Disc 1 | ||||||
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1. |
| 4:17 | ||||
There was a hush inside the air
When you were lying on the stairs Feeling the world had scattered there Like little feathers on the air And as the people filed away The men in suits of black and gray Each with his hands inside his coat Each with that hush inside his throat And this concrete cold And this cruise control And the drops of blood in the shaving bowl Are the lovely things Bright and hovering That can pull you up With a thousand wings Let me through They're thinking, "How did we arrive? Was it by fortune or design? Or was there something else in mind? Let there be something else in mind" |
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2. |
| 5:52 | ||||
I tried to save a girl I truly loved
And didn't quite know how to help her So now she's sleeping as her parents up above Cry over things that they can't tell her And when I did my good deed I thought I'd feel unbroken gladness But standing in the street alone I just felt sinking sadness Girl, your dad will not us bless So hang up your veil and dress Look at me and take one guess Where this best-intentioned love will lead us I once felt a feeling fully through Though I knew I shouldn't feel it Because to act on it I'd be a person Who should be slapped into a straitjacket So every time it comes around I just let it die inside me You said, "I only come around Because I just need you to hide me" So we knelt in those dead weeds Sticks and sharp rocks cutting into our knees And I thought that we would freeze But there was just too much warm blood in our bodies I'm not going to make you take the pills Though you should really think about it The fire by which we both were almost killed Glowed so beautiful, don't doubt it But we have to make a choice now Can we glow without it? There's a space I tried to fill But I'm seeing now I never will You fly around while I stand still Until I slowly just get smaller and smaller I tried to save a girl I truly loved And I never would desert her But we both found out that I was dreaming Of the day I thoroughly could hurt her And I saw myself inside her eyes This shrinking would-be savior Resented her for never needing help And couldn't wait just to betray her So we drove back to her place From the temporary home that we had made And I stepped back into the street Feeling the fullest moment of my life Slowly shrink away from me With my good deed |
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3. |
| 4:43 | ||||
4. |
| 2:50 | ||||
Baby, hands in your lap
You touch your wounds so much they'll never heal I fear you'll turn your back On just the kind of love you really need It's just the kind It's just the kind you need to feel Baby, I love your laugh And everything you say is dire and dear But "Cut the crap, you're still alive" It's just the kind of thing you really need It's just the kind It's just the kind It's just the kind you need to hear |
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5. |
| 5:01 | ||||
"It's like a makeover when the filming's over and she doesn't know how to fix it so that it'll stay, and she can't figure out how to tease out her hair that way herself. And when she wakes up all the make-up has rubbed away and she doesn't know how to find her face. It was only for one single day that you looked so beautiful, baby. Now your cheeks have gone pale, and your roots dark gray. And though they nod as they notice you're nice, baby, nobody's noticing twice. Dim the lights as your memory of paradise fades. I'm like an architect who cashed his check, but he doesn't let on that it's the last one he'll get. Though he knows the funds have run dry, he wants to have fun for one final night, staring out at a skyline that he'll never change. They're saying 'though we like all things that you've made, notice no one remembers your name. As you float through time, feel your powers decline day by day.' You're like a convert who goes back to work when he can't retrieve how the clarity actually felt. When his co-workers ask him the words won't come out. And in three weeks his new leaf has rubbed away and it feels just like an average day: facing walls talking into the phone, sitting dumbly in church all alone, picking back up the magazines he'd thrown away. Well, convert, what your god whispered into youl ear you forgot once that god disappeared, and that life-changing day, you just felt it fade. But, you know, it's got to fade. You know it's got to fade," and, falling down on the couch, he says, "it's perfectly that way."
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6. |
| 3:39 | ||||
Claire lives up on Saint Mary's walk with her mother
I live down on Philomel by the harbor And I hate the ocean And I hate the ocean And I hate the ocean, oh well Claire says she'd throw me overboard then that she loves me And then she kisses me on mouth and says I'm ugly And I hear the ocean And I hear the ocean And I hear the ocean roar The water pulls around the pier, dark and rusted And I know the kindest face with a sailor's eyes still can't be trusted But I feel the ocean And I feel the ocean And I feel the ocean swell |
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7. |
| 6:27 | ||||
8. |
| 3:16 | ||||
When will they remove the tourniquet? Is the operation over yet? Will you calm down, sir, will you calm down? I can hear the generators hum, roaring like an evil stadium. Will you calm down sir, will you calm down? But this frame is collapsing under all of the weight of my self, and this desperate wish that they'd pin it on somebody else. Will you calm down, sir, will you calm down? And this terrible drone is the sound of a thousand machines, singing just to themselves in a language that no one can read.
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9. |
| 3:02 | ||||
"When our column advanced, and we saw what we'd done, we were sure that we could never tell the folks back home," said my father to me, I had just turned sixteen, and we were walking from my school to his apartment alone. And he said, "You'd think the world you're in would always remain, but some worlds can just disappear. Some worlds you enter just for seconds at a time, and some last until you're forgiven.
When my mother and me take the drive into town, I can't tell if she's lost in thought or lost where we are. She turns the radio to 92 Star, where Ronnie Milsap sings what he would not have missed it for, and she says, "What do you think you're gonna do with your life?" And I say, "You've got to teach me to drive." She just laughs at that, and musses my hair, and says, "Kid, you're lucky to be alive." |
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10. |
| 2:46 | ||||
I forgot I was loving you
Disappeared for an hour or two And I came to on a cold, wood floor And I didn't feel so good anymore Now we clasp our hands And we make demands That the clouds will say what's wrong with you now And we had big plans Now alone we stand In the crowd and they're not even laughing out loud They don't care I'll shut my eyes and let tv Whisper, laugh and talk to me And I'll curl up tight inside my head Killing time 'til the whole day is dead And I'll clasp my hands And I'll make demands That the clouds are asking what's wrong with him now And I had big plans Now alone I stand In the crowd and they're not even laughing out loud They don't care God, take that sound away If you've got something to say Say it now It's fake and I need you not to be fake And don't care how you make me feel Just so you're real Once I saw my face in a bathroom mirror And I didn't know that I was here But I knew my eyes and I knew my hands I knew God would now listen to all my demands And the sky opened up And God interrupted The Earth stopped dying and stopped giving birth And when I came to on the cold, wood floor Well, I didn't feel so good anymore And all that sure love And all their sweet words I'd forgotten I'd felt and forgotten I'd heard That was was clear And is now so blurred and smeared And your love felt more pure And your love felt more pure once your voice disappeared |
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11. |
| 3:49 | ||||
Feel the hooks in my skin
I set every one myself And if you pull them all taut I will turn to someone else Was that what you asked? Pour the wax in my mouth And seal the place inside To build a chamber like that You must be in bad need, child Oh, let my body rise Effortless and light And burst the seams of night Took me deep underground And outside the reach of light Found it already filled, full of life Was that what you asked? |
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12. |
| 6:40 | ||||
Your warm sweater
Your torn letters They're all that matters They're all that matters At the window watching the elegant traffic It's all fantastic It's all fantastic And when you find these things that make you shine Don't let them too far outside of your life The set table The friend smiling The bones piling The smoke hanging And the soft mention Deserve attention So when you find these things that make you shine Don't let them too far outside of your life But don't try to hold them too hard Inside your mind when they slide When they slide When they slide |