SOURCE MATERIAL

After we held our weekend of album release shows in Milwaukee, the biggest thing we took away from them was that the audience members/listeners were much more engaged in the musical pieces after they heard us discuss the story behind each of them. Everybody likes an “origination story,” so we decided to include them all here on our website. We feel that (whether you’ve read the particular DFW piece or not) if you read the specific characters/plot circumstances that pertain to each of our instrumental compositions, you can get a feel for our musical inspiration and have visualize what we were trying to express or describe with our music. We do this in hopes of enhancing your listening experience and providing a deeper understanding of this difficult bridge we’ve built between literature and music.

What follows is a listing of each track title on the album, what DFW book it is from, and the backstory behind it. We have copied the original letters that Tyson sent to Aaron in the mail, where DFW’s source material was paraphrased and presented by Tyson in a brief, “nutshell” description so Aaron would have enough of an outline to react and respond with his cello.

TRACK 1: “THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM”

This piece is actually based on a separate short story within DFW’s book, The Broom of the System. One of the characters is a reviewer and often recounts various stories that have been submitted to him. He does this with Lenore, the main character of the book. They do this often in conversation to pass time and as a way to amuse themselves. It’s not what the main plot of the book at all; instead, it’s a curious story that fit in with this project’s theme of loneliness and sadness.

There is a man in NYC who can fall in love at the drop of a hat. Like full-on, head-over-heels love. It could be anybody who catches his attention and/or attraction. Needless to say, his propensity for saying untimely and inappropriate things to strange women has gotten him into some serious trouble over the years: slapped, kicked, fired from jobs, thrown in jail, etc. Because he is continually pushed away, he is constantly lonely. Eventually, he decides to seek the help of a love therapist. She concludes that he needs to interact with women who are the opposite of what he finds attractive. Women who he could never fall in love with. By doing this, he could hopefully build a control mechanism over the chemicals in his brain that go haywire when meeting someone he desires—a way to keep from jumping too far ahead in a relationship and instead get to know someone slowly and fall in love over time. So he remembers this woman he saw on the subway earlier that day. She is unkempt, has coke-bottle glasses, and is grossly overweight. He noticed how unattractive she was when she got up to leave the subway, and when she did, she forgot her Thermos under her seat. The Thermos rolled across the floor and ends up right by the man. He picked it up and found her name and address written on masking tape on the bottom of it in case it is found somewhere. The man finds the address and goes to her house to return it to her and strike up a conversation. After a lot of awkward explaining and a few more meetups, they become friends. There is no pressure, and even though he isn’t attracted to her, the man enjoys talking to the woman and going for walks with her. He thinks the love therapist’s advice is actually working. The woman, lonely and tired of feeling unnoticed and unwanted, is simply happy to have a man to talk to and spend time with. The man begins to look forward to their time together and has enjoyed getting to know her. The one thing he can’t figure out is why she always seems to wear a bunch of scarves around her neck. She often touches them on one side and rearranges them slightly. He thinks it’s a nervous tick and forgets about it. The woman feels a new confidence in herself and ditches the coke-bottle glasses, dresses differently, and begins to lose weight. This continues over time, until the woman has completely changed her appearance, and both have grown quite comfortable around each other. The man realizes that he has come to love this woman and now finds her beautiful. They finally express this love by spending the night together. In the course of the evening, the woman allows the man to undress her, including the inordinate number of scarves she has continued to wear around her neck. She’s nervous, and he is curious as to what is underneath. Once he has them unwrapped, he finds a small toad living in the crook of her neck. She explains that it is a family custom; she is well aware that it isn’t normal and that it’s the main reason she always kept to herself and felt like a societal outcast in the past. He finds this all adorable and they are in love and begin their relationship in earnest. The woman brings him to meet her family, and over dinner he sees that everyone has some form of clothing that covers their neck. The woman doesn’t hide her toad anymore, allowing it to be out in the open for all to see. She feeds it little morsels of food while her parents watch in disapproval. They are not happy with the man, who they figure is the cause of all this change in their daughter. A rift develops in the woman—on one hand, she is happy with her new life, self-confidence, and relationship with the man; on the other hand, she feels familial pressure to continue to uphold their customs and make her parents happy again. It causes her too much anguish, so she breaks up with the man. He is crushed and falls back into his old ways of expressing love to strangers and being rejected. The woman is also heartbroken and takes her own life. One day, the man hears a noise at the door. When he opens it, he finds the woman’s toad staring up at him, slowly blinking.

