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Chet Baker's Unsung Swan Song Lyrics
My old addiction
Changed the wiring in my brain
So that when it turns the switches
Then I am not the same
So like the flowers toward the Sun
I will follow
Stretch myself out thin
Like there's a part of me that's already buried
That sends me out into this window
My old addiction
Is a flood upon the land
This tiny lifeboat
Can keep me dry
But my weight is all
That it can stand
So when I try to lean just a little
For just a splash to cool my face
Ahh that trickle
Turns out fickle
Fills my boat up
Five miles deep
My old addiction
Makes me crave only what is best
Like these just this morning song birds
Craving upward from the nest
These tiny birds outside my window
Take my hand to be their mom
These open mouths
Would trust and swallow
Anything that came along
Like my old addiction
Now the other side of Day
As the springtime
Of my life's time
Turn's the other way
If a swan can have a song
I think I know that tune
But the page is only scrawled
And I am gone this afternoon
But the page is only scrawled
And I am gone this afternoon
Changed the wiring in my brain
So that when it turns the switches
Then I am not the same
I will follow
Stretch myself out thin
Like there's a part of me that's already buried
That sends me out into this window
Is a flood upon the land
This tiny lifeboat
Can keep me dry
But my weight is all
That it can stand
For just a splash to cool my face
Ahh that trickle
Turns out fickle
Fills my boat up
Five miles deep
Makes me crave only what is best
Like these just this morning song birds
Craving upward from the nest
These tiny birds outside my window
Take my hand to be their mom
These open mouths
Would trust and swallow
Anything that came along
Now the other side of Day
As the springtime
Of my life's time
Turn's the other way
I think I know that tune
But the page is only scrawled
And I am gone this afternoon
But the page is only scrawled
And I am gone this afternoon
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This song is beautiful. I cry almost every time I hear it.
It was written about Chet Baker, the infamous trumpet player who happened to be a heroin addict.
The contrast of beautiful, innocent images like "morning song birds" and "flowers toward the Sun" with the heavy and dark theme of addiction is what makes this song so haunting.
Clearly this song is sung from Chet's perspective. I always see the "lifeboat" as a very unreliable metaphor for heroin. I think that to Chet, the heroin must have seemed like the lifeboat, keeping him afloat at times, but as an observer I think it's apparent that the heroin is actually the rising water that pulls him under.
I'm not a heroin user but I've heard that the feeling it gives you is akin to what it feels like to drift around aimlessly in a swimming pool or on a large body of water. In the movie "Ray" there is a water motif that escalates with his heroin addiction. And heroin itself is often injected as a liquid through a syringe.
I sometimes think that all of those connections to the water may explain the flood imagery.
I took the "scrawled" page as a suicide note--Chet's swan song.
Couldn't have said it better myself. For those of us "of a certain age" who remember Chet as a young, hip, West Coast jazz icon, the later twists and turns of his life are a haunting reminder that all glory is, indeed, fleeting. King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, Ziggy Elman, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Parker, Jim Morrison...the list of gifted musicians whose demons took them from us too soon is depressingly long. Thanks for posting such a cogent interpretation of David Wilcox's masterpiece.
Couldn't have said it better myself. For those of us "of a certain age" who remember Chet as a young, hip, West Coast jazz icon, the later twists and turns of his life are a haunting reminder that all glory is, indeed, fleeting. King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, Ziggy Elman, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Parker, Jim Morrison...the list of gifted musicians whose demons took them from us too soon is depressingly long. Thanks for posting such a cogent interpretation of David Wilcox's masterpiece.
This song is a very accurate depiction of addiction, told from the inside.
On one of his live albums, Wilcox says he didn't know anything about Chet Baker except what he read on the liner notes. (Baker died from a fall out of a window, which is referred to in the ninth line.)
Somewhere else -- it might have been in the interview on his DVD -- Wilcox says this song "saved my life". My impression is Wilcox was suffering from addiction when he wrote this song -- he says in the interview "I could not have recopied it faster than I wrote it" -- and this song helped him see a way out. (My guess is Wilcox was addicted to sex. I have no data for that other than the songs he has written, such as "Right Now", "Language of the Heart", "Dangerous", and especially "Please Don't Call").
As an unrecovered addict, you keep doing something you really want to stop doing. "Changed the wiring in my brain", "Like the flowers towards the sun/I will follow", and "These open mouths/will trust and swallow/anything that came along" all describe this state of inability to stop, to choose, to be rational.
The siren call of the solace of whatever you are addicted to -- and addiction is nearly always an attempt to numb a seemingly unbearable pain -- this siren call includes the insidious suggestion that you could take just a nip, just a puff, just a look, just a little of the desired sensation. But. No You Can't. Attempt "just a splash" and you are "five miles deep".
Indeed. And addiction can take many forms, witness the "anthrax scientist," Bruce Ivins, whose long-ago rejection by a girl for whom he carried a torch the rest of his life led to a series of bizarre, self-destructive responses to the "siren call" culminating in dishonor and death. Are such non-chemical "addictions" really worthy of being classified as such? I believe so. Pathological obsessions such as Ivins' can lead to the same disastrous outcomes as chemical dependency. Musicians and other artists may be somewhat more prone to such demons. The flip side is that...
Indeed. And addiction can take many forms, witness the "anthrax scientist," Bruce Ivins, whose long-ago rejection by a girl for whom he carried a torch the rest of his life led to a series of bizarre, self-destructive responses to the "siren call" culminating in dishonor and death. Are such non-chemical "addictions" really worthy of being classified as such? I believe so. Pathological obsessions such as Ivins' can lead to the same disastrous outcomes as chemical dependency. Musicians and other artists may be somewhat more prone to such demons. The flip side is that we are fortunate in having an outlet which others for whom the "wiring in [their] brain," like Ivins perhaps, do not. Our inner demons may in fact drive creativity. Indeed, the creative impulse can ease the pain and possibly prevent further descent into the abyss. Catharsis and redemption can take many forms. For me, jazz improvisation on saxophone or keyboard and writing songs that evoke nostalgic memories can do it, as can driving a classic car--with my siblings as passengers--through the neighborhood where we grew up, and where I first fell (very much unilaterally) in love. I have no idea whether David Wilcox was an addict, and if so, to what. But in this one song he has expressed most eloquently the "seemingly unbearable pain" that so many of us know all too well. As a long-time Chet Baker fan, hearing this song sung by k. d. lang never fails to evoke ecstatic melancholy. This is a song for the ages.
maybe the boat is just a metaphor for one's ability to barely stay afloat and then when tempted to just slightly deep into destructive habits it sinks into them, completely loosing itself.
David Wilcox is the best metaphorical songwriter I've ever heard, and this song is full of gems. Beautiful stuff!!
I think it’s about a religion that this person left but knows it was best for him. Really nothing to do with any sort of a bad a addiction but rather a good one. Just an addiction that the singer can’t stay with. Probably for reasons of this world, like family and work.