This is my blog for miscellaneous.. For my personal music and writings blog: xylenroberts.tumblr.com…

I reblog other people’s stuff also but it all goes on this site. Just thought some of you should know. 

This is the first chapter from a novella I was writing several years ago, in 2008 I believe when I had more or less taken a break from music. I got maybe halfway done with it then my attention focused away from it I guess. After my next musical release (working title Neuron Observer) is finished and comes out probably next month, hopefully on my birthday (May 3rd), I may take another indefinite hiatus from music and finish this book or just get back to writing again. Here it is…

————

One morning I emerged from my sea of milk as a tiny bit of cereal left on the side of the bowl, perhaps a bran flake of birth. My alarm clock went off on an adjacent Cheerio that passed by—-ok, so I guess somebody had mixed the Cheerios and Bran Flakes together, possibly my obnoxious half-sister ugh. Anyway,I started out as this little piece of cereal and grew minute by minute over centuries it seemed as my gargantuan father moved in slow motion of snails stuck in syrup. I eventually grew so big that I broke the spoon with my buttcheeks. All the while, my body lay perfectly still in a meditating position. I grew beyond the size of the table and was now the size of my parents, parents who were talking in indecipherable growls in slow motion. I would levitate in mid air and move patiently towards the kitchen floor, until I landed on it in a soundless fluid motion. 

A lunchbox would appear out from the fridge in an egg pop of ectoplasmic mud, gravitating quickly towards the magnetic pull of my topaz fingernails. Clip.

 Lunchbox was now in hand. Time would halt to the low buzz of the kitchen’s flourescent lights. I would open my mouth and let out an augmn of wah-wah pedals imitating Pacific whales. Before I knew it I had arrived on a tiny thought  bubble of a beach in North Carolina, waves gently splashing as my dog and cats lapped their food bowls. I had now arrived on the bus. Every kid on the bus with their own oceanic thought bubbles like animals lapping water. On every seat of the bus and the bus was going twenty miles an hour, running down old ladies who were us in past lives. When their broken elderly bones dissipated into our mouths we had arrived at school. Walk in patter pat. Walk in patter pat. Glide floating spirits into Science class. Learn about the formation of water crystals on cavernous stalactites…

This is how I spent my school days. This is how I spent everyday leaking through the faucet. For lunch, eat gnomes. Bash their heads in like cracking a nut.

 Suck the brain juices out. But I always felt bad about it, I always saw a picture of their souls or something absorbed into mine. You are what you eat, they say. ‘Instant Karma’ Lennon would say. What would I say? I don’t remember. I would say many things. I am saying this now, but I think I said it then, too. Say, what’s that you’re watching?

“It’s my new Bobcat Goldwaith hologram. This is the episode where he hops on a fly and rides to Vegas in a psychotic fit to feed his gambling habit. 

Only thing is he gets involved with a radioactive prostitute who gives him cancer of the gonads and has to phone home to mother for some quick cash and…’

Fuck that guy. He’s a gent from my youth. And me, I am Floater, spirit of the East. I am Floater, spirit of the river’s brush. Paint brushes against your skin the wind, that’s me, that’s wind. Waterfalls…..waterfalls….waterfalls…..water……..

Flutes from Machu Picchu ring out over the intercom. Principal Sandwhich cuts through them with his low growling throat singer’s voice.

 ”Uhmmmmmmmmmmn…on the cafeteria’s loonch today we are having fish sticks and live gnomes, remember you have to kill them yourself….Uhmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn….remember how to do that, kids?”

“Yes, Principal Sandwhich.” The kids said in a lethargic unison, pulling out their handy pocket wrenches all at once. Swoop. Stubby little children’s fingers open up their desks with opposite hands to reveal little frightened gnomes. I always felt so bad for them, looking up at me with tiny puppy dog eyes, so pure, so beautiful…

“Eh, alas, all beauty must die.”

“Uhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmnnnn…Fire!” Wrenches bash down hard upon soft pallette gnome skulls. They twitch a little in ghoulish convulsions, then collapse to the ground, dissipating into holographic nothingness.

“Pity we have to do that.” Said Louie, my next door chum. “But if we don’t kill ‘em, they get out of control this year. My dad had quite a problem with gnomes this year. There must’ve been fifty of ‘em, all up in the gutters and in the walls and under the floorboards. Come on all warm and innocent in the daytime, but by night they turn into nasty little buggers, real vicious rats with razor teeth. Bite your hand clear off, make it fade away, like eraser to cartoon. A real Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, those buggers.”

Thought about this for a little bit, surmising if this was true or just another bullshit myth adults tell their kids to justify the shit they have to do in life. Supposed it didn’t matter in hindsight. “Yeah, I hear ya” I said reluctantly.

“Yeah, you can’t trust those little buggers. Wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Louie tore his little gnome limb from limb, thrust each little appendage into the black hole that was his mouth. “Haha…” His pudgy face looked embarrassed  “Didn’t get to eat breakfast today…I’m fucking starving.” A piece of microscopic shoulder blade falls on his Scholastic music t-shirt, bits of blood getting lost in the shirt’s red dye.