TRACK 2: “INFINITE JEST”

Infinite Jest is the book that put DFW on the map: a meteoric magnum opus landing on the face of postmodern literature that continues to fascinate and intimidate readers/scholars to this day. An entire album could have been built around the contents of Infinite Jest, but instead the focus was put on two of its main characters: brothers Hal and Mario Incandenza. This piece is about Mario, while Hal gets his own piece on Track #8.

Mario Incandenza is a teenage, yet pre-pubescent student at the Enfield Tennis Academy. Plagued by several birth defects, his body is a malformed nightmare of angles, thin appendages, and weak muscles. Despite this he is able to get around on his own through the use of sturdy, high-tech crutches and a series of locks, bolts, and various lattice-type support systems connecting metal and body together. The cumulative effect of all this winds up freaking people out more than if he just used a motorized wheelchair. Besides having to lug all of that around, Mario is never seen without a backpack full of lenses and a few cameras slung around his neck (still shot and video). He is the unofficial photojournalist for Enfield and, in the opinion of most, produces exceptional quality pictures and videos, especially given his age and obvious physical limitations. Mario is allowed to attend Enfield because his older brother, Hal is a student there as well. Mario adores Hal and can often be found in his company, tagging along everywhere, constantly chronicling events on film. Once strangers/students get over the initial shock and pity they inevitably feel for Mario, he becomes a “fly on the wall” in every situation he is in. Nobody knows what’s going on in Mario’s mind because he never communicates. Most think he is mute, and mental problems are assumed. Right away, people feel sorry for him and imagine how hard his life must be— sad that he will never experience a “normal” human existence. But if the right person or group of people were to peer into Mario’s mind, or ask the right questions, or perform certain tests, they would find one of the most fascinating and powerful human minds on the planet. Mario is operating on a completely different plane than most people, and he sees/experiences things in such a peculiar way that they would never understand. If they knew, they would no longer feel sorry for Mario and may well feel sorry for themselves instead. A tip of the iceberg of what Mario could offer the world is a complete, down-to-the-smallest-detail retelling of what it was like to be born and, indeed, what it was like to be inside of his mother’s womb. His remarkable memory bank of vision, feeling, and dreams extend back that far.

TRACK 3: “INCARNATIONS OF BURNED CHILDREN”

This story is from DFW’s book Oblivion and is the first piece that Tyson and Aaron worked on together. The amount of panic and horrifying emotion DFW evokes from this three-page piece is astounding. Rather than paraphrasing this one, Tyson simply bought another copy of Oblivion, tore out the three pages, and mailed them to Aaron’s house along with his proposal for the whole musical project. Here is a paraphrasing of those three pages.

A young boy, a toddler’s age, stands screaming in the kitchen in a pool of hot, steaming water. He had reached up by the stove and pulled a boiling pot of water onto himself, his hair and chest now steaming and his skin turning scarlet. The mommy and daddy rush in, not knowing what happened but figuring it out very quickly. The daddy moves fast, swoops the boy up, and brings him to the sink to run cold water over his feet and splash the rest of his body to cool him down. The screaming continues without relief, and the boy’s hands reach into the air, clenching in pain. The mommy speaks and coos to the child to help calm him down as his skin becomes less red and they don’t see any blistering. Yet the boy screams on as they gently wrap him in a wet towel. It is then that they notice a slight vapor of steam arise from the boy’s diaper and realize that they haven’t addressed the cause of the boy’s true pain—boiling water had collected inside his diaper and had been burning his legs/groin area while the diaper slightly melded with his skin. They get the diaper off, and what they see almost knocks them over. They swaddle the boy in gauze and hand towels and rush him to the emergency room. But on the way, the child learns how to leave himself and the pain; his soul floats over his body to watch the whole thing unfold and to watch as the rest of his life unfolds. He grows older and bigger, and he gets a job, but his body is a thing among things in a life untenanted.

TRACK 4: “RUTH SIMMONS”

This track is based on a short story called “The Soul Is Not a Smithy,” which is in a compendium of DFW short stories called Oblivion. The narrator of this story talks about being bored in class when he was young, and he would create comic book-style imaginary scenarios within the small wire squares covering the outside of his school windows. Ruth Simmons was a character in one of these daydreams.

