12/18/2020> # 6 on Herd of Birds is "Split Screen", the final # on side 1. We originally called this song "Last Picture Show," just cuz the phrase popped into our head while strumming these chords + we liked the sound of it... we'd never seen the movie, tho we did see it recently (after writing the #) + while it was good, we wouldn't write a song about it. "Split Screen" is more about vanity of trying to capture something on film + how by capturing something u kill it, this Copenhagen interpretation/uncertainty principle theme that seems to reoccur w/ us (we did study physics after all)... that's what the plum pudding + tissue paper references are about (the history of quantum mechanics). Perhaps we thought The Last Picure Show (1971) would be more like Cinema Paradiso (1988) cuz we also had this image of the volatile nature of old nitrate film + how it would eventually spontaneous combust (+ thus we've lost 70% of silent films).

> Here's the chord progression for "Split Screen" (we think... some of the lyrics seem like "Novus Ordo Seclorum," tho we often carry over lyrics to other songs if they don't work out), albeit we minimized or processed the hell out of the foundational guitar chords + used mostly keyboards.

SPLIT SCREEN

the picture fades to cellulose souls
lost in the folds

found in an Oldsmobile
originul wheels
d-tailed by the same machine
that shines your shoes
chalk it up to
automation blues

choose life over death
but it’s all in the choice
which brand of shoes
boot-strapping the beam
that split the seam
shedding light in between

the lines’s drawn in the sand
by the same hand that draws the curtains in the end

then ushers us to the concession stand

J.J. stuck in his thumb + pulled out a plum
tasted what he set out to taste
Earnest fired a gun at tissue paper
+ it bounced back in his face
100 years ago the last picture show self-ignited its one negative
the nitrate emulsion self-imploded the ocean, land + sky w/ it

from past blasphemy
we can’t see thru the trees
cursed by d-zzz
heresy is hearsay
hearsay is heresy