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Eudaimonia

by ianto mabon

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1.
Everybody Cares 04:42
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I take my pain Turn it to music, you turn away So I just sing to white walls & windows To save me from the emptiness that’s inside my head To pretend I am more than a silent cliché I’m hard to know But warm to love if I let it show Not just greet, withdraw & internalise When I see eyes that don’t look like mine Embarrassed by the sounds that I tear from my throat I take to the stage Drown in blinding light & canyon eyes But don’t believe a word that I tell you I am alright; I don’t really want to die But everyone who’s held me has held dust in their hands You don’t have a reason for feeling this sad You’re white, working class; your life’s not too bad You’ve never lost a parent, a friend, or your heart It’s just this dysthymia you’ve always had Words are inadequate, leave it at that Everybody’s listening, understanding all your pain Waiting for a silence to clap in to, hollow sound Painting them a picture of depression in your mind Everybody has it, black as cancer in their heart
2.
Ouzo & Gin 06:06
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This is a time of year I see you get quieter Autumn grey in the sky and summer bleeds from your eyes The grief never goes away But the wonder of life will prevail You’ve always been there for me and taught me so many things You’ve listened to all my dreams and lived with a sadness too But it’s okay if it hurts It hurts just to be alive I remember when I had moved from city to seaside town You called in my darkened room and we spoke all afternoon And I never told you this But that meant so much to me We’ve been high together Drunk and hungover And spoke of all the things we’ve loved and lost You feel like a brother Who’s lost something forever And I wish I could take that pain from you But that is the problem Life doesn’t want us And death is the only thing that last There is a boy that I have known half of my life Lost his mother as a child And there is a man that I love now, motherless and Beautiful, blue-eyed and bright We drank Ouzo & Gin in the dark of the park In the place where you used to live We shared a bed in your childhood room But I don’t think you ever slept Your mother was a silent presence in the house She was beautiful and you look like her My father would pick me up on Sundays, I’m still drunk The churchyard was godless and bright When we were older we stood on the South Bank The dirty Thames rushed on below We listened to Kozelek, we talked of suicide We laughed and that’s just how we are
3.
Dust & Disappointment 05:45
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I see all my ghosts in the streets of this city When I’m drunk, lost, alone with my friends, they’re so pretty And I see how we’ve grown in our own ways, it’s a pity How we drink just to talk, just to hide all our fears Of our long-held dreams we hold less ever year Cause when we were kids, didn’t think we’d be here I’ve never felt anything like this before Sat by the river, content on its shore That’s where we left the boys we don’t anymore For men who don’t know what this living is for What is your, my darling one? Mine is that I’m not the man I thought I would be in my youthful dreams This is how our lives will be now forever Waking every Monday and still hungover In twenty years we’ll meet and talk of our failures Of how we didn’t get the life that we wanted I’m sorry that you didn’t get the life that you wanted I won’t be the first, and I won’t be the last To live with the weight of disappointment Brother, did you see it, every Sunday morning Waiting for you in those dark green rooms? Father, do you feel it running through your fingers Every time you play a melody? Sister, is it in your, dark and overwhelming Hiding behind all your accomplishments? Mother, I can see it, every time I see you Sitting alone with those distant eyes Like when I see the fields passing by the window That’s where I thought I would spend my life Or when I see you walking somewhere in the city You were a love I thought I‘d always have
4.
Western Sky 05:05
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Did you hear about the guy who committed suicide In the town where we used to live? We saw him around, we probably walked by his house And missed the beauty of his quiet life It got me thinking of you in those sad, white rooms At the confluence of our youth In a valley flooded with light we were probably high Under starling-filled western sky We’d sit on the pier smoking cheap cigarettes And watching the Irish Sea Talking of death and forever, I guess Oh, to me they were both the same thing A chill in our bones in winter’s visceral cold And now you’re living a life I don’t know So, I’ll write a sad country song about us drinking at night And the beauty of the western sky An interstice of light Where our childhood died The shores of a silver sea Your prose and my poetry Now there’s a great divide A distance between our lives Is this the life you want? I don’t know what I want I don’t know what I want Time turns around and we are strangers again Three years to dust like a second in air I still dream of sea-wind and house on a hill The bundle of lights below, we called that our home
5.
Eudaimonia 06:06
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I walk in to spring light A hollow hope holds me I feel it below as I go This solving emptiness The trees are all black In the last of the sun And the city is starting to shine This beauty is too bright A third of my life's gone And I haven't lived But there's comfort in knowing it ends It's sad and it scares me still I should be grateful Just to wake up It's not like I want to feel like this A woman I love In a garden of sun How can I ask for anymore? I wish I was dumb I was I had fun I wish I had faith in silent gods I'm sat in blinding light In the morning with my love And it hurts her eyes, I know When the light shatters like glass As she walked inside to shade We were silent in our pain And how could I complain With that you live with every day? I will get used to my life lived in circles Where spring's not the season of hope My melancholy is always overlaid By joy that I can't comprehend I prepare all winter to face anhedonia I hope my heart can hold the weight The rest of my life searching for Eudaimonia The meaning's whatever I make it But there's no such thing as a fulfilling end There's always something left unsaid
6.
Stranger's Stomach 04:10
