a song about (not) working to death in the name of a capitalist idea of self-worth
I don’t want to be productive
I understand the feeling and I feel it too
That there is something close right ahead of you
An end to all the aching
Work through it,
Push through it,
Trudge up the hill
An infinite incline,
There is no other side
I don’t want to keep moving
To make it look like I’ve been working
I just need move slowly and cautiously
at my own pace
I can’t sacrifice my own body and free time
To help someone else make more money
I’m not convinced you’re benevolent
Call us leeches, when we’re giving our blood for this
Giving up blood for this
Part of growing up
Is learning to judge my worth by my own standards
Not someone else’s
I don’t want to be productive
I like making music
Because nobody listens
I don’t want to keep moving
To make it look like I’ve been working
I just need move slowly and cautiously
at my own pace
I’m longing and longing to simply do nothing
And get back in touch with why I’m alive
In songs like thunder
And I won’t let anyone tell me I’m wasting my life
I think we’re worth more than what we produce
And our extractable monetary value
Working yourself to death is an abusive relationship
And it’s not what I ever wish to be caught up in ever again
I don’t want to keep moving
To make it look like I’ve been working
I just need move slowly and cautiously
at my own pace
I’m longing and longing to simply do nothing
And get back in touch with why I’m alive
In songs like thunder
And I won’t let anyone tell me I’m wasting my life
I don’t have any bootstraps
I don’t know what that is
I fucking despise this
I don’t think it’s what life is
To just keep on going
Til your bones are showing
I won’t have it
Don’t call me worthless
I don’t want to keep moving
To look like I’m working
I long to do nothing
To just keep me going
Get back in touch with why I’m alive
Don’t tell me I’m wasting my life
Today I’m putting out two new songs. I’ll be donating and matching any proceeds to Until Freedom, an organization focused on fighting systemic and racial injustice. https://threadleaf.bandcamp.com/album/cant-stay-this-way
I don’t expect to make any significant amount as I’m not a popular artist, but I wanted to contribute in a way I could today—When Bandcamp is donating proceeds on their end to NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
These songs are up for pay-what-you-want, so you can choose the amount, or download them for FREE and then donate directly to Until Freedom here: https://www.untilfreedom.com/donate
I can't keep my head up high enough
The dirt's to my nose and you can't hear me
And I can't hear you over heavy heart beating
Wishing more than anything to get through
If there's even an other side
It's just one thing after the next thing
I'm mending as quickly as I can
I need to find some kind of distraction
So I don't keep clenching all my joints into oblivion
Staple a note that reads "What's wrong with me?" to my forehead
It's all I'm ever asking.
Just point to where the problem is
I'll believe you in an instant.
I've got no confidence that I'm functioning.
It's just one thing after the next thing
I'm mending as quickly as I can
I need to find some kind of distraction
So I don't keep clenching all my joints into oblivion
I'm sick. But not the way I think I am.
Take the spaces between my fingers
Show me new places I can be
New rooms to see
To ease my slow transition
To new things in a new life that's coming
And I'll step inside with legs that function.
On to the next thing.
In a diner, too loud to hear
I found my footing
Talking my way through problems in what was clearly an act of fantasy
In the best way, I think I lost me
I was taking flight, chaotic
Like a demon, all the horns
Without the wings
In a realm of fantasy I was doing the exact same thing
Speak up,
I can’t hear you
Over the sounds of monsters screaming
We started somewhere else
But found our footing there
Down Fulton
On the west end
Make new friends
Spent weekends
Adventuring
To the bitter end
There was something I think I knew I was missing
But I found it
When we move on to a quiet apartment
I’ll still cherish where it began
To the bitter end.
The cracking of my jaw
The pain behind my eyelids
A tube down my esophagus
For what was only in my head
Check on my insides
The pain within my abdomen
Give me useless medicine
For what was only in my head
Every single illness will last forever
The ringing in my ears won’t cease
The eternal cold, the chronic sleep
It’s always coming for me
I know my fate was overblown
But the noises are still real
I’ll take the steps I need to breathe
And make the shrieking leave
All these costly visits
Thinking everything is urgent
Convince me I’m not shriveling
What’s wrong is I can’t tell it to myself
Every single illness will last forever
The ringing in my ears won’t cease
I’ve lived too long to be so inept at
Seeing what clearly won’t kill me
I’m sorry silence
Took you for granted
I’m sorry silence
I’ll do anything
I’m sorry silence
Took you for granted
I’m sorry silence
Don’t leave, don’t leave
I’m sorry, silence.
