We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Three of Wands

by Tyler Shipley

/
1.
three of wands cast your shadows upon the vast oceans i've crossed and the dirt paths i've walked the missteps and the loss and the prevailing winds blowing me across three decades of life three goodbyes three siblings and three of their husbands and wives three scoops of cat food when he's feeling alright in my years at york university i've been on three strikes three of wands in front of my old house three empty chairs i leave em out rain or sun for anyone with a story to tell of something they've done good or bad right or wrong i'll say what i think maybe in a song they'll never hear cos my music career is one of several routes towards which i didn't steer
2.
Three Meals 23:22
i think you'll agree that it's true i don't spend a lot of time talking about food i'm just not oriented towards taste of my five senses its the one i care about the least but in my life there have been a handful of meals so memorable that i recall every detail and the memories stay with me across the years so if you're not into the nexus of food and emotion, cover your ears gonna share these stories in three parts each sounding a little different from this section at the start cos i'm aware that this is a bit too easy-listening like the hold music on the phone with the garage fixing my transmission but like any good intro i want to grab your attention and assure you that these dining stories are worth your retention cos each one taught me something about myself and the world and our unbreakable bonds with each other and the sea and the air and the earth and the dirt so if you decide to spend the next few minutes in three different places with three different palettes i can only offer my heartfelt thanks in and two cases a restaurant recommendation you can take to the bank ok what are we saying? is it time to insert a comma? and move on from this music that feels too much like bahamas not the beautiful country but the utterly irrelevant band (no no it's cool, don't worry man) ... so the first stop on this tour is a very small town called mallaig on the northeast tip of scotland, the last stop on the train most people get off the train and grab the ferry to the isle of skye but it was late and we were tired so we decided to spend the night it was 2004 and i'd been living outside of edinburgh away from my first serious girlfriend who stayed home in winnipeg to save money to come see me and when she did that may my parents bought us a train pass valid for seven days so we travelled all over and it was a real experience for me cos back in edinburgh working in a bar for months i'd been so lonely i hadn't made a lot of friends and i often felt like an outsider even when i was surrounded by people protesting the iraq war now we were together and it was such a fucking relief the well of loneliness and isolation had filled up so deep inside of me it was ready to burst and i needed it to but i was only twenty two and expressing emotion and weakness wasn't part of anything i knew how to do so that night in mallaig we checked into a small room and decided to walk the main street of the town to find some food we found a place called the cabin on a corner straight across from the docks it looked like it had been there for centuries, half buried in the rocks from the moment we walked in, i felt the knots loosening inside it was warm, it was comfortable, it was home, everything felt right we were hungry and it smelled so good and we got a table by the window and as we looked out at the ocean i knew i was letting go of the tension i'd been carrying for nearly half a year all alone trying to figure out who i was and what i was about far away from my home now i felt safety and support and comfort and like i was in the right place i ordered the fish and chips and a heather ale and when it all arrived and i started into it everything came loose it was the best fish and chips i'd ever eaten and keep in mind i was living in the uk and when the taste of the heather ale crossed my lips it was like i'd died and been buried and i'd arisen it was earthy and floral and felt like sanctified ground had been bottled and lost for centuries and suddenly found and served to me cold on this table in the corner of the planet and the tears welled up in my eyes and i let go, and this meal began it so that's the story of how i was brought to tears by fish and chips and heather ale in a warm cabin in the ocean mist i've never been back and i'm not convinced i would even want to cos when a memory so beautiful locks in you shouldn't spoil it, just keep it to hold onto ... i was in honduras in 2009 hard to believe that was just five years later, feels like another life i'd grown up so much from anti-war marches in london to facing up tanks with a video camera during a coup in tegucigalpa so my second memorable meal was during that time i was documenting abuses of human rights one day in late november i hopped into a van and drove to small town in the south with a guy from an organization called fian we stopped at a house where a group of people had gathered in a sitting area in a back room that opened onto a courtyard there were probably 25 or 30 people all together to share their stories of military violence and terror my spanish wasn't great and i felt a little out of place but i listened and i took notes and i still remember the face of a man in his late 60s holding a shard of a skull of his son who was shot by the soldiers as he was trying to run one after another, these people told their stores my brain was so fried, i'd been doing this for weeks i was hardly sleeping and i was emotionally burnt out but here was a kid showing me his bruises while his mother was shouting so my colleague from fian and i documented everything and when we were finished i thanked them for their courage and started packing my things as we were leaving someone said no no no no and insisted we stay for dinner and honestly we were both really hungry so i had one of the tastiest and most meaningful meals of my life it was tortilla soup and corn and beans and chicken and rice with thirty some people all packed around a few tables the heaviness of the day replaced by a lightness that to describe, i'm not able it was eating the way eating is meant to be surrounded by laughter and love and a sense of community we stayed late into the night and i felt connected to something so important and real and rooted in the bonds of close living when we drove back to the city we brought a few people with us there were checkpoints everywhere and someone had to hide under some canvas in the back of the truck and i don't remember exactly why but i remember thinking whatever fucking happens please don't let this man die no one in our party died though a few have been killed since it's a bad situation and i've written about it but i'll be forever grateful i was brought into someone's home to share a meal and be part of humanity doing something so old just eating, sitting with other people and sharing a delicious meal it's what people have done as long as people have been people it's one of the oldest ways we know how to connect with one another whether with friends around a fire or in a cabin beside the water ... the third tale in this trilogy was in 2016 