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.

Wedding Guest (Fled the Wedding)

by Anton Sword

/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

about

One spring, you’re invited to the wedding of a lover from your past, someone you’ve lost touch with. Your affair was long ago. As far as you know, you bear each other no malice; you’re mere memories. Your lives and social scenes long since diverged, like loose clumps of mown grass thrown onto the surface of a lawn-lining creek break apart while floating downstream. You finger the mailed invitation, musing; yours came with a heartfelt handwritten entreaty, so with some lingering doubt you decide to risk attending.

At this midlife wedding of this old lover, some newly revealed present reality bumps and blends with memories of your past together. Visions surface in your mind of how it might have gone differently, or why it didn’t and couldn’t. The collision of old and new, of casual hedonism with half-hearted stabs at half-commitment, kicks up memories and judgments, dimly formed, that start to jostle and swirl around you, forming a fog of regret, irritation, nostalgia, yearning and confusion that at last you pierce with a slightly superior point of view, a slit-eyed glance of condescension down at your former paramour.

Slicing through the veils of this wild carnival of a wedding, you glimpse the life situation your ex-lover is embracing, or passively surrendering to, as a sad farce. Or is it? Should it have been you? Did you make a narrow escape? Where will you both diverge to now? Who is, who was, who will be the happy one? Recalling the old days and ruminating over them repeatedly, you go home drunk, and wondering.

lyrics

Wedding Guest (Fled the Wedding)

I heard a rumor she bought a long white gown
When we all knew her, she'd have shut that down
A three-ring circus to surround her clown
My card came late, I resigned myself to fate

I was uncomfortably an honored guest
In doubt whether to be more there or less
No clue whether the groom knew, I confess
By luck, just then, the sky whipped out its pen
And wrote its verdict on the world
In transparent silver pearls
But we couldn't read a word, so we just fled

In the gazebo where we huddled close
We caught the bride with something up her nose
And a hand wriggling in her pantyhose
In that hushed crowd our breathing seemed so loud
Until the orchestra of leaves
Rose to the eaves up with the breeze
She sneezed into her sleeve and hit her head

We fled the wedding

She used to pet me when I had my hair
We used each other thinking we had spares
It takes some time to find life isn't fair
By then it's too late, one resigns oneself to fate

I caught a ride home with a long-lost friend
We'd never thought those days were going to end
Return to sender what was never sent
The clubs, the cliques, collapsed like pickup sticks
All the sidekicks gradually
Kicked away into the sea
We dragged our clams back stumbling into bed
Wishing for oysters instead
And weddings, remembering how we fled

We fled the wedding
We fled the wedding

credits

released April 7, 2023
Bass: Eddie Eyeball
Guitar: Julian Maile
Vox/Keys: Anton Sword
Written & Produced by Anton Sword
Mastered by Dan Walker
Music & Lyrics copyright © 2023 Anton Sword/Fugue State Music
All Rights Reserved
photograph image © American Museum of Natural History

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Anton Sword image

Anton Sword Brooklyn, New York

NYC-based songwriter Anton Sword leads an indie synth/ dance/ new wave project with a shifting band lineup. Sword has toured the Eastern USA twice and Europe 10 times, playing for a small but loyal following. One of his ambient compositions runs in a loop on permanent display in NYC's American Museum of Natural History, scoring the ‘Astro Bulletin’ in the lobby of the Rose Space Center. ... more

contact / help

Contact Anton Sword

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Anton Sword, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now