The EP we will release on December 10th at The Living Room is complete. There are approximately 2178 words spoken and/or sung on the album (give or take a "Yeah" or a "Uh-huh" here or there). For those of you who are interested, here are those words in the order they appear on the record. We don't have the funding for fancy inserts.
As you're reading along, feel free to make up your own tunes. Also, sometimes I can't always make out what Chris saying, even if I wrote it. So not everything will match up will what you hear live. Just like real rock and roll.
William Faulkner
Pressed into service by an unrepentant television, he arrives at the pen. He brandishes it clumsily, makes some marks on a page, turns up the volume on the knob inside his head.
“Fuck aesthetic! Aesthetic is accidental!” He screams this out the window into the night. He is a beast, scanning for chaos. Down below, he knows the men and women are silently shrieking.
Chorus 1
Ugliness and language is the beauty of the dead.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Feverish! Feverish! Like Faulkner’s dogs, always in pursuit of feelings with flesh! Life’s on the line here, gotta get it right. Rip it out! Every revelation is vicious.
Chorus 2
Stampede of belief and a quiet little bed.
Looks like what we’re looking for has already been read.
Managing his shoe salesman job has become a daily interference. After all, America is hard to conquer on a slope. He crushes his feet into size 8s as a matter of principle. He needs the pain. He goes to work every day and walks home. It does not matter if he goes home. By then, a portion of him has traveled on. Most remains. It’s not until much later, in the deepest part of the secret night, after he has had a glass several more, that his teeth come out. And the excavation begins. Blessed are the wounded. Blessed are the stubborn. Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the underwhelmed. Blessed are the damages inflicted under the night sky by every drop of anguish of the brothers and sisters of the brothers and sister. We are all bottomless.
Books are not riddles. Don’t fancy them. Press them against your skin. Smell the meat on those pages. Concentrate on the blemishes. Unless you’re only looking to run away.
You and Me
1.
Madness and ignominy are the best things that could happen to you.
As long as we’re built this way, I want you to sweat out your own sins and breathe new life into mine.
2.
My work is a sieve. It is burdened and fancies wanderlust.
That means it collapses very easily.
That means a lot of things get into it.
That means we all fall down.
Chorus (2x)
Whatever I conceal
Whatever I hold dear
Will always be estranged
From the way I appear.
3.
You can be logical.
You can mix in theology.
You can be trusted.
You won’t fall all the way down.
You can be kindness.
You can be struggle.
You can make decisions.
You can be told.
I am kneejerk solipsism waiting to be broken down.
My situation is more urgent.
4.
In the very last moment of night
I come back to you.
I come back because it is convenient
And because it is safe
And because it is my heart.
Declaration of Us
I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.
I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.
We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.
See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.
I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:
Charles Dickens.
Tom Hayes.
Grandma Sadie.
Natalie Maines.
Michael Rupert.
Tupac Shakur.
What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.
OK. Back to the story.
Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.
I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.
Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.
I want to write.
Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.
The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?
Health is hogwash.
Smart is good.
Murder is a deep feeling.
Damage is irreparable.
Good.
Stay damaged.
Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.
And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:
“I feel OK.
Thank you kindly.
I appreciate your concern.
But don’t worry about me very much.
‘Cause I’m not really here.”
He’ll never know what hit him.
Zornoza
That is the young writer's dilemma as I see it. Not just his, but all our problems is to save mankind from being de-souled as the stallion or boar or bull is gelded, to save the individual from anonymity before it is too late, and humanity has vanished from the animal called man. And who better to save man's humanity than the writer, the poet, the artist, since who should fear the loss of it more, since the humanity of man is the artist's life's blood? -William Faulkner
1.
Get ‘em out.
2.
Blended sounds
Blended sounds
Walk outside
And blended sounds.
3.
You don’t empathize.
You rationalize.
You don’t feel it.
You only steal it.
4.
Suffer . . .
5.
Fix things and hustle.
Fix things and breathe.
Factor in the unfactorable.
Maybe then I’ll believe.
6.
I’m not like you!
7.
Buck up and tell me who is used to it!
Buck up and tell me who is used to this!
Handsome men, handsome men.
8.
I can’t get turned on.
I can’t get turned on.
Maybe it’s because I’m bland.
I can’t get turned on.
9.
Everybody has a leader.
Everybody has a plan.
No one who connects the dots
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man,
Can fathom man.
Etcetera.
Dangerwalk
1.
Dragons.
It is not necessary to invent dragons.
They’re already on their way.
I am my most vicious at work.
Making rules.
Believing in ordinary angles.
I won’t think twice about cutting off your money
or your scholarship
or your air supply.
Viciousness is a decision.
It’s in my blood as we speak.
Lay down your fire. Lay down your showmanship.
2.
This verse is an old, broke-down shoe.
One with the leather tongue deflated, the sole worn through.
One that looks like you.
You don’t have to be defended.
Your leg up is an illusion that colleges reproduce.
You see without magic.
You are a deduction.
You dance to the music of calendars.
You old, little man.
You meaningless prick.
I will not let you into me.
Go find another legacy to shake down.
Lay down you’re tired. Lay down your selfishness/selflessness. This indiscretion has left you vacant.
3.
I am weaker than my muscular moments.
Those things flee at a bribing kiss
and the fallacy of relief.
My kingdom is in the wash
Being sanitized for reproduction.
It seems I will join your logic after all.
Lay down you’re free now. Go on discover. Please let me be now. I am not dead.
Ten years
The first time I fell in love it was Los Angeles and it was in a room with a lot of other people, a Tuesday I think, and I was an actor and a teenager, and she had the reddest hair and was taller than me, and everyone ate lunch and read their lines and laughed, and I never shook her hand, and then it went around in circles, and I stayed up in bed at night asking God for help, and I gave her mix tapes and wore clothes I thought would impress her, and the weather was always fine, and she thought I was fine, just not kissing material, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and she grew up into something else, a rock star, I still see her from time to time in magazines, she’s a superstar, and all I do is read books so I can see why she decided to pass.
The second time I fell in love it wasn’t winter but it should’ve been and I wasn’t an actor anymore, she was, maybe, and it was a Tuesday night, I think, and I spent two weeks leading up to her, two weeks of strategy in New York City diners, she said no anyway, and it was cold on weekends in Hopewell Junction, Halloween cold (remember Matt?) and the Knicks were always on the radio, and the way it was was something that will never happen again, and after I realized I was ashamed of it I started to make sentences out of love, the long and short of it, got happy with the gloom, showed off my wounds, and I liked the crying but it wasn’t just that, her sister got killed but it wasn’t just that, I would’ve helped her anyway, I was good, I was pure, I wanted to relieve her, she decided to pass.
The third time I fell in love with a real live believer and she scooped me up on the early side of a fade, first I decided on her, hid behind trees to watch her making out with accountants (future accountants actually, even worse), and we bounced around, we were hooting and hollering and when we made love it was actually worth it, she was worth more than a decent poem, finally she strangled me with her hands, four months and then the murder, my fault really but not much left of me, I was constantly crawling, I wrote her letters from Cheyenne and Provo and Los Angeles too, and I argued for what she left behind and she didn’t so much decide to pass but pretend it was never there, and the way it was was something that I will never feel again.
Then ten years went by . . .
The fourth time I fell in love is the love I’m in right now, and it won’t be the last time, that much I know, but I like it because I can’t watch her start to cry, I always have to make it stop, I’ll even go so far as to put a tissue underneath her eyes to see if I can stop the flow, and that makes her laugh, so this time I think I’ve almost got it right . . .
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