12/15/2020> The 3rd # on Herd of Birds is "Aeolia." Lyrically, "Aeolia" is a carry over from Textiloma, wherein we recapitulated our brother's recapitulation of Joyce's recapitulation of The Odyssey. Aeolia is the island home to the keeper of winds, Aeolus, who entrusted Odysseus w/ an oxhide windbag but his men opened it up while he was sleeping, sending their boat back to Aeolia. This was all after their misadventure at the Cyclops' cave where Odysseus cleverly escaped by saying his name was No One (our assumed pen name for 4ier X-forms)... obviously the 2 books we were working on this year had a bearing on the lyrics we were working on in tandem. There's a whole verse (the chorus actually, a nod to Alladin Sane) that we ended up cutting (we almost scrapped the entire song), so really this is just a salvaged remnant.

> Musically we were going for a North African feel, inspired by Savage Republic. The guitar tuning we used was C♯ G♯ C♯ G♯ G♯ C♯. Birds featured in "Aeolia" include metallic starlings, a crested oropendola + a swinhoe’s snipe. The soundbyte @ the end was from a Marshall McLuhan documentary. Anyway, hear's Aeolia:

AEOLIA

they said “say our name”
as they came from the raging blood orange sea

after saying “my name is No One”
we cling to the underbelly of sheep

beaten black + blue
from Arabian horses they make shcool glue

the night mare resumes too soon
blistered by the memary of Spanish flu

a collage of colures degrades to gray
then fades to black where it all began

the candles wax + wane
the birthday cake left in the reign

the barbary apes took the wheel
when we stopped the rental in the middle Atlas hills

Ulysses fell from grace
when his men took a peak in the ox-hide bag of skin