All right... Why a duck?

I walked along the aqueduct
just before the dawn.
The sun looked old and tired as it came up
but at least now the night is gone...

The old college try.

One last night of talking. Crying. Yelling, maybe. Holding each other quietly. And then walking out into the morning air and knowing nothing will ever be the same again.

Do it enough times, you get good at it.

I had favorite spots I'd go when I was nursing a broken heart. I don't want to give them away... especially since some of them were also my favorite spots for winning a girl over... crashing surf has often had a positive affect on my love life. It's the ions or something.

But there aren't any good aqueducts around here, though. Not that I know of. Maybe some up in the mountains. So that part of this song was pretty much fiction. Southern California leans more toward concrete-trapped rivers... which have their own parched charm, I suppose but have never drawn me through the hazy nether-consciousness of a broken heart as have various seaside cliffs, dumpy oil well-covered hills overlooking endless grids of twinkling lights, or lonely stretches of sand.

But I have strolled along a few aqueducts in North America and Europe and I thought there was something kind of evocative about the notion.

Also, characters in my songs had walked by oceans, rivers, streams, floated on ponds, splashed in puddles, driven along lonely coasts and generally explored most of the other song-worthy picturesques that come easily to mind.

That's why.



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Now, Baby It's Never

Everything you say
seems to mean goodbye
Though we talked forever
I never did know why

Now baby its never
our time wont come again
This time forever baby
This time it's the end

Tonight when I kissed you
it burned me to my soul
Everything I thought I knew
was all a lie I know

Now baby its never...

I walked along the aqueduct
just before the dawn
The sun looked old and tired as it came up
but at least, now, the night is gone

Now baby its never
our time wont come again
This time forever baby
This time it's the end

(C)1991, TK Major

Up against the wall...

[update 2006-11-11 - mp3 content corrected]

"The true revolutionary is guided by love."
- Che Guevara

Nah... it's not one of those up-against-the-wall things... but it's that disconnect between the notorious phrase of itimidation, harrassment, and implicit death threat and a story of timeless, hopeless love that fired up my creative energies... not unlike how a chemical battery generates current, I suppose.

You'll notice that there's some real ambiguity in these lyrics. I considered different ways to try to make the song less ambiguous -- but each one seemed to diminish the song, rob it of power. So I left the words more or less the way they spilled out.

You'll have to figure out for yourself what goes on in this song...


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studio version [soundclick]
May 26, 2006
October 31, 2005


10,000 years

Up against the wall
the moon was in her eyes
I felt her heart beat
I heard her sigh

I touched her cheek
a tear met my hand
I didn't know it then
but that tear fell to her plan

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I've been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

I have seen that shining light
one too many times
I have heard the angels sing
while I riddled the devil's rhymes

I have seen your eyes
burn into my soul
I have seen the truth
and I will never again be whole

10,000 years...

I'd do it all again
and still come back for more
I know how it's all gotta end
but I'll never know what it's all for

Until the end of time
there's not that long to go
I thought I knew heaven's secrets
what the hell did I know?

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I've been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

A Whole 'Nother New Morning

Nice day, today.

Yep.

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This time tomorrow, I reckon where I'll be...

It's Public Domain Sunday.

I just declared it.

So, today's entry is the traditional folk classic (or an abbreviated, radically reworked version thereof), "Tom Dooley," a song of love, betrayal, murder... and possibly deception and cover-up, depending on what back-story you buy into.

This rather irreverent (and remarkably sloppy) version is a veritable simulation of being stuck in a backroom jam session at a party circa 19-something-or-other with me behind the guitar (and me on some rather chaos-driven bongos... obviously, it's kind of a cubist, asynchronous simulation).


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Tom Dooley

(Traditional)

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

I met her on the mountain, there I took her life
Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Hadn’t been for Grayson,
I’d-a been in Tennessee

Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Hang down your head and cry ah poor boy, ah well-ah
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head your head Dooley and cry
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

This time tomorrow,
reckon where I’ll be
Down in some lonesome valley
hangin’ from a white oak tree

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die
Poor boy, you’re bound to die