Erica Mulkey (Unwoman), largely using cello, vocal, and birdsong sources.

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