Mr. Simmons is a blue-collar man— a hard-working journeyman currently doing a lot of snow plowing, sidewalk shoveling, and other winter jobs. Mrs. Simmons is currently unemployed and doesn’t care. She is often listless and out of touch with her surroundings. They have one child: Ruth Simmons, a daughter that was born blind. As a baby, Ruth would cry a lot, reaching her arms out, wanting comfort. But Mr. Simmons would always be at work, and Mrs. Simmons would ignore Ruth, not knowing what to do or what good a blind daughter was anyway. Instead, Mrs. Simmons would often stand in front of a full-length mirror with her best dress on and a drink in one hand, fantasizing about how she would look and hold a drink at parties. Ruth would cry in darkness. As Ruth grew up, she never knew love or companionship until she reached the age of elementary school and she received a dog for a pet. She named him “Cuffy,” and that dog was her whole world: always there and happy to see her after school. One day, Cuffy goes missing while Ruth is at school. Ruth is busy in art class, where she is supposed to be making a human figure out of clay. But her figure turns out having four legs instead of two, and the whole class laughs at her, not knowing that she has done her best to form a clay figure of her beloved dog, Cuffy. Mr. Simmons is out driving his car around the neighborhood, yelling Cuffy’s name out the window. He hopes to find Cuffy before Ruth gets home from school, but eventually gives up and goes to work. Mrs. Simmons takes over the search for Cuffy but drives around aimlessly, not even bothering to roll down the window while calling Cuffy’s name. While making a turn, her car slides into a snowbank and gets deeply stuck. She can’t get it out and doesn’t have the presence of mind to get out of the car. She sits, staring at the window while carbon monoxide fills the car and the radio plays. She dies without even knowing it. In the meantime, Mr. Simmons is snow-blowing a long driveway, and about halfway through the job the snowblower gets jammed up. He sticks his hand in to remove a chunk of tree bark. When he moves it, the blades start spinning and chop his arm off at the elbow. He wanders aimlessly looking for help and winds up falling headfirst into a snowbank. In his shock and confusion, he doesn’t know which way is up or down, and he bleeds to death before he can figure it out. His last thought is of Cuffy, hoping the dog is found before Ruth gets home from school. Cuffy is never found.

TRACK 5: “THE SOUL IS NOT A SMITHY”

This story also is from DFW’s book Oblivion and is the same story that contains the character in Track #4, “Ruth Simmons.” A lot of ground is covered in these separate aspects of the same story, and it’s hard to believe that these two plot lines exist together in the same piece.

A boy grew up in the late '50s. American dreams and nuclear families. His childhood was fine. He remembered his father coming home, always in brown pants with a white shirt and tie. The suit coat went on the rack, the hat on top. Tie loosened. His wife had a scotch ready. Easy chair, read the paper. Dinner. Play around with the son for awhile. Family vacations every summer. The son was happy and oblivious to anything wrong. The father, while seemingly content, is going through the motions and close to losing his soul. Fast forward about 30 years. The father has long been dead from a heart attack. The son works for the same company his father did. Through stories from his mom and co-workers that are still around from when his father was there, a picture is painted of a man he never got to know. His dad was a solid worker, respected and liked, though he never rose above his position in middle management. Quiet, reserved, he put in his time without complaint. One of the things everyone mentioned was his lunch break. He always went outside. He carried a brown bag with food his wife made for him. He had a special bench he always sat at. Every day, lunch outside on the same bench. You couldn’t call it a park bench, for this was in the middle of downtown. No one bothered to sit with him or disturb him. And now the son finds himself sitting on this very same bench on his lunch breaks. It took him awhile, but he did finally notice that this particular bench was the only one facing a small square patch of green grass with flowers that bloomed in the spring. One natural (albeit man-made) garden of color and life, wild and unique among the stifling gray/white/chrome of the concrete city. What did his father think about while looking at that garden? Chewing his sandwich, knowing exactly what to expect when he came home… Why did he do it? He did it for his family. To sustain them. So they could be happy. After the son figures this out, he feels the puzzle of his father grow larger and denser. He begins to dream of his work at night, and it’s always the same dream. There are rows and rows of desks in a room. Each desk has a typewriter on it, and a man at a chair in brown pants with a white shirt and tie. Click-clacking away. The men are faceless and amorphous. They could be anybody. But he knows his father is in there somewhere. He knows that he himself is in there too. Only he can’t tell which is which.

