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By the Dawn's Early Light

Boy about 10

Tattered Lee’s overalls and brown shoes

turned up at the toes

Winchester pump action .22

scarred by chaparral

Stinking dead horse alive with flies

Rusting hulk of 35 roadster

Running in circles firing

Breathless

Running more

Down the slopes to the meadow

Absolutely exhausted, delirious

Ass hits hard ground

Gets cut crossing the barbed-wire fence

Chased by the corpse at the shooting gallery

Circle some more

Merry-go-round

The painting

A child with a lion in a sylvan field

Fat boosters throwing rocks at the rattlesnake

Dervish dance

Xylophones rattle as the snake whirls

then slows to stupid circling

 

April 1990

I wrote the poems ‘Aztec Hotel’ and ‘Boy About 10’ within days of each other in April 1990. That is to say I simply wrote them – as I did all the others – with no particular purpose in mind at all. But for some reason ‘Boy About 10’ stuck very close to me; it insinuated itself on my consciousness. Aside from it being a hazy mirror of personal history, it seemed to arc across a simple check-list of circumstances and root into something fundamental. It wanted to generate something else but I couldn’t see or hear what that would be.

 

That same month, in Tokyo, Ray Hearn took me to an artbook store in Roppongi where I just happened to thumb through Sandro Chia’s Ninety Thorns In The Wind. In an instant everything was clear. The only thing left to do was get to work. I had casually come across the photo of Santiago McKinn perhaps twice in the past decade or so. The last time I saw it, in a news article when it was sold, I knew it wouldn’t go away again.

 

Harold Budd

Album notes from original release

 

 

Tracklist

 

1  Poem: Aztec Hotel

2  Boy About Ten

3  Arcadia

4  Dead Horse Alive With Flies

5  The Photo Of Santiago McKinn

6  The Corpse At The Shooting Gallery

7  Albion Farewell

(Homage To Delius, For Gavin Bryars)

8  Poem: Distant Lights Of Olancha Recede

9  Down The Slopes To The Meadow

(For Ruben Garcia)

10 She Dances By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

11  Blind Bird

12  Saint's Name Spoken

13  The Place Of Dead Roads

14  A Child In A Sylvan Field

 

Poems

15  Boy About

16  Wings

17  No Name

18  Advent

 

Harold Budd: Piano, Hammond B3, Synthesizer, Vocal

Bill Nelson: Acoustic and Electric Guitars

B.J. Cole: Pedal Steel Guitar

Mabel Wong: Viola

Susan Allen: Harp

All compositions by Harold Budd, except “The Place Of Dead Roads” by Harold Budd and Bill Nelson. “The Place of Dead Roads” refers to the novel by William S. Burroughs.

Published by Toyon Music, administered by

Universal Music Publishing

Recorded and mixed at Kingsway USA Recording Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana from March 15 – April 4, 1991. Special thanks to Daniel Lanois, Mark Howard and Karen Brady. Mastered at Precision Mastering, Los Angeles, California. My Personal and most sincere gratitude to Melanie

Ciccone and to Kevin Laffrey.

Original front cover photography (ruined

polaroid) by Harold Budd

Original sleeve design by Tom Recchion

“The Captive White Boy, Santiago McKinn” –

anonymous, 1886. We gratefully acknowledge

permission for use from the Tokyo Fuji Art

Museum. Particular thanks to Mr. Stephen White, Los Angeles, whose help has been invaluable

1991

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