Six albums, six casts, and vK has always been behind the curtain: the drummer, the producer, the one guy who never dresses up in the after-session photos. This is the first release where he steps out alone. Two tracks, two sides of the same person: one confession, one joke, the whole thing that started the Church in the first place.
Side A
Rootless
the confession
Everything else in the catalog has a costume. This one doesn't. A quiet, one-guitar record about being the human behind the automation: rootless in the literal sense, and awake at the hours the fictional prophet only gets to be awake in fiction.
(tape hiss, one guitar)
My address says a city
But my head don't stay in one place
I keep my life in a laptop bag
And a half unpacked case
They ask me where I'm from
I give them the short version
Truth is I built a home
Out of wifi and a version
I run the whole cathedral
From a folding kitchen chair
Halvar sleeps in the story
I'm the one who's actually there
Call me rootless, call me gone
Call me the light still on
At three in the morning, still awake
Every system I ever built
Was just a place to put the ache
Rootless, but I'm still here
Rootless, but I didn't disappear
I just learned to live
In the space between the check marks
I wrote a religion as a joke
And forgot to stop halfway
Now I answer prayers in commit logs
At the end of every day
Somewhere there's a version of me
That never opened the terminal
He's got a garden and a Sunday
I've got a graph that's vertical
I run the whole cathedral
From a folding kitchen chair
Halvar sleeps in the story
I'm the one who's actually there
Call me rootless, call me gone
Call me the light still on
At three in the morning, still awake
Every system I ever built
Was just a place to put the ache
Rootless, but I'm still here
Rootless, but I didn't disappear
I just learned to live
In the space between the check marks
(quiet, half spoken)
Maybe home was never a place
Maybe it's just uptime
Something you keep, not somewhere you stay
Maybe rootless just means
I built my roots sideways
Call me rootless, call me gone
Call me the light still on
Every version of me
Still answers when it's called
Rootless, but I'm still here
That's the only proof I need
(guitar only, fading)
Still here.
Still here.
Side B
Sudo Make Me a Sandwich
the joke that started it
Every engineer knows the old joke about asking politely versus asking with elevated permissions. This turns it into the dumbest possible novelty song: a guy who built an entire parody religion around infrastructure concepts, reduced to just wanting a sandwich and being denied one.
(guitar riff, count-in)
One two three go
I asked you nice the first time
You said no, get in line
I asked again with a little more spice
You said computer says no, still not nice
Well I read the manual, found the trick
One word fixes it quick
Sudo make me a sandwich
Sudo, gimme root
Sudo make me a sandwich
Now you gotta do what I do
I ain't asking twice
I'm asking with permission
Sudo make me a sandwich
That's the whole tradition
Started as a joke on a whiteboard
Now it's how I live my life
Sudo skip the whole commute
Sudo fix my whole life
Sudo git commit to a better me
Sudo raise, sudo peace of mind
But all I really wanted
Was some turkey and some cheese
Sudo make me a sandwich
Sudo, gimme root
Sudo make me a sandwich
Now you gotta do what I do
I ain't asking twice
I'm asking with permission
Sudo make me a sandwich
That's the whole tradition
(spoken, deadpan)
Permission denied.
(beat)
Sudo permission denied.
(beat)
Fine. I'll make it myself.
Sudo make me a sandwich
Sudo, gimme root
Sudo make me a sandwich
Now you gotta do what I do
I built a whole religion
Just to get some bread and cheese
Sudo make me a sandwich
Sudo, please
(handclaps fading)
Sudo... please.
Written and performed by vK. Presented by Church of the Eternal Cluster Records. Catalog VK-001. Streaming links go live on release; check back soon, or hear the rest of the catalog below.
An independent, self-released solo work. Kubernetes is a trademark of the Linux Foundation. Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the CNCF, the Linux Foundation, or the Kubernetes Authors.
