by Zac Picker
Experimental
Crazy Paving
By Rutherford Bee Haze · Track 13 on Swift Currents
Produced by
Trevin Barker
“Crazy Paving” is the closing song on Rutherford Bee Haze’s hit album Swift Currents (2015). Frontman Trevin Barker reflects on the perils of fame and the evolution of his musical style.
May 12, 2015
1 Viewer
1.2M views
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
I can still hear the hum
when I lie down to sleep
Very-Smart™ annotation
Barker is aware that his transition from “pure” psychedelic rock to a style more influenced by pop structures and electronic instrumentation may alienate some of his fans.
In a recent interview with Vogue, Barker remarked, “I can hear them, when I close my eyes at night. I can hear them.”
Upvotes: 81
Downvotes: 4
Lyrics
But they don’t know what I’ve seen
Very-Smart annotation
This is a reference to an experience Trevin Barker had at the 2019 Australian festival Splendour in the Grass. While exploring the farmland on the outskirts of the Byron Bay site, Barker stumbled on an abandoned shed containing old beekeeping outfits.
Upvotes: 54
Downvotes: 1
Lyrics
They just know how to creep
Feeling them pass me by
Very-Smart annotation
While on tour in 2013, Rutherford Bee Haze’s tour bus was involved in a highway incident with an RV belonging to Australian psych-rock sensation Tame Impala, permanently souring the relationship between the two bands.
Upvotes: 11
Downvotes: 3
Lyrics
Don’t even want to try
I’m just a normal guy
Very-Smart annotation
Since 2019, Barker has exclusively performed in a beekeeping suit, intentionally masking his face—perhaps mimicking the wig that pop icon Sia regularly wears to protect her anonymity.
Upvotes: 89
Downvotes: 9
Lyrics
I know you don’t mean to pry
Very-Smart annotation
This line is a reference to when I saw Barker a few days ago, walking with a canvas grocery bag through my neighborhood in Sydney. Still wearing his trademark beekeeping outfit, he stopped outside my window and stared at me for some moments.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 43
Lyrics
How could you not see me?
Very-Smart annotation
Here Barker is describing when I went outside to ask him if he needed any help, but he just kept repeating, “What are you looking for, huh? Can you not see me, bro?” There was a sort of … resonant drone in his voice, a choral undertone. He reached his arm out and his hand was sticky to the touch, glistening softly in the filtered light of my front porch.
Upvotes: 4
Downvotes: 37
Lyrics
How can I find what was never found before?
Very-Smart annotation
In 2014, Trevin Barker told Music Junkee, “I’m just trying to find the kind of music, you know, that I would want to listen to while high, or something. To me, whether or not that is with, say, a droning guitar effect, or a kind of bright, pop-y riff, that’s sort of secondary.”
Upvotes: 45
Downvotes: 1
Lyrics
[Chorus]
Filtered light on crazy paving
(can’t see where I’m supposed to be)
Very-Smart annotation
The next morning, I went outside again to wait for Barker to walk by. The sticky stuff on his hand—I couldn’t scrub it off, all night. I put my hand in a rubber glove to keep my bed clean while I slept. I dreamt of crazy paving. When Trevin finally showed up, he was walking slowly with his Rickenbacker 335 on a strap around his shoulder. I asked him what it was he had touched me with. He said, “Do you want to be famous or something? Why are you doing this? Huh??”
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 20
Lyrics
Who do you think really needs saving
Very-Smart annotation
(In truth, I guess I never actually knew it was Trevin in that bee suit.)
Upvotes: 37
Downvotes: 4
Lyrics
(can’t hear when I go to sleep)
Very-Smart annotation
After a brief pause, Barker continued to accost me. “I can’t hear you!” he stage-whispered.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 18
Lyrics
I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m losing
(can’t see, I really can’t see)
Can’t bring back that thing, that thing that’s out there
Very-Smart annotation
As Trevin walked away, I noticed that a thin trail of goo had been dripping out of holes in his old shoes, sticky to the touch. Ants poured from small sand constructions between dandelions and got stuck in the sap.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 15
Lyrics
(can’t taste, I really can’t taste)
Very-Smart annotation
It was honey, I’m pretty sure.
Upvotes: 2
Downvotes: 17
Lyrics
(can’t play, I really can’t play)
Very-Smart annotation
The release of the 2015 album Swift Currents was stalled for some months due to contract conflicts between record label Partwise Recordings and Galactic Music Australia. Barker later noted that the period was “uncomfortable and dreary. That’s not what music is about, you know?”
