Bright Eyes

"At The Bottom Of Everything"

So there was this woman and
she was on an airplane and
she's flying to meet her fiancé
sailing high above the largest ocean
on planet earth and she was seated
next to this man who you know
she had tried to start a conversation
but really the only thing
she heard him say was to order his bloody mary
and she's sitting there and she's reading
this really arduous magazine article about this
third world country that she couldn't
even pronounce the name of and
she's feeling very bored and very despondent
and then uh suddenly there's this huge mechanical failure and one of the engines gave out
and they started just falling thirty thousand feet
and the pilots on the microphone and he's saying,
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Oh My God, I'm Sorry"
and apologizing and she looks at the man and she says,
"where are we going" and he looks at her and he says,
"We're going to a party, it's a birthday party.
It's your birthday party, happy birthday darling.
We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much."
and then he starts humming this little tune and it kind of goes like this:

One, Two, One, Two, Three, Four
We must talk in every telephone, get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues from the books we have read
And to the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist who sleeps but doesn't dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing

And it'll go like this
While my mother waters plants, my father loads his gun.
He says, "Death will give us back to god,
just like the setting sun
is returned to the lonesome ocean."

And then they splashed into the deep blue sea
It was a wonderful splash

We must blend into the choir, sing a static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And to this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry where the bats in moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

And then we'll get down there,
way down to the very bottom of everything
and then we'll see it, we'll see it, we'll see it, we'll see it

Oh my morning's coming back
The whole worlds waking up
Oh the city bus is swimming past
I'm happy just because
I found out I am really no one

"Waste Of Paint"

I have a friend, he is made mostly of pain.
And he wakes up, drives to work,
and then straight back home again.
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper.
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover.
And I tried to tell him he had a sense
of color and composition so magnificent.
And he said

"Thank you, please
but your flattery
is truly not
becoming me.
Your eyes are poor.
You're blind.
You see,
no beauty could have come from me.
I'm a waste
of breath,
of space,
of time."

I knew a woman, she was dignified and true.
And her love for her man was one of her many virtues.
Until one day, she found out that he had lied
and she decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie.
But she was grateful for everything that had happened.
And she was anxious for all that would come next.
But then she wept.
What did you expect?
In that big, old house
with the cars she kept.
"Oh!" and "such is life," she often said.
With one day leading
her to the next,
you get a little closer to your death,
which was fine with her.
She never got upset
and with all the days she may have left,
she would never clean
another mess
or fold his shirts
or look her best.
She was free
to waste
away
alone.

Last night, my brother he got drunk and drove.
And this cop pulled him off to the side of the road.
And he said, "Officer! Officer! You got the wrong man.
No, no, I'm a student of medicine, the son of a banker, you don't understand!"
The cop said, "No one got hurt, you should be thankful.
And your carelessness, it is something awful.
And no, I can't just let you go.
And though your father's name is known,
your decisions now are yours alone.
You are nothing but a stepping stone
on a path
to debt,
to loss,
to shame."

The last few months I have been living with this couple.
Yeah, you know, the kind who buy everything in doubles.
They fit together, like a puzzle.
And I love their love and I am thankful
that someone actually receives the prize that was promised
by all those fairy tales that drugged us.
And they still do me.
I'm sick, lonely,
no laurel tree,
just green envy.
Will my number come up eventually?
Like Love's some kind of lottery,
where you scratch and see
what is underneath.
It's "Sorry",
just one cherry,
or "Play Again."
Get lucky.

So I've been hanging out down by the train's depot.
No, I don't ride.
I just sit and watch the people there.
They remind me of wind up cars in motion.
The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions.
And I want to scream out that it is all nonsense.
All your lives one track,
can't they see it's pointless?
But just then, my knees
give under me.
My head feels weak
and suddenly
it's clear to see
it's not them but me,
who has lost my self-identity.
As I hide behind
these books I read,
while scribbling
my poetry,
like art could save a wretch like me,
with some ideal ideology
that no one can hope to achieve.
And I am never real;
it is just a sketch in me.
And everything I made is trite
and cheap
and a waste
of paint,
of tape,
of time.

So now I park my car down by the cathedral,
where the floodlights point up at the steeples.
Choir practice was filling up with people.
I hear the sound escaping as an echo.
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle.
When the voices blend they sound like angels.
I hope there's some room still in the middle.
But when I lift my voice up now to reach them.
The range is too high,
way up in heaven.
So I hold my tongue,
forget the song,
tie my shoe
and start walking off.
And try to just keep moving on,
with my broken heart
and my absent God
and I have no faith
but it's all I want,
to be loved.
And believe,
in my soul.
In my soul.