This song started with me dropping my head into my hands, addressing a friend who was not present but who was being talked about by a pair of caring but exasperated friends, saying, “Sheena… no… Sheena.”
You probably get the drift.
But no vexation is so troubling — or irritating — that it can’t be turned into art. Well, maybe not art, exactly, in this case. But something trapped in the no man’s land between edification and amusement, yet somehow probably failing both.
Sheena eventually quit her wild ways, grew up, settled down, and, last time I checked was a happy suburban soccer mom.
She was lucky.
Sheena No Sheena (No Sheena No)
Sheena was a spy
for the FBI
her contact never showed
and she never wondered why
but the saucer people came
and the hours just disappeared
the dreams began again
and the eyes behind the mirrors
Sheena no Sheena no Sheena no
the house began to talk
and the giant spiders came
she went out for a walk
she was gone for seven days
Sheena no Sheena no Sheena no
in the morning she was fine
her eyes were bright and clear
I’ve got two left she cooed to me
and dropped one in her beer
It’s another scorcher here in south Cali… not as oppressive, maybe, as yesterday — unless you’re foolish enough to decide to catch up with your quixotic blog/podcast (I know, I know, all blogs are quixotic. I’ll go one better, all communication is quixotic. But it’s too stinkin’ hot to argue about engines of futility… Where was I?) …not as oppressive unless you close all the windows, trying to shut out neighborhood noise to better please your audience (that would be you, noble and perhaps imaginary reader).
The lyrics, I think, are more or less self-explanatory. It started off heading towards being a catalog song (a bunch of girl’s names strung together with oneliners about them) but I’m not a fan of the form and diverted it to a general discourse on the nature of love… at least as it relates to simple-minded pop songs.
I wanted an old-timey kind of sound so I used my 3/4 sized spanish guitar that I bought for $50 at a music superstore. It’s my go-everywhere guitar. I was going for a small, cheap sound — and I think I nailed it.
When Ashley Said Goodbye
Amber said hello when Ashley said good-bye
I said hold on but there’s no wondering why
when love wants in, love can knock down yer door
I said Amber, I think this is forever
she said baby you’re yanking on my tether
when all is said and done love will even up the score
Love will fool ya — love can kill ya Love is all that love can give ya and still you keep coming back for more
Love is funny — love is cruel
Love’ll make Einstein act just like a fool
Love’ll make a tomcat dive in-a swimin pool
All these toys all these games
all these pretty dollhouses going up in flames
if you play around enough you know you’re gonna get burned
Love will fool ya — love can kill ya Love is all that love can give ya and still you keep coming back for more
It’s too hot to think, here… it’s certainly too hot to strap on a pair of headphones. I recorded this last week and put it aside for just such an occasion.
Kristin was written for an album of “girl name songs” back in 1996, The Barista Cycle. The women behind the names that inspired the songs were real — they worked at my favorite coffee shop — but the songs and the girls in them were entirely fictional. (Still it made for a few awkard moments with a couple of boyfriends and husbands.)
AYoS acoustic version:
Barista Cycle version:
Kristin Was Never Here
Kristin was never here
You didn’t see her slip in the back way
You didn’st see her float up the stairs
You didn’t see her perfect hand on my door
Because Kristin was never here
She loves me twice as much as him
Lord, I know that’s true
but she loves those kids 10000 times more
and, man, I know that too
Nothing adds up or works out right
Nothing’s gonna make it so
I’ve run the numbers a million times
at the bottom line I gotta go
Kristin was never here…
one last time I swear we only kissed
for a moment there were only two
eternity is where parallel lines meet
and all lies are true
You didn’t see her slip in the back way
You didn’st see her float up the stairs
You didn’t see her perfect hand on my door
Because Kristin was never here
____________
Did I mention it’s hot here? Stinking hot. Melting plastic hot.
Hot, hot, hot.
Hot.
(And, yes, my Riverside and San Berdoo brothers and sisters — I know I don’t know the meaning of the word.)
A s this first entry is being posted, the sun will be crossing the celestial equator. Today, night will be about as long as daytime. Autumn will have begun. And summer will be over…
A GIRL NAMED OCTOBER
I couldn’t help fall
for a girl named October
her eyes like the sky
when the day’s almost over
her voice like a song
you almost remember
from some other life
some other forever
Why did I lie
why did I say — I didn’t love her
I knew just what that meant
I knew right there and then
that it was over…
ten thousand times
I thought that I might see her
a million nights I lay awake
and remembered
ten billion stars
go on forever
not one chance
we could stay together
Why did I lie
why did I say — I didn’t love her
I knew just what that meant
I knew right there and then
that it was over…
W hen I was a kid, summers stretched on lazily. I worshipped summer. Long days at the library or playing pool at the Boys Club, and later, hitching down to the beach, body surfing and just hanging out looking at girls and talking about life… the life that didn’t seem to have begun yet.
But, sooner or later, fall would start to sneak into the air and a wistfulness, a longing would overtake me. You’d become aware of the faint perfume of fallen leaves or distant fires (yeah, not only could you hitchike back then, people actually burned leaves to get rid of them… it was a long time ago… don’t try it in your century). And, even when I was a boy, I would feel… old.
And filled with complex feelings I never understood.
The first time I fell hopelessly, obsessively in love — I was 10 — was on a fall-like day at the end of summer. Autumn hung over that day so heavily, I found myself drawn down to my locked-up-for-the-summer grade school. I took the wooden boomerang my dad and I had made in the garage (from instructions in a Reader’s Digest kids book… another thing that’ll never happen in this century. Have you ever been hit by a wooden boomerang slicing in from 120 feet in the air?)
For a few idle hours, I threw the ‘rang in the various ways I’d studied, sending it scooping low to the ground and then watching it rise suddenly, but predictably to come up and back around, running to where it would land as often as I ran away from it as it bore down on me.
There I was toward the end of the day, the sun slanting in, eucalyptus trees wiggling their long, finger like leaves, the distant sounds of other kids on the sprawling grounds and I saw her…
It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen her before. She’d been in my class since 2nd grade, maybe first. But there was something about her long hair and her slim athleticism as she chased her family dog… something I’d never seen before in a girl my age, something that talked to me on an altogether unfamiliar level… something that talked to my genes…
As fate would have it, it was an unrequited love. I even tried getting to her through her best friend, a cute blond I’ll call Lauren. Of course, even though I didn’t know that was how the plotline always goes, I found myself drawn farther into a sweet and innocent puppy love… with Lauren.
For almost two years we were inseparable — except at school, where I had to keep up the fiction that I hated girls. But for endless hours we would walk and talk or just lie next to each other on the grass, looking up at the trees above us.
We ended up going to different middle schools (back then we called them junior highs) and, not too long after, my family moved away. I saw her again when I was 17 and totally full of myself. She was very cute. I thought for a few moments that she would surely fall for the new, self-consciously hip me but it wasn’t to be. I never saw her again…
This song started with me dropping my head into my hands, addressing a friend who was not present but who was being talked about by a pair of caring but exasperated friends, saying, “Sheena… no… Sheena.”
