Tag Archives: suicide

The water’s cold, the moon is pale…

Forget Her Eyes

There had been a lot of women. At least by the standards of happy, well-adjusted people. That’s how he figured it these days.

But for a long time, he’d been proud on some level he knew to be infantile, silly, superficial, tawdry… but proud, nonetheless.

He’d lost track but one day an old pal challenged him to count them up.

There were more than he remembered, and he felt a secret thrill as he tallied them up… but as the scribbled list grew, there were more and more question marks for last names, and more than a few forgotten first names, as well.

And as the list grew, so too did his increasing sense that there was something ultimately pathetic about the list. There were a lot of flings, of course, a handful of one night stands, a little cheatin’, a little slippin’ around…
But there were some relationships he really tried at… or at least that’s what he’d told himself at the time. But every time a love affair or relationship went down in flames, he consoled himself with the promise of adventure and new romance.

And after a while he began to wonder if maybe it wasn’t just adventure and romance that he was seeking. Maybe the hard work of building a relationship — as more than a couple of girls had phrased it — maybe that was just too much work.

Adventure, romance, sex… that was the easy part...

previous versions
Monday, November 21, 2005
Tuesday, March 14, 2006

lyrics
Forget Her Eyes
[aka Swim or Die]

forget her eyes forget her voice
forget her soft caress
she’s just some phony made up girl
up inside your lonely head

forget the night that could have been
the time that never was
forget the dreams that turned to lies
then crumbled into dust

swim or die
it’s understood
I know just what to do
swim or die
it sounds- so – good
if I could only move

the waters cold
the moon is pale
the lights sparkle on the pier
the musics faint & far away
the ocean’s like a mirror

I see myself for what I am
it all becomes so clear
just a wave upon the sea
and this ocean’s just a tear

swim or die
it’s understood
I know just what to do
swim or die
it sounds- so – good
if I could only move

(C)1996, 2008, TK Major

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A Moody Guy

There ain't no heart in my heart anymore...

OK… I guess it’s no surprise a lot of us theoretically creative types have… oh, let’s call them… mood issues.

Of course, we don’t all go the Elliott Smith route and there are, undoubtedly, some happy-go-lucky types who keep pouring out music and words (or other forms of art) and never once think about plunging a dagger into our own hearts.

Well… there must be.

But it ain’t me.

We all have ups and downs, of course. And, perhaps, it stands to reason that those who “live large” will have higher highs and lower lows. Not to mention more erratic cycles of up and down, longer, shorter… maybe a little like heart arrhythmia, I suppose: too fast, too slow, pounding, barely beating… that’s what the emotional life of some of us is like.

A life of interesting times, you might say.

Anyhow, I’m not bitching. Good grist for the kind of songs I write. (Or do I write the kind of songs I write because of… yeah, you think?)

But it’s been a long and rocky journey, too. And, as those adept at reading between the lines have probably already sussed, after a few decades of alternating — and, not unoften, overlapping — periods of attempted monogamy and semi-wanton carousing, all of it well-lubricated by society’s drug-of-choice, alcohol, I have in recent years led, by comparison, an almost monastic life of relative seclusion and sobriety.

That might sound like something healthy and mature — and, to be certain, I have, thank God, no desire to try to squeeze back inside the bottle that contained me for so many years. But alcohol did, for me, have a leveling effect on my moods. It sort of mushed them together.

And, honest to God, for me, a good, nasty black out drunk and killer hangover seemed to have the same kind of salubrious effect claimed for electroshock therapy. You wake up, you can’t remember anything, you ache all over… but whatever it is you were obsessively worrying about is pretty well forgotten, just part of the smear of history. Past history.

That was the good part of drinking, for me.

The bad part was that what started out as an occasional blow-out became, over the years, a somewhat more subdued, but nightly, then daily routine. (Well, the two beers every morning before coffee counted for something, yeah? After breakfast, I was good ’til cocktail hour… as long as that began about 5 or 6 pm and lasted until closing.) I had many adventures over the years with a bottle in one or both hands… but at the end I was just watching TV and sluggin back one Bud after another. The guy I swore, when I was 19, that I would never be.

But no good deed ever goes forever unpunished… the receding tides of alcohol revealed a jagged and rocky emotional landscape I’ve found myself picking my way through, ever since.

It’s an interesting life, still.

Internet Archive page for this recording

previous versions
October 02, 2005
January 27, 2006

There Ain’t No Heart in My Heart No More

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

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 just ain’t no heart
in my heart no more

7/27/98

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A ship made of frozen tears: When Baby Can’t Go On

When Baby Can't Go On

Y‘know, I still remember one night real late, a single dog barking way off and Baby lying in bed next to me looking at the roof of the trailer and she takes a drag on her smoke and says: “In the post-literate culture, where cliche and aphorism take on the social importance of fable and where scandal takes on the importance of myth… the truly realized and fully actualized individual must, of necessity, be the architect of the deconstruction of her own mythos and ultimately of her own self-immolation…”

She’s quiet for a long little while while she takes another drag off the cigarette and then she says: “On some kind of level, anyway.”

When Baby Can’t Go On

When Baby can’t go on
she won’t wonder why
you open up the bottle
and go home when it’s dry
when the darkeness hits the dawn
and the ocean meets the sky
there was never in her always
and forever in her goodbye

baby lived forever
for almost thirty years
then she sailed away one day
on a ship made of frozen tears

baby had a house those days
way up the shore
we all knew that she was hiding
but no one knew what for

the last time i saw her
i knew it was her time
there was sadness in her laughter
and a long-way-off in her eyes

baby lived forever
for almost thirty years
then she sailed away one day
on a ship made of frozen tears

(C)1994, 2006 TK Major

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When Baby Can’t Go On

When Baby Can't Go On

 

 

Like Connan Doyle killing off Sherlock Holmes, I decided in 1998 that it was time to write my most famous character out of future episodes…

Maybe my heart wasn’t in killing off Baby, the self-destructive, half-woman, half-goddess who tormented the wounded, emotionally tortured protagonists of more than a handful of my songs. At any rate, I found myself writing this pretty much by brainpower alone — and I’m afraid it shows.

Like the half-hearted series finale wrap-up of a canceled TV series, this song shows the wrenchmarks of uninspired, but dogged craftsmanship (y’ listinening, David Lynch?)

Still, I thought it was appropriate as a wrap up for those previous (and thoroughly inspired) Baby songs here in the last few days of Phase One of AYoS. (Phase One, for the unitiated, is the roughly first third of A Year of songs wherein I set out to do every [presentable] song in my songbook, one after another [although in no special order]. Henceforth, my song choices will be guided by whim, inspiration, and the fierce whispering of my legion of demons, guardian angels, and muses.)

Careful readers — or those familiar with popular serial literature and media — will note that, while Baby appears to have made her final voyage into the sunset… we really can’t be sure… perhaps she will show up in some future song, resurrected by sheer force of personality like the indestructible villain of an old Saturday afternoon serial.

When Baby Can’t Go On

When Baby can’t go on
she wont wonder why
you open up the bottle
and go home when its dry
when the darkeness hits the dawn
and the ocean meets the sky
there’s never in her “always”
and forever in her “goodbye”

baby lived forever
for almost thirty years
then she sailed away one day
on a ship of frozen tears

baby had a house those days
way up the shore
we all knew that she was hiding
but we never knew what for

baby lived forever…

the last time i saw her
i knew it was her time
there was sadness in her laughter
and a long-way-off in her eyes

baby lived forever
for almost thirty years
then she sailed away one day
on a ship of frozen tears

1998-08-06
(C)1998, TK Major

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