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Torn from a stranger's stomach Unasked for and unwanted We live this life because we're made to A childhood lost to silence And adulthood was violent I drank myself to death on weekends That summer I was 18 I fell in love in daydreams I'll carry her with me forever And after that to seaside The western sky at twilight I left a part of me to die there Then it was anhedonia When everything meant nothing I wish that I could feel what you feel Now I live here without you An empty bed, a silence I bawled my eyes out in the bathroom Funny how things pass in to nothing Without cause or celebration Stages of life are always ending After birth it's constant regression Life is just a long way of dying Life is just a long way of dying I've thought of death almost every day Since I was 19 it won't go away When people ask I'll say I'm okay I'll just explain the sadness away I didn't want you to leave, love But I have a lot of things to learn (As I’m living in these empty days alone) You have another life to lead now But I will be there if you need (Just to guide you through the blinding light) Oh, you were the bright sun On the narrow horizon of my life (I still love you, I still love you, I still love you)
7.
The Daily Threnody 05:03
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In the moment just after I wake I remember I die It's a small suicide Every morning A sharp pain behind me eyes And a pain my side When I got to bed It's a recurrence Of light, that's how I measure time How I construct my life It's a cyclical dream And it terrifies me Trains sound like a threnody They screech and they wail On the morning commute And it always move me Stuck here in my static life In a room full of screens There's a window at least Where I watch the clouds move I wish that I could write some songs That everyone could sing along to Hear myself on the radio In the Hollywood Hills I would still feel empty I would still feel unfulfilled And filled with longing for somewhere else Take a train or take my life There's only one of those I'm afraid of Afternoon in an empty room Why I waste time when I know I'm gonna die? (I'd like to die beside you some day, my love) I've got a poet's heart and a lazy mind I see beauty but I don't right down (I'd like to write it all for you some day, my love) So I live my life and it's cyclical And I'm sick and tired of being so bored (I'd like to live my life with you some day, my love) I love this life and it's disappointing That when it ends it's just over I'd like to think we'll still be together You and I, forever I love this life and it's disappointing That when it ends it's just over I'd like to think we'll still be together You and I, forever I love this life and it's disappointing That when it ends it's just over
8.
Existence is a Drug 05:07
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Existence is a drug and we can’t get enough But if all life lasts a moment, does it mean as much? Oh, I hope there’s no life when I die I overdosed on psilocybin All time stopped passing on the river of life Oh, there’s only one world and that’s fine I lived for years like I thought we would never die Out by the sea Where the waves would send us to sleep But now you’re a love I won’t see for the rest of my life And that time is held As a heaviness in my heart I was born in the doorway for you You were born in the white sky window Now I keep waking from these bad dreams You’re really gone and there’s nothing I can do Life is like and endless bad trip We all wake up from it now and then With silent, vivid realisation That we die and there’s nothing we can do Every day it’s the same thing There’s a pain in my heart every morning And tears in my eyes every evening My medication is to sing La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la There was pressure, I know But I am to blame For the pain that you hold For the tears on your cheeks There was pleasure, I know But a lot of sorrow All those nights by the sea And your recurring dreams
9.
The View From Lord Street 04:23
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It was spring, late afternoon and I’d just woke up From a sundeath dream I took a walk for seven miles just to feel something Just to kill some time I didn’t think, I didn’t talk, I didn’t feel at all I was empty as ice But in the harbour light I saw so many beautiful things There’s beauty everywhere Most of all it was the view from up on Lord Street, love That I’ll take to my grave So many silver clouds had formed from the city’s smog Over streets of my youth Where I was born, I fell in love, where I still live now I will die there too And almost everyone I love was alive in there I hope they’re all okay I keep thinking my life will change The world will just open up But I do nothing all day Just stare at these empty white screens And write shitty songs no one hears And wait for my love to come home I keep waking it awful hours And staring in to the dark A pain in my swollen side The big fear of death in my mind But morning’s enough to forget That life’s just a fleeting bright moment And so it goes every day My life’s a recurring dream But every now and then The beauty reveals itself Small moments that pierce my heart Somewhere between joy and deep longing
10.
Rain on the Pane of my Room 06:42
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I had a dream last night and you weren’t it For the first time Since early July, the gulls were singing In our garden There’s still a pink light, but neither of us Are there to see Started to feel like life and nightmares Were the same thing Why do I find such pain and solace In what I dream? Quick as a sigh, dreams disperse In to morning And we wake to different skies A third of the way through our lives I don’t belong here I don’t belong here What eyes do you see when you wake? And whose hands caress your face? They don’t belong there They don’t belong there But nothing belongs to me Your heart or the moon-silver leaves I wish you the best I wish you the best I wish you the best The Summer Book I closed in autumn Its beauty haunts me Its beauty haunts me The island skies above the gulf and A child’s fear A child’s fear How memory fades as we get older It shrinks and glides away It shrinks and glides away How August brings an early dark but It’s still the summer It’s still the summer There’s rain on the pane room It’s evening, white houses in blue light A woman tends her garden before night draws her in And I’m reminded of Nordic skies The further I go, the deeper longing grows Beyond this black horizon there are towns I’d like to see Where there’s so much life in their eyes But somewhere along the way I lost that I’m almost twenty-five and I’m alone all the time I’d still be writing songs if nobody ever heard them I’d still be writing poems if nobody ever read them I do it for the beauty that gets lost if we don’t hold it I do it for the beauty that gets lost if we don’t hold it I do it for the beauty that gets lost if we don’t hold it Everyone is an island alone On the sea of a life we don’t ask for Floating along to the horizon of death And when I get there, I know it’s a dark shore I hope it hits me at night, I hope it comes in my sleep I hope I don’t have to deal with forever Cos the beauty is brief and love is all that we keep And I am grateful enough to keep living

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released January 5, 2019

Composed, performed, produced, mixed & mastered by Ianto Jones

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ianto mabon Cardiff, UK

Singer-songwriter from Cardiff.

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