Invertebrate City

from Deep Leads by The Orbweavers

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Subjects: letters, archives, decay, architecture, hierarchy, terrestrial invertebrates, memory

Shoeboxes were the standard archive filing system I grew up with. We used to keep them under the bed, filled with old birthday cards, postcards, diaries, letters. The guttering in one house we lived in has rusted out. Water ran down the external walls and pooled under the house after heavy rain, encouraging a silverfish infestation (they like the damp and can survive on water alone for a year). The silverfish would creep up at night through gaps in the floorboards, to graze away the top layer of our shoebox ‘archives’. Their grazing created irregular tracks across the top surface of documents, literally digesting words from pages. We hated the silverfish back then. Now, I feel more sympathetic towards them. They are just living their lives, eating starch as they have for the last 400 million years, long before humans. This is their world too.

lyrics

I turn over your picture searching for an inscription,
Letters formed out of angles,
Keener than a scalpel.
When will time never matter?
There’s always something cruel within me.
Drawing breath from an archive,
Heaving with your missives.

Now the envelope is closing,
A seal upon this house.
Some words last
A very long time.

So, is this what you wanted -
Final preservation:
Letters piled in a shoe box
(I’m farming silverfish to graze them).
When will time never matter?
Always something cruel within me.
Every mind is an archive.
Every season has a meaning.

And when the gable falls,
And the bearers crumble,
Oh Invertebrate city!
You will inherit it all.

credits

from Deep Leads, released September 17, 2017

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The Orbweavers Melbourne, Australia

The Orbweavers are Marita Dyson & Stuart Flanagan, multidisciplinary artists working in song, performance and visual art. Their work responds to history, memory and place. They are interested in local waterways, industrial history and environmental change.

They have written and recorded 3 albums, co-produced by their greyhound companions, Fern (RIP 2018) & Susie, released through Mistletone. ... more

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