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It's a Party,
and Janet, the girl who is going away, moving to the coast, is sitting alone, staring off into
space. I was there. I always wondered if she was looking forward or
looking back, and whichever it was, why the sad face. I heard she went on
to get a job as a translator at the UN. And I wondered, if she ever did go
back to this night in her mind would she be able to make sense of the
babble of voices within and without.
Stop the
Pain was written for Charlie Thorne, the world's greatest living
artist. Women have always messed up artists, even when it's women who are
the artists and the men are already messed up.
The Sea
Wind's Daughter
When I wrote the Sea Wind's Daughter, I was in a trance state. My mind was
on Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, about the desolation
of hope brought on by bad luck and poor sailing. This too is about
desolation of sorts, though, when I wrote it, I didn't know it was or
would be. I wrote it automatically, one verse at a time. I sang the first
verse, exactly as it is - and stopped. Then I started over and sang the
first verse followed automatically, or perhaps inevitably, by the second -
and stopped. And started over and added the third verse, complete as it
it. And so it went through a long night, working my way one verse at a
time to the end, which surprised me when it came, and left me wondering
who was telling the tale - me or the music.
The Girl Who Got Away
I was thinking about the night I fell in love with the beautiful girl who
soon became my wife. It was a dazzling night. Light, which could have been
stars or could have been sparks flashing between us, glistened in the sky
and filled the air in the cab of my pickup truck as we sat at three A.M.
inspecting our hearts, knowing they would never be the same. And I
was thinking about that night and it crossed my mind to wonder what if we
had passed through that night and, for whatever turn unimaginable reason,
reaching the other side of it, went our own ways. I know that for the rest of my life I would have looked
back on that night as a turning point, turning away from possibilities of
joy and completion and turning inward on thoughts of irredeemable loss.
And this song came to me as a profound reminder of what could have been
even though it never should have been and...happily for me, wasn't.
Grotesques
Just a song about a couple of people I met. Payin' the price for not
meeting up to the standards.
Only the Lonely Survive, but survival at any cost, especially that
cost, just isn't worth it.
In My Life,
dedicated to Eddie Balchowsky
Under the Boardwalk 2007 or forever.
Cloud Nine, the
only place I've ever really lived
Angelina was
someone a friend of mine met and wrote a song about. Now I sing the song
in hopes of meeting her some day, too. |
