Songs about your pets are usually about something much more. We project onto them, we imagine we know what they’re thinking and saying, we begin to see expressions on their faces. Non pet-owners think we’re annoying at best, obsessed and/or pitifully lonely at worst.

But isn’t it true that pets know us? They’ll look us in the eye, willing us to be our best by being the best to them. They notice our every move, looking for snacking opportunities, but also listening with their super-human senses to our heartbeats. Therefore they might know, before we even recognize it ourselves, whether we’re anxious, elated, tired, or ecstatic.

By projecting onto them, we become them (and not vice versa). Adopting their expressions, we take on their animal versions of patience and play. When we train them, they train us to read their desires and through this they inadvertently control our daily rituals. We commit to walk and feed them on time, and this becomes the simple, basic building blocks of a deep friendship.

In between the punctuation of eating and playing, a pet watches us constantly. And I dare any pet-denier to say that our animal friends don’t have incredible abilities remembering. Through the years they quietly witness and register our lowest and highest moments. Without the baggage of human judgement, they develop a kind of animal-empathy, accepting our base-level selves in between the dark and the light. On those mornings where you’d rather not face the world (ever again), they quietly know. Nevertheless, they’ll crowd the bed and step on you until you’re up and ready to play.

‘mussi’ is the 3rd song off the n0va EP.

Album artwork by Jin Suk
» buy mussi on Bandcamp »
mussi
a stone and a stick
stone wind on a plane
i know you want to:
change your fate as black as slate to want to go
to play and to pray
and go fly away
catch a leg inside a claw a yawn to beg
what if I turn grey?
you ask of the day
sailing on a pin:
fortune and a fly distract a scratch and as for me
and when your soft palms
come down on the rain
nails pulling apart
the bark the tree the ghost the half moon
“all too true I sleep half the day
come full moon I’ll watch over your breaking heart and wait…
even as you fall into snores
chasing dreams on the edge of your haunted love contours”
…a stone and a stick
a rib and a bone
whisker whisper
“even though i sleep half the day,
come full moon I’ll watch over the way to wake you soon
even as I fall into purrs. ,
keeping one ear in tune to the wondering of you”
a rib and a bone
like water and stone
you can’t deceive:
kiss me then to calm the sad unsaid
whisker whisper
crowding the bed
kick to the head:
find me when i count to ten!
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