TRACK 6: “THE VIEW FROM MRS. THOMPSON’S”

This track is based on an essay from DFW’s book, Consider the Lobster. Where were you when 9/11 happened? No matter what you were doing, you surely knew all about it by late morning, and the world hasn’t been the same for anyone ever since. There is so much resonance in this piece, as DFW describes what may have been going on in many households across the country. It’s an emotionally honest piece, balancing love for country with a possible generation-wide skepticism for the various machines that run it.

Mrs. Thompson is 74 years old, and people in the neighborhood generally gravitate to her because of her friendliness and accommodating nature. She is widowed and has a middle-aged son and a grandson. About seven people from the neighborhood have congregated at her house and are watching the events of 9/11 on her TV. There isn’t much talking, the phone often rings, and the coffee is flowing. Mrs. Thompson trusts Dan Rather’s reporting the most, and the channel hasn’t strayed from his somber voice all day. Tower one has already fallen, and now the TV camera is zooming in on Tower two, where they watch in silent disbelief as they see people hanging out of windows—screaming, reaching, some falling, some jumping—and various shoes, purses, paper, and constant billowing smoke. The camera zooms back out. For the most part, those kinds of shots aren’t usually repeated on national TV. The whole world changed by brunch on a Tuesday. Within three days, there is an American flag everywhere you look, and the whole town is sold out of them. There is a sense of anxiety if you don’t have a flag somewhere around your car, house, etc. Like you’re making a statement that could be taken the wrong way. Most of the seven in the room are older and have seen many things in their lifetime. They are quiet, while the few younger people in the room make comments. There is a palpable difference in the generations and perspectives involved with 9/11. The older folks are often stoic, while the younger ones have cynicism for everything. What went through the minds of the few younger folks in the room were things like questioning why all the network TV reporters appeared disheveled, like they had all been called in from home or pulled out of their beds. Like none of them had a comb or a suit coat around or a TV makeup person to tend to them. It was easy to believe that they appeared that way on purpose—that it was all a show to manipulate how everything “looks” and to be “authentic.” That kind of cynicism. The version of America in the minds of those terrorists was likely that cynical one, not Mrs. Thompson’s.

TRACK 7: “THE PALE KING”

The Pale King is an unfinished book that DFW was working on when he died. The existing pages were gathered, and Michael Pietsch (the same man who edited Infinite Jest) was called upon to edit and arrange them in some kind of order for a posthumous publication. At 700+ pages and a feeling that the story was really just getting going, it promised to have been a very lengthy novel had DFW actually finished it. This piece is about one particular event that happened in the life of one of the characters when she was 12 years old.

