An Embrace of Incomprehension

by Human Kitten

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03:25
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02:33
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01:30
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02:27
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04:15
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05:20
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about

an imperfect album

credits

released January 10, 2020

music by elijah
additional vocals by ian and john wayne
cover photo by chazaq

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all rights reserved

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Human Kitten Tucson, Arizona

acoustic songs about isolation, crisis, pain, growth, & learning to be alive after years of anticipating death

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Track Name: In the Care of No One
I haven't lived through a day where I wasn't in pain
In so fucking long, it's insane
And I'm starting to wonder why I still lay here and suffer

What is the point? Why do I live?
I just feel like my life is a prison
I've been on death row
Anticipating the nothing
I'm so fucking tired of complaining
I don't wanna whine
There is no endgame
No justice for a world self-destructive
To each and every living being that it contains

I'm just grateful I never knew
Where the gun was hidden in my friends' parents' houses
There are so many versions of my life
Where I'm never writing this song
So many versions of my life where I'm no longer here at all

I've always felt like a regular person being burned alive
By a fire that no one else can see
The only war I'll ever choose to fight
Will be against the voices on the inside
That don't have my well-being in mind
Nobody tells you
Suffering isn't just a thing that happens to you
It's a responsibility

We become reflections of all the hurt embedded within us
It's not always easy to turn that into kindness
Lord knows it's not always easy
To convert your pain into kindness
The exchange rates are simply ridiculous
Track Name: Cultivation Theory
I could see you wanted to get better
You wanted to live a life
Devoid of fear, devoid of failure,
But you couldn't quite reach a time
You could see a light in the distance
But even with your arms outstretched
You couldn't quite reach it
You couldn't quite hold it in your hands
And I'm afraid, because we lived for the now
And we've all lost that somehow
I hope in your final moments
You felt overwhelming love
It's so unfair
The world
It just plows through us like snow
And I wish you'd recovered
From the storm that raged over
The coast of the Carolinas

It's not fair to blame all of the people that get destroyed by
A world that doesn't care whether they live or die
Oh no, I just want things to get better
It was never the drugs
It was a void created by the culture
Communities can't succeed
When individualism overshadows humanity

I'm just tired of suffering being the default state of being
For nearly everyone that's ever mattered anything to me
Track Name: Mother Land
All that I've learned, there's no skeleton holding up truth
All that I've learned is it's a crapshoot
People get killed for no reason
People get sent to jail that didn't do anything wrong
So what's the point?
Where is the justice in this cruelty
Of widespread punitive power fantasy?
The American way
We're not okay
Today we will deconstruct
An ego poisoned by a culture that doesn't want you
To extend outside of yourself
We're all struggling to pay rent
Struggling to get out of bed
Struggling to balance all that races through our heads
Is there an answer? What even is the question?
It's all so goddamn disorienting
That's what they want, they rely on us to fail
The ruling class is lounging as the world spirals downward
Grappling with chaos
Grappling with pain
Grappling with tragedy every single fucking day
How do we survive after we realize
All this conventional knowledge we have been surrounded by
Our entire lives
Was a complete and total bad faith lie?
Track Name: Little Hunger
It's easy to be a consumer
But at the end of the day
Who are you outside of culture?
It's easy to be a spectator
But who even are you
Outside of your opinions on everything going on around you?
What do you even do?
Who are you?
What do you plan to do with your ever-dwindling time?
Are you too afraid to truly engage with the infinite uncertainty
Of the ever-present anything?
Do you just plan to spend the rest of your life
Entrenching yourself in illusions?
Products, conflicts, all the worlds we create
To distract ourselves from the demons we refuse to face
Track Name: Crisis Actor
A static image in your brain of an entire human being
Where do we find the misguided confidence
To act out in ways that only hurt?
Oversimplify the lives we don't want to see
Just so we don't have to do the work
Why do we avoid the work?
Track Name: The Mountains of Ignorance
You will waste so much time
Protecting lies
You've built yourself upon
Too young to yet make sense
Of the overwhelming everything
It's not your fault
It's easy to see yourself as a failure when you have failed
It's easy to resign yourself to the loss
It's easy to latch onto every last malignant thought
But that's not you

So much energy spent denying
Your true conflicted inner self
Trying to fill that mold of an obtuse world
That never even respected you
It's easy to conform to the destructive social norm
It's easy to buy into the myth
When reality is far more challenging
The comfortable lie, well it becomes attractive
If you think you are an exception
Well, I'm sorry you are mistaken
We're all just as easily captured as we are sold
Track Name: The Foothills of Confusion
If you see the world
Through a prism of power and control
Then every action becomes one of aggression
Neighbors become oppressive
We all become pawns in ideological games
We all become disposable
So what's the point
Of making all this noise
If it only seeks to disorient further
The people with actual power
Don't want you to trust your neighbor

