Category Archives: microprose

If I had time to count the lies…

Not one of those dreams...

He lay on the bed, watching her.

He was never any good at reading her. He never felt like he knew what she was thinking.

He was drinking, once, with the guy she had gone out with before him.

“Most people,” that guy had said with drunken conviction, “have a mask they hide behind. And when you get to know them, they let it down a little and you start to see what’s there. With her,” and his eyes glinted a little in the dim bar as he paused, shot glass in hand, for effect, “with her, it’s just one mask after another. At first, you think, ah, a mystery. I love a mystery.”

The ex-boyfriend threw back the tequila and went on. “But the mystery becomes like a bad surrealism movie… there’s no…” His eyes seemed to unfocus for a moment. “There’s no coherency. A true sociopath would…” he stopped suddenly.

“I’m sorry, man. I must be drunk. I was just talkin’ shit. I mean, well, she is a piece of work, and we both know that… but she is a real double E-ticket ride. If you want the thrills, you gotta stand in line. Oh, wait. God, I’m drunk. Let’s have another round…”

Internet Archive page for this recording

AYoS October 09, 2005
AYoS January 28, 2006

Not One of Those Dreams

If I had time to count the lies
or that hours that you stole
but it ain’t like me to wonder why
all the same there’s some things one needn’t be told

I can see it in your smile
it’s there behind all your words
something dancing behind your eyes
I can tell that you think it’s
me that’s gonna get burned

It ain’t like you’re the only one
that ever threw away love
I’ve sinned your sins and some again
it’s all the same, it’s all been done

I can see it in your smile…

I’m not saying that I’m sorry
I won’t say I didn’t love you
I won’t say that I didn’t have some dreams
but not once did I dream they’d ever come true

I can see it in your smile
it’s there behind all your words
something dancing behind your eys
I can tell that you think it’s
gonna be me that’s gonna get burned

(C)1981, TK Major

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Suddenly, the world’s just too damn old

Mountains come, mountains go

As a wide-eyed youth, I was always a sucker for songs like “Teen Angel,” “Running Bear” or the Everly Brothers’ weeper, “Ebony Eyes.”

“Teen Angel” is pretty well known and its title is probably close enough to self-explanatory… “Running Bear” was about two young American Indians from different tribes, separated by their tribes’ mutual animosities — and a raging river — who fall in love from opposite riverbanks and finally, overcome by love, dive in from opposite sides and perish in the rapids just as they reach each other. Makes me misty just thinking about it. Loved that hokey “Native American” tom tom beat that underlay the song, too. Bum buh bum bum. Bum buh bum bum…

The Everly Brothers’ “Ebony Eyes” is more somber… but a mid-song monologue spoken in a shaky, post-juvenile voice by one of the brothers heads straight for the top of lugubriousness. Hearing it the third or fourth time as a callow youth may well have been my first turn toward cynicism. Even though I’d been a big Everlys fan as a youngster, I remember turning “Ebony Eyes” off more than a few times.

As I wrote in the post for the previous AYoS version of this song, the lyrics were originally written around ’99 to go with a fast (142 bpm, if I recall) techno track from Deakin Scott, a young producer in Britain, who came across me on the web and wanted to collaborate.

Deakin didn’t have any idea what kind of lyrics I should put to it.

I fooled around with a bunch of ideas and eventually pulled out my acoustic guitar (which was not first reach in those days), found myself playing a classic rock ‘n’ roll progression (I-vi-IV-V, for those who keep track of these things).

I came up with the first line (“Mountains come, mountains go…” — which was inspired by a song in my favotire musical, the 1955 Kismet… ” Princes come, princes go / An hour of pomp and show they know / Princes come / And over the sands, and over the sands of time they go…” [Forrest and Wright]) and it looked like it was going to be one of those “highest mountain/deepest ocean” things but then it veered off into tragic loss.

Now, I can’t tell you why, but I have to admit that, embarrassing as it is, I find these lyrics strangely moving. They’re far from an empty exercise in pop formalism to me. I guess you’re really not supposed to admit that you’re emotionally affected by your own lyrics but… well, there ya go. Call me a silly, sentimental sap.

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version


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Mountains Come, Mountains Go

Mountains come and mountains go
but a love like ours will surely show
the stars themselves to be a fling
I’ve seen the End of Time
It’s no big thing

The ocean deep is just a pond
I throw my coat for you to walk upon
The waves are tears that mist my eyes
The mighty wind is
just your sleepy sigh

When I sing to you the angels sing along
and yet I know there’s something wrong
The sky above is in your eyes
and I know that means
you’re lying on the ground

The sirens freeze my blood is cold
suddenly the world’s just too damn old
the future fading in your eyes
time and space collapse
in one last sigh

Mountains come and mountains go
but a love like ours will surely show
the stars themselves to be a fling
I’ve seen the End of Time
It’s no big thing

1999 08 01
(c)1999 TK Major

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Hoping for rain…

The world is so big...

 

 

You know you’re lonely when you find yourself doing lonely things like hitching half the length of California (don’t try that in your century, kids) or going on long, rambling, solo camping trips, driving from forsaken spot to god forsaken spot and packing up and moving on if anyone else shows up in camp even if you just got there that morning. You find yourself listening for thunder through the mountains a lot. Feeling it resonate in the emptiness inside you… filled for a moment with rumbling sound and dull pain and then empty again.

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version

World So Big*

The world is so big
then again the world’s so small…
I might be in your arms tomorrow night
or I might never make it home to you at all

true love, baby, the bottom drops out
and then you fall…
it only happens one time baby
if you’re lucky maybe not at all

I could live a thousand lifetimes
I’d never forget a single one of your lies…
I could die a million times
ant the ghost of you would still draw me back to life


*name changed from “The World Is So Big” (9/25/2007)
(C)2007,TKMajor

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Moonrise Over Alamitos Bay

Moonrise Over Alamitos Bay
From a promo page for TK’s side project, The Mutant Liberation Orchestra, where the new track below has also just been posted…

This represents a very definite sea change for The Mutant Liberation Orchestra — although keyboardist TK has been exploring polytonal improvisation since the first time he snuck into the piano room at his maiden aunt Tillies’s haunted old mansion in the hills above Pasadena.

As soon as he sat down at the battered old upright grand, he was overcome by the compulsion to spread his tiny hands wide across the old, yellowed ivory keys. Slipping into a state that a concerned girlfriend would, decades later, describe as “a scary, near-catatonic trance,” little TK’s fingers seemed to fly across the keys in patterns hard to comprehend — but repeating in intricate, interlocking melodic movements that circled ever wider.

When his aunt rushed into the room she stopped suddenly and began weeping…

Years later, TK would learn that she thought she heard the playing of her long-dead protoge, a frighteningly moody young European refugee composer who would later die in a fiery motorcar crash, plunging off a twisting mountain road after an argument with the then-voluptuosly passionate Tilly, his lover, his benefactor and — he said as he stormed out of her house, the keys to her ancient Packard limousine in his hands — his warden and taskmaster…

 Moonrise Over Alamitos Bay

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