...
I hear noise
I hear noise
(fade)
I hear it
I hear it
(fade)
(fade away)
(slowly fade)
(the noise fades)
Springing up for the spring I hurt my back
I’d forgotten about the sun I lacked
Existence seems to have a new sheen
So I won’t hide my voice from everything
I have new energy
To take steps to be someone I won’t regret being
I can’t exist in a vacuum
I’ve grown afraid of my impact
That I might make a noise loud enough
For someone else’s ears to ring
I saw something turn its head at me
360 degrees
I’ve been trying to be a person
whose existence I can justify
But I’m coming up short
Leaving better than I found me
Turn my head around to see
Make sure there’s no dirt tracked behind me
I want to share in this existence
Without taking more than I’ve given
I saw something turn its head at me
And I’d like to turn my head the same way
Without breaking my neck
Greenwood
-
A tree fell from a storm in the cemetery
right over the graves with names too worn to read,
and I wondered how much more obscured one could be
after being underground,
And I’m no less obscure & that’s ok.
When the tree fell I’m sure it made a sound
cracking over memorial stones,
led to by mossy cemetery steps
All of it sinking further down
forgotten and shifting in the muddy ground,
And I’m no less obscure & that’s ok.
////////
Blain
-
I was drawn in by the welcoming arch
and walked the path paved the same shape
traversed as an onlooker
What is nearer to humanity than already dead?
Our natural state—the purest selflessness
I felt like an intruder
to the birds making homes on stones
Anxious from the simplest interaction
Assuming I didn’t belong,
Approached by a stranger
Afraid I was being kicked out for not being dead enough
Sent back past the arch to the world of the living
where I’ll temporarily belong
This isn’t my long-term parking space
I’m headed home
The minority 2-way ticket holder.
////////
Rest Lawn
-
Your name brings thoughts of comfort at the end
Like a place to come and stay and work off sleep depravation
Like I desperately need to.
So how could someone be so disappointed in you?
Giving graveyards bad reviews,
Were things not dead enough for you?
Was this street side cemetery not your quiet sanctuary?
Or were you buried alive, and you’re still stuck inside?
If you don’t like it you don’t have to come back—until you do.
One star - graveyard
Wouldn’t be caught dead in this place
The decor’s only dirt and decay
Subpar - graveyard
Buried only 5 feet deep
Too close to the busy street
The residents can’t sleep
But that wasn’t my experience
I learned from you in my youth
I passed by and had the memory come back to me
It was part of my history
Of where I grew
And never far,
A perfect 10,
-5 stars.
////////
Woodlawn
-
In the midst of these neighboring cemeteries
There was a small chapel that we crowded in
Light through stained glass shone
From the winter sun
And 3 years later I came back
And I wonder if I ever will again?
And for who? Within the pews, few
But enough to hold us
Again up the hill to the graves,
Seeing the grass this time in late spring
My toes have warmed
Across ground I might too join someday
When I’m gone too
I’m afraid there won’t be room in the ground around you
When the yard is good & filled
& my blood is spilled into decay
There won’t be any more space
We won’t be neighboring graves.
But you could send me into space
When there’s no me
I wouldn’t care if you blew me to smithereens
You can sink me in the sea
When there’s no me
You can burn me, bury me, leave me there to rot
If a stone must say my legacy
“I once was scared,
but now don’t care,”
A lack thereof will follow me
So feed me to trees
Make anywhere my cemetery
There won’t be any more space
We won’t be neighboring graves.
////////
Oakhill
-
The cemetery rules were knocked to the ground
And I do suppose we can’t take civilization with us when we go
Yet we build all this for them,
These spires and stones crowded around
For the living for the dead
I passed by so many places I knew
Looking for a resting place for no one I’ve known
But I know the names of these streets
And I passed by graveyard after graveyard looking
They’re all bunched up and want to be close
And I felt a bit lost amongst the staring stones
Then I arrived.
Shapes and shades in abundance
With a pyramid of tomb & angelic sculptures
I wonder if that’s just what they wanted to be buried near or under
And I wonder what it is I want or if I care, well I don’t know.
