Skins Sticks and Sonic Wilderness

Описание: Skins, Sticks and Sonic Wilderness is a journey through the years from growing up listening to vinyl legends create dreams. To all drummers out there, I am sure the sentiments will reverberate perfectly.
Lyrics:
Mellotron choir rises like fog over silent streets.
A single cymbal struck, allowed to decay into forever.

No pulse yet.
Only breath.

I remember the needle falling like judgment from above,
Black rivers spinning secrets I was too young to name.
Rooms became cathedrals made of voltage and dust,
And time itself no longer moved the same.
Voices spoke in riddles of cities in the clouds,
Of men who walked the edge of reason’s flame,
And somewhere in that endless sonic wilderness,
I heard them whisper my name.

Every measure stretched like a lifetime,
Every silence heavier than stone,
I learned that sound could build a universe,
And I would not walk it alone.

Snare introduces pattern, uncertain, asymmetrical.
Kick drum answers in defiance.
Bass enters, climbing.
Toms roll like distant thunder approaching consciousness.
Hands learning language faster than the mind can speak it.

Blisters forming maps across untested skin,
Pain becoming proof of passage and belief,
Counting ghosts between the numbered lines,
Finding order hidden underneath.
Metronome, the tyrant and the guide,
Demanding sacrifice of doubt and fear,
Each night I died a thousand smaller deaths,
Each morning, rhythm pulled me clear.

I was no longer just the listener,

I was becoming the storm.

Drums take command.
Snare cracks open the firmament.
Toms cascade like collapsing stars.
Cymbals shimmer,
Not struck, but awakened.
Keyboard solo spirals upward.
Guitar answers in sustained defiance.
Drums break free, polyrhythmic, searching, alive.
Silence.
Single heartbeat kick.
Silence.

The Stage and the Infinite Now
Light fell across my eyes like absolution,
Shadows of strangers breathing in my hands,
Counted in, four pulses to eternity,
And became more than I had planned.
In that moment there was no beginning,
In that moment there was no end,
Only vibration passing through fragile bones,
And the certainty I would transcend.

The boy was gone.

The sound remained.

All motifs return.
All rhythms reconciled.
Drums no longer questioning,
Drums declaring.
Crash cymbal, sustained.
Band cuts to silence except echo.

When the final vibration fades into the dark,
And the air forgets the shape of what was said,
Still the stars revolve inside my chest,
Still the living answer what was dead.
For I was raised by ghosts in spinning black,
And gave my mortal heartbeat in exchange.


And in the measure between silence and sound,

I became,

Everything.

©Mike Howes aka Silent Cougar
27th February 2026