MY MISTAKE
on the particulars of latest EP + corresponding videos
on may 1, 2026 impermanent marker released a 5 song EP titled my mistake. This post is to give some background and context on the EP and how it was put together and how the videos were constructed.
general background: I don’t really set out to make an EP or an album. At any given time I have a a volume of songs recorded or partially recorded and in downtimes or when i have the time i will mess around with them and/or determine which parts are needed or need to be augmented or whatever. writing and recording songs is just something i’ve done for a long time. i enjoy the process and it’s been solely a private one for decades. Over the last couple years I’ve been releasing them, if for no other reason that to hold myself accountable and see them through. I have no agenda or expectation beyond that. Anyway, if I have say 5 songs or less in semi-acceptable state, and further if they have some sort of cohesive element to them, musically or thematically, I will pick a date in the future to release EP, usually 4-6 weeks away and make that the countdown clock towards finishing. The reason this is important is b/c with out the constriction of the release date (even though it’s a manufactured constriction) I’ll just tinker forever and never ever release them b/c it’s rare that I’m ever truly satisfied with them and this ticking clock means I have to get them as close as I can and then part ways with them. Sometimes these songs have no lyrics yet, sometimes they have vocal tracks but need backing tracks, sometimes i need to add piano or bass. Lots of times what i need to do in fact is subtract tracks. (Sometimes I need to abandon the songs altogether.) I listen to these songs as they form and finalize many times, sometimes on walks with the dog on repeat when they’re getting close, figuring out all the adjustments that need to happen. mix, adjust, repeat. by the time the EP is released I am pretty much at saturation point with the songs and can easily never hear them again.
specific background: songs on my mistake had been around for a few months in different iterations. for awhile there were a couple other songs in the running but over time they began to stick out or not fit or cohere so they were removed. in the end i was left with five songs: 1) slough of despond 2) going going gone 3) when where why 4) all my future dreams 5) coda.
more on each song and video below.
slough of despond
the song: is about watching a loved one die, but the lyrics are mutable and could easily be about the death of a relationship. whatever the case it’s about how sometimes it’s better to look away. slough of despond is a phrase of hopelessness from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which i read a few decades ago in college, and it always stayed w me (the phrase slough of despond i mean, not pilgrims progress. i can barely recall what i did yesterday much less remember the particulars of texts from college.)
the video: this one is not too fancy. two driving shots put together with a dissolve though i do mess with the speed when the guitars kick in.
going going gone
the song: about the bewildering concern of death and how can it be that a person is a breathing living organism one moment and then simply the inverse just like that. a contradiction here is that this process feels so intimate and personal and yet it’s the most banal commonplace enterprise there is. what are we supposed to do with that? I have no idea.
the video: i screen-recorded my photos on my computer, using the arrow key to forward through them. then I cut some photos out of the final video file b/c they were unsightly or personal and left it mostly all just human-less, until the end. as i was editing a swath of photos I took at Mauna Loa volcanic eruption in 2022 came up and that sort of fit perfectly with the gone part. this took me a few hours to put together.
when where why:
the song: i had the refrain first (I don’t know why i should forgive you) and had to build the verses around it. i really have a love/hate feeling toward these verses. on a possibly ill-advised whim i included the lyric “treat your old self to an evening of brine-covered toadstools” which i can’t really defend other than to say i talked myself into leaving it in place when maybe i could have held myself to a more rugged standard. so it goes. this is the one song that doesn’t really fit thematically with the others b/c it isn’t about death exactly.
the video: more not too fancy. a video of a tree in the wind and a video of driving around at night stitched together.
the song: about how you’re alive after someone you love is gone, left to the sole consolation that you’ll possibly see them again in another form but how that isn’t really the same. this was kind of an experiment to see if i could just keep the guitar very simple. I released a slightly different version of this song before the EP came out, a simpler one that just ended when the guitar ended. during the prep for EP release though i made it a little more atmospheric at the end, which felt appropriate given the subject matter. there’s a guitar bit at the end that’s literally a guitar track from when where why that i just pasted into this song.
the video: this is all one shot, slowed down and with a slow push in (done in post). I was sitting in my car killing time near Berkeley Park in SE Portland.
the song: about all the plans i make and how it can be over at any time. this i recorded out in the car just after i drove home from work around 12:55 am one night. i just kind of hatched the couplet right then and there and sang it on a couple different tracks. then i went to bed. it sat on my phone for many months until a few days before the EP was to be released I remembered it. I added some effects and some depth to the vocals.
the video: another one shot, this from a walk in Westmoreland Park in SE Portland.
thanks for reading this far. i appreciate it.
You can follow impermanent marker on bandcamp and/or purchase the EP there. you can see the my mistake videos on a playlist here.
bye xo