“Oh yeah that reminds me…You ready for the recital later this evening?”

“OH YEAH!” Little bits of gnome flesh and bone go flying out his mouth, landing on the chalkboard next to the million-year old bugger stains. Louie’s hands clusp each other in a demonic scheming embrace, his face turns to mine in a half-retarded smile. He looks like the obese Frito Lay-raised child of the Joker, face paint and all. “I’ll have to skip tonight ‘cuz my parents need to prepare me for my Clownmitzvah. I’m officially become a clown tonight.” The lack of an ‘ing’ was no mistake. Louie never used inflectional endings, at least not around me.

I examined the toxic paint marks on his face, an elaborate highway of dollar bin designs and cheap green poison. “Sweet…good for you. They giving you an Uzi, too?” 

Louie licked his lips. “Yeah…I’m gonna get to kill my first my poor person!”

I looked away casually and took a sip of my water. Same shit different century, I thought. 

RINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG! The fire drill was going off. “Sweet!” Terry exclaimed.

“Ok, sure, let’s do this.” I thought. Everybody stood up in a single fluid motion.

“Alright class, one…” Little bowls of cereal appeared in front of us…

“Two…” We were now little bits of cereal in the bowls, perhaps bran flakes.

“Three…” We slowly grew up from the bowls, perhaps centuries, perhaps centuries…

“Four…” Fully grown in size, we slowly levitated to the ground…

“Five…” Our lunchboxes appeared from brown mud egg pops, gravitated towards our hands…

“Six…” Thought bubbles appeared in our heads, oceans like lapping water of animals…

“Seven…” We sucked up into the bubbles…

SHNURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP.

…and floated outside the class in a single fluid motion…27 different beaches exiting out the classroom…

Once we got outside, we observed the world around us. “Man I hate these fucking fire drills. Sometimes I think they’re just a glitch in the system, coming on accidentally.” I said to Louie, talking through a tiny version of myself through a megaphone on the beach in the bubble.

“Yeah I wonder the same thing sometimes.” 

All was still in the clouds today. Not a woolly mammoth was stirring, not even his tusks. The great golden arch of Gibraltar ..it always looked like the gates of heaven to me. But it was really more of a reform school than heaven. It just happened to exist in the clouds in what humans like to call ‘inter dimensional fields’. 

At one point in time maybe people thought it was heaven or something, but no—-it’s just a higher plain, a higher field, a higher program—-and far from the highest I’m afraid to say. So to me Gibraltar Academy was a reform school in my perception tunnel. I’ve been here so long that sometimes I forget how I got here in the first place 

This place like the clouds, it has a way of erasing your memory…everything is air, everything is air

EVERYTHING IS AIR, EVERYTHING IS AIR.

All I have memory-wise of my past is told to me by my supposed Uncle. 7 ft 5, lanky ass fellow with long spider legs. Always sitting up there on his red wagon pedestal always sitting up there trying to make us think his spider legs weren’t there massaging our brains all the while trying to make us focus instead on the random shapes he would generate from his cirrus clouds trying to make us focus instead on the shapes he would generate from a pear-shaped hole in his bottom half.

Always, always with those shapes……………….it was a uhhhhhhhhhh…thing with him.

Anyway, he would sit up there and look down on me with his sundry blue binoculars, point them right towards my brain. He would say: ‘HEY!’

I would say: ‘WHAT?!’

The uncle my uncle would laugh a little to himself. Uncle’s face would glitch a bit when he would laugh.

Once I saw an image of a tomahawked retro Native American L.A. punk in his face.

Anyway, he would sit up there and look down on me with his sundry blue binoculars, point them right towards my brain, he would say: ‘HEY!…..

………………………….I have something…………………………wisdom to tell you.” The words slowly fever blissed out of his mouth.  

My own head, gaseous smoke signals sifting away casually from precisely located solar planet eyes filled with red black swirls, a bronzed everybody nose, stitched smile stretching to give his my uncle secret condolences. “What is it………………………you have to tell me?”

“You want to know how you got to this reform school……….why it is you are here?’                     Sift.                                      Sift.

“Yes. Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?’ I recall saying the words before I ‘actually’ said them. 

His my uncle smiled. “Take this module. This circular-shaped module. It acts like a pill. It will help you remember how you got here.” 

I stared at him……………….stared………………………….stared…………………………stared…………………..I was on pause. 

And in one swift motion, I grabbed the module. Swallowed it. Blacked out immediately.

This was the memory I had…

I’ve had this for a while but forgot to post it. My Soundcloud and the main mixtape that’s on there currently. Follow me :)

As it says, this is a discography of my myriad albums and tapes as best as I could remember, as well as explanations for some of them if they were important transitions and descriptions of uncompiled recordings as well. A large amount of these are unfortunately unavailable right now but I am working on making these readily more available. Anything checked with an asterix is currently not available in an easily accessible downloadable form. I haven’t gotten around to uploading them all because I’m constantly busy with new material to obsess over the older stuff.  The rest are available on my Bandcamps (xylenroberts.bandcamp and mythshifter.bandcamp) or elsewhere on the internet. Some old 4-track classics for some of my fans, like ‘Confusion…’ and ‘Evaporation’ used to be readily available but are no longer online until I reupload them to Bandcamp. Xylen Roberts and Mythshifter albums are seperated into their individual categories.