and it might be anti climatic after the intensity of danli there's no shooting or danger of any kind in this story just a hot day in granada and a slice of humanity granada is full of interesting artists who make interesting music in venues built in caves in the cliffs enrique morente grew up on flamenco in the albaicin and the music that they make has had a major impact on me on our way into town from the airport in a taxi we asked the driver if he had any recommendation for where to eat and he thought about and said that his favourite spot was los diamantes and it was just up the block i was there with someone whom i cared about a lot but it was unmistakable that our relationship was on the rocks this was to be the last trip we would take together we were trying to get along despite the forty degree weather so we arrived in the city hungry and hot and edgy and los diamantes was close to where we were staying so we took the cabbie's advice and i was glad when he said 'there's not many tourists there, it's all people like me instead' the aesthetic of the restaurant was not my usual style it was all white high-top tables that stretched twenty seats wide and the lighting was bright and neon and kitchen was wide open it was chaotic and loud and not what i would normally go for but that place and that moment was exactly what i needed we'd been miserable and isolated and now we were surrounded by people families, kids, abuelas, aunties and everyone packed tight at these long communal tables of bright white nearly everything they served was from the sea and deep fried we ordered calamari and anchovies and prawns and every time they brought us a new plate they also brought us a small glass of lager it was complimentary to help wash down all the salty gambas i don't recall for certain if this seafood made me cry but i know that for the couple hours we were in there i was in a kind of high the food was so fresh and tasty and the beer was so cold and the crowd inside was bustling and i didn't feel too young, and i didn't feel too old it was seriously around 42 degrees outside in southern spain but los diamantes was cool and energetic and local and strange and as people jostled and shouted and laughed and ate fish i let it all wash over me like a man granted his dying wish and i would have happily said my last goodbye to the world in that place it was the highlight of that trip and that summer and it chased away all my worries, briefly, which at that time were many to be surrounded by beautiful people just living their lives made me so happy
3.
Three Dreams 18:29
it's 2 am and i'm tired and i just wanna go to bed but the cat's curled up sleeping wrapped around my hand i can feel him twitching like he's deep into a dream maybe he's chasing down his octopus or catching fish from a stream or maybe he's visiting his brother who left us a few months ago i've no idea how a cat processes loss and let's go of the brother he spent nearly every day of his life with sometimes i wish we could talk and he could tell me how he manages it but wherever he is right now i just can't interrupt so i'm not moving my arm and i'm laying here propped up cos i was watching an episode of doom patrol before bed now all i wanna do is lay down my head if you've ever had a cat sleep so sweetly beside you you know no force on earth can compel you to move until the cat decides to move of his or her own volition inscrutable like every other cat motivation eventually the cat moved and i was able to go to sleep and the next morning my alarm interrupted the strangest dream a dream where i was a student at the college where i work and i was in class and get this, adolf hitler was the professor yeah you heard that right, i mean what kind of nonsense am i thinking? i have no idea what it meant or what problem my brain was solving all i know is that hitler's classes have a ten minute break in the middle which seemed, for the 20th century's greatest villain, oddly reasonable ... as absurd as the fucking premise of this dream no doubt is through the dream, in fear, i was increasingly gripped a growing sense of foreboding and the knowledge that just one slip could mean some of kind of dramatic danger would be imminent and yet, at the same time it was all insanely trivial me and my teenage classmates making jokes to turn down the dial of the awkwardness in the room, as if it wasn't fucking hitler standing there if you have any theories about what all this means i'd really really like to hear but i'll note that i did get an email today from my boss the president of the college sent a message to all of us that his annual breakfast celebration was going online and he wants us to send in videos of ourselves having a fun time doing our work from home while - and this is a direct quotation - quote: grooving to justin timberlake's can't stop the feeling comparing to hitler might be a bit of a stretch i'll admit but there are layers and layers and layers of why i don't want to do this anyway that dream was a month ago and these words have been on hiatus it's been a busy stretch and i got pulled in other directions but last night my dreamscape got intense and i needed to write down the details so i can try to make sense of this in the light of day cos when i woke up from it this morning there wasn't a lot of sense to make i dreamt i waded out in the ocean far far away from the beach the water wasn't deep and you stayed on the sand waiting for me i guess i drifted so far away that i lost sight of the coast there was some kind of wind kicking up and i knew it was time to go but i looked around in every direction and i didn't know where you were at it was like i'd moved so far away from you that i didn't know how to get back i wasn't scared for me and i didn't feel guilty for leaving you i just thought, ok, i guess i have to decide what i want to do and in the end i waded my way back to the edge of the water it was nowhere near where you were waiting but i kept trekking onward i slid down a sand dune and i passed a lot of other beachgoers and though i made passing conversation, in my goal i was not deterred the dream ended before i made it back to you but i know that in the dream that was what i intended to do and yeah in the real world we've had a pretty difficult summer and i've drifted pretty far into that metaphorical water but even though i can't see the way right now i'm putting one foot in front of the other we may be a long way away but each day i'll try to move a bit closer cos life is getting shorter and we have to give ourselves a chance to be known and loved and to change and grow and, when the winds pick up, to move past

about

three shuffley songs of long reflection and contemplation, organized around sets of three, because every good argument and story has three points or three parts.

credits

released October 22, 2021

written and recorded by tyler shipley in 2020 with help from ryan mcveigh.
mastered by jamie sitar.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Tyler Shipley Toronto, Ontario

Tyler Shipley was the founding member of the Consumer Goods (theconsumergoods.bandcamp.com) and now performs as a solo artist.

contact / help

Contact Tyler Shipley

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

Tyler Shipley recommends:

If you like Tyler Shipley, you may also like: