Get all 24 Benjamin Jay Thomas releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Mantrasongs for Starting Over, Oh Mycelia (Mantrasong 053), I Belong (Mantrasong 052), Give Up The War, Seas and Trees and Mythical Creatures (Demos from an RV), The Wilderness Voice EP - Advent Journey Edition, The Way Up, The Way Up (Full Album + Meditations), and 16 more.
1. |
The Way Up
02:36
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The grey, the icey rain that wraps itself around
Our broken dreams, our whispered destinies It shrouds
When all the empty bottles up along the wall
Can capture melodic reverberating sounds
It tells that the way up is the way down
I find it difficult to execute the hours
When our entire lives are spent ascending towers
To find out the way up is the way down
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2. |
Air
03:56
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Breathe deep, unsee the lines of the crosshair
And read between the lines of the story that brought us here
I'm letting go of all of my weapons
Time stopped bleeding the moment I walked away
From your perfume soaked fast calendars that fuck with my yesterdays I want us to be okay
But I know we’re not okay
This feels like the first time I'm letting you go
And here comes the air...
The bottle caps and firecrackers left on the driveway Mix with the left out, dried up dreams on the runway And it’s burning a hole I know I shouldn’t repair
My love I’m letting you go
We’re going to be okay
I really thought I wanted you
You were my savior but I your muse
What memory would you choose?
You’re going lose your life you don’t grip on and hold it
You’re going to lose your time if you don’t take time to win it
Breathe deep, unsee the lines of the crosshair
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3. |
NotUsNotThem
05:10
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All those words you say
All those microscopic Twists of tongue you keep
Praying louder and your Heart will seep out like
Rouge heat seeking missiles
Heart will sing out and
Play it's song forever
So, mourn the fallen souls
And empty cathedrals
Mourn morality
That comes in shapes and colors Build your arsenal
Defend your false contentment
Beg the clock rewind
Hold tighter to your textbook answers
All your black and white
Voices in the garden have
Rendered me naked and ashamed.
Oh, the story you tell to build the temple walls Will separate
Separate
All your future fear
All your paranoia
All your us and them
What's the problem, is the house too crowded? Climb your pedestal, colonize the masses
Fight your holy wars And isolate your children
But we are
We are just one my friend My friend we are one one
Not two
Not us
Not them
You and and I we're one my friend We are one
We are one my dear, my friend.
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4. |
Sick From The Split
02:48
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All the monotone collapse
Empty static from my disconnected past
Catching up with me at last
I've been wide awake in bed
Splitting hairs upon my wall of china head
Oh the colors I've been dreaming, they've been haunting me
I know we tried to figure out
How to he crack the code and circumvent our doubt
Now my habits act like air
But now I feel it my chest
Call it sickness from the split
My lips confess
All my classified and calcified containers
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5. |
Irma (We All Evolve)
05:24
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We all evolve We all evolve
I know it isn't right
to think that I'd rather die
Than to pack up and leave town
And evacuate this house
I can't afford to stay
When the shutters break away
But I can't afford to leave
This is all I know that's me
Go now
You have more in life to give
These old paradigms and traffic lights
Were fine when we were kids
But all the magic in the universe
Resides beneath your skin
And if you stay here
This is where your story ends
What about the photographs
And the paintings on the wall What about the empty cross
Given to me when was small
I don't want to leave my friends
I don't want to leave my job
What if all my blessings vanish
When I pull out of this town
Go now
You have more in life to give
These old paradigms and traffic lights
Were fine when we were kids
But all the magic in the universe resides beneath your skin
And if you stay here
This is where your story ends
We all evolve We all evolve
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6. |
I Miss The Right
05:57
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Come on back
Back to the end of
Blind and deaf blissful security coming from on high
Say what you want Say what you will
I miss the right Right that I knew
Come back faith
Like you once were
Strong And stable and simple to confirm
Take me back to the places we lived then
Places where words meant what really did happen
I miss the nights staying up late
Praying with fervor for friends To get saved
I miss the air that I breathed when I woke up and studied the word
Come back clean Armageddon
Come with your trumpets and choirs from heaven
Come back clean, simple salvation
When we could sit back and wait for it to happen
I miss the days all of us had
Interlocking our fingers and lifting our hands
I miss the right, right that I knew when I said I believe
Some creature inside me
It tells me to rewind
And regain the logic I had in my old mind
Where two plus two equalled the bricks that allowed me
To build up a wall that could confine the mystery
Say what you want Say what you will
I miss the right, right that I knew
But all of this heaven exploding above is a beautiful mess
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7. |
Cues
02:34
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Been around town
I hit the ground
We both waited up 'til the dawn came 'round
Your six o'clock shoes
Painted in booze
The sunrise acquainted us both...
We tried underground
We plotted the sounds
I grabbed a cassette tape and demoed it out
Found all my hues
My Robert Smith blues
Trent in my reds and your Paul Simon cues...
We war with the night
We put up a fight
We try and we try and we try for what's right
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8. |
Skip To The Bow
04:40
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I wanna skip to the part
Where we all take a bow
Where the ambulance driver says it's time to go home now
I want to sing a song
With nothing but refrains
About the we're all better humans now that we've endured the pain
I could write you a song about the necessity of death
But when all that I love starts to slip through my fingers
I’ll grip on like everyone else
I want to climb into the center of the earth And make it back alive
Just to tell a decent story to my grandkids
Like I'm Bruce Willis in some Die Hard 5
I want to lean way back
Sip smokey bourbon in my chair
I want to look nostalgically back at all the shit walked through to get here
I could write you a song about the necessity of death
But when all that I love starts to slip through my fingers I’ll grip on like everyone else
If I’m honest I’ll tell you that
most off my choices are made to avoid the pain
And I make up excuses to minimize loss
And invent ways to push of off the blame
If I pretend that I’m satisfied long enough
I can buy Into my own little lies
Until that voice deep inside me comes creeping up whispering truth in my ear at night
I wanna skip to the part
Where we all take a bow
Where the ambulance driver says it's time to go home now
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9. |
Bleed The Words
05:58
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Feel right...
Nothing is ever going to feel right
As sure as the blackness of dark night Folds out the color of day
And the small steps
Both of us taking are blind steps Feels like we’re faking the confidence Over and over again
Could we ever feel so brave that we bleed the words right to the page?
Every email I write
Every text that I send
Every chicken scratch song I've penned out
Is motivated by my need to exist in a universe beyond myself
I'm afraid you'll tune out
I'm afraid you’ll move on
to the hip young new girls and boys
I'm afraid that my voice will get lost in the chasm of you-tuber static and noise
Feel so brave
Pulsing with then energy
Running through your veins
So could you ever be
So brave
That you bleed the words right to the pages
Feel so brave
Catalyze the stars and light and dark and Bring them in
So that we can feel So brave
Everything is resonant
Nothing disconnected
Now
Say yes
Everything is resonant
Nothing disconnected now
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10. |
The Way Down
04:28
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I lost control 300 feet above the ground
Collided with the dirt
The planetary sounds
We all, We are
Connected gravity and dust
Molecularly chained to death and fade and rust
I saw that the way up is the way down
The gnawing ache inside my gut said it was true
The more we know the less we know
The more I choose our language to communicate the bitter truths,
The beauty that resides inside our bones has been tattooed
With signs that the way up is the way down
When all my fear is on display for you to see
Some kind of mysterious peace dissolves my need
To prove the universe is slanting all toward me
I saw that the way up...
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