Xylen Roberts releases (xylenroberts.bandcamp.com)

2013   Neuron Observer (work in progress—-not yet released)

2012 Jump Into The Portals

2012 In Soft Flames

2011 No Man’s Land (Album as a whole is not online but a few of the songs, like ‘Shaman Song’ and ‘Now We’re Choking’ are on various sites of mine and you’ve probably heard them) *

2011 Hits of Sprawlshine: Sonic Youth Covers (My cover of ‘Brave Men Run’ was among these, and currently the only one available) *

2010 First obtained my R16 digital recorder and made numerous recordings which remain uncompiled. Sprawlshine, No Man’s Land, and In Soft Flames, as well as most Mythshifter recordings—-in addition to these other uncompiled recordings—-were entirely recorded on the R16. Now I use the R16 in conjunction with Reason 5. Some of these uncompiled recordings are actually on my Tumblr, like ‘A Thin White Void’.

2008 Avadhuta (standalone song, currently only on a Soundclick site. Type in Xylen Roberts Avadhuta Soundclick into Google)

2007-2010: various uncompiled recordings on tape and F. Loops which are either lost or remain vaulted, some of which I may resurrect and remake *

2007 Itzamentals

2006 What Animals May Come (first attempt at working with computer software, in this case Fruity Loops. Both this and Itzamentals were recorded with the program and remain the only albums as such)

2006 Step On Up To This Great Demise*

2005 Which Way To Wizardry?

2005 Evaporation*

2004 Curse of The 4D Witch

2004 I Shot The Tazmanian Devil*

2003 Confusion Hath Paul Reiser Its Masterpiece*

2003 The Mercury Journals*

2002 Lemurcharmer*

2002 Zhao Outpost (first tape recorded on the Tascam 4-track that I would use to record all the tape albums from here to Step On Up in 2006, after which I started experimenting with computer software. I will upload this one day. The compositions on here are arranged in sort of brief, genre-hopping segments ala Zorn. Interesting early work.) *

2002-2006: Beyond the tapes just mentioned, there are also numerous  songs, noise experiments, piano recordings, etc. that never saw any exposure beyond myself and may very likely remain vaulted. *

2001-2002: numerous pre 4-track recordings mostly recorded live to boombox and mostly uncompiled as of yet *

2000 Another Drink of Lunar Wine (third official tape, very lofi, recorded mostly live to boombox with me singing overtop of Casio synths and drumbeats overlayered on my old Casio’s layering function. This tape is currently crudely uploaded on an old computer but there nonetheless. Eventually it will be re-released with all the other currently unavailable releases) *

1999 Shadow Lifeforms (second official tape made when I was just 14. These songs have since been lost unfortunately.My first experimenting with using my Casio’s layering function and singing overtop of the compositions. Recorded crudely on an old 1970s boombox, much older than the 90s boombox I used to record Lunar Wine. I wish I still had this tape. THe only known copy is with one of my sister’s old boyfriends haha.) *

1998 Summer 98 tape (Don’t remember much about this one. It was my first experimenting with music period. Recorded entirely at my sisters’ old college house during a week or two I had stayed there. I hadn’t even learned how to play piano/keyboard yet. All the songs involved me singing overtop of cheap Casio readymades Wesley Willis style. Man I wish I had this still but I think I used the tape it was recorded  on to record Shadow Lifeforms. Oh well) *

Mythshifter releases (mythshifter.bandcamp.com)

2013 Fleeting Film Series 1: El Topo (an experimental re-soundtracking of the film El Topo—-not yet released, a work in progress).

2012 «<><>< etc.

2012 Death In A Vulture

2012 …Dried Scales Disolve

2012  Emanations From The Star Pyramid

2010-2012: other uncompiled recordings, including a few on my Tumblr, like ‘Bayou Ghosts Ride THe Featherd Serpent’ and ‘The Sepiatone Projections…’ or whatever the hell it’s called.*

Recorded September through November 2012. Aside from the vocals and the acoustic piano, this was almost entirely recorded with Reason 5 and a MIDI controller. As usual, the music is hard to categorize. Just listen.

a dream I had as a baby or one year old which involved me emerging from some sort of cosmic light and then drifting through space in my crib until I woke up. I believe it was a memory of my soul entering my newly-born body.

two new mythshifter releases with the above names plus two others (‘mangled stars…’ and ‘emanations…’) which have been up there for a while. ‘Death in a Vulture’ is a very long post-rocker, ‘iii…’ is new noise age Oneohtrixesque stuff. And, for those who haven’t heard them, ‘Emanations…’ is in a similar vein to ‘iii…’ and ‘The Mangled Stars…’ is on an island to itself, the most experimental and strange sounding Mythshifter release (with heavy microtonality). Ta-ta.