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How Many Roads?
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Tag Archives: homeless
How many times must I fall down?
New song alert!
When he was a kid he’d lie on his back in the sand just above the tideline where it dropped away to the bay, listening to the murmur of his grandparents talking by the firepit, watching the stars shimmer and wave above the fire, red glowing bits tracing the undulations as they crossed the starfield.
Sometimes, if no one else was nearby to be bothered, his grandfather would turn on the Sony transistor radio quietly, tuning in KFI 130 miles to the north, the reassuringly familiar voice of Vin Scully calling a Dodger game suggesting there was continuity even in an era when you could carry a radio in your coat pocket, Russian satellites were circling the globe — and the Dodgers would move from Brooklyn to L.A.
Dedicated readers will remember I posted a link to a discussion of an earlier version of this song in the songwriter’s forum I’ve been moderating for the last few weeks. The discussion there and your comments here helped me greatly. The changes were mostly not dramatic — but the extended discussion of the how many clowns section did prove especially helpful and I think it resulted in getting a lot closer to what I was after.
I was tempted to say that I wished I could have incorporated everyone’s suggestions — but in a very real way I did.
So I thank my friends there and here for their generous and thoughtful comments and suggestions. There wasn’t a bad one in the lot.
How Many Times Must I Fall Down?
lyrics
How Many Times Must I Fall Down?
How many roads
must I walk down
before I can sleep in the sand?
How many times
must i fall down
before I can
take someone’s hand?
How many doors
must I kick in
before I find
the magic one?
How many dreams
must I tear apart
before I see how it’s all done?
How did i get here?
where have I been?
How long have
I been this way?
I remember a time
I remember a place
I just don’t
remember the way
How many clowns
does it take to screw down
a reason for a man
to exist?
How many times must
I see the light?
There must be
something I missed…
How did i get here?
where have I been?
How long have
i been this way?
I remember a time
I remember a place
I just don’t remember the way
How many roads…
(C)2007, TK Major
All the way up… I was lookin’ back
Everybody there used to be somebody once…
Everyone had a story. Some had been factory workers laid off from a string of jobs. A couple had been suits, grinding away in corporate offices. There was an accountant. He liked to joke that he’d help the others with their taxes for a swig of Mad Dog 20/20.
For a while, there was even a doctor, a foreign guy who’d been caught overprescribing. Word was he’d overpribed half the inland empire and, when he lost his license and his world came down around him, warrants out for his arrest, the doc had run away, eventually spending all his cash and ending up under the wide overpass, on the railroad right-of-way… not more than a quarter mile from the harbor. With the rest of the nobodies who used to be somebody.
When people asked the lanky, long-haired guy with the cloudy blue eyes for his story, he kept it simple:
“One day… I just fell.”
That was it. All you could get out of him. He kept to himself and slept somewhere else, only coming into the encampment to trade and occasionally score something to take the edge off. Folks said he drank — but he drank alone. Someone said he often sat by the bluffs along the beach, a pony bottle in an inside pocket of his worn, gray parka.
One day some college kids came down into the camp.
“We heard about this guy, here. He used to be a rock star.” They said a name and a younger guy with half his teeth missing, taping a battered baby stroller back together with duct tape said, “Yeah, I heard of him.”
The college kids passed around a photo. It was one of those head and shoulder shots with the top of a guitar showing and a rough and chipped brick wall in the background.
“Oh, yeah. That guy. He comes around here maybe once or twice a week. He’s kind of a loner. So… what? He was a big rock star? When?”
When? A long, long time ago, indeed. A million miles and ten thousand years ago.
A condo, a fiance, a fancy car, an agent, a dog, and 25 guitars ago…
25 Guitars
previous versions
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
lyrics
25 Guitars
Go back home and
tell all the kids
this is what it’s like
when their hero hits the skids
go out to the farm and
tell my ma and pa
the higher you climb
the farther you must fall
I started out thinking
that I’d always know the score
now I hardly know
what I was counting for
I lost my one true love
my agent and my car
my condo and my dog
and twenty five guitars
but baby I was lost before
I ever got to town
I threw the map away
the day I let you down
yeah I hit the big time
but the big time it hits back
and all the way up
I was looking back
Wake me up and say its all a dream
we could drink coffee and talk about what it all means
I dreamed I dreamed I threw it all away
If I could just wake up back in your arms today
I was on the fat side of heaven
how come it felt like hell
each day was a struggle
one day I just fell
The bottom dropped out
I laughed the whole way down
with a noose around yer neck
LA is a much nicer town
Wake me up and say its all a dream
we could drink coffee and talk about what it all means
I dreamed I dreamed I threw it all away
If I could just wake up back in your arms today
Go back home and tell all the kids
this is what it’s like when their hero hits the skids
(C)1997, 2007, TK Major
I Saw My Baby on the Street Today
You see a lot of homeless people near the ocean, at least around here.
If you ask them, often as not they’ll tell you, if you have to be homeless somewhere, you might as well be homeless by the beach. And there are often pick-up jobs and day labor opportunities near the waterfront, and sometimes hideaways in coastal estuaries.
But sometimes I can’t help wondering — as I’m sure others have wondered — whether they end up along the water because other people keep pushing them away and, eventually, there’s just nowhere else to go.
The protagonist of this song finds himself torn between pity and forgotten love as he struggles with the natural inclination to turn away when he sees his estranged wife homeless on the street and she doesn’t recognize him.
I’ve seen the mutation and destruction of personality that can result from some sickness and injury and I don’t know that I would have the kind of selflessness it takes to make the sacrifice he makes by eventually taking her back in. (Eventually, meaning by the second short verse in a two verse song.)
I saw my baby on the street today
I saw my baby on the street today
she didn’t recognize me I turned away
I shoulda said
come back baby
come back home
how could I leave ya out here all alone(in the cold
I know youre crazy
and it’s tearing me apart
but I vowed to love you
til’ death do us part
come back baby come back home
i jusc can lveave you out there in the cold
unpack your shopping crat
take a nice long bath
it ain’t like the old days
but the worst is past
I know youre crazy
and it’s tearing me apart
but I vowed to love you
til’ death do us part
(C)1990, TK Major