On Zapo De Ray’s Fresh Air Freaks
(Church of the Sacred Mushroom, 2023)
These piano fingers feel air by reshaping it for you.
Zapo’s fresh freaks have a beauty that no secret circus could show
As those grazed by light seek sweet retreat in soft shadow
And the ache and the anthem is for the kind of place lost ghosts go.
The church of the secret mushroom unearths these star-like notes,
These carved shimmers, placed within an electronica orbit, as melody
Forms phrase by phrase and the sad spirit splits from the unsteady flesh
To rise, graceful, and translucently lucid granting language at last
To dream-haze. This is music as place. This is a sweetened theme
For the sour. This is a soundtrack to an entirely new kind of life.
Where the mind can halt in repose and feel the delicate movement
Of magic; a place in which hollow husbands can find at the end of it all
A soul-wife. The harmony swells, implying recalled further voices,
Higher notes take us deeper as a narrative secret is shown,
All while the cloud of reverberant dread darkly gathers, before
The steel strikes us and our perception of peace is disowned.
A discordant note slices mist, solidifying the aether,
Just as the other within you is imagining itself into place.
For this is a portrait in sound, a hint from which Hell taints
Heaven, as the steady scream behind silence scars every angel
And grants the Devil’s design its own face. Zapo De Ray
Forces laser light across darkness. Plants peel. Milk-fed mornings
Regurgitate to congeal, while the Fresh Air Freak sups on the slow
And steady strain to becoming and dissonance creates drama
Written to redefine your numbed real. You leave a print on the air
As well as the path through your movement. You, shifting shadows
Separate sad star stuff. Zapo’s music steals you, sealing each wound
In its warping. And then it will soothe you, while your body burns.
What’s enough?
The life that you lead, or the one
You can’t fathom? The frequency you inhabit, or the unknown world
Of your dreams? How do you leave? This fourteen minute piece
Becomes beacon. In listening, your fears glisten and then
They are replaced by this theme.
Fresh Air Freak Take 2 takes your hand and slowly squeezes
Your finger. It wrenches skin, playful, by placing a nail into you.
A steady pulse now appears as if it were your hand itself,
Jesus-ready, to rise and resist the sharp puncture that will turn
Your peasant blood to royal blue. I refer to the monarchy of the stars,
The blue of Selene, Moon Goddess, the blue of sweet water
In some time-excused coral reef, beneath which those of Atlantis
Still rest. For this is music as waves washing over, sifting
For spirit as if the fat claim of flesh was a thief. I close my eyes
And this piece completely overtakes me. This is song as communion
With some higher form. Its handful of notes every hand,
Waving while drowning and bidding departures to those
We leave behind and still mourn. Minimalism remains to these ears
And heart the most holy. It contains complications which every
Fragment infers. A sequence of trembling notes and stuttering pulse
Is sound-illness; mirroring our own frailties that if we do not think fast
Will deter evolution and love, and from love survival. This then
Is the story of how wordlessly we begin to assume higher states,
And from those states, stellar placement. Each person is soon
Their own planet if they can look back on the earth and remake
What was not right, in an attempt to teach the far others;
The Fresh Air Freaks who are angels, or aliens too; those who wait
For us to reclaim the places of the past we belonged to.
The magic in mushrooms reminds us of the tang and the taste
Of that life. For as fungi grows it distorts not just shape,
But perception. You can hear them grow through this music.
And you can cut this present cage with a knife which this music
Now wields. Sounds slice within it. The piano’s pull and insistence
And its synthesized sister is out to cure you all with a kiss.
Zapo’s space name is the nom de plume for the Scottish,
But his soul is all siblings and his byword and call is for bliss.
This is the music of change. This is the water within ancient water.
Look into the pool. Suck and savour.
Fools, chill transforms you.
You will be different.
Zapo De Ray promises.
David Erdos 9/2/23
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