Upvotes: 25
Downvotes: 2
Lyrics
Someone’s on the porch, someone’s there, someone
And they want to know who I am
Very-Smart annotation
This line is a reference to when I followed the trail of honey back the way that Trevin had come from. The glistening pathway he left behind sparkled with ant life and it was easy to follow it up the hill, past the school and the Taiwanese cafe and the lone sprawling Eucalypt whose networked branches reached out like the nervous systems of those bodies that I saw in the science center when I was eight.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 9
Lyrics
(can’t wait, I really can’t wait)
Very-Smart annotation
The ground honey became thicker the farther I walked. In the park, it filtered weblike through the small crevices in the crazy paving, like amber rivers in stonework canyons.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 11
Lyrics
But I won’t be there when they call
[Verse 2]
Everything’s on my flight
Very-Smart annotation
Swift Currents was accidentally released early, while Trevin Barker was aboard a flight to Los Angeles. The album was originally titled Swift Currants, but Barker remembered that he actually does not like raisins. “I don’t like raisins,” Barker said. “I always used to soak them in grape juice to try and make them right again.”
Upvotes: 53
Downvotes: 7
Lyrics
I wish I knew what I liked
What am I doing here?
What am I waiting for?
Very-Smart annotation
I continued following the honey road through the park, meandering into a thicket of dense scrub covered in bat guano. White cupboards of bee colonies were spread throughout the small forested area, and the imported honeybees buzzed close to my ears as I walked. The bees formed a quiet chorus of translucent-wing humming, a soft singing in the underbrush. They said, What are you doing here? Who are you looking for? Have you brought us pollen?
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 7
Lyrics
Nectar’s not always free
Very-Smart annotation
I let the bees land in the palm of my hand.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 5
Lyrics
Only inside my dreams
Names that don’t dissipate
Very-Smart annotation
Rutherford Bee Haze was named after former U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes. All things considered, well—there were worse presidents than him.
Upvotes: 59
Downvotes: 1
Lyrics
Places to pour concrete
Very-Smart annotation
Barker is presumably referencing here the moment when in the middle of the clearing in the woods I found a small tin shack on a large, crumbling concrete plinth—maybe it was an old shearing shed or something. White stacks of filing cabinets were piled up densely around it, thick with bees and sweetly dripping. As I approached, the forest grew into a small thunder, always rolling, magnetic, and intoxicating.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 0
Lyrics
[Chorus]
Very-Smart annotation
The chorus of a song is a central recurring structure, usually climactic in nature. The bees were a chorus, too, in their own way.
Upvotes: 31
Downvotes: 6
Lyrics
Filtered light on crazy paving
(can’t see where I used to be)
Who do you think really needs saving
Very-Smart annotation
I knocked lightly on the shearing shack door. The sheet metal reverberated in long bouncing ripples of sound, but no one answered. I cautiously pushed the tin door open.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 7
Lyrics
(can’t hear when I go to sleep)
I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m losing
Very-Smart annotation
Thin strands of light speared into the shack through the gaps between the roof and the wall, illuminating the freshly disturbed waltzes of dust, like spotlights over the city. Beekeeping suits lined the walls.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 1
Lyrics
(can’t see, I really can’t see)
Can’t bring back that thing,
that thing that’s out there
Very-Smart annotation
At the other end of the room, a person in a beekeeping suit was sitting hunched over in an old wooden chair. “Trevin?” I cautiously asked.
I could see that he was playing an electric guitar, but there was nowhere to plug it in and the small tinny notes of the metal strings could barely be heard over the neverending buzzing outside. It sounded like the riff from “Crazy Paving,” but he kept missing notes and hitting the wrong strings.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 6
Lyrics
(can’t taste, I really can’t taste)
[Bridge]
You once said, you know
That this is all a thin film
Very-Smart annotation
This line is obviously a callback to when Barker said to me, in that shed, “You know, this, all this—” (he was waving his arms in big circles, looking up) “—is all a thin film, a thin film, you know.” Trevin swiftly placed his guitar down in frustration and stood up to face me.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 12
Lyrics
Thinner and denser every day
Very-Smart annotation
When he spoke, it was like there were dozens of voices emerging from the veiled heavens of the beekeeping suit, thick and primordial and dripping with the long honey of cocoon days.
Upvotes: 60
Downvotes: 79
Lyrics
When was the last time
You sifted through the sediment?
