We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

My First Goose

from Death Waits II: The Writers by Art Schop

/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    The packaging includes a deluxe booklet with original art by Eric Collins -- a portrait of each writer to which a song is dedicated, as well as notes on the songs and lyrics. Songs inspired by the lives and works of Emily Dickinson, Haruki Murakami, Isaac Babel, Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath, James Joyce, Dante, Paul Bowles, Seamus Heaney, and Albert Camus.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Death Waits II: The Writers via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 2 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $14.95 USD or more 

     

about

Isaac Babel wrote of death, despair and brutality with a tender and lurid vigor that leaves us spellbound and repelled by the acts of man. A gentle, bespectacled intellectual, he followed the advice of his mentor, Gorky, and went out to learn to write by experiencing life. Babel joined the notorious cossack army during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920. My First Goose is a story from the resulting Red Cavalry collection. Surviving the war and an order of execution (reward for his unvarnished reporting), Babel continued to live in the thick of life’s discomforts. Despite the constant threat of arrest he kept the company of the police — how else to understand them? he asked. Babel’s luck eventually ran out and, by consensus at least, it is agreed that he died in 1940 in a Soviet prison.

lyrics

Such is the lure of the regular army, the sinuous swell and no questioning why
you would duck from your ivory tower
For people, for country, for love of the word; for life, for Yevgeny, for lines never heard; for orders of death cast off with a flourish, a switch in his hand & the sweet smell of flowers
As Lenin spoke of woe and want, my heart it grated and overflowed
The Cossacks sat shaving, the sun bled away. The goose pecked so sternly, the words wouldn’t stay. Her neck like your waist and her feathers like leather
The Cossacks sat stock as I picked up the sword. I muttered a curse and stepped into the yard. I held the goose firm ‘neath the heel of my boot. Its wings moved above as its head cracked and spilled
As Lenin spoke of woe and want, I reveled in his secret turn
In my dreams I saw women, but my heart it grated and overflowed
We lived for truth and for beauty, we lived for love of the word. I lived my lies for Yevegny, for a bed in the dirt. I got close to his stench, close to his fire. I drank from his cup, now I’ll quietly expire

credits

from Death Waits II: The Writers, released March 12, 2019

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Art Schop image

Art Schop Brooklyn, New York

Contemporary rock that's "a mixture of Murder Ballads, Songs from a Room, and Hunky Dory."

contact / help

Contact Art Schop

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Art Schop, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring interviews with LA music scene pillar Kamasi Washington, and new London-based duo Mrcy.

listen now