‘The Corner’ was written and performed around an old approximately 70-page story written, but eventually never published, by Corey over 6 years ago during a period of extreme mental and physical illness.
The story focused around a man trapped in a room on the floorboards, debilitated by sickness and unable to move. In the corner of this room is something also lying on the floor across from him that is covered by a white sheet. As the man struggles to maintain consciousness, the reader slowly travels through the man’s internal struggle and dialogue through flashbacks recollecting past memories in order to try to deal with his inability to face the thing lying on the floor covered by the white sheet, along with death itself.
In the end of the story, the reader is left without any solid conclusions. Whether the man is morally ‘good’ or ‘irredeemable’, if he dies or finds respite, what in fact is on the floorboards covered by the sheet in the corner, if the man is in fact already dead or simply insane; there is no resolution. The only clear thing is that much like now how we collectively are faced with unresolved problems in an increasingly absurd and unforgiving world, so too is the man left alone with only something in the corner of his room covered by a white sheet.
This story was something that kept coming back to thought throughout the pandemic as everyone was trapped in their rooms having to deal with not only their own inner struggles, but also had to deal with the unforgiving outside world with its sickness, corruption of governing bodies, disgusting landlords, and everything that bled around it. It was startling how even over half a decade later; ‘The Corner’ still kept crawling back. So we all slowly sent things towards each other, sounds trying to make sense of it all, and played to this manuscript a sort of soundtrack to accompany old abandoned writings born from current times, abandoned and breaking down, that felt all too familiar in different ways from each of our rooms across the globe.
We are still struggling on the floorboards of our own lives...
And we are all still trying to come to terms and make sense of the object in the corner...
credits
released October 22, 2021
credits:
recorded through various exchanges of material in 2021, finally compiled in 2021 isolated and alone in a dark room in Thailand late at night with shaking and tired hands under the present military occupation, as well as small rooms in Canada and Argentina.
by members of a world wondered full.
instrument credits:
corey best :
saw u, piano, field recordings, prepared guitar, etc.
akitsu yoshinaka :
voice, vocal manipulations, etc.
violeta garcia :
cello
ailén antú :
double bass, voice
mixing and mastering by corey best
moral support and kindness: thomas fitzpatrick
and finally thanks to:
our families, friends, our lovers.
And to the people that are either in prison under lese majeste law, have disappeared through the incessant swell and waves, become past-people, or are still fighting to simply breathe through the static and ash...
"All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the
brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die."
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