I stood under a tree of bright & vibrant yellow leaves
Readying their fall to meet their new ground home
Where they decompose
I do suppose there’s no better place than here,
Although I know the yellow would be welcome anywhere—
Become dirt and meet their caskets
-
The fall sun seeps & I can breathe
& I alone.
I wonder where, and if I’ll care—where will be my end home.
Passing through what could be my end hometown I see them—villages of homes in the ground & stone—their end homes.
I thought I’d join too soon
Wake up late and go before noon
Young & weak
I thought I’d suffer
Doing tests and waiting for results
& dying.
I thought I’d wake up that morning with the news
& need to make my rounds
Telling everyone they’d have to watch their friend slowly die.
I thought I was marked.
I thought my body betrayed me.
Hyper-rational—but my brain betrayed me.
You must understand if you can
I truly believed I was going to die
and it’s still so hard to believe I’m not shriveling
—am I not shriveling away?
I’ll see you all soon but not too soon.
The owl watched over me like the god I’ll never have
A creature of the night
but still begging for light
I thought I was cursed
but came out fine—
& my blood & my insides
will work with me for some time.
the fall sun
seeps
into me
and I feel
release
golden
leaves
save me
& the owl watches
& I breathe.
alive
with everything.
////////
Unmarked
-
I always wondered who gets a rock and who gets a tomb
And where there others will go when we don’t have any more room
And who gets evicted?
I have this fixation
And in waves I’ll obsess too much of death
I’ll feel terrified and panicked and feel this weakness all throughout my chest
And through my bones
But I walk by these stones
And feel a kindredness,
That while so many have feared
We all have to go
Meet the spots we merge with the earth
To our end homes.
Where we are when we finally go means nothing
And the plot of earth is nothing to the dead
From monument to forgotten plot of dirt
It means nothing to those past their end
So prop up a stick and someday forget me
It’s all the same
Someday we’re all unmarked graves
I’m scared but there’s one thing I’ll share
That everyone becomes no-one
And I’ll be no-one too
And there won’t be anyone left around to truly remember you
But I got the most that I can get, as much as anyone
I’ve been alive
And I’ll be grateful until I no longer can be
to the grave
It doesn’t make me special to have a designated space for my body to lay
Or a place to etch my name
Someday we’re all unmarked graves
When we’re all just dust drifting through space
and that’s ok
Between other stones
Or decaying alone
The view looks the same
From our end homes
I don’t want to go
But I’ll find what meaning I can find
Until I join the aligned stone structures
Calling out was never good enough, between walls
No nearby ears, no sun to build me up
And come fall, I’ll be immersed in the warmer shades
Evidence I’m not wilting away, that I’d be unwise not to take
Even with leaves of stress I just can’t shake
Only waiting for the flow to come back
Now months as months have passed
Bringing life and death
To moments of only finding hope in a streetlight
Now seven years have passed
The ebb left
The flow came back again
My tentativeness was for the short-term
The associated color was only a shade of what occurred
I now know there’s no plateau
No permanent revival, stone becomes paper
Here becomes there, and safe becomes danger
Further depths can be fallen to,
Just to climb back out again
And it never ends
And it’s a reality with which to reach some kind of acceptance
And maybe it’s okay to never get “there”
When colder winds break through
Warmer colors seem to come back
It’s a cycle I can’t ever resist
And somehow forget with each collapse
I guess this is some kind of ending
And while there’s still time before the curtain’s closed
I’m checking some boxes for a life that I’ve re-promised to myself
Re-evaluated everything and left behind my imagined life
And wound up liking what I’d find when the thoughts bloomed out
Even from this far I can see it
Sickness fades, residual exhaustion
But with comfort
In the humid august air
What I’m looking for comes closer
August is here again
Its wind against my face
The place I now live
Feels closer to the place I built in my head
Call it some kind of acceptance
I’ve seen that nothing stays the same
There’s always change
In the seasons and the colors they bring
Crushing under my feet
Scattered through dead leaves
Are pieces that were once a part of me but never again
And I bid good riddance
I don’t feel so rotted down
I don’t feel like wilting now
And I feel the sun
As I bloom
“Months” - Reflecting on the project in memories and album covers
In September of 2011 I came up with a concept for an album.
