A Year of Songs

Dharma.

It’s the damnedest thing.

Not to mix metaphysical and cultural paradigms here.

We are born into a life we have no business pretending to understand, and, if we spend too much time pondering that, we either drive ourselves crazy or become paralyzed, frozen in the amber of our own, absurd ontological dialectic…

Like a deer, you can stare, transfixed, into the oncoming light of something you can’t decide is destiny or chaos or both… surrendering with the thought that, whatever it is, it’s probably bigger than you.

Or you can act like a human.

And run like hell.

YouTube
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video [normal]

previous versions
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Saturday, October 06, 2007

lyrics
Angel’s Vacation

He tried to do what was right
but it always turned out wrong
the heavenly host was not impressed
and he had to blow out of town

he came down to earth near Phoenix
in the middle of the summertime
he walked to the first bar he saw
and ordered whiskey, beer, and wine

An angel came down from heaven
hoping to get away
he stewed in the hotel bar all night
and baked by the pool all day

He pushed the desk clerk to a breakdown
and drove the other guests away
he punched out the hotel detective
and ran off with the pretty dark eyed maid

They laid out on the lam for 40 days and nights
and on the 41st they had to rest
the pretty dark eyed maid was all worn out
and the angel was scared to death

he knew they’d have no trouble tracking him down
angels have this certain glow
and when they said it was time to leave
brother, then it’s time to go

An angel came down from heaven
hoping to get away
he stewed in the hotel bar all night
and baked by the pool all day

(C)1990,2009, TK Major

New song alert!Served up with a heaping helping of formalist irony, this work is probably a victim of – uh, excuse me — inspired by – the zeitgeist, in the form of an overheard movie review.

This song (below and in the vid above) may test your patience for vague mysticism, veiled romanticism, and even vaguer references to late second millennium solipsistic philosophies.

Then again, you may think it’s deep, profound, and oddly moving… in which case, I’ve got a couple of screening passes for you to this new movie you’ve probably heard about…

lyrics
If Yesterday Was Tomorrow

If yesterday was tomorrow
I’d still be here today
As joy is born from sorrow
And night is bride to day

If the world and stars
were in my soul
and time was in this tear
I’d still have wandered all this far
I’d still be standing here

If love was not the only thing
that never had to die
still I’d spend my next life remembering
but never knowing why

If today was all there’d ever be
and tomorrow never came
I’d stay right here, I’d never leave
I’d do it all the same

If the world and stars
were in my soul
and time was in this tear
I’d still have wandered all this far
I’d still be standing here…

(C)2008, TK Major

Love is both a many splendoured thing and a royal PITA, not necessarily in that order, as everyone who’s been paying attention knows by now.

That’s the nominal excuse for this song — but the real deal is just that I wanted to write a song with two then-trendy girls’ names in the title — which was originally “Amber Said Hello When Ashley Said Goodbye.” But that wouldn’t fit in the song database of the old Mp3.com so it got cut down to size back in the heady days leading up to the millennial odometer flip.

Today’s song is available as both a streaming YouTube video as well as a downloadable or streamable Mp3. And there are even more download and streaming options available (see the more stream & DL options in the inset to the right).

previous versions
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Friday, March 09, 2007

lyrics
When Ashley Said Goodbye

Amber said hello when Ashley said good-bye
I said hold on but there’s no wondering why
when love wants in, love can knock down your door

I said Amber, I think this is forever
she said baby youre yanking on my tether
when all is said and done love will even up the score

Love will fool ya love can kill ya
love is all that love can give ya
and still you keep crawling back for more

love is funny; love is cruel
love’ll make Einstein act just like a fool
love’ll make a tomcat dive in-a swimmin’ pool

All these toys all these games
all these pretty dollhouses going up in flames
if you play around enough you know you’re gonna get burned

Love will fool ya love can kill ya
love is all that love can give ya
and still you keep crawling back for more

(C)2008, TK Major

play the embedded version above or go to YouTube to see the
HI FI / HI REZ VIDEO

You know the old saw about the mechanic driving the smoke-belching, beat up, barely running car… As a database guy in real life, you’d think I’d be more on top of my own IT…

But until recently I’d been using a highly informal matrix of data queries, guesswork, and eyeballing to figure out which of my ~150 songs was most due for a new, improved version — or at least a shot at one — here in AYoS.

But I finally broke down and used some of the handy dandy aggregate query functions that Bill Gates kindly hammered into my local DB manager, Access, and set up a kind of one-stop for quickly spotting songs that had only been done once or twice and/or which had never had a version score high in my idiosyncratic personal rating system (which is currently hidden from your sight, thank you very much).

Even though this song, “Without Warning Blues” goes back at least a few decades, a reasonable performance had so far escaped me. This one just barely clears my rather low bar

lyrics
Without Warning Blues [video]

(C)2008, TK Major

Sometimes you just see how it’s all going to go down. You look and look and no matter how you look, you see the same end coming.

But not everyone sees it. And when it comes, it hits them hard.

Maybe it’s the sad wisdom born of years of life, death and change, as they say in the comics, but at a certain zoom level, the pain and the pleasure and the sorrow and the joy start developing some kind of symmetry. Not, perhaps, the nice, even, balanced kind… but an inner symmetry that is at once reassuring and sobering.

I’m thinking, of course, of that moment in the narrative of life when a wised up adult tells his or her young and heartbroken lover, You’ll be better off without me, doll. It’s a big world out there. You’re gonna find some guy who really loves you — not a guy like me, always out for number one, looking for the next adventure, the next good time. You’re going to find someone who deserves a fine girl like you…

The funny thing is, after a while, you see it happening. You see one of the perfectly good girls you threw away out on the street with her new number one and they look so happy. A few years later you see them out shopping with the kids, the happy family. At a certain point, you look twice and, if you try real hard, it can almost look good for a few moments.

But that’s their destiny.

previous versions
Friday, October 07, 2005
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Sunday, March 02, 2008

lyrics
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
(C)2008, TK Major