heard what they say   about loving and losing, but
tastes like whiskey  on it's way back up to me
and once your lips are wet from kisses or drink you never get rid of the thirst

searched so hard for excuses  but i'll keep my lips sealed next time
truth is that i'm just too afraid to touch
hearts  glass  and questions that i couldn't ask

and true love  it swings like a hammer
back and forth til it kills all your dreams
but they never were that great to begin with
and it drives you back home again

my hands  are dangerous things  callous and strong
they hold on way too long  but can't get a grip on my tongue
when all the dumb  words that i've got  up and run away

if losing is better than never  ever loving at all
then this much is true  when i ran from you  i really earned that fall
but even strong hands  can't pick themselves up off the floor

and true love  it swings like a hammer
back and forth til it kills all your dreams
but they never were that great to begin with
and it drives you back home again

sample work from mm-cc, a community creation project i do stuff with. more info, samples, and etc at mm-cc.org

my teeth run red from indefinitely being set on edge
stained with sunday blood and scarred from biting my tongue
to keep from telling myself what i already know
and to know that no matter what i say
no matter how loud i can sing i can't compete
with the ringing inside your head

so if that's the case i'm sorry dear
but i refuse to use my indoor voice any longer
until the blood drains from my skin
and i'm blue in the face from all the
shaking yelling never understanding boundaries
of time or grace or reasonable amounts of patience

when you've got the whole world in your hands
and i've got no feeling in my fingertips
gone numb from trying to reach across
the distance between whatever it is
suffocating that little light inside of you
and where i used to stand and wait

so if there's a break in your ringing
and my shaking stops or my singing makes it across
remember i meant it
every word

as dust on the scales as grass of the field
so are our days with the serpent on our heels
the reed is bruised the sky is cracked
you wear your pain as a veil of black

proverbs of ashes smear you with lies
the one who changed your name has touched your side.
fortune and favor you have not known
what is the vine, you have not grown?

 i will not sing songs when you're heavy
 i will not speak words to make it clear
 i will stay with you and all that you carry
 i would trade my love for all your fears.

if i speak or refrain you may not be changed
for your deliverance your days are arranged
to the roots of the mountains you sink down
hurled into the deep, spit onto the ground

severe mercy is your one great hope
it is well, it will be well with your soul

 i will not sing songs
 i will not speak words
 i will stay with you and all that you carry,
 i will trade my love... for all your fears

you learn, my god do you learn!
from this the most brutal of teachers
that all of our backs are bent
from the weight of all our affections
spilled and spent just to fill our burdens
with all these little lies that
never did any harm until we began to believe

and ain't it heavy
to hold up your own head

so put your hand to the plow
and score your crooked rows into the earth
crack apart the stony ground
'til bone and sinew stretch and ache at
every expectation frustrated
and every weed choked seed that you have sown
fills you up with failure

and ain't it hard
to beat your own heart

so stand,
stand and face the sun
til it burns your blistered skin
and breaks away your burden
wreck, wreck your wretched heart
wreck all apart your broken heart
stand straight and face the sun again

then broken bodies groan, and graves
split open when breath breathed into ashes
breaks all the slumbering children
free from death and dust
and seeds sown sprout and
stretch their fragile limbs in praise
burdens break and roll away
like stones from tombs at break of day!

and ain't it something
to die to live

and ain't it something
how you were never alive until you began to die

i can smell the japanese magnolia flowers from here
but i cannot see you

oh how i love you

you are goliath and i
i only have these small stones
i looked in the water
and there were many stones
large and strong ones
that could surely bring you down to me
but i could not carry them back to you
because i am small and you
you are far away
and they would have driven me into the ground

so i chose the small stones
because they were worn down and small like me
so i knew they would fly true to you
and i could carry them

the japanese magnolia blossoms have fallen
they became too beautiful for their branches to bear
the weight of their own sweetness made them fall
so they are replaced
by the softer shoots of spring leaves
that stay tied to twigs because
they are too fragile to let go

and you, and i, and goliath, and these stones
are felled and made true
because we are weak
replaced by something that can bear us

i cannot smell the japanese magnolias anymore
but i can see you

oh how i love you

some photographs. been shooting a lot of 800 speed film in my canon ae-1.

a spoonful of sugar will make your heart race
and just as much hope will break it
because before we knew we wandered bare through the garden
but now we've tasted and we know, and hope there's more than hope

what once was sweetness on our tongues now tastes tart
with the salt and bitterness and tears spent
on sounds not made for whispering but for moving hard past lips
that burn from backfiring words

made happy and then sad
made malleable like seeds and bread
first tossed out and left to die in shallow rows of dirt
then sprout, reborn watered and grown just to be cut down
and ground into dust
pressed thin to be cut again into usable shapes
only to be thrown into the fire!
but you'll rise again
all the little dreams we used to fight to keep
and sleep lost dreaming we would wake up different
only to hear him say 'i don't want the things you're doing
darling i want you-

and i'd take your dreams but they're much too small you see
when i said i wanted you to be like me i also said i love you.
dear i'd dry your eyes but when they blur with tears it's just a reminder
you once were blind but now you see

but you'll rise again
damn right you'll rise again
you'll rise again
damn right you'll rise again

and how i've loved you for so long

today jared and i made an electric cigar box guitar. it looks good and sounds pretty good. there's a bit more work to be done to make it easier to play but it was cool to make an entire instrument. i'll post some pictures and audio samples soon when we finish it up.

from my tumblr: http://donttellmymom.tumblr.com/

yesterday jared and i found a few free piano's on craigslist. there were two we really wanted, one was exactly the same as the one i grew up with in my house, the other a beautiful console. sadly, no one answered the phone when we called about those.

regardless, we drove across town with a new pack of tie-down straps (a toll designed almost entirely to make you angry, those things are a pain to use) and picked up a piano. it's a kimball made in chicago sometime in the 1930's.

it was in decent shape, although very dirty and out of tune. we spent most of the evening trying to figure out how to get it OUT of my truck and then taking it apart and cleaning it. there are a lot of parts on the inside of these things. here are some pictures of the process.


