Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe Lyrics

It's just a bad movie where there's no crying
Handing the keys to me in this Red Lion

Where the lock that you locked in the suite
Says there's no prying
When the breath that you breathed in the street
Screams there's no science
When you look how you looked then to me
Then I cease lying and fall into silence

It's just a life story, so there's no climax
No more new territory, so pull away the IMAX

In the slot that you sliced through the scene
There was no shyness
In the plot that you passed through your teeth
There was no pity

No fade in, film begins on a kid in the big city
And no cut to a costly parade, that's for him only
No dissolve to a sliver of gray, that's his new lady
Where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane
Of some great movie
Hey, I didn't watch it

It's just a house burning, but it's not haunted
It was your heart hurting but not for too long, kid

In the socket you spin from with ease
There is no sticking
From the speakers your fake masterpiece
Comes serenely dribbling

And when the air 'round your chair fills with heat
That's the flames licking
Beneath the clock on the clean mantelpiece
It's got a calm clicking
Like a pro at his editing suite takes two weeks stitching
Up some bad movie
Song Info
Submitted by
soctra On May 21, 2007
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21 Meanings

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Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

"And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!)." -Reminds me of Bueller every time

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

Fantastic! People make the banal things in life out to be much more dramatic and important than they actually are... just like a movie editor painstakingly takes weeks trying to make a boring film into something exciting- and fails.

Take a listen to the acoustic version of this song; it completely changes the mood and is SO wonderful!

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

they do make allusions to movies, though, right? like for example-- "No fade in: film begins on a kid in the big city. And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!)"

Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

@regretably Of course.

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

Does anyone know what the Red Lion refers to? I know Okkervil were in Texas, but I'm near Silverlake, Ca and there's a Red Lion Tavern local bands and just us regular common people meet up at. Anyway, that's what I always think of when I hear it. "Hand your keys over cos you've been drinking."

This is just great writing and epic sounds. The "Maybe" part gets me. In many ways our lives ARE like movies...the climax, the let-down, the resolution. Or maybe you've had a boring, bland life so you can't relate and your life is not a movie, that's why you like watching them! Stop watching them! Go out and make your life something! :)

The Red Lion is just a stereotypical name for a bar. For example the Red Lion is the name of the bar in Animal Farm and in other literary works.

Not Valid

i learn sooooooooo much from this website. Fuck college, I can get a degree from the useful and meaningful information that is constantly displayed on here. You are sooo smart and should be a professor of music and lifeology. just coined that shit. THanks again, I don't think I could live with your knowledge:)

Not Valid

"THanks again, I don't think I could live with your knowledge:)"...I'm guessin' he mistyped. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's kind of cute so we keep him around:)

Not Valid
Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

this song is pretty solid

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

This is my favourite song off of the new album.

It really has the feel of someone not being as important as they think they are

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

ah but it has such an epic sound for a song about how not everything is really that epic afterall. yet it's got this effect on me where i feel more important after i listen to it. even though the words don't really suggest it.

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

Life doesn't work out like movies do. There's nothing magnificent or pure or happy-ending-movie-esque waiting for us.

...maybe? sorta?

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

I see it as more just a precursor to the album. It's sort of a concept album (not quite fully realized, but still somewhat), so it's more just an opening to the album that says "This is just what it is, nothing more."

Cover art for Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe lyrics by Okkervil River

I think the parade line is definitely a reference to Ferris Buller. (Love that movie).

This song sounds like it could be like the anti-theme to some super low budget indie film about sad suburban teenagers... like me. It's like the epiphany song. Plus it'd just be ironic if you put a song in your movie that said, "It’s just a life story, so there’s no climax."

I love this song.