Big, Nasty World

When I was a kid, I was so hungry for life I just couldn't imagine how people would want to escape samsara, the illusory world of seemingly endless life and death that Vedic religions believe traps us all -- at least unless or until we can achieve ultimate union with God by transcending the desires and fears that bind us to this life. (Or that's my twenty-five cent write-up, anyhow.)

But after I'd kicked around a few more decades I started understanding how someone could become world weary -- even in the heart of what many folks here in the temporal world might consider a demi-paradise. It isn't so hard for me, now, to imagine how someone in, say, the slums of Calcutta, might long for union with the source of everything -- particularly if it got him out of the slums of Calcutta.

Anyway, now I appreciate the stoic nobility of those who "soldier on" in the face of everyday challenge to their sense of purpose -- no matter how temporal -- how ephemeral -- that purpose might be.

That said, the melodrama in this song cracks me the heck up.

It was a challenging time for me when I wrote it and it would have been more so had I known what would unfold in the years to come. All the same, the melodrama cracks me up and that's why I think I really like this song. It was like I was trying to perfect my "street walk" to get through the very tough neighborhood of what us over the hill types like to think of as the downhill slide.

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BIG NASTY WORLD

wake up each morning
and I reach for my bible
I reach for my razor
and I reach for my gun

I reach for the dream
I was dreaming last night
but each single morning
that dream is gone

'cause it's a
big nasty world
terrible mean place
It's hard to stay alive
and it's hard to keep the faith

its a rotten world
a grim shabby place
but out of the endless depths of time
you're here today


I'm tired of living
and I'm tired of dying too
I'm tired of tomorrow
and all the shhh that I've been thru
I'm tired of forever
and I'm tired of yesterday
I'm tired of never
and the man the child became

'cause it's a big nasty world...

I used to love ya baby
and you know that's true
I used to love God
and you know that too
I used to myself
It was the hardest of all
I loved the whole GD world
but that was before the Fall

'cause it's a
big nasty world
terrible mean place
It's hard to stay alive
and it's hard to keep the faith

its a rotten world
a grim shabby place
but out of the endless depths of time
honey, you're here today

Someday, Baby

Ever done the right thing when it came to someone who was in love with you that you didn't feel the same about?

Me, neither.

But being a sensitive and empathetic guy (I'm assuming you just started reading this blog so I figure I can say anything) I figured I could imagine what someone might say to let the girl or guy down easy.

In this case, someone who likes to look at the Big Picture...


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Someday Baby

someday, baby
you'll be looking down on me
but don't you ever think I don't know
what you're bound to see
it's just destiny
it's just got to be
that's my prophecy

someday, baby
when you've got this
whole thing straight
after you contemplate
maybe meditate
you'll see that it was fate
it had to be this way
besides
it's all too late

someday, baby
you'll be laughing in the sun
I can see you with your Only One
and I know that it just has to be
it's prophecy
it is destiny

someday, baby
this will all be washed away
that's what the old men say
but it'll be okay
a million years from today
it'll end our pain

someday, baby
youll be laughing in the sun
I can see you with your Only One
and you know it just has to be
it is prophecy
it's destiny

7/27/98

His or Mine

Continuing right along in the slow boil, passive aggressive vein... This one goes back to August 1990.

There's not a lot of meat on this song's bones but it always seemed to go over pretty well in my shows. Maybe it was just from getting through some of the tongue-twisting lyrics -- when I did.

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His or Mine

how come you love me
how come you hate me
how come you just won't leave me a alone
did you ever have the notion
you ain't gotta monopoply on emotion
honey can't you tell my pain is real

honey come here put your hand on my heart
there's a world of feelings trapped inside
look in my eyes
and tell me once and for all
honey make your mind up
are you his or mine

how come you love me
how come you hate me
how come I can't tell them apart
where was your conscience
when your mind told my body
to make sure that your soul
had my heart

honey come here put your hand on my heart
there's a world of feelings trapped inside
look in my eyes
and tell me once and for all
honey make your mind up
are you his or mine

When You Look Through Me

Not sure, really, why the lyrics of this 1994 tune came to me.

I wasn't in a relationship at the time and I wasn't thinking of any specific relationship from the past. Still, the situation talked to me. In a sullen, passive-aggressive way, of course.

Though it comes off here as a kind of mutant bossa, I initially conceived of the music as a European tango. I'm not a big fan of European tango, with its cliche rhythm and the cartoonish dance styles associated with it, but I thought that very baggage suited the style to the lyrics.

(I go on at length, because I am a big fan of the modern Argentine tango of Astor Piazzolla. I saw him in performance in 1987 at UCLA, and it was an amazingly deep musical evening. No cliches in Piazzola's tango.)


