1. |
INTRO
01:29
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Everyone looks better in the dark
So I’ll keep it dark here.
More cryptic metaphors so you won’t know
What I’m talking about, so you won’t get the joke.
We’re all waiting for the catch-phrase.
Let’s not speak too frankly here:
“We wasted too much time,
That’s not our only but our biggest crime.”
A strong sentence to begin with
But no clever words to spend the night with,
Just broken chords and burned out holes
As big as the moon collected in our pockets.
Apologies will follow:
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2. |
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Don’t crown me John Lee Hooker because my/this/our youth’s never earned the blues.
But cover up these words of mine in healthy noise
And call it “free expression” if you may.
As if I/we had something to say, as if we ever had it hard enough to earn the blues.
Dreams don’t come here to die, my friend, it’s even worse:
Most of them come true. So have a break, you deserve one,
Because earning stylish pain is hard labor and we all know that here,
But hell, it looks so damn good on us.
So this is it, this is everything we have to offer.
Where can I find home but here, in healthy noise and singers who never tried to sing?
So let me sing a song for you in spite, a melody stuck in my sore throat,
One more broken chord and I’ll puke it out,
A song for the gladly hopeless with no rhymes for drawn smiles
But with fingers crossed so hard they turned numb and black.
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3. |
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One day I had enough of it, on that day I made a list,
A list of pros, a list of all the things I should be glad to have, a list to remind me
And at the end of that list I wrote: “Note to self: Others would kill for less”
On that day I fed my feet to the worms as an appetizer for what they won’t get alive.
I fed them my feet so I had to stop running away,
So I had to sit still and be content with what I have, until the walls started caving in.
But fuck walls and all the other clichés, I’m not afraid of walls:
I’m afraid of people, I’m not afraid of what they might do, I’m afraid of what they won’t do,
I’m not afraid of walls, I’ve never been, I’m afraid of people,
(I’m not afraid of what they might think,) I’m afraid of what will never come to their minds,
(I’m not afraid of walls, I’ve never been I’m not afraid of what’s done,
I’m afraid of what just happens) and so I sat in fear.
And for one year I sat there and watched history play rise and fall,
Watched it save kings and sacrifice pawns
But today I don’t need to see more, it’s enough,
Enough “being” not “becoming”, enough contentedness, enough sleepwalking,
Enough friends, enough grinning suits, enough
I don’t need to see more to stand on new feet and to set fire
To all the things I should be glad to have.
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4. |
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If I had a cent for every empty word I heard I’d buy myself a church and nail myself to a cross.
So let it rain disappointment, let it fill every hole
Until the streets drown in it. Wading through it we’ll line them up, (all the plans we made,)
Line them up and bury them without eulogy or praise
Write “irony” across their tombstones, the saints cry for them in vain,
They should cry for us, we’ll never earn our goddamn haloes.
We meet at the deathbed of ambition (call them liars, telling it fought the good fight,
I was there, naked skin and commercials were all I saw).
No heroes left and I’m pretty sure we missed the chance to die young.
So I’ll draw a circle of black humour big enough to call it our own.
This is where we’ll rest while the world just passes by.
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5. |
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A room (painted with get-well cards) and a box of the things we (yet) don’t understand,
Buried underneath the old mall at the marketplace
And the handful of hope you brought back home from your one year in misery.
All these songs that lightened up our days,
There’s more beauty in them than I see in us.
(They’re) haunting this empty palace, (the orchestra of emptied bottles,) we found shelter here.
“It gets better before it gets worse and then it gets worse (again) and then it gets even worse”, That’s the deal we signed, no one forced our hands.
(We signed it with the last bit of gasoline which we had used to burn the memories,
A fire that brought us through this winter.)
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6. |
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We need more, more dreams, more memories, more bottles; the fire’s almost gone out,
So throw another penny in the wishing well and poison down your throats.
Fate gave us plenty of time and what did we do with it?
We blackmailed the piano-man with pictures we took of him and elderly women
Playing doctors and nurses,
We blackmailed him not to sing us another song but to pour us another drink,
For a song we could sing ourselves:
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7. |
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“(We’re) glad that you all made it out from where the lions used to roam,
(We’re) glad that you all made it but we’re still in this alone,
(We’re) glad that you all made it out from where the tigers sharpen teeth,
(We’re) glad that you all made it but we announce defeat.”
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8. |
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We praise, we kneel, we repeat, we stand still, we find beauty and paint it black
(Until it’s down to nothing all over again),
We strip the skin from it till it’s only flesh and bones
And wonder why it’s just “defeat” that the banners read
Hung on every empty building we didn’t care for.
This circle you had drawn grew way too small for us, too small to hold us in.
So we got lost somewhere in the crowd
That’s trying so hard to be different. We can’t hear our own excuses whispered desperately.
(For all this whining and begging for better days makes quite a noise.)
Tired of mourning till our throats go sore while better days are knocking on the doors
Of our empty buildings we didn’t care for.
So, here’s to “blinders on”, a salute to “gone astray”.
So, here’s to never knowing what we’re for only what we trying to avoid.
No more waiting on the rooftops with lights, sounds and banners
To guide the way for the “good life” just in case it ever makes its way.
Tonight they’ll know we’re here.
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9. |
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Don’t even try to track this call down, use the time you have (left) before the flames arise
(And evacuate the town-hall),
Don’t even try to negotiate, use the time before...
