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