I always tended to organize my life by months, and living in an area of the world with 4 distinct seasons, the shifts in weather month to month throughout the year made each month feel even more distinct. I almost felt each month had its own unique color, synonymous with its name.
I was 17 when this project began. The basic concept was this:
Write one song each month for one year. Each song will be based on the ‘feel’ that particular month brings. The lyrics would detail my thoughts and feelings I went through that month. It was late in September when the idea came to me, the first month of my senior year. I also felt it would be a great way to document my final year of grade-school.
Since September was almost over, my first song in the “Months” project was a simple song made with only MIDI instruments (piano, strings, and my personal favorite--reed organ). I intended to eventually add vocals and guitars, but in the end left it how it was by the end of September. That was the thing--I had to complete the song by the end of the month. By the 1st of the following month, no more writing lyrics, no more composing.
So my real start on the “Months” project always felt like October, and that’s why that song has always held a special place in my heart.
For this album, I would name each song simply the name of the month. So the October song was called “October,” and it was track 2. Then I’d write “November” and so on.
And the band name, I would decide:
Rainclouds.
October began with MIDI reed organ, and did just what I intended with this concept, it sounded like what I felt October sounded like. Mostly breezy and cool and a bit uplifting sounding, but shifts to moments of spookiness like my favorite holiday.
This would mean December sounds cold, atmospheric, sometimes dark. I tried to recreate the feeling of being outside in the winter, when sound seems to float far away, and everything is quiet.
I wrote not just of my thoughts that December, but of past Decembers, and all December meant to me.
I had written a song called “August” way before starting the months project, and had the idea to slap that song as the final track, since it was a nice coincidence to have a song named a month already. I thought it’d be nice and nostalgic to have a re-recorded old song at the end, but I ended up just seeing how much I’d grown as a songwriter since then.
And that was another thing I always loved about doing the Months project: I’d see my own progress, growing as a writer, compositionally and lyrically. And I’d also see my growth as a person, and what I went through. Like a strange, strange journal.
So “July” ended up feeling like the big finale for that year. I even put an album medley at the end of the song.
I finished up the album, calling it “Changing Color” based on the lyric in October. The album cover would be a strange boxy mess of colors lined up next to each other. From left to right, the colors represented the months of the year, starting with September. The colors we what I, for whatever reason, associated with that month. I always wondered if I got the colors stuck in my brain from a calendar I had as a child, where each month had a different color scheme. I always found October to be kind of dark blue, and January to be a light light blue like ice. I wasn’t too happy with the album cover though, so I changed it after releasing the album to one that still featured the colors, but over a picture of Lake Michigan. Changing the album covers last minute, or even after release, would become something of habit with me… (“Changing Cover,” if you will).
But I didn’t want it to end. So I started the project up again with a Months #2 that September.
This time I’d name the songs like I would any other song I write, but the concept remained the same. By the end of the year I had an album I’d name “Empty Hearts & Sinking Ships” after a lyric in “Petrichor.”
This album had a cover change, just before release, and good thing too, because the original was awful. And thus would begin my constant use of trees and/or leaves in my album covers.
This album also would feature the longest song to ever appear in a Months album (and also the longest title I guess), “Until the Dark Dissolves: The Finale Begins When the Curtain is Closed” clocking in at 11:18.
Again, it’s amazing to see the journal that this project can be, with songs like “Petrichor” based around the first major death in my life, and “Absent from the Ocean’s Tomb” marking me gleefully detaching myself from religion at 19.
Then there was a third Months album, I knew before I even began it, for whatever reason, that it would be called “Silent Spectrum” and I ended up working that into some songs (including the closer of the same name).
This one technically had 2 changes of cover, first from probably the worst cover I’ve ever made, then to what I quickly changed it to, and the cover til long after release. Later on I changed it again when the “band” name changed from Rainclouds.
This Months albums at this point slowly crept away from being strictly about being modeled after the feel of a month, although they still strongly represented my thoughts and feeling during the month in which I wrote it.
“Strange Places” would be the fourth Months album, and the only with less than 12 tracks (because I ended up cutting the first 2, not being satisfied with them).
The first album cover was simple, done right in the first month, and although I planned on changing it, I did like the brighter tone it conveyed, which inspired the final cover concept. This cover was a picture of a field behind a library (the same field referenced in “The Field Behind the Library” of the 2017 EP). After a tornado that caused slightly-above-minor damage to my neighborhood, I fled to the library the next morning to experience the view, an eerie brightness and calm after a dark storm.