This is no admission of guilt, this is a warning. Hurry, evacuate the goddamn building!
We (two pitch black figures) only want to hurt your goddamn structures
Not the ones held hostage by them. This is only an act of defiance, don’t make us murderers.
Hurry, evacuate the goddamn building!
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10. |
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The flames followed the matches and they provided us (two pitch black figures)
With light to find the safest way out,
Way before they arrived with blue neon-lights (to put out our act of defiance,)
To put out what we created.
And hobbling you presumed that no one got hurt.
It’s not called an argument if someone wants his opponent so strongly to be right.
When it was far enough to feel safe, I was that someone.
“The human potential ” pointed out by you in a more breathless than lamenting tone.
Yes, you got that right:
“Hope is a crutch we all need from time to time ”
But no one wants to feel crippled, right?
(Yes, you got that right again:)
“Misanthropy won’t get you anywhere ”
So I decided (just not to be there.)
But “hope ”, this strange word, it still remains a mystery to me:
I can read it perfectly but when it comes to spelling it always reads like “N.O.N.E.”
“The human race and all its great achievements ”, no, never said I hated them,
But plain disappointment reigns in this chest, nothing more and nothing less.
And I got history as witness on my side.
With unbelieving eyes you fell silent after you heard my speech.
The police-sirens sang us a lovely tune, an almost jazz-like sound they made.
But you, you were deaf to it, the warm tone of hope still ringing in your ears.
And at the end of the road our escape plan paved for us, we parted ways.
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11. |
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Oh bitterness, my dear, would you please marry me?
We’ll have children we’ll name them “vermin” and “disease” and become like those before us.
We met at the deathbed of ambition and this is where it led us (to).
We’re the copy-cats of our own lives and the lines were drawn way before us
And I’m/we’re just walking them.
Wiser men than me claim
That human existence takes place inbetween of what was and what will be,
So it’s not really there at all, by looking around you can tell they’re right.
We’re doing nothing better, we just know how to wait it out.
Disappearing, the invisible generation without a name.
Class-war is over (and all the individuality money can buy won it),
Eternal boredom (that’s eating us alive.
So line up for the big parade!)
We’re the best informed virgins there ever were.
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12. |
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Mad eyes, torn face and a gallon of gasoline.
Done less sleeping and more dreaming for the last couple of days, his eyes tell the story.
(These worn-out clothes hang on his emaciated body like flags on half-mast.)
Nervous hands are caressing torn pieces of paper in pockets full of matches.
He won’t need these scribbled pages, he knows his speech by heart by now but just in case, just in case.
(Feels) like the man of steel building his own kryptonite (as he raises his voice:)
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13. |
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Dear committee of plastic bags, listen to my words!
I won’t distract you long enough from the impending doom
Of dirty numbers on clean white paper,
(I just demand the one thing you’re really good at:) Silence amongst the herd.
(So please mark my words for we’re singing from the same sheet, you just don’t know it yet.)
Oh, I only came to ask: Are you happy here?
Pills and healers and holy men, did they save your soul today?
Did the holy men give you a reason to stay here?
When was the last time you felt like changing weather?
Oh, Machiavelli would be so proud of you while Debord is turning in his grave.
Replace “they” with “we”.
It’s almost as if your god and your devil came to an understanding to lay down their weapons
And leave you lost and alone.
Nothing matters unless you want it to. Nothing’s pointless unless you want it to.
So please let us not hope, let us know, let us know for sure (that):
Everything we do is politics, every move is a dance, every word is poetry, every sound is a song.
These are my famous last words (this is my farewell),
I’ll see you all in hell if we’re not already there.*
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14. |
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So this is how it ends, this is what’s left after the last sad song is sung, we’ve come full circle.
Now the joke’s been told, have your laugh now,
Laugh as hard as you want to, this one’s on me. But the story’s always sadder after I told it,
So burn these notes.
So forget these words you heard from me
Because I forgot what I wanted to say in the first place about five songs ago.
But remember that pity-parties are best held when you’re alone.
So if cynicism really is the loneliest kind of anger,
You can have your laugh now because the human animal is not nature’s favored son,
Put that out of your mind,
We’re more like peace and doubt, like her wedding dress and the rain,
We’re more like the desperate dreamer and the joyful pessimist,
Like the sad guy and his funny shirt.
We’re more like...
(We’re more like marvelous plans and the missing link between our words and our actions)
We’re more like the tragic death of humor and the stone-cold irony of it all,
We’re more like...
We’re more like...
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15. |
OUTRO
01:32
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But don’t believe the words you heard from me, the story’s always sadder after I told it.
I’m hiding behind characters I brought to life, characters who tattle behind my back,
They say I wasted your time and I see their point, not my only but my biggest crime.
What’s a joke without a moral to the story? If you got it all figured out
Then come for me and tell me what this is all about.
We’ll meet each other again with disbelief, quietly,
No more worthless words, no more cryptic metaphors.
We’ll light up a candle for the dead only to blow it out and inhale the smoke,
Repeat after me:
“I am an island”
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Walking is still honest records Berlin, Germany
Walking is still honest records is a label/distro established in 2011 in Andalusia, (south Spain). D.I.Y. project created with the idea of supporting projects I feel an affinity and/or friendship with. Music matters to me as also attitude does it. This is a label that releases mainly Hardcore-Punk related stuff, but I’m interesting in some other genres too. This is a non-profit project ... more
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