Monthly Archives: January 2007

Two fools for the price of one…

Two Fools

Fool.

Terminator menu system-like, I see a short list of possible angles and ledes…

1) Since the beginning of time, the fool has symbolized man’s ambivalence about the relationship between knowledge, wisdom, and grace…

2) The idiot. The savant. Are they not two sides of the same illusory coin of enlightenment…?

3) In the medieval courts, who better than the sovereign’s own chosen fool to plumb the inner machinations of that court or even to orchestrate those intrigues…

I dunno.

Here are two songs that both have the word fool in the title.

The first is something of an oldie, going back to the early 80s but here rearranged somewhat, different chords, a slightly darker feel.

The second is, even by the rough standards of AYoS, pretty sloppy. Intentionally sloppy — but that’s like intentionally ugly in a painting: you have to be an artist to make it work. Here, we just have sloppiness. Still, there’s a cheery, who gives a good goshdarn exuberance to it that matches the relatively optimistic lyrics.

Relatively optimistic, that is, for this writer. I still manage to get in a line about falling down the well of one’s own soul, bottomless, hell, yadda yadda. So, anyhow…

4) None of the above.

No Fool

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous versions
9 November 2005
19 February 2006

No Fool

Sitting all alone
by my telephone
Waited all day
but that’s okay
I could wait all night
and that would be all right
for a woman like you
I would wait all my life

Sometimes I pull myself together
and I go downtown
I’m all dressed up
and I wander around
and I feel like a fool
I can’t stop thinking of you
When you’re all alone
this city’s so cruel

I walk along the river
until the stars come out
I sit by myself alone in the dark
and I wonder
Oh yes I wonder
I’m just like a child
but I am no fool
I know it’s over

(C)1980, TK Major

I Should Stop Being Such a Fool

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version
Friday, October 13, 2006

I Should Stop Being Such a Fool

I told my self
Life has no meaning
I told myself
I should stop dreaming
I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

I told myself
love’s just a lie
I told myself
I should get wise
I told myself
being kind is just being cruel

Lookin in my heart
was like lookin’ in a well
and if there was a bottom
you couldn’t really tell
as dark as midnight
all the way down to hell
one day I looked in
and then I just fell

Then I looked in my soul
and I saw that it was empty
and I said to myself
just like the rest of them
and i said out loud
from here on
it’s all ’bout number one

But I added that up
and I factored in forever
I subtracted my dreams then
divided that by never
When I saw the bottom line
I sat down — I knew that
I was done

Lookin in my heart…

Back then I told my self
Life has no meaning
And I told myself
I should stop dreaming
Then I told myself
I should stop being such a fool

But then I thought to myself
what’s it all for?
and I thought to myself
must be something more
and I realized all at once
there’s more than one kind of fool

(C) 2006, TK Major

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I’ll be loving you until I’m put in my grave…

A diamond ring in the gutter

A sense of betrayal hung over America when this song was written. It was so heavy you could taste the bitterness in your mouth.

That feeling seeped into seemingly every aspect of our lives, from religion to family, to romance, like a corrosive leak, slowing eating its way through the infrastructure of our lives.

I wrote about that in the political sense when I posted this song before but I neglected to explore the broader implications of that acidic doubt and distrust… how it ate into not just societal institutions like government, schools, jobs, church, but right into the family and and the most intimate relationships between people.

Everything we knew was wrong.

That’s how it looked, most days.

But when I wrote this song — one of my very first — I wanted to craft a simple expression of faith in love in the face of doubt and fear… or get laid. I can’t remember which. Probably the latter.

But it’s a nice little song, anyhow, I think.

Internet Archive page for this recording

previous AYoS versions
Thursday, Oct 27, 2005
Sunday, March 19, 2006

What Promises Mean Today

I know what promises mean today
I don’t care I believe in you anyway
I don’t care what anyone says
I’ll believe in you until I’m dead
But at the rate things are going
That could be any day
I don’t care
I believe in you anyway

You say you’re my lover
my sister my brother my friend
I’m surprised you don’t claim
to be my mother my father
and the priest that the church said they’d send at the end

And I still don’t care what anyone says
I’ll be loving you until I’m put in my grave
but at the rate things are going
that could be any day
I don’t care I believe in you anyway

I know what promises mean today
I don’t care I believe in you anyway

(C)1974, TK Major

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Willows weep… tears melt in cool water

On a lake...

I don’t write a lot of what you’d call love songs.

Broken hearts, betrayals, disillusionment, dissolution, self-destruction, simmering anger… that’s my turf. They didn’t call me the Bard of Bitterness, Denial, and Regret for nothin’…

But this is a love song. And I’ve always had a soft spot for it.

This version is a little unusual for AYoS. While it’s built around acoustic guitar, there are a couple of voices (both mine), and the second guitar, instead of noodling around the melody as usual, tries to somewhat mirror the first (and it comes oddly close, considering what a sloppy guitarist I truly am… perhaps too close to do much good). I even threw in a little echo, a stab at otherworldliness that will no doubt just irritate some purists — but what are they doing listening to me, anyhow?

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS versions
September 23, 2006
March 25, 2006
December 18, 2005

Emily

On a lake
the faded yellow row boat
drifts in lazy circles
while I fall in love with you

Emily Emily
watch the sky go around
Emily Emily
watch the sky

Willows weep
tears melt in cool water
your white cotton dress
you warm brown legs
your deep green eyes
Emily

Emily Emily
watch the sky go around
Emily Emily
watch the sky

(C)1982, TK Major

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Coming to your hometown before too long…

Have you embraced the Beast?

He never thought he’d be glad to see tanks rolling down Main Street.

But after masked gunmen with machine guns and grenades killed the mayor and half the city council, he decided maybe martial law wasn’t so bad.

The regional authority said it was the foreign fighters but the rumor spread quickly through town that the gunmen spoke only awkward, oddly accented pidgin Spanish among themselves and several times lapsed into what sounded like American English, recognizable even in the chaos of death and destruction.

But there was no knowing. The police had mostly either been killed or had deserted.

When the tanks rolled into town, it was a relief — even if a lot of folks suspected it was the regional authority behind the attacks, anyway.

Six months later and the regional authority had been commandeering private homes to bivouac troops — or extracting exorbitant “resettlement avoidance fees” from those who could come up with the money. The schools hadn’t opened in five months. There was only electricity 4 hours a day most days.

Since the water plant had been bombed, citizens were dependent on regional authority water trucks — and if you wanted to make sure your four hour wait for water was fruitful, you had to cough up bribes to assure yourself a place in the front of the queue.

Bribes were the rule. And when there was no money or no electronics or no furniture, then people sold what they could; it was a desperate, clawing marketplace of desperation and doomsday carnality.

He found himself obsessing these days on how it all started. Sometimes it felt like it must have been this way for generations — but he remembered the crisp winter day little more than a decade earlier, the abortion of an election and the installation of the loser as president.

He hadn’t thought it was such a big deal at the time — after all, he’d voted for the appointed president along with something considerably less than half the voters. Still, it was close, he had told himself. Someone had to do something.

But , now, every time he traced it all back… that’s where everything seemed to start — like the first mortal error, the first offense against the gods in some epic tragedy.

___________________

Not, you know, to put too fine a point on it (or perhaps too ham-fisted a fist)… but this song below is dedicated to the appointed president — who I –unlike the protagonist in the vignette above, did not vote for:

Internet Archive page for this recording

December 13, 2005 version
February 15, 2006 version

Have You Embraced the Beast?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

Copyright 1984, TK Major

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