My Back Pages

When I was 15, I started to keep a journal because the cathecism teacher I had told the class to do so. It was the year of our confirmation and so I think it had something to do with that. That was also the year I first met God, and the things I wrote in my journal were interesting, to say the least. I was reading it a couple of weeks back and I'm looking at it again now, and I'm still a little surprised at what I see. For about a third of the journal, this nut sounds very little like me. It's weird. It's my handwriting alright. Exact same scraggly "You should've been a doctor" stuff all these years. But this guy who was writing in my handwriting was shameless. And very happy. Well ok so some of the stuff I've written on this blog have been pretty shameless too. But NOT so happy. I think the closest I ever got to happy was muted joy. That's just my take on it.

Back to the topic. So tonite I decided to collect all the songs I ever wrote from 2001(which is when I started writing these things) til today, that I still have lyrics for. I am putting them in one Word document. I'm not quite done yet( but so far the index says I've got 35 of them). One thing that struck me when glancing through them was how much they were like a journal. They weren't so much a record of actual things that were happening in my life at the times I wrote those songs (though many of them were semi-biographical), but they did reflect my state of mind pretty well. I was, for the most part, dealing with a lot of crap at the time. In a very eloquent fashion of course.

Well I decided to look at my journal again tonite after looking at those songs, and I found that towards the end of the journal, things were actually starting to break apart as I was realising that I couldn't do this whole Christian thing very well on my own (which unfortunately at the time I was forced to do since I lived in the middle of nowhere without a driver's license). Some of the stuff I wrote got pretty angsty in a psalmy kinda way... I wonder if I had actually been peeking at the psalms by myself at the time. I suppose that's where my talent for waxing poetic in the midst of spiritual depravation first began to rear its ugly head. Well that talent would eventually lead to at least a couple of good songs, and a load of bad ones.

Here, I'll share a couple. :)


Bringing It All Back Home (yes, it's the same title as a Bob Dylan album)

I take a long walk down liquored avenues
And arrive at a room I've just come to know
Where strangers meet and trade how-do-you-dos
And all the yellow lights are turned way down low
Like sweat-bees my thoughts itch, my memories ache
With all the crap that has gone before
Just one more dance, it'll be a piece of cake
To drop to my knees and say "no more"

And now chief among my fears
Is that I'm bored beyond my years
I can't bring myself to tears
In this land that I now roam
And it don't matter what I see
It don't matter what I touch
Baby I know this much
I'll be bringing it all back home

Laying still in a spinning room
My skin feeling like it's six days old
A friend on the phone foretold my doom
Well not all tales end well or so I'm told
Like dancers on the street, deaf to the tune
Caterwauling to the very end of time
I don't know when it all ends, but I hope it's soon
All this waiting's enough to blow my mind

And now chief among my fears
I still got a lifetime of years
To leave behind a trail of tears
In each forsaken place I roam
And it don't matter what I say
It don't matter what I do
Baby this much is true
I'll be bringing it all back home

Well I shuffle out to the place next door
Call it a hijrah if you will
The guy there sleeps with the lost and poor
These are some funky shoes I get to fill
Satterfield's his last name, I call him Walker
But I think his mother calls him Sloan
Last thing he says, he's going off to Alaska
He's gonna find a piece of mind to call his own

And I ain't decided since then
But for now I call him friend
And I guess it does depend
On the highways that we roam
It don't matter what he'll perceive
Or the lies that he'll believe
It's been written what he'll receive
He'll be bringing it all back home

Summer comes, the memories begin to fade
I play the part of the guilty child
Stumbling around in every evening shade
Like Nebuchadnezzar in the wild
Preparing them tables and hauling those trays
Setting up a banquet of emotional flux
Glancing aside in cautious ways
That girl looks just too damn good in a tux

It was hard to decide back then
What to do to be the perfect friend
But sometimes it don't depend
On where your imaginations roam
And it don't matter what I fear
It don't matter what I feel
But half of this is real
And I'll be bringing it all back home
Consider a while everything I ever did
The ticket's in my hand and it plainly tells
The information's there, it has not been hid
But each time I look I see something else
The damn plane's left now, oh what have I done
The midnight Greyhound is all I've got now
To get to Detroit before the noonday sun
Before my spirit is completely shot now

In my seat I bowed and prayed
For every second I've delayed
A black lady said every debt's been paid
For every bad road that I roam
And it don't matter what I do
It don't matter what I've done
I'm there before the stroke of one
Soon I'll be bringing it all back home

Now I feel safe in the colors and skin
Of a two-story shop lot and a round-the-clock din
But I should know I can never quite win
Yeah she comes and invades the state I am in
Making up signs to hang over the can
Exaggerating pouts just to catch her eye
Of frustration, I'm an undisputed fan
I'll be leading that charge til the day I die

In my seat I bowed and prayed
That the term won't be delayed
I learned she had not stayed
When I upped and left to roam
It don't matter if she's not there
I'm not there to care
I'm on the road to anywhere
I'll be bringing it all back home

Yes the pages look full to me now
Oh my head feels full to me now
The pages look full to me now
My head feels full to me now
By and by the pages turn
By and by they turn
I don't lift a finger
But by and by they turn

And chief among my fears
I'm getting ahead of my years
I have no right to shed my tears
Over the distances I roam
And it don't matter how I ache
It don't matter how I break
There's mercy for each mistake
Though I'm bringing it all back home

Now I spend my time in a room I rent
With four good friends that I've got
Their names are Moira, Grover, Brent
Well Mutley really lives on the parking lot
But something comes a-rattling my skull once more
The calm of evening bites me to the core
Where on earth have I seen this lady before
I won't get to ducking out anymore

And chief among my fears
It'll be like this all of my years
A different thing each time to start the tears
In every mockery I roam
And it don't matter if I end up bound
It don't matter if I remain alone
Baby it's all set in stone
I'll be bringing it all back home



Black and White in Berlin (inspired by the Wim Wenders movie 'Faraway, So Close!')

The darkness of temptation
Like a lioness on a rock
Hunts me in the twilight
As I rage against the clock
I heard, I spoke and faltered
I embraced the written word
But it's time itself that binds me
To the good news I heard

I made no promise to her
Though my heart was filled with hopes
Tossed about in raging storms
Hanging from the ropes
Would not penetrate the waters
To rest within their calm
But time itself compelled me
And eased me with its charms

Now everything is scattered
Living by the gun
Cast out of the garden
And dying in the sun
We recall when Adam was
Cursed to work the mud
When time itself exploded
In a litany of blood

Wrongs I did against you
You didn't need to hear
I would have left them all unsaid
Bound up in my fear
But they would have surfaced anyway
In a manner long foretold
For if time does not accuse you
It'll strand you in the cold

Now everything is wounded
Shattered where they lie
Between Gehenna's growl
And the red arch of the sky
Unwanted foundlings in
Anticipation of the son
Since time itself exploded
And kept us on the run