Influences
Ozric Tentacles, “Crackerblocks”
Zymosis, “Path of Nocturnal”
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith in general
Story
In January 2019, I declared to my parents that I needed a set time – 4 months and change – away from them to separate them from other things in my childhood. Without quite understanding what I was trying to say, I was dealing with emotional flashbacks that were triggered by them being literally the people who raised me, and I needed to separate all that out. I didn’t have enough energy to maintain a happy-achiever son for their satisfaction and a me who stayed employed and married and so on.
They bristled at that, though I didn’t know the extent at the time. Since I wasn’t talking to them in that period, they struck up a conversation with my wife, and it led to a phone call with my dad where the agreement was that I’d send an email update every month for however long.
As I was about to send the April one, I got an email saying they were disinheriting me. They linked two tweets (I’d blocked them on Twitter, but I hadn’t locked my account, so fair enough. Cue a 1993-style PSA to “Block and Lock!”) without a specific allegation and said I was wallowing in lying and deceitful behavior, so they couldn’t deal with me until I got out of it. They signed it with their names rather than Mom and Dad, and they text-dumped the whole dialogue with my wife. It got odd in places, in particular where they expressed skepticism about my 2017 autism diagnosis because the doctor asked me about my childhood instead of my mom, who they claimed would remember it better.
They said they wouldn’t read anything I sent them (it turns out this is because my dad blocked emails from me, “to spare your mother”) but that they might accept a phone call.
Warp to 2023, and my aunt showed some interest in my idea of a mediated talk – just anyone trusted to call balls and strikes in a discussion of my concerns. I’d put them into a detailed letter. My dad got wind of this while “reading Brandon Isleib’s on-line comments” and hadn’t heard about this when I’d tweeted that he had (misunderstanding on my part). This led to a voicemail from me and a small text exchange in July 2023. My dad read the letter and declined to discuss its particulars. He read my (many) frustrations more than the request to hear their perspective on them. And it was then that I learned that one of the biggest charges against me was that I had “mock[ed]” them more than once in public (which appears to be what they thought the two 2019 tweets were).
Given that I’m a lawyer and therefore borrow civil procedure concepts for conflict resolution, I will summarize like this: my parents haven’t pled their allegations of my emotional fraud with sufficient particularity to be justiciable, and they also are offended that I want to address mine with particularity. I want to know what their defenses – their perspectives – are, and to do so I figure I need to articulate what I’m actually alleging. They’re seemingly offended by the act and art of alleging, in both directions. It’s apparently bad that I finished mine, and they don’t want to finish theirs.
After this exchange, I felt different than in the rest of my life. And after three completely separate sets of lyrics coming from very different perspectives – and some clutch input from both Madame Maledicta (a Portland radio host who’s a good friend and part of my musical brain trust) and Anji Bee (of Lovespirals and this album) – I figured out where I was with all this. I realized I’d been seeing my parents as the authority figures they always were growing up, and I hadn’t adjusted my emotions for a different reality. It took seeing my dad acting out-of-character, defensive and closed off, to see that I wasn’t punching up anymore, the way that it seems you will forever do when you’re a kid and they’re the adults in charge.
Now, when I see how hurt they still act from their old hurts…I feel like a bully, punching down. I’d been away for years, I came back wanting to spit the fire that was still unaddressed in my heart, and I didn’t find a sparring partner. I saw someone whose emotional vitality no longer matched the picture in my head. And at that point, it felt very wrong to keep wanting to fight for myself, because there was no one to fight against.
These lyrics are about that feeling, of seeing parents (or any authority figures) holding less power after enough time and determining they’ll be happier and better off if you leave them be. I themed this as though I were harnessing electricity in some way, like a lightning mage, who chooses to ground it at the end. To match, the vocals decrease in distortion over time (offset by the backing vocals – entirely programmed using Soundtoys’s Little AlterBoy – increasing in the mix). It’s weird to have a verse, a bridge, and a chorus with nothing to come back to, but as Tracy Chapman puts it, “there ain’t no more to say.”
7000 is roughly how many days I lived with my parents. Also, there are a ton of randomly complicated rhymes in here. Thanks to Anji and Maledicta, and also to Rose Alaimo, who thought these lyrics carried enough meaning to be worth making music for and recording sooner rather than later/at all.
Lyrics
I captured 7000 sparks
Making light for all my dark
Wit spit, emitting showers
Of incandescent power
With an adolescent glower
In my blue-sky redemption arc
You’d crown me as the king of snark
War-torn, adoring throngs
Would drown out all your wrongs –
A downspout, then they’re gone
But in the crackling of my rage,
I failed to realize
That memories of younger days
Are nature’s best disguise
So when I showed up for a fight,
It took me by surprise
To learn that time had left you pale and
Immunocompromised
When I was young, you seemed so strong and tough
I thought that I could never measure up
Years on, demystified by disconnect,
My anger was a high-voltage respect
In finding you like this, I should have known
The gap between us wasn’t set in stone
So I will ground my electricity
To not burn down your hospice reverie
Some press about it
““7000 Sparks,” a short piece driven by modern dance rhythms along with lush electronic soundscapes, is strongly “loaded” with concepts of self-exploration and change.” – Skylight.gr
“7000 Sparks [is] weird synth pop shimmer, raging against all the disguises and compromises filling you with pain.” – Whisperin and Hollerin
“Isleib bares his intimate heart and emotions making its barely touching two minutes a highly evocative affair bound in sounds that equally stirred the imagination and evocative thought. It is a track that again reveals and brings more to the table with each play[.]” – Ringmaster Review
Next song: Nearest Pool of Chaos
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