Always one step ahead of you even when you’re both racing for the gutter… and yet they always pull up at the last instant, leaving you splashing, face first, in the soggy, slimy defeat of your own victory.
At least, you know, that’s how it always was for me.
I’ve been up to your penthouse but
I… I was afraid to look down
I’ve been all around the world
but I’m only at home on my own side of town
I’ve been up all night
trying to find
the right way to come down
I been inside out and I know all about
the emptiness all around
everything happens for reasons but we never get to find out what they are from way down here it all looks pretty big so how does it look from the stars
you laid it all out
and I wanted so much
to just pick up
what you put down
I can taste it right now
but still somehow
I’ve finally found
the power to shine on
everything happens for reasons but we never get to find out what they are from way down here it all looks pretty big so how does it look from the stars
War! What’s it good for?
Say it, say it, say it again…
So… this song, below, is certainly not one of my best songs, by a stretch. And, yet, I’ve posted a slug of versions of it here on the AYoS parade of songwriting shame…
What gives?
It’s this damn war, I tell you.
Like the overwhelming majority of US citizens, I’m sick to death of it, sick of the suffering of others, sick of the squandered sacrifices of our men and women who feel called to fight, sick of the lies, and sick of the excuses of those politicains and legislators who claim they were fooled into supporting it.
That, my friends, is a sock full of shit.
The truth about what US intelligence analysts really thought about Saddam and the supposed threat he posed to the the Middle East and the US was known then, as it is known now.
It was, indeed, in — if not all the papers — certainly in responsible, mainstream publications like the Christian Science Monitor and plenty of others, even if the supposedly liberal New York Times seemed to focus all its energies on promoting this most foolish of modern boondoggles of death, destruction, and cynical profiteering.
And it was well covered in the British and Australian press who had a lot less temerity when it came time to speak “truth to power” and seemed far less worried about offending those whose first response to the 9/11 attacks was to rain death and destruction indiscriminately on any handy villains, guilty or not.
Now… don’t get me wrong.
I did support the incursion into Afghanistan to get the people who our intel officials did think were behind the 9/11 attacks — and who, in fact, were bold enough to take credit for it. Hell, I thought just the act of claiming credit was worthy of some serious ass-kicking…
But there was — in the words of our very own intel and security experts — “little or no credible evidence” of Saddam Hussein’s purported involvement with the attacks.
Yet, there we were, confronted by the sorry spectacle of not just the idiot-president’s own party of warmongering lackies (full disclosure: I am a Republican) rushing to join the gangpile of those willfully ignoring the truth — but the “loyal opposition” — the then-Democratic Congressional leadership joining the festival of deception and disingenuity, rushing to vote for war against a nation for which there was little or no credible evidence of involvement in the monstrous attacks on New York and Washington.
So… yeah… this Old Beast, again…
A note about today’s version:This recording was actually made in early 1998 as part of the AYoS precursor, TK Major’s Song of the Day. Unlike the mostly acoustic/folk AYoS, the SotD project was all over the map, production and style-wise but this song, with its string arrangement (OK, synthetic strings, to be sure, I’d already spent the retirement money I could have devoted to hiring a real string section) and putatively soothing background vocal harmonies, was an odd duck, even for that polystylistic culture jumble.
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?
It’s easy to lose your perspective in this world. It’s easy to start thinking you’re… you know… somebody.
Even though, in the end, you will certainly be nobody.
But, with the household staff buzzing around you like so many worker bees making things nice for the queen, it’s easy to forget that inside that Greek-columned mausoleum, inside that marble crypt… you’ll be just as dead as the nameless drunk in potter’s field.
You must think you’re oh so very
terribly important
with your car, your house, your maid,
your butler and your porters.
But seen from the stars you’re the same as all of us are. And it might seem a queer notion but we’re all just spit in the ocean.
Hop upon a plane
run around the world
Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Berlin
and they’re all full of your kind of girl.
You can have all the ones you want you can play with people’s lives. You can have all the rope you want but soon enough they expect that noose to be tied.
Seen from above just another slightly balding head a little bit of dandruff on the shoulders but you’ll be dead soon enough, anyway.
Hiding in your villa
on the Dalmatian Coast.
Your blue ribbon Afghan hound at your feet
the one that you prize the most.
But your baby’s got the rabies
and he’s gonna bite your foot.
ain’t there an end to the indignities
through which a human being
must be put.
Seen from the stars Just another chunk of rock in space. little ones crawling about on it but they’ll be gone soon enough, anyway.
You must think you’re oh so very
terribly important
with your car, your house, your maid,
your butler and your porters.
But seen from the stars you’re the same as all of us are. And it must seem a queer notion but we’re all just spit in the ocean.
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
Three songs about three different kinds of fools… [and let me hasten to point out that while All Fool’s day caught me off guard today with the startling news that Apple was leaving the home computer market, I must still have been subconsciously thinking ahead: yesterday’s song — which went up quite late last night — and is kind of interesting if I do say so myself — had the line: “…in the Idiot’s Guide to Love I must be listed in the back under ‘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 (C)2007, TK Major
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
