chain of hearts | A Year of Songs

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

When Ashley Said Good-bye

He remembered thinking, “Oh, god, now she’s in love.”

There he was, just crawling out of one bed and now, here he was, with this new girl, spent, lying easily across him, propped up on an elbow tucked between his arm and his ribs, a goofy smile on her lips and a faraway look in her eyes. He thought at the time that they must look like a European coffee advert.

He had thought he was going to give himself some time, some emotional space. But before he knew it she was watching TV at his house four nights a week and cooking him breakfast.

She was warm and comfortable and and one day, just as he found himself getting used to it and liking it — she was gone.

There was no talking to her. There was no asking why. Did he do something? Not really. Was there someone new? Not anyone who means anything.

Was there any chance? No.

He couldn’t believe he asked.

Before her, he wouldn’t have.

He mooned around for days, then weeks. His buddies tried to get him to go out but he sat in the long summer evenings, watching the sky darken through his open window, as the shadows drew the room into darkness and an open bottle of whisky kept an even inch in the bottom of a tumbler by the couch.

He studied the indigo sky over the tops of his bare feet and tried to think about nothing.

It was getting easier everyday.