Tag Archives: fate

Someday, baby, this will all be washed away…

Someday Baby

Sometimes you just see how it’s all going to go down. You look and look and no matter how you look, you see the same end coming.

But not everyone sees it. And when it comes, it hits them hard.

Maybe it’s the sad wisdom born of years of life, death and change, as they say in the comics, but at a certain zoom level, the pain and the pleasure and the sorrow and the joy start developing some kind of symmetry. Not, perhaps, the nice, even, balanced kind… but an inner symmetry that is at once reassuring and sobering.

I’m thinking, of course, of that moment in the narrative of life when a wised up adult tells his or her young and heartbroken lover, You’ll be better off without me, doll. It’s a big world out there. You’re gonna find some guy who really loves you — not a guy like me, always out for number one, looking for the next adventure, the next good time. You’re going to find someone who deserves a fine girl like you…

The funny thing is, after a while, you see it happening. You see one of the perfectly good girls you threw away out on the street with her new number one and they look so happy. A few years later you see them out shopping with the kids, the happy family. At a certain point, you look twice and, if you try real hard, it can almost look good for a few moments.

But that’s their destiny.

previous versions
Friday, October 07, 2005
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Sunday, March 02, 2008

lyrics
Someday Baby

someday, baby
you’ll be looking down on me
but don’t you ever think I don’t know
what you’re bound to see
it’s just destiny
it’s just got to be
that’s my prophecy

someday, baby
when you’ve got this
whole thing straight
after you contemplate
maybe meditate
you’ll see that it was fate
it had to be this way
besides
it’s all too late

someday, baby
you’ll be laughing in the sun
I can see you with your Only One
and I know that it just has to be
it’s prophecy
it is destiny

someday, baby
this will all be washed away
that’s what the old men say
but it’ll be okay
a million years from today
it’ll end our pain

someday, baby
youll be laughing in the sun
I can see you with your Only One
and you know it just has to be
it is prophecy
it’s destiny

7/27/98
(C)2008, TK Major

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The way things had to be…

Jennifer

Sometimes you meet someone and it just seems like it’s meant to be.

That’s how it felt when I met the girl I’ll call Jennifer.

Our eyes locked as I got up to play in front of the small, coffeehouse crowd and I felt, a little, like I was playing just to her.

She was with a friend of mine — who it turned out was her ex-boyfriend — but, for me, she was pretty much the only one in the room. I’d sung a song about suicide — she’d said “Don’t you just feel that way, sometimes?” and I said, “Yeah,” — and we talked for a while about some of the ideas behind my songs, touching on love, death, and fate, suicide and responsibilty to the living. It was an interesting, surprisingly lively conversation that wound from one provocative or resonant idea to the next.

Brazenly slipping my card across the table to her, I was somehow sure that I would hear from her again… I’m not usually so confident — much the opposite. But, looking into her eyes, I felt certain that fate would bring us back together.

That Sunday I wrote the fleeting shadow of a song below, “Jennifer” (not the real girl’s name, mind you) — starting simply from that pretty name and a sad, bittersweet mood… and not moving too far from there. It was my idea to fill out the lyrics, make some sort of story about it. In my mind, the song was very much about someone ending their life.

Days went by and I didn’t hear from Jennifer, though I still felt, somehow, that I would.

Late in the week I saw my friend, Jennifer’s ex, sitting alone at the counter of my local coffee house and sat next to him. He was unusually quiet.

Finally he said, “Remember my friend, Jennifer?”

I nodded. Of course I did. She’d barely left my mind — but I didn’t say it.

“She died.”

I was stunned. I’m seldom truly without words but I couldn’t say aynthing.

Finally, I said, “How?”

“No one knows. She was having friends over for Sunday dinner last weekend and when they arrived she didn’t come to the door. Finally, they peered through the window and saw her lying in the kitchen. She was already gone.”

In the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think of our conversation — but she’d seemed so full of life and I was so convinced that we’d both intended to somehow see each other again…

Eventually, we found out it was a heart attack — the result of a previously unrecognized congenital defect. She was only 28.

Fate… it’s a funny thing.

Jennifer

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previous versions
Friday, December 30, 2005

lyrics
Jennifer
Jennifer
I swear it’s not your fault
It’s always been the same
It’ll always be this way
Jennifer
you’re not to blame

Jennifer
Jennifer, you’re not to blame
Jennifer
Jennifer, you’re not to blame
Jennifer

Jennifer, you’re not to blame
Jennifer

Jennifer, you’re not to blame
Jennifer

(C)1996, TK Major

(C)2007, TK Major

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I’ve seen that shining light… one too many times

10,000 Years
Weren’t we just talking (however briefly) about Fate?

Once you give causality an inch, it seems, like ice-nine, to take over your whole cosmology.

Anyhow, I’ve always thought dimestore metaphysics makes for great pop music and this song is a gesture in that direction, spun with a little ambiguous pronoun play.

10,000 Years

Up against the wall
the moon was in her eyes
I felt her heart beat
I heard her sigh

I touched her cheek
a tear met my hand
I didn’t know it then
but that tear fell to her plan

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I’ve been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

I have seen that shining light
one too many times
I have heard the angels sing
while I riddled the devil’s rhymes

I have seen your eyes
burn into my soul
I have seen the truth
and I will never again be whole

10,000 years…

I’d do it all again
and still come back for more
I know how it’s all gotta end
but I’ll never know what it’s all for

Until the end of time
there’s not that long to go
I thought I knew heaven’s secrets
what the hell did I know?

10,000 years
is not a day too long
since the world began
I’ve been hangin round here
waiting for you to come along

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Sunday, Baby…

Someday, Baby

 

 

You’ll be better off without me.

That’s what I should have said.

But what I usually said was… Sure, I want to spend the rest of time with you, baby… I just need a little time to get used to the idea…

previous version (Oct 7)

Someday Baby

someday, baby
you’ll be looking down on me
but don’t you ever think I don’t know
what you’re bound to see
it’s just destiny
it’s just got to be
that’s my prophecy

someday, baby
when you’ve got this
whole thing straight
after you contemplate
maybe meditate
you’ll see that it was fate
it had to be this way
besides
it’s all too late

someday, baby
you’ll be laughing in the sun
I can see you with your Only One
and I know that it just has to be
it’s prophecy
it is destiny

someday, baby
this will all be washed away
that’s what the old men say
but it’ll be okay
a million years from today
it’ll end our pain

someday, baby
youll be laughing in the sun
I can see you with your Only One
and you know it just has to be
it is prophecy
it’s destiny

7/27/98

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