A 12-year-old girl has a mom who is in her late 20s. They are poor; the mom bounces from job to job and man to man. All of them treat her terribly. Some of these men also make moves on her young daughter, and she cannot defend her. There are also scumbag teenage boys in the trailer park who make moves on the young girl. At first, she is forced to go along with it. She then learns how to shut off her mind and distance herself from what is happening to her. She is smart and eventually learns how to defend herself and inflict pain on anyone who threatens her. She likes to do this in creative ways. She also came up with a game for herself: seeing how long she could go without blinking. Basically practicing a dead stare. She learns to fight through the burning in her eyes and the desperate urge to blink so well that five minutes (and even longer) is not a problem. This game evolves into practicing being perfectly still and controlling her breathing to a barely detectable shallowness. During yet another of the mom’s low points, they were at a truck stop eating breakfast when the mom starts flirting with a trucker. She tells him they are essentially homeless; he tells them to get in his truck. Although they are total strangers, Mom and daughter get in the semi and head out to wherever he is going next. The mom had done some drugs—Her eyes were glassy, and she was half out of it. The trucker makes dirty talk about what he wants to do with her at the next stop. The mom nods off, and the trucker continues to drive with one hand on the wheel and the other reaching to the backseat to fondle the daughter’s breasts. The girl does nothing about this; doesn’t say a word. In a moment of clarity at the next stop, the mom gets into the driver’s seat while the trucker is in the bathroom. She drives off in the truck while the trucker is coming out of the bathroom. He begins running across the parking lot, screaming profanities and threatening to kill her if she doesn’t stop and come back with his truck. Mom and daughter keep driving. About an hour up the road, another truck barrels down on them from behind. It’s the trucker, in a smaller truck than the semi, and he overtakes them and runs them off the road into a ditch. The mom isn’t good at handling a semi, and she rams the truck into the ditch, shattering the windshield. The mom’s head bashes the steering wheel as various pieces of glass and dashboard enter her body. The daughter is relatively unharmed, but her seriously injured mom is on top of her in the cabin of the truck. The trucker approaches, crazed with anger, and rips the sheet of broken windshield from the frame. He looks at the mom, seeing her bleeding and moaning but not conscious. The daughter is petrified, but her survival mode kicks in. All those games she practiced to defend herself from attackers in the past help her body go still. She stares blankly off into the distance, focusing on nothing. She is breathing so shallowly there is no movement in her chest. The trucker looks at her and decides that she must be dead already. He grunts and proceeds to choke the mom, who never regains consciousness but makes horrible moaning, gurgling sounds while her broken body jerks around. The daughter is beneath her the whole time, able to hear and feel her mom dying on top of her. All the while staring and barely breathing. She knows if the trucker has any inkling that she is still alive that he will kill her too. After a few minutes, her mom stops convulsing. The trucker once again looks the daughter right in her eyes. Only through sheer will and because of all the practice can the young girl hold his gaze without a sign of life. She thinks he is going to choke her as well anyway. Meanwhile, blood from a cut on her Mom’s forehead is running down her face; close to dripping in the daughter’s eye. If that happens, this is all over. After what seems like an eternity, the trucker walks away to the other truck and peels out, leaving them there.

TRACK 8: “HAL INCANDENZA”

Hal Incandenza is one of the main characters in DFW’s novel, Infinite Jest. He is also the brother of Mario Incandenza, the subject of Track #2. SPOILER ALERT! If you have yet to read Infinite Jest, you may want to skip reading this particular piece!

Hal Incandenza hasn’t spoken to anyone for a year. He has been sent to psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors of all types. After an array of tests, doctors could find nothing wrong with him and discover that he is actually quite brilliant. Although everything seems ok physically, when he tries to speak only unintelligible mumblings come out of his mouth, so he can’t even explain himself or his strange behavior. He has been taken in and out of school and suffered through frustrated teachers and peers alike. It takes awhile, but we slowly see the person he used to be returning as the story blossoms. We discover that this whole time, this year of noncommunication, has to do with one event; and more to the point, one simple thought that entered his mind concerning that event. A thought that his mind has chewed on relentlessly in such a way that rendered him unable to speak and unable to seek help from anyone but himself to come to terms with it. One year ago, Hal walked home from school and was the first to discover that his father had committed suicide. And this was no ordinary suicide; it took thought and determination. By careful breaking and cutting, his father had managed to fashion a hole just big enough for his head to fit through the microwave door. He knew that the microwave wouldn’t operate without the door and latches being intact and locked in place, so he figured out that by standing on a chair and doubling over, he would be supported while his head was in the microwave, and he could also operate the push buttons on the side of the machine to set a time and start it cooking. His father knew that food cooked in a microwave from the inside out, and that his head would explode like a hot dog without punctures in it. What he didn’t know was how long it would take, so he erred on the side of caution with the time setting. When Hal got home from school, he heard the microwave still running. When he got to the kitchen and saw the mess, his first thought was not, “Oh My God!” or “No!” or “Help!” or “Dad killed himself!” The first thought that entered his mind, the thought that had paralyzed him for a year as he heard the microwave running was, “Something smells delicious.”

TRACK 9: “BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN (#48, #46, ADULT WORLD)”

While this is a single track on the album, it’s meant to be thought of as a “suite” of sorts, with three individual pieces all taken from the book of the same name.