The logo on the right is a remnant of the artist name being Rainclouds, the logo setup itself meant to look like a rain cloud with rain falling. I’ve tended to keep the eight-forward-slash logo since it just looks cool.
The title track of Strange Places marks a point in the Months discography where I felt I was exploring a new sound, one I’d mostly stick to for the rest of the Months albums til now.
A funny trivia about track 9, “July Fourth” is that the title is simply referring to the fact that it’s the fourth “July” song in the Months project, not the holiday. I kept the title to be… ironic or something.
Also on this album is the song “Someday I’ll Finally Get ’There’” which I’ve often looked back on as my favorite song I’ve ever written.
Then comes the self-titled album, the fifth Months record. I never thought I’d do a self-titled album, but there it is. The main reason was that I wanted to consistently present a new sound on the album. When I started writing it I was releasing under the name “Rainclouds” and with the release of this album (almost one full year after finishing writing it), I decided to do a fresh start, renaming to Threadleaf, a name I’m much more proud of and better fitting the heavy leaf and tree themes in my music. This would mean the album would actually be called just that: Threadleaf.
The album cover was simple, and I knew I’d use it right near the beginning of writing. Nothing too extravagant, not with much meaning, but some that, with a little editing and light effects, gave a feel I really loved. It’s a picture of my shoe and a fancy designed carpet, some kind of brass bar obstructing part of the view. But with the bright orange light effects and the dark purplish border, the colors were really accentuated. Just another example of me caring about feel more than meaning.
Threadleaf, 2017
I wanted to continue this sound on the sixth months album, (and the newest one released as of now!) Winter Flowers. Right away with the track Hyacinth, I almost feel that song could be found on “Threadleaf.” I was happy to have a consistent sound.
But, I started to get too used to it. I’d written song after song in the format since “Strange Places” and I started to feel writer’s block, worried that the songs were sounding too same-y, too formulaic, but afraid to change it up too much and create a disjointed, uneven record.
Reasons like this are why I am temporarily ending the “Months” project, and that announcement is why I’m writing all of this…
Winter Flowers had 3 different covers before its release, first was a cover when the album had a different title. I always wanted to have a less serious sounding album name, so as something overly long and ironic I originally used the title “Unsuccessfully Growing Flowers in the Winter” which poked at the basic lyrical concept of what came to be simply, “Winter Flowers.” Realizing that not all things that are planned to come to fruition and bloom in life transpire. Dreams, relationships, places. The future I built for myself in my head simply wasn’t going to ever happen, and I learned during the writing of the album that it’s necessary to build up a new future goal to strive for than to just wallow and consider yourself dead.
The album cover then switched to a similar one with the altered title, then finally, just a month or so before release, the final cover, and one of my favorites: a pink and dark teal color schemed cover featuring a hyacinth flower. All three covers feature the window of my room in the house I grew up in—one of the last photos before I left it for good.
Another example of Months being a journal, this album contains my most cynical of songs like Honeywort, which says “I won’t ever find what I’m looking for,” as well as more hopeful and understanding, with my favorite stanza I’ve written being this, from Involuntary Chrysalis:
“What remains of what I used to have are shards of glass that scattered,
and I spent too long dwelling on the minor scapes that I’ve gathered,
now that time has done some healing and what broke dispelled a song,
you’ll find me contently humming and sifting through the wreckage of it all.”
And with that song ended Winter Flowers.
So I began the seventh Months project, not knowing I would make it a sort of a finale season of “Months.” Maybe there will soon be a comeback when I feel inspired. Maybe I’ll continue writing one song per month, but as a different project or concept. All I know is with these 12 songs and a seventh year, it feels like a finale for whatever reason. I don’t want an eighth album if it’s going to be more of the same. I need a fresh idea.
That being said, this seventh Months album is the one I might be most proud of, truly.
