Black and Brown Blues

I take this song in the light of my own struggle with the alienation that comes from living with Bipolar Disorder. I have no idea if Berman is bipolar or anything, but this is how it speaks to me:

Baby let's get dressed up I got two pairs of shoes (he's feeling good, a high roller with TWO pairs of shoes, woohoo!) Darling you look so beautiful when your hair's all hung in jewels (she's gorgeous so there's a lot of stress about making a good impression on her and that triggers anxiety and indecision.) and sometimes I find it really hard to choose between a pair of black and a pair of brown shoes (you know the old routine of dating someone indecisive: "i dunno, what do you wanna do"...this guy is like that even about which shoes to wear. This makes me feel very wistful and sorry for him yet dismissive at the same time.)

When I'm high on batwings up by the silvery moon (a bipolar manic episode) I think of a certain sad eyed king trapped in his golden room (when you're manic, it seems like everything you touch turns to gold like King Midas...) and I dream of a cold river on the way to come and sweep that king into this black and brown bay (...but you know that ultimately, it's no good and you're going to crash back down into normal-to-depressed, like King Midas getting doused in the cold river in order to be able to relate to his loved ones again.)

Well the water looks like jewelry when it's coming out the spout (I love Berman's haiku-like poetry. He takes something so ordinary and turns it into a jewel.) and nothing could make me feel better than a wet kiss on the mouth (alienation and loneliness follow a lack of masterful living.) Fake I.D.'s and honeybees (peer pressure. Bees live for collective, not for themselves.) the jagged skyline of car keys I never knew the bird could fly so low (driving a T-bird? a grounded god, in a sense, Thunderbird was a great Spirit Guide for Native Americans.)

Rub out the catlight, rub out the village (the mood crashes into bipolar dysphoria and loathing...) red and white exit light NEXT EXIT IS 'DAMAGED' (this is how I understand this line. I think it's saying, look up ahead there's the signpost but instead of it saying the twilight zone, it says welcome to being damaged goods, buddy!) Why don't people think of who they use? (Their mindless cruelty damages sensitive souls.) Why don't you try and come and get me: Black and Brown Blues (Anger about this injustice makes him taunt the bipolar blues, bring it on, brain chemistry!)

It's raining triple sec in CHULA and the radio plays "Crazy Train" (a lost weekend of binge drinking in Mexico) there's a quadroon ball in the beehive hanging out in the rain (he's watching all the drones dance from the outside, where it's raining and dreary. He thinks of them as mindless insects, yet longs for the community they enjoy that he is ostracized from. He'd like to come in out of the rain, but he's too different from them.) and when there's trouble I dont like running (he doesn't fancy himself a coward) but I'm afraid I got more in common (clever use of the idiom "i'm afraid" in this context of claiming not to be a coward) with who I was than who I am becoming (when you're bipolar, you are never sure which "you" you get to be on a given day, and you get stuck in the residue of your previous mental state. You think that however you feel at the moment is how you will feel forever.)

When I go downtown (heading back into depression) I always wear a corduroy suit cause it's made of a hundred gutters that the rain can run right through (camouflage: trying to become invisible in a nondescript suit so that all the slights he must bear run right through him like rain thru the gutters. The word "gutters" gives a very low self esteem feeling.) but a lonely man can't make a move if he can't even bring himself to choose between a pair of black and a pair of brown shoes (how can he even begin to live with vitality if he can trip up on such a mundane issue? and so he stays paralyzed with loneliness and social anxiety.)