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This Body is a Compass

from 3x3 by I Hold the Lion's Paw

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about

featuring Didem Caia

‘This body is a compass’ is a psalm for modern times that blends notions of the human body, with the body of the earth. The intention was to find the resonances between our declining touch with the earth and our eroding relationship with our own material body. The words draw from theories of animism, eco-spirituality and post-industrial revolutions, which illuminate the failure of ‘modern’ society to favour the connection between the natural environment and the human being.

lyrics

This body is a compass
Ceremony and sacrifice
A vast waterside
Amniotic oasis.

Secrets stacked in library spaces
Held together by umbilical systems.

Threads of emerald green grass
Weaved conversations
It’s the gestation of all life forms
When hills were the first ever churches
Say root, say strength.

And what of the myths and mathematics
That could be read like poplars on trees
A vast horizon of leaves
And carriers of historic genes.

This body is a compass

We used to kiss the brown of daylight
Look into water as a mirror
Not a mirage
Not ‘unreal’ or ‘hallucinate’
Not ‘Let this body be a sunken place.

Roots and arteries overthrown
By artillery
Cages and theft
Value put on machinery over maternity.

An army swarms -
This body is a compass.

You broke through this hymen place
Ran rampant over valleys
Ignored peaks and red ripe warning signs
To stop.

And how often this body has bled
In your arms
How the scratch and pull of ‘stop’
Kept daylight from coming.

It suffocates
The womb of the world unable to menstruate.

Youve lynched the moon
Stolen the cycles
Made a conveyor belt rotation of
Minefields.

Collapse of foresight
Civil unrest
Old famines
Slow and steady decline
Minerals mingled with mercury
Foreign objects searing this delicate chemistry
Dead tissue in mother belly, once a ‘one-day’ baby.


And now every war is the same war –
This body is a compass

We altered the laws
The alter of stars turned away
From facing us
So we clawed down the skies.

But before that
We carried the planets on our shoulders
They used to carry us with their fullness.

This body is a compass

Speak healing to the body
Throw your head back
Holy
Commune with the sun
Caress with hands on ocean skin
Until they’re medicine numb.

This body is a compass

credits

from 3x3, released September 8, 2022

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Reuben Lewis Melbourne, Australia

“a vivid listening experience that gleams with sinister detail” (The Wire)

Music devised to create a new musical narrative that is “beyond category” (The Australian)

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