It may follow the same sound and style of the previous few, but I felt I gave it enough energy, diversion, and intent behind it for it to stand above. The songs tend towards being shorter, to the point, displaying a single idea for that particular month. I for whatever reason decided for each track title to be only one word. Maybe that has something to do with further conceptualizing the album. The challenge has been to make my meanings concise, songs more to the point, and short song titles forced me to boil down that meaning even further. Like the song title “Apricity” which says a lot about the song’s meaning in one word. Apricity, I learned while researched for the song, is a word which here means “the warmth of the sun in the winter.” Which on its own is a nice metaphor for what I felt then, in January.
The album cover is also as simple as I could make it, featuring no words, no “Threadleaf,” no album title. Simply a painting of a sliced orange. Eight purple slashes. All over a picture of a tree, of course.
I painted the orange years ago, always wanting to use it for an album cover, but never knowing just how or why. Initially I had the cover as just the painting on the canvas with an orange border. But I wanted more, I wanted… tree.
The meaning might be forced, but it makes sense to me. When I started the album I felt like, although I was young, I was way past the time in one’s life where they typically meet people, make friends, learn new things, have new experiences. Pulling a bit from Winter Flowers and described on track 2, Germinate, I felt like I was something young, growing up and escaping from the ground in the spring, but autumn came, and I never blossomed. The other flowers grew without me.
Though, I remind you, by “Apricity” my attitude shifted a bit.
Which is why, I think, behind the lonely and singular orange slice, is a bright and sunny image of the light between tree branches.
So, here it is, I’m announcing that the seventh and “final” Months album is called:
Way Past Blossoming
Anyone
Germinate
Wallmouth
Sustain
Apricity
Vibrancy
Grotto
Dayspring
Banishment
Reblossomed
Forthcoming
Septennial
Way Past Blossoming, TBA (final cover)
At the near septennial of when I started Months, with Changing Color in September of 2011, to now, writing a song called Septennial in August of 2018, I’m excited for the future and feel like I might get a chance to re-blossom, if you will. I’m about to start college again, aiming for a bachelors degree and a specific career in mind.
I don’t know exactly when I’ll finish Way Past Blossoming, hopefully sooner rather than later. I don’t know what will become of “Months” or what my music will become once September comes. I want to try new things. I have a couple in mind, such as reviving the politically driven “It doesn’t have to stay this way” concept as an EP, and making a short album based on graveyards I’ve visited called “End Homes.”
But I want the time and attention to decide what’s next. And once “Way Past Blossoming” is done, Months will be for the time being, and I’ll explore.
So, with the basic structure of the final song complete, I see the full scope of “Months” and I wanted to reflect.
And by the way, listen to all this junk at threadleaf.bandcamp.com!
I’m excited to have this 7-album concept run complete.
I don’t know when I’ll return, or what I’ll do, but maybe someday
Imagining little bits of sunlight falling through my old window
I don’t think I ever processed leaving
Or anything
I’m too attached to place
And now it’s breaching my brain
I couldn’t see this coming right in front of my face
I’m too attached to place
And while everyone leaves
I can never get away
From the urge to stay
I might be fine where I am now
And alright with change
But when it hit me all at once it scared me
And now the bits of sunlight found me in my new place
And again, I choose to stay
Right around the corner
The chance I’ve been waiting to take
I can never get away from the urge to stay
Everything burned down
But not to ashes
It burned to a shimmer
And now the bits of sunlight found me in my new place
And I choose to stay
Placed firmly in soil
I’m confident will cooperate
The landscape is measured
Things all set in their right place
I’ve found relief in accepting where I am and where I’m going
Sleep in the dirt
Until I’m back to light again
I think I buried this in spring this time
So the stems won’t decline
As they show their green to the sky
And not killed by cold again
Reblossoming
I wasn’t grown properly
When I’m in dirt again I hope it warms me
I hope I’m met with light when I breach to the air again
And I’m filled with sweetness
I was a bitter blossom
Rotting citrus
A fruit left lonely
Detached from the branches
The network of greens ceasing to feed me
No throat to scream or sing
I was grown improperly
I was way past blossoming
The summer surrounds
After planting in spring
The Sweet Sounds of June
Reblossoming
It's summer but it's WINTER FLOWERS. 🥀
It's the next Threadleaf album and it's out July, Friday the 13th.
Each song representing a month, written from September 2016-August 2017.
Here's a new single from the album, the "November" song, entitled "The Place I Once Lived"
The rest will be out on iTunes/Apple Music and Spotify on July 13 here: https://threadleaf.bandcamp.com/album/winter-flowers
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