Leave The Plate Off
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
One chair
at the end of the table
no plate
no cup
we left it that way
we left it
that way
leave it bare
I meant it bare
nothing looks like forgetting
write down
that I meant it
you came in
counting what was missing
a fork
a glass
the bread
someone was waiting for the bread
no one waits
for the chair
you were kind
you were careful
you set the plate
leave it bare
I meant it bare
nothing looks like forgetting
write down
that I meant it
put my name
under the nothing
and why
so the next one knows
count the chairs each night
one still empty
still empty
still right
one chair
no plate
I meant it
because
The band
Soft Delete
Tape hiss, a felt piano, a nylon-string guitar and one hushed voice close enough to hear it breathe. Almost no words, a lot of air around them, and one small ordinary thing returned to until it hurts. Never states the point and never resolves it.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post An Intended Absence Needs An Owner.
When a system is deliberately meant to produce nothing for some cases, that absence has to be written down and tested, or the next person fixing missing data will quietly undo it.
More by Soft Delete
- Old Address 3:45
- The Key Is Somewhere Else 4:45
- Same Name in the List 4:31
- Layer Nobody Checked 3:38