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The Handsome Family – Cathedrals Lyrics 12 years ago
Lyrics changes, as sung:

-But Icicles don't take a THOUSAND years to die.

-And everyone WHO'S ever worked on this Cathedral

-(no 'and') I fell against you and felt your beating heart

submissions
The Handsome Family – Where The Birch Trees Lean Lyrics 12 years ago
He sings "between" the leaning trees, not "beneath", despite what's printed officially.

submissions
The Handsome Family – Stalled Lyrics 12 years ago
Correct Lyrics:

Falling snow, spun above the road
winding through the dark woods
where my pickup stalled.

Falling snow, hissing through the air
painting my windows white
till the trees disappeared.

Even though, I started to feel cold
and I was far from town
I just sat there in the dark.

submissions
Townes Van Zandt – Our Mother the Mountain Lyrics 12 years ago
I can't find where I read this - I think it might have been in the stuff that came with the CD, which of course I lost a long time ago. But if memory serves, this song was written in a sort of lightning strike, stream of consciousness, channeling type event. That's how Townes (loosely) described it. He was just struck, all of a sudden, as if by some kind of 'lightning', grabbed a pen, and let the words run through his hands. He said he really didn't even know what he was writing until he was done and and looked it over. He altered it very little if at all.

I wouldn't go looking for meaning in the mundane, or the particulars of his life. This is something mythical. This is an encounter with the Crone, or something of the kind.

Townes had a link with a Muse. Calling him gifted is an understatement.

submissions
Andrew Bird – Effigy Lyrics 14 years ago
*hear. not fear.

submissions
Andrew Bird – Effigy Lyrics 14 years ago
This one, I always understood. This one, he wrote about me.

Or at least he could have.

Every time I fear this song, I well up.

Thank you Andrew....

submissions
Andrew Bird – A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left Lyrics 14 years ago
This one always makes me think about... me.

I had a "nervous tic motion of the head" when I was a kid. It used to be pronounced. Not "to the left", but a forceful forward snap. It won me merciless and cruel attention. It never really went away. I just internalized it. Now I chomp and grind my teeth all day; now they’re cracked and chipped like the rest of me. I also have an assortment of other nervous twitches that don't fail to be noticed.

The "16 tons of hazmat” are the messes that I've left behind, and the way they've stained my present; limited my future by consequence. A life full of poison that any sane person would rightly want to avoid, pack in a truck while covered in a sealed suit, and bury in the desert. "What goes undelivered" is the part of me that was damaged as a result. Time I will never recover. Potential never developed. Options and paths, irreparably damaged by decisions, made for me by trauma and sickness. And yes, I would love to have my life back. Love to undo what's done. But was it ever really mine to begin with, or did the forces of nature conspire to make me a human disaster?

"Overprescribed...Under the Mister". This is fairly literal. Patient of the psychological machine, 30 years and running. The “mister” could be any assortment of doctors or institutions. Parents. Teachers. Bosses. Lovers lost. Anyone assuring me I MUST do this or that. All of which leaves me roughly where I began. And so here I lay, “stretched out on the tarmac”. I missed the plane. I wanted to fly away. Instead I'm just a few miles north of where I started, face down on the asphalt.

This leads eventually to being "splayed out on the bath mat". Possibly having "over-imbibed" something you might see a man in my condition, on the street, clutching in the poor disguise of a "paper knapsack".

Now I'm "barely alive" and I "cover the blisters" - from a seared life; scorched earth; fiery encounters - with a layer of whatever it is I can find to cover myself. "Flannel" is as good as anything else I suppose. It doesn't matter. Flannel's practical. It doesn't impress, but it doesn't have to. It just needs to be soft, and somewhat durable. The blisters hurt, you see.

I try to talk about my pain. My depression. My dysphoria. But when I say things to people, I fail to make an impression. My ramblings sound "banal" - the whines and complaints of a guy who just needs to 'get his sh!t together and quit b!tching'. But not "one of them's [the words] a lie". It's the truth. An awful truth. A truth they're glad they don't know, or can't see. They know nothing of the hidden blisters. Nothing I can spit out of this mouth and into their ears will ever make any difference.

It'll only just land me back into the hands of a "mister" - another "prescription" - or perhaps upon my “bath mat”, where someone will find me, a repellent mess, blocking the path between them and the toilet, the latter a higher priority, only slightly less disgusting than whatever they are about to excrete.

Why this? Why ANYthing. It just happens. "Substances collide". Galaxies — solar systems — planets — molecules — bacteria — spirochetes - fungi - plants - animals - complex arrangements of tissue. Egg and sperm — the bulk of the latter wasted. Ejaculated into the dark, swimming around lost, finding nothing, until death. One in a million, if lucky, leads to something new, but maybe meaningless.

You can "exercise yourself 'till you're bereft" - but it won't really matter.


*tic*







submissions
Andrew Bird – Effigy Lyrics 14 years ago
This one, I always understood. This one, he wrote about me.

Or at least he could have.

Every time I fear this song, I well up.

Thank you Andrew.

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