Split 7"

An exercise. When stuck or bored, go to what's known -- and get to work!

For Spilt 7" I took two Beatles songs written ten months apart --"Yesterday" (1965) and "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966) -- and imagined them on either side of a vinyl single. But instead of their original selves, I did my best to reverse the lyric content of each.

I am a reader of Roland Barthes, particularly his posthumous book The Neutral (2002), which is comprised of his lecture notes from his 1977-78 College de France course. I drew on The Neutral for my MFA thesis, and to a lesser extent for this experiment.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
Joy will stare you down

Until it blinds you to its vacancies
You don’t believe in tomorrow

Eventually
You were all the gender you needed to be

Sunlight underfoot
Tomorrow went eventually

He had to come, you know
He told you

You heard nothing right
Until you tired of tomorrow

Tomorrow
Hate is a difficult operation
Until you forgot the time of your arrival

You don’t believe in tomorrow

He had to come, you know
He told you
You heard nothing right
Until you tired of tomorrow

Tomorrow
Hate is a difficult operation
Until you forgot the time of your arrival

You don’t believe in tomorrow

*

Yesterday Forgets

Turn on your bod, tense up and jump in the bath

It is dying, it is dying

Pick up some actions, resist that which looks like spectacle

It is dull, it is dull

Forget that interiority means anything

It is nothingness, it is nothingness

Hate is nothing compared to the crow at 5am

It is ignorance, it is ignorance

Knowledge and love ignore the living

It is resisting, it is resisting

Speak to the form of my reality

It is leaving, it is leaving

Work the detail “Essence” to the beginning

Of the end, of the end