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Kumulipo Variation

from Exotica Suite by Paul Isherwood & Wayne Burrows

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about

A reworking of a Hawaiian Creation Myth, with a 1950s techno backing.

lyrics

Coral polyps build. Glass shrimp kick sand grains from the sea-floor. The shellfish makes his own shell. All stones are alive inside their hard coats. The male stone is bulbous, a fertile root. The female stone is cleft or smooth. From the sex of stones land comes.

The small sea urchin is born, the smooth sea urchin, the long-spiked sea urchin, the ring-shaped sea urchin. The barnacle is born, his pink foot clasped like an anchor to a pearl oyster's shell.

The kelp is set afloat. The bladder-wrack drifts like a net of plants on the waves. The sea algae that greens the hulls of boats takes its place in the waves with the lobster and the hermit crab, the limpet, the scallop and the giant dog-whelk.

The razor-fish is born. The nautilus hovers in the open sea. The scallop sets forth in the water, the hermit crab seeks the first empty shell.

Near the shore where humans await their call, sea-plants float in the wash of the blue waves. Traceries of root and weed strike positions in this new earth, extend land into salt foam. Stones end and the sea laps like a dog's tongue. Leaves strain against sea winds like patterned sails.

The climbing vine, its red spike erect at the fruiting point, brings forth the first man with a water gourd. His feet, set firm on land, stand astride the cold rush of a crystal spring. Hard stones soften around him. Green plants expand over the earth. Water runs through his cupped hands, bathes thick tubers and lace-work roots with a fecund wet.

For this night the sun darkens like the skin of a ripening fruit, brings the moon to shine like a wet stone in the heated darkness of its own shade. New land rises from slime and fire in the open sea. Islands churn in the water.

The source of darkness is darkness. The source of this first night is a deep-ocean darkness that shapes new night. This first night is a black nest that gives birth, carries all things up from the star-flecked womb of the deep.

The sea opens around these first shores as the sky opens above the new land. The volcano casts its red stones and arcs of fire between the stars as glass shrimp kick sand-grains from the sea floor.

Every shellfish makes his own shell. All stones are alive inside their hard coats. The male stone is bulbous, a fertile root. The female stone is cleft or smooth. From the sex of stones more land comes.

credits

from Exotica Suite, released July 10, 2015
Lyric and Voice: Wayne Burrows
Music: Paul Isherwood

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about

Paul Isherwood & Wayne Burrows Nottingham, UK

Paul Isherwood has released four LPs with The Soundcarriers: Harmonium & Celeste (Melodic), The Other World Of The Soundcarriers (Great Pop Supplement) and Entropicalia (Ghost Box).

Wayne Burrows' recent publications include The Holcombe Tarot (2014), Black Glass: New & Selected Poems and Exotica Suite & Other Fictions (Shoestring Press, 2015).
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