Track by Track: Massa Nera Explain the Songs & Meanings Behind ‘Derramar | Querer | Borrar’

AJ: I wrote the opening lyrics (“The distance between…beginning and ending”) while I was working at my first full-time job. I had an abusive boss, I was drinking a lot, I was emotionally spending. I kept using destructive habits in an attempt to ameliorate my situation. I felt trapped.

One day, we were developing the opening musical passage. I brought up these lyrics and suggested pairing them with the music. We tried it out and liked that sort of off-mic sound (we literally didn’t have a mic in our space at the time). It quickly became clear that this was going to be the beginning of the album. Shortly after, Mark and I compared lyrics, realized we were writing about similar things, and decided to combine them for this song.

Mark: On a long bus ride, having crawled out of a deep depression and finally feeling a measure of peace, I made a promise to continue growing and moving forward. To consecrate that promise, I started working on a poem that would never be finished. So much for that.

Months later, I found myself staring blankly at a computer monitor in a basement office, pretending to look busy. No one in the building knew my name, even though I’d been working there for five months. Whatever peace I felt on that bus ride was gone. Back to square one. Utterly exhausted, I bristled at the memory of my unkept promise and revisited that poem. I took the opening words (“From the burial plot…I offer one final plea”), altered them slightly, and wrote the next five or so lines. I guess it was at this point that the album’s thematic preoccupations started to shift into focus (for me, at least).

The latter half of this song came together much later, after we had fully developed the themes and ideas animating the album. Chris and AJ helped out with the “Close my eyes” section, which was a lot of fun. Some of the lyrics were plucked from other songs, a choice that arose from our desire to create a “lyrical spiderweb.” We wanted the songs to feel interconnected in a rhizomatic way, such that by the time you get to “Anchored,” you should (hopefully) feel the accumulated weight of the entire record.

“The one who feeds you controls you” is an allusion to a Thomas Sankara speech. Conversely, “The shadow of a dream deferred” is not a deliberate reference/homage to the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. However, as I was familiar with the poem, I can only assume I unconsciously pulled from it.

One more note: the opening guitar part was written ages before the rest of the song, in January 2018 or so. As soon as Chris played it, I was confident it would open our album. I’m happy that turned out to be the case.

Source: diyconspiracy.net