Aesop Rock - Rings Lyrics

Used to draw
Hard to admit that I "used" to draw
Portraiture in a human form
Doodle of a two-headed unicorn, it was soothing
Moving his arm in a fusion of man made tools
And a muse from beyond
Even if it went beautifully wrong
It was tangible truth for a youth who refused to belong
No-name nuisance
Stools in a bedroom
Oozed in a brand new cuneiform
Barely commune with the horde
Got a whole grey scale ungluing his world
Might zone out to the yap of the magpie
Unseen hand dragging his graphite
Cross-contour, little bit of back light
Black ink after a Bristol to baptize
You can imagine a rush that ensue
When you get three dimensions stuffed into two
Then it's off to a school where it's all that you do
Being trained and observed by a capable few
Back in New York, five peeps and a dog
In a two bedroom doing menial jobs
Plus, rhyming and stealing and being a clod
Distractions free to maraud
I left some years a deer in the light
I left some will to spirit away
I let my fears materialize
I let my skills deteriorate
Haunted by the thought of what I should have been continuing
A mission that was rooted in a twenty year affinity and rickety condition with an ID crisis
Nap on the front lawn, look up in the sky, it's...

Shapes falling out of the fringe
All heart, though we would've made cowardly kings
They will chop you down just to count your rings
Just to count your rings, just to count your rings
And there were
Colors pouring out of the fringe
All heart, though we would've made cowardly kings
They will chop you down just to count your rings
Just to count your rings, just to count your rings

Used to paint
Hard to admit that I "used" to paint
Natural light on a human face
Stenciled fire on his roommate's bass
It was blooming addiction
A miss and a push and a pigment
Book like a tattooed pigskin, look
Pinhead kids intermittent
Drank Kool-Aid from a tube of acrylic
And I grew up in a linseed oil over linen
Joy to the poison, voice in the resin
Capture a map of the gesture
Back up, add a little accurate fat to the figure
Redo that, move that inwards
Zinc-white lightning shoots from his fingers
Studios drone with allusions of tinctures
Stay tuned for the spooky adventures
You can imagine the stars that align
When a forearm starts foreshortening right
Or a torso hung on a warping spine
Of proportion reads as warm and alive
Routine day with a dirt cheap brush
Then a week goes by and it goes untouched
Then two, then three, then a month
Then the rest of your life, you beat yourself up
I left some seasons eager to fall
I left some work to bury alive
I let my means of being dissolve
I let my person curl up and die
Eating up his innards in unfeasible anxiety is brutally committed to relinquishing his privacy aligning with the trials of the anti-Midas
Nap on the back lawn, look up at the sky, it's...

Shapes falling out of the fringe
All heart, though we would've made cowardly kings
They will chop you down just to count your rings
Just to count your rings, just to count your rings
And there were
Colors pouring out of the fringe
All heart, though we would've made cowardly kings
They will chop you down just to count your rings
Just to count your rings, just to count your rings

I'm getting sick and tired of never understanding
Where is the truth you promised?!