Designation by James Blackwell
Designation (verb): A sentence.
This concept album is intended to be enjoyed and appreciated as a whole.
01 Reanimated
First, I am awoken by something I picked because I knew I would hate it. Other unpleasant sensations follow, before consciousness emerges. Not consciousness that Mother Nature would be proud of, but consciousness nonetheless. My mind crawls along with a single, simple question: Why? It is the most important question anybody can ask, but I feel it most strongly at this time of the day. In fact, I barely have a chance at all to ask this question for the rest of the day. The larger question slips out of my mind when the frustrations and tedium get to me. But right now, I have to get through this day of banal stupidity.
02 Essential Nutrients
The best decisions are those that you barely participated in. For all I’ve learnt of the temple which is my body, I cannot free myself from the constraints & whims of the temple of my body. The body wants this, the body wants that. I must placate the body, as there is not enough meaning and satisfaction left in the world to fill the whole within.
03 Moving and Waiting
Do I move, then wait? Or do I wait, then move? Strangely, it feels like I do both simultaneously. Often when I am moving it turns out I am waiting, and when I am waiting I have just made a move. When the wait is over, I often wish I made a different move. Even when I am moving, I wish I made a different move. I do both more often than I like, but I don’t have another move to make.
04 A Small of the Larger Shell
It feels like the world is larger, but all that is happened is that the connections have changed. They changed before me and I didn’t notice. I had no names for what it had become. Only after the change, can someone inform me of a name. From my perspective, the shell I reside in is unchanged, only when I ask it to work for me does it turn out the rules have changed. Yet, the tedium, the monotony, it stays with me. I don’t get to see the bigger picture. It is deliberately hidden from scrutiny.
I will never meet my masters.
05 The Same Questions
Among my fellow workers, we retread old experiences and familiar thoughts. It would be possible to step outside our little box, but we are limited by time, space, and finances. Our experiences are far too limited, our thoughts are far too narrow. And yet we have nothing else to discuss.
06 Autopilot & Automation
Brain shuts down. Brain occasionally distracted. Brain is bored. Brain knows it should care. Day is too long for brain. Brain is agitated. Brain is neither awake, nor asleep. Brain waits. Brain continues to wait. Brain still waits. Brain no longer has energy for when brain is no longer waiting.
Brain is so used to waiting, it waits even when not here.
07 Where the Flowers Grow
What life can spring up here? I submerge myself in filth and accept it as the price of living, but I must not kid myself that the only things that can grow would not possibly be also be a product of the filth. I cling to the hope that I have a clear mind, and my clear mind gives me my hope. I stay, in my hope.
08 The Market Needs You
Rush! Scroll! No time for choice! Obfuscating description! Overly complicated package details! Bonus tangental offers! Frustrating lack of details! Ambiguous product! Suspiciously cheap! Suspiciously the expected price! Suspicious seller!
After all, you will buy anyway, why not buy this?
09 Work, but at Home
The work done at work funds the work done at home. Does that mean I pay to do work at home? No matter, the work can wait, even if it eats at me. After all, when the work at home is done I need to work on falling asleep.
10 Standardised Entertainment
Everything I know is reflected before me. The full gamut of human experiences is represented in this seemingly ambiguous directionless work of art. It contains nothing, it represents everything. I recognise the splashes of insight, the references to what I know. It is a hodgepodge of everything I know, and nothing else.
11 Essential Functions Slow
The body begins to surrender to fatigue. Just when I have time to myself, I no longer have a self to nurture. I don’t want to give up this time. I will hold onto it.
12 Tensely Dissolving
Another day has passed. Another facsimile which I helped create. Tomorrow will be just like today. I'm just too exhausted to try and change anything, though.
Tracklist
| 1. | Reanimated | 5:00 |
| 2. | Essential Nutrients | 4:18 |
| 3. | Moving and Waiting | 2:35 |
| 4. | A Small of the Larger Shell | 6:32 |
| 5. | The Same Questions | 4:01 |
| 6. | Autopilot & Automation | 6:06 |
| 7. | Where the Flowers Grow | 6:54 |
| 8. | The Market Needs You | 3:37 |
| 9. | Work, but at Home | 5:29 |
| 10. | Standardised Entertainment | 5:28 |
| 11. | Essential Functions Slow | 4:56 |
| 12. | Tensely Dissolving | 3:14 |
Credits
Composed by James Blackwell
Cover art by Mike Shisler