Bourgeois liberal lies, infesting the inside
Bourgeois liberal lies are infecting your insides
Bourgeois liberal lies, infesting the inside
Bourgeois liberal lies, don't believe
Love every single ugly, love every single ugly
Love every single ugly, with open eyes
Love every single ugly, love every single ugly
Love every single ugly, just let mythologized purity die
Track Name: The Kingdom of Wisdom
Empathy is being murdered right before our eyes
And we're all letting it happen
I think we all underestimate our own
Capacity to be manipulated
What we call manipulation
Can easily be a delusional person
Trying to convince you of an earnest belief
Just because someone's wrong
Doesn't mean they have to be evil
Just because someone hurt you
Doesn't mean you should make them an object
Of your own psychic torture

Fallacy has been built up a fortress of fragile psyche
And we've all just become passive
I think we all overestimate our own
Capacity to see genuine manipulation
What we call manipulation
Is often too satisfying to our brain things
A dopamine rush to the face
Just because something feels right
Doesn't mean that it's righteous
Just because something feels true
Doesn't mean you aren't being fundamentally lied to

In the end, it is likely
The pain will remain
The illness may never go away
But it's never too late
To escape the existential void you've been led into
By a world hellbent on gaslighting you
Every step of the way
You survived
You survived
You survived
You survived
So why don't you just give yourself permission to be alive?
Track Name: Character Actor
Every dude from your high school you thought was a scumbag
May have grew up with a mother that beat him into silence
Everyone that you've known
All these people that you think you know
What moments of tremendous pain
Could they have lived through to carry
Gut-wrenching specificities
Why are we so caught up in the orbits of ego
Denying the lives of the people
That we refuse to truly see
As if this world made a promise to us that it wouldn't be ugly
As if anything good ever came from denying the humanity
The restlessness of suffering
The obstinance of ego
Forever colliding
Forever destroying
All you can really do
See a mirror image of your own face on everyone around you
Track Name: Great Hunger
Peer inside, what do you see?
It doesn't always come out clearly
What motivates what you believe?
Does it truly represent
The person that you know you need to be?
To be

Plunge within, what do you need?
Are you communicating clearly?
Passing off the blame is far too easy
What tangible steps can you take
To assure that you maintain being healthy?
Healthy

It's easy to stumble into
Following in the missteps of everyone around you
It's easy to stumble into
Acting just like all of the people that have hurt you

You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light
You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light
You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light
You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light

You can't rid this world of destruction
By destroying the explosion
You can't rid this world of chaos
By just trying to control it
You can't face the pain within you
By aggrandizing all that you've been through
You can't rid yourself of suffering
You can only become one with the knowing

You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light
You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light
You can't rid this world of darkness
You can only become a light
You can't rid yourself of the darkness
You can only forever search for a light
Track Name: Story Land
When I grew up, I wanted
To be something so much bigger than I am now
But now I understand that
All I really wanted to be was
Something better than I was yesterday
And now I know that I
Am so much kinder, so much more thoughtful
Than I ever could have been
When I was a dumbass selfish teenager

You can grow up, or you can show up to the show
And find a way to make it all about you
You wanna jump off the stage
Well dude, maybe we don't have the strength to carry you

It's easy to be young and reckless when
You don't quite have the foresight yet
To realize everything you do has an effect
On what the world will become tomorrow

When I grew up I envisioned
Big ass houses, no more stresses
Everything would be so much easier out on my own
That was just an illusion
Fed to us by corporate stooges
Ayn Rand was stupid
Track Name: An Ascent of Essence
There is so much more tragedy that unites us
There is so much more that we all have in common
Than we could ever perceive
What do you want to believe?
That everyone is out to get you?
Or that everyone is just preoccupied
Fleeing the grasp of a monster that you can't see?
What will you believe?
There are no simple answers
There is no easy labor
But there is no other way
Cause otherwise, nothing fucking gets done
Don't let yourself stagnate
Just let yourself change
The world will be waiting
Try not to show up late
You can always get better
You can always be kinder
To the people beside you
To the vulnerable child forever living within you
Track Name: To Be Seen
You see the Lakers on the TV set at the bar
Maybe you're starting to learn now
Everything you hope for, it must be balanced by
The brutal despair of reality

Statistically, you're fated to lose
You must become friends with your own powerlessness
Cause this world will hurt you and tell you you deserve it
This world will destroy you and tell you you have earned it

Just keep your head down, try to carve out
Any fragment of this world that brings you peace
Does it live inside you? Is it all around you?
What helps remind you of the beauty in everything?
The overwhelming grace in the experience of your own suffering
Leading to a total immolation of your own past sense of being
There is wisdom to be found
By existing on the plane of pure nothing

You see commercials on the TV set at the bar
Are you maybe starting to confuse
Your own reality with the projections all around you?
Are you starting to subconsciously destroy?
You must rewrite that blank page inside
You are so much more
Than all the words this world has written for you

I think it might be time to pay your tab and leave now