#48

A man, who upon bringing a woman home on a first date, when he feels the time is right, will ask the unsuspecting woman how she would feel about being tied up by him in his bedroom. He does this with every woman he brings home. He is not interested in a relationship. He promises complete safety; no harm will come to the woman. It is something he simply enjoys doing, and he swears it has nothing to do with asserting power over the woman. While some women upon the suggestion get very nervous and leave, others get very nervous and giggly and can’t believe he has suggested it—but they don’t want to leave or cut the date short. And some women, a significant percentage actually, are into the idea and allow him to tie them up in his bedroom. Up until the point of them being completely bound, the man is nice, flirty, and careful. He is mindful and reassuring. Once he has them tied up, however, it all stops. While most women who allow things to get to this point are along for the ride and highly aroused, sexual intercourse rarely happens. What does happen is the man becomes sad. He sits on the edge of the bed and weeps, sometimes mentioning something about his mother under his breath. He begs the women for forgiveness and never wants to see them again. The women are confused, naked, and bound to the bed by their wrists and ankles. The man lets them go, untouched and unharmed.

#46

A woman in her 20s walks home alone one night. She is grabbed at knifepoint and gang-raped by a few men. At the end of it, they insert an empty bottle of Jack Daniels so far into her anus that the bottle shatters inside of her, rupturing her kidneys and causing other internal damage. She survives the attack but is subjected to dialysis for the rest of her life. Now in her 40s, her attitude and disposition toward life are remarkably well-adjusted. She considers what happened to her a “life experience” that affords her a unique insight into the world and the dark corners that exist in it—almost to the point that she feels “above” others because of their lack of experience and knowledge and feels that perhaps something horrible should happen to everybody so they will learn.

Adult World

A man is addicted to masturbating. Everyday, several times a day. His penis is constantly red, raw, and ravaged. He is married and still has sex with his wife, but she wonders what is wrong because when they have sex he acts like he is in pain. She feels like it’s somehow her fault. She is not aware of his addiction and never sees his penis because he insists on having sex in the dark. She wonders why her husband always seems to be leaving for “work” at all hours of the day and night. The husband secretly buys oils, lotions, and other masturbation aids at an inconspicuously named sex shop on the other side of town. These purchases show up on his credit card bill, which the wife sees, but she doesn’t think twice about it because the business name doesn’t make her suspect anything. This goes on for years until finally the wife can’t take it anymore. She meets up with an ex-lover for lunch, and he is clearly still in love with her. They agree to meet at a hotel. On the way to the hotel, the woman drives by the sex shop that her husband frequents, and she recognizes the inconspicuous name from his credit card bills. Her heart nearly stops as she realizes that it is a sex shop, and in the process she also drives right by the hotel where she is supposed to meet her ex. Her ex-lover watches from the parking lot as she drives by, and he begins crying because he thinks she has changed her mind about their rendezvous. She drives home and confronts her husband, armed with her new knowledge. They talk about it, and she learns of his addiction. For now, they decide to not do anything about it and instead start thinking about having kids.

TRACK 10: “EVERY LOVE STORY IS A GHOST STORY”

This piece was the last one Aaron and Tyson did. It was the culmination of the project, and instead of being based on a certain character or situation in one of DFW’s books, this one was about DFW himself: the man, the writer, the genius. Originally, facts and anecdotes were pulled from David Lipsky’s 2010 book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which was a journalistic recount of the author’s time spent with DFW on the book tour for Infinite Jest. Lipsky was a reporter for Rolling Stone at the time and did a story on DFW that sadly was never printed in the magazine. However, this book became the basis for the movie, The End of the Tour starring Jason Segel as DFW and Jesse Eisenberg as David Lipsky. It was released in 2015, and Tyson rushed out to see it and brought his 12-year-old son along, talking to him about DFW for the whole car ride to the theater and back. (His son said the movie, “had a lot of talking in it,” but he “liked the dogs and the convenience store scene.” He also began humorously calling DFW by the name “David Foster Walrus.”) Eventually, a proper biography was written about DFW by D.T. Max in 2012 titled, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story. This provided more solid and wider reaching biographical info about DFW, and that’s why this last piece shares its name.

For this piece, Tyson asked Aaron to “bring the fire” with his cello in order to pay proper homage to DFW and his extraordinary talent, the reward we all get from reading his books, the sadness we feel that he is no longer with us, and to simply bring a scorching end to this conceptual project. Aaron responded by saying that this piece “takes place AFTER he brings the fire; to picture him walking away from the studio as it burns to the ground, his cello a mess of splintered wood.”

Tyson, Aaron, and Emperor Penguin Records hope you enjoy this project, and they all thank you very much for reading these backstories and listening to the album. A percentage of all sales will be donated to the DFW Archives at the Harry Ransom building at the University of Texas—Austin.