I was eight or nine.
I saw sviatoslav richter
perform his first recital
at the engineers club of odessa
it was long before the genius was crushed
by an unrelenting state
and an unloving mother
unable to push past their inherent flaws
and every so often
until the curtain finally fell on everything
I would slink into the back row
of the engineers club of odessa
and dream of talent and genius
hoping to see a glimpse of it again
maybe this time we'll just let it be
the road to middle management is littered with men with morgages
thirty six walking past midnight with no were to be until six am
it's dark and all I have is my regrets and a buzz that will end in forty five minutes if I don't find more fuel for it
and like the germans retreating from stalingrad I've been whipped by my own greed, naivety and trusted the worst person I could find and that is all on me and when I get back to the home front it lies in ruins and the locals don't want to see me so I'm walking past this neon lit gas station with forty bucks in my pocket at two thirty seven in morning and if not for the boys
I'd be looking for a place six feet under no wonder I lost my mind and why it's took so long to recover
we're walking hand in hand
in sync, in step
smiling toothy grins
we seem to be floating
down the isles
past the pop and the beer
colours abound
functional food
packaged fish
frozen meet
sadly cellular automaton
will no longer do
two sets of chromosomes
walking hand in hand
no body could contain
the giddiness of us in awe
they say that joy can't be scientific
immanuel kant may disagree
but these feelings baby
seem to come from nowhere
it's probably the chemicals in our heads
we were walking
on a another snowy night
and she said..
your lies are so big
you need a transit plan,
to simply get around them, so I said
you're an coward in a bra
and you're becoming the poster girl of your mom
to uptight to enjoy life
and to lost in the joke
that is her "plans"
we walked past a church
where jesus saves
and jesus bent down
and whispered into my ear
"go ahead and kiss her, you don't know what your missing"
so I did and she said
you're not as clever as mark twain
but you're easy on the eyes
so give me another kiss
and tell me some more tall tales
well there was a corn field near trois-rivières
that used to sing in the rain
and now a box mall stands on the spot
and shits out carbon by the parts per million
crazy enough, its where I fell in love with you
driving at two am
with a bottle of rye in between my legs,
with another in reserve in the back seat,
without a mad mother in sight.
and with a granddaddy who watched his brother die at ypres,
and a daddy who bombed the rhine until it shone in the dark,
there's no king or empire with me tonight,
it's all cheap sentiment that ends in some poor bastards death.
all I have is a buzz that wishes that it would never end,
the apostle paul always travels with me,
as he does with those fleeing death in the suburbs of kabul,
from those who say they're there to liberate them
the western front is always around us and moving in
We were walking this town
on a another snowy night
and she said
your lies are so big
they have suburbs of their own
and sub divisions full of fibs
you need a transit plan,
to simply get around
so I said
you're an asshole in a bra
and you're becoming the poster girl of your mom
to uptight to get the punchlines
and to lost in the joke
that is your bullet point life plan
we walked past a church
were jesus saves
and jesus bent down
and whispered into my ear
"go ahead and kiss her, you don't know what your missing"
so I did and she said
you're not as clever as mark twain
but you're easy on the eyes
so give me another kiss
and tell me some more tall tales
well there was a corn field near trois-rivières
that used to sing in the rain
and now a box mall stands on the spot
and shits out carbon by the parts per million
crazy enough, its where I fell in love with you
It may be a mid sized town but it's too small a core of government cubicles
centrally located,
downtown,
not to walk past her time to time,
she were walking down bank street,
her coat was brown,
she may have been thinking about lipstick
or she could have been pondering a new place to eat lunch,
so I hid in a crowd on a corner,
next to a pharmacy,
waiting for the light to change,
it was raining
and I became another face
in another grey afternoon
but I know you saw me
you took a hard long look
I would have said something
but you've made it clear
so I crossed with the light
and had to laugh to myself
four years of naive sentiment
a complete metal breakdown
three years of chemical imbalance
two hard years of recovery
a very destroyed reputation
and a lifetime of recovery for being the fool
I want to thank randy newman
for making that clear
I want to thank him
for simply stating the facts
It was pretty bright
up on the eddy street bridge
and when the cards were dealt
someone had to lose and someone had to jump
I used to run red lights
trying to get arrested
I pictured an angry mother wagging her finger
saying where's a cop when you need one
jesus spoke softly to me
never with malice or judgment
laying the foundation of redemption and rebirth
never a condemning word
I'm running now
I'm getting clean now
and standing outside this bar
wishing I could go in and quickly down a few
but the chemicals have been balanced
and I find myself swimming to the rescue boat
a decent lady offers me a cup of tea
I think this is ain't bad this ain't bad
bared from the uranium club of copenhagen
the chairman of the commission for atomic physics
wrote me saying he had no time for dyslexics
moving along, I fell in with a band of wolves
spreading a flawed brand of nuclear fusion
look at it glow, I would say with smile
this little rod is the loneliest of all spent materials
fraternal twins with duplicate snide comments
shouted me down and called me a fraud
they even published a paper at the universitat of leipzig
I left a discharged tenured professor
heinrich himmler was the head of the ss
he wanted to know about hilbert's theory of integral equations
so I sat him down and we talked over coffee about my future
and I asked him about the death camps and the v-one rockets
after the war I ended up in dayton ohio
teaching teens the basics of atoms
those kids are old now and making amends just as I once did,
and I'm dreaming more and more of the innocence of youthful summers
everything is easy, before you get caught up in it
the simplest pleasures are lost, as we move forward
evil is never in the surroundings of debate or ignorance,
it's found in our curiosity of the mysteries of science
and this is the spot where I sat hollow.
empty after the worst nine months
of the first thirty four years
shipwrecked a thousand miles from water
and this is the road that took me back to sane.
full of pot holes, inquisitions and self loathing
in time the water drained
my feet touching ground
and that was the trek that led me back to who I was.
through the artic madness of chemical imbalance
I probably gave up hope a few times but you never did
even though I gave you every reason to
you had my back
when no else did
I got lucky when you found me
I can't say thank you enough
it's two a.m again.
thoughts are like snowdrifts
and my skidoo is stuck, again
people, places
I'm six , I'm watching my dad hit my mom
I'm sixteen, I'm dropping some acid
I'm twenty eight, my son is being born
I'm thirty three. i'm cheating on my wife
I'm thirty eight, i've hit rock bottom
it's summer
1985
i'm playing midfield
i make a through ball
I kiss the girl, i score on a corner
she's leaving, her coat is gone
i'm falling , so this is what they mean tumbling
like a car crash,
when a second seems like an hour
the ocd is in charge,
it's 2 am again
the record is stuck, the record is stuck, the record is stuck