Very-Smart annotation
“When was the last time you looked for me?” he asked. “When was the last time you looked for yourself?” he asked. “Do you think you’re gonna be famous?” he asked.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 4
Lyrics
Of stolen grassy days, fireside,
Very-Smart annotation
“I just want to write about it,” I said. “I don’t know. Don’t make me answer.”
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 3
Lyrics
Bleached in the mottled sunlight
of itchy afternoons
Very-Smart annotation
Trevin walked slowly toward me, his motions awkward and stumbling. The thin beams of light flashed across his body as he moved and they felt to me like the plucking of guitar strings, in the ultraviolet bands that only bugs can see.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 7
Lyrics
Long and buried
under new thin films
Very-Smart annotation
A thin band of light flashed across Trevin’s mask so that I could see through the shield, to where his face should have been. All I saw there, under the mesh, was a shimmering pulsation of bees.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 2
Lyrics
The roots search through them
Very-Smart annotation
One of Barker’s gloves fell off. Honeybees poured out of his body, spiraling around the room in a buzzing cyclone, screaming. They wreathed and tangled in long bands like strangler figs, like twisting roots probing for the topsoil.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 5
Lyrics
But the good dirt only goes so low
Very-Smart annotation
Swift Currents was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year at the 2015 ARIA Music Awards.
Upvotes: 21
Downvotes: 3
Lyrics
[Outro]
You once said, you know
Very-Smart annotation
As the bees spiraled and twisted and writhed, they spoke to me, asking, Do you even know what crazy paving is? Do you know how it’s made?
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 17
Lyrics
That trees are just thin skins of themselves
Very-Smart annotation
You don’t make it out of stones, you know, they said. You start with a big slab of regular wet cement and then you get a stone-shaped stencil and push it down onto the cement, they said. When the cement dries it looks like the path was made from cutout stones but it’s all fake, really, they said—
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 27
Lyrics
Centers dried,
unliving heartwood
Very-Smart annotation
And I looked down at my hands and the bees had settled onto them like thick gloves until I wasn’t sure that there were ever hands there at all,
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 30
Lyrics
They pass the groundwater
up through pale layers
Very-Smart annotation
and through the primordial thundering I heard Trevin asking, as if he was talking through my own heartbeat, asking, “Why are you wasting your time with all this?”— still waving his hands in big circles, still looking up toward the tin-shack ceiling heavens—
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 41
Lyrics
Of new flesh
that coats their outside
Very-Smart annotation
“Do you think this is more than just a hobby?”
Upvotes: 31
Downvotes: 4
Lyrics
If you wanted,
you could take out the heartwood
Very-Smart annotation
“No one gets famous doing this shit, you know,” he said. “Do you want to be famous? There’s nothing there. No one remembers anything,” he said.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 49
Lyrics
And they’d be fine
Very-Smart annotation
There’s nothing there at the end, the chorus agreed, swarming and haunting and filling the gaps between all things. We made the crazy paving the way it is, they said.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 50
Lyrics
Or maybe they would fall over
Very-Smart annotation
Stop thinking, I yelled—or maybe, thought loudly—falling over my own legs, sprawling across the floor.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 36
Lyrics
It’s hard to say
Very-Smart annotation
I thrashed through the dense fog of yellow swarm that had filled the shack, searching for the door. “Trevin!” I yelled. “What am I doing?” I could hear him in the background, struggling again to play the old riff on his guitar, but soon the shack had filled with the golden nectar of lost days and I couldn’t hear him anymore.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 62
Lyrics
You once said,
you once asked
Very-Smart annotation
How will I know how long to wait, I thought—
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 41
Lyrics
How long will I have to wait?
Very-Smart annotation
How do I know I can wait that long? I thought—
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 29
Lyrics
How do I know I can wait that long?
Very-Smart annotation
Anyone can fit in a beekeeping suit, I thought, but I looked down and I couldn’t see my body anymore. I thought, I can hear the hum, when I close my eyes. I can hear it.
Upvotes: 1
Downvotes: 0
Lyrics
But you don’t need to
Very-Smart annotation
Anyone can fit in a beekeeping suit—
Upvotes: 0
Downvotes: 0
Lyrics
The waiting is done for you
Zac Picker is a physicist, writer, and former RollerCoaster Tycoon champion from Kansas City or Sydney, Australia (depending who’s asking). He currently is a postdoc at the University of California, Los Angeles, looking at black holes. He’s been published in magazines such as Overland, Going Down Swinging, and Island—see more at zacpicker.com/writing and let him know where to get the best pupusa.