'the only manufacturer thus honored' is a pretty lofty claim.


tons of dirt and grim on, between, and under the keys. we took each key out, brushed them, cleaned the ivory and wood, cleaned the pegs, and vac'd all the dust and dirt out from underneath.




i think someone spilled an entire pot of coffee inside this guy.


every key. luckily each one was numbered, so getting them back in correctly was not quite as difficult.


mostly finished product.

a few keys still stick in the higher octaves and it is desperately out of tune, although in tune with itself at least. but all in all, not bad for the cost of a pack of tie down straps and a 30 mile drive. everything is functional and with some tuning i think it will sound really nice.

just thought i would upload a poster that i finished making today for an art show in gainseville. i'm really happy with it, about 3 days of work and revisions. the original was flashier and had a lit more going on, but a few font changes and color palate revisions later, i ended up with a more minimal modern style that i really like.

if you're going to be in gainseville you should go check out the exhibit, i've seen the photographs and they are really amazing.

full-size version of the poster can be seen here if you're interested.

orlando.

i'm here.

i spent the first week alone at the house. i'm staying with my friends jared and megan until it's clsoe to the time their baby is due. the first week was strange because i neither left the house or spoke to anyone for about 8 days. i spent a lot of time sorting through my things... i got rid of a lot of stuff when i moved but wanted to trim down even more. aside from that it was mostly playing the piano and watching scrubs dvd's on my laptop... no internet or tv here.

i've been out a number of time applying for jobs, apparently orlando is 42 on the list of 50 worst metro cities to try and get a job in. there are 6 unemployed people to every 1 job opening. after two months trying to find work in orlando while i was living in tallahassee and one from orlando, it finally paid off. i got hired at gap after one interview. working at the mall / in retail isn't my first choice, but it's a job and they were very nice at the store. apparently they usually look over applicants for about a week after interviews, but they called me before i was out of the parking lot to offer me a job.

i have one other interview in the works for a company called district lines that makes t-shirts, websites, and merchandise primarily for bands. they do a lot of screen printing and web design and i know one of the owners, so i am hoping that will work out as well.

other than that just more music practice as usual. i'm making a lot of progress with the guitar and working back at being able to play the piano well. next thursday i head back up to tallahassee with jared to play a show at the engine room with a band from orlando, the winter sounds which should be a great show. if you're around please come out and see us play! we've recorded some new stuff and will have that on our myspace soon.

-h

my band will be playing live on V89 tonight at 10pm EST.

tune in if you are local to tallahassee, if not you can stream the show from:
http://voice.wvfs.fsu.edu:8000/stream.m3u

trying to get a job is really awful.

i applied for about 35 different positions in or around orlando last week. i've heard back from 3 places, one of which just wanted me to but a timeshare (i don't know about the rest of america, but normally when i am out of money/jobs i don't buy real estate). there are some great opportunities in orlando- for music, for education, and especially for community- but the basics are not falling into place. not for lack of trying. which is the frustrating part.

i've had an excessive amount of time to write new music, which is going well, but i think the frustrations of trying to get a job and move are wearing me out. some days things go well and it's exciting, other days i wonder why i have invested so much effort and money into it.

i don't anticipate making any money off music, i just want to be able to play and record and have things sound the way they ought to. i'd like for the songs i write to impact other people the way my favorite songs effect me.

[photo by whitney brammer]

i did it. and i'm glad i did.
http://twitter.com/hunterpittman

aside from doing that, i am searching had for a job in orlando. nothing really at this point but there are a few opportunities i'm interested in and i plan on being annoyingly persistent until one of them works out.

a lot of music going on. i finally have a dedicated practice space so i can play anytime, leave everything set up and not have to worry about it getting moldy, submerged, overheated, or stolen. this is a nice change.

i was able to trade in a giant fancy electronic keyboard i had for a rhodes, a vintage piano that i have been trying to find for three years or so. it sounds and play very nicely. i like playing the piano... so having one of my own is neat.


it looks like this. it's an actual piano, with hammer's and dampers, but instead of hitting strings it hits a special tuning fork inside. it makes a little noise on it's own, but is designed to be plugged in to something to make it louder.

so now i'll be spending a lot of time in my storage unti locked away making pretty music. its been a long road convincing jared that we should make pretty music (as opposed to spastic or creepy) but i think we're well on our way.

i'm excited to see what happens with orlando. lots of possibilities, i just need some of them to work out. our style of music will be fairly unique in orlando with so that should also be interesting to see how it turns out.

i may or may not get around to posting family pictures from our family "staycation." lets be realistic here. i don't post so very often. also there are a million pictures on my mom's blog so they can be seen there just as easily

i could hear the church bells ringing
they pealed aloud your praise
the member's faces were smiling
with their hands outstretched to shake
it's true they did not move me
my heart was hard and tired
their perfect fire annoyed me
i could not find you anywhere
could someone please tell me the story
of sinners ransomed from the fall
i still have never seen you, and somedays
i don't love you at all

the devoted were wearing bracelets
to remind them why they came
some concrete motivation
when the abstract could not do the same
but if all that's left is duty, i'm falling on my sword

could someone please tell me the story
of sinners ransomed from the fall
i still have never seen you, and somedays
i don't love you at all
if this only a test
i hope that i'm passing, cuz i'm losing steam
but i still want to trust you