matt pond PA

July 4, 2017

Independent Thoughts.

In the beginning, we are parked below darkness with hundreds of other people, murmuring, rustling. The pickup truck bed’s ridges poke against the ridges in my back. My butt, a mutinous wisecracking sidekick. Suddenly, bursting light, explosions, the sky is lit up with choreographed chaos. Shouting, laughter while brilliant colors flash and wane. Thoughts of the corporeal world are fleetingly lifted. Time temporarily stops.

All these gleaming holidays that bring us together were ultimately meant to be individually interpreted. The same chintzy, sputtering sparkler we simultaneously hold is seen through a million different eyes, making sense in a million different ways.

Winter Lives and Still Summer will never stop. They are endless, independent albums intended to build forevermore, ascending across the seasons until they eventually hook up. (Hopefully.) Every year, we plan on adding a song or ten to each, as a constant work in progress.

The EPs between them may never stop, either. And I want to go on playing shows — however it can happen, whenever it makes the most sense. My arms and legs feel stronger than ever, my brain fumbles but continues to flicker.

Beyond that, it’s too hazy to see what’s going to happen next.

I want to collaborate in ways wherein I am not the president. (I believe I’m a fair president of my musical kingdom. But I am a modestly mercurial president — I do not quietly accept anything unseemly. At times, even within myself. I want democracy, I want to go Dutch. I want to collude with a bassoon in humid depths of a summer afternoon.)

As life gets more and more ephemeral, I believe there are more and more reasons to find truth, meaning and connection in these chintzy sparklers sputtering within our fists.

To you. Thank you.

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