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When You Look Through Me

You ask me where I've been
I wonder what it matters
I wonder why you should care at all
I wonder what you see
when you look thru me
I feel like a ghost in my own home

Oh but weren't the old days grand
our lives together like love letters in the sand
raise a glass to the past
but don't look through
to a time when you loved me and I loved you

I go out walking
you stay home talking
those people on the phone know more about me than I do
I hear your laughter
I don't hear what you say after
but I hear that I'm a joke in my home town


Oh but weren't the old days grand
our lives together like love letters in the sand
raise a glass to the past
but don't look through
to a time when you loved me and I loved you

Sheena No Sheena (No Sheena No)

This song started with me dropping my head into my hands, addressing a friend who was not present but who was being talked about by a pair of caring but exasperated friends, saying, "Sheena... no... Sheena."

You probably get the drift.

But no vexation is so troubling -- or irritating -- that it can't be turned into art. Well, maybe not art, exactly, in this case. But something trapped in the no man's land between edification and amusement, yet somehow probably failing both.

Sheena eventually quit her wild ways, grew up, settled down, and, last time I checked was a happy suburban soccer mom.

She was lucky.

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Sheena No Sheena (No Sheena No)

Sheena was a spy
for the FBI
her contact never showed
and she never wondered why

but the saucer people came
and the hours just disappeared
the dreams began again
and the eyes behind the mirrors

Sheena no Sheena
no Sheena no

the house began to talk
and the giant spiders came
she went out for a walk
she was gone for seven days

Sheena no Sheena
no Sheena no

in the morning she was fine
her eyes were bright and clear
I've got two left she cooed to me
and dropped one in her beer

Sheena no Sheena
no Sheena no

Paperback

There was one thing on my mind when I wrote this song.

I wanted to get in the line, "Get down, baby, get out tonight" -- in something that couldn't be mistaken for a party song.

And I think I nailed that aspect. No one will party to this song and if they do, well, I'm not responsible.

I was thinking about this song after the fact and realized that it fits nicely into my plans to re-invent myself as a bitter old has been. As opposed, you know, to a bitter old never was. It's probably a minor distinction to most folks, I suppose, but I think my brothers and sisters in the music biz will appreciate it. At any rate, I have a song, Tell All the Kids, that's specifically about my fall from grace. Or the fall from grace I never had. But, anyhow, that ain't this song.

So, as this song spilled out not quite a decade ago, I realized I was telling its story from the point of view of some imaginary, long-suffering rockstar, addressing, for what he evidently hopes is the last time, his histrionic, soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend as she pursues a theatrically anguished voguing session attop the retaining wall of his penthouse terrace.

Get down, baby.


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Paperback
AKA Get Down Baby (Get Out Tonight)

Everywhere it sez you love me
but ya never read the truth
'cause when I look into your eyes
I can see who's getting screwed

Get down, baby. Get packed,
get out tonight.
You're gone, baby,
that's right you heard me right.

A secret's not a secret
unless it has been told
our private life's not really ours
until all the rights are sold.

Get down, baby...


you will get some mileage
from that small town trollop trip
but the journey's strictly one way, babe
and heavenward ain't it

Get down, baby...


history will tell us
all about the truth
until that time I'll do fine
your quickie paperback will do

Get down, baby...
get packed, get out tonight
you're gone
baby
that's right
you heard me right

3/10/96

(C) 2005, TK Major

There Ain't No Heart in My Heart Anymore

Sometimes, back in the days of my fitful career as punkrocker-turned-folkie, I used to tag myself as the Bard of Bitterness, Denial, and Regret.

My ol' man used to always say, If you've got a lemon tree, make lemonade.

[This was written on a stormy Saturday in Mexico I wrote about in the first week of the AYoS project, in my post for the song, Looking for Trouble. It was the second of three songs I wrote that day. I subsequently posted the third, Not One of Those Dreams.]

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There Ain't No Heart in My Heart Anymore

There ain't no heart
in my heart no more
I don't know where it's gone
but it's gone for sure
Maybe it went with you
when you went out that door
but there ain't no heart
in my heart anyore

I feel like giving up and maybe I should
I cant go on and I know it's no good
There aint no meaning
in life any more
no there aint no heart
in my heart anymore

The end just means
we begin again
where did you say I signed
I've lived this life
one two many times
I don't think I can take it twice

Too many loves
too many lies
too many broken lives

too much night
too little love and way too little love
and nothing to show for a life

refrain
There ain't no heart
in my heart no more
I don't know where it's gone
but it's gone for sure
Maybe it went with you
when you went out that door
but there ain't no heart
in my heart anymore

(C) 1981,1989,2005 TK Major