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 theres 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
When he was a kid he’d lie on his back in the sand just above the tideline where it dropped away to the bay, listening to the murmur of his grandparents talking by the firepit, watching the stars shimmer and wave above the fire, red glowing bits tracing the undulations as they crossed the starfield.
Sometimes, if no one else was nearby to be bothered, his grandfather would turn on the Sony transistor radio quietly, tuning in KFI 130 miles to the north, the reassuringly familiar voice of Vin Scully calling a Dodger game suggesting there was continuity even in an era when you could carry a radio in your coat pocket, Russian satellites were circling the globe — and the Dodgers would move from Brooklyn to L.A.
Dedicated readers will remember I posted a link to a discussion of an earlier version of this song in the songwriter’s forum I’ve been moderating for the last few weeks. The discussion there and your comments here helped me greatly. The changes were mostly not dramatic — but the extended discussion of the how many clowns section did prove especially helpful and I think it resulted in getting a lot closer to what I was after.
I was tempted to say that I wished I could have incorporated everyone’s suggestions — but in a very real way I did.
So I thank my friends there and here for their generous and thoughtful comments and suggestions. There wasn’t a bad one in the lot.
How many roads
must I walk down
before I can sleep in the sand?
How many times
must i fall down
before I can
take someone’s hand?
How many doors
must I kick in
before I find
the magic one?
How many dreams
must I tear apart
before I see how it’s all done? How did i get here? where have I been? How long have I been this way?
I remember a time I remember a place I just don’t remember the way
How many clowns
does it take to screw down
a reason for a man
to exist?
How many times must
I see the light?
There must be
something I missed…
How did i get here? where have I been? How long have i been this way?
I remember a time I remember a place I just don’t remember the way
I remember a Sunday so long ago, the concept of Sunday was a new one… this special day when no one worked (in those days my mom worked weekdays and my dad was off on Tuesday and worked Saturdays).
On this day we were driving out to the country — the outskirts of the then-small city of Orange, California — to pick up friends of my folks and then driving up to the mountains at Big Bear.
In those days, Orange was mostly orchards and farmhouses, spreading out from a tiny downtown built around a turn-of-the-last-century roundabout (a traffic circle, if you will). Besides some fruit packing plants there wasn’t much to town except the children’s hospital I’d been born in.
We met up with another car load of young adults and, leaving Orange, we drove down two lane roads for hours until, sometime long after noon (another slightly hazy concept — I think remember someone on the picnic explaining that it meant the sun was directly overhead) we arrived in what I recall as a big valley meadow between two sets of snow-capped mountains.
I don’t remember too much about the picnic but this is what I do remember — even though it seems oddly dreamlike:
After we’d been there a few hours and the sun was edging down toward the mountains I now know to have been in the west, we heard a long, low roar echoing out of the mountains behind us. A visceral, beastly roar…
Everyone froze and the girls — I swear this is what I remember — got scared. I think someone said something like, “Well, maybe that’s the Big Bear they named this place after.” A couple of the guys wanted to go see what it was. But a couple of the girls seemed genuinely frightened and one of them seemed panicky, insisting that we pack up and go.
And we did. As the adults hurriedly packed up (the scared girl was sitting in the back of one of the sedans and refused to come out even to help pack up) I remember looking down at my arm and seeing the little bumps around the hairs on my arm. Someone said they were “goosebumps” and that was a new one to me, too. I don’t remember much else except that it was long after dark on Sunday night when we dropped my folks’ friends off.
To this day, I still wonder what the hell that sound was. And, sometimes, when the memory seems really vivid, it can still raise goosebumps and I can still feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
NEW VERSION of the brand new song from last week…
It takes a while to find each new song, often as not, and this one is no exception. I’ve been rolling around some changes (I’ve wrestled with the “lots and lots of lots” issue but I’m sticking with what I wrote for now).
This version was actually recorded earlier in the week. The vocals are still somewhat awkward. Some of the guitar work is, too. But it’s pretty different than the first, fingerpicked version and I think it’s worth putting up, capturing a different aspect of the song… I think it suggests where I want to go a little better. I’ll probably rough it out with a fleshed out version with drums, bass, and more guitars in the coming weeks…
A Land So Far Away
I was born so long ago
between some forgotten wars
times were different then I know
it’s the one thing that’s for sure
There were cows across the road
I can still feel the dairy smell
where it’s only houses now
and they stretch all the way to hell
and back then I never thought
I would ever hit the road
but before I knew what was what
there was nowhere else to go ch and right now I know I want
to find this place called home
I don’t know where it is
and I don’t know where to go
I was born between some wars
between the mountains and the shore
in a land so far away
you just cant
get there anymore
I saw the world there’s a lot to see
and sure I was impressed
lots of hope lots of fear
and lots of girls undressed
lots of bar rooms lots of dreams
lots of lifelong friends
lots of pals you’ll always love
and never see again
ch right now I know I want to find…
I was born so long ago
between some forgotten wars
times were different then
it’s the one thing that’s for sure
and back then I never thought
I would ever hit the road
but before I knew what was what
there was nowhere else to go
ch and right now I know I want
to find this place called home
I don’t know where it is
and I don’t know where I have to go
I was born between some wars
between the mountains and the shore
in a land so far away
you just cant
get there anymore
Written a few hours ago… It’s not normally my practice to comment on the images that accompany my blog posts but yes — that really isthe town where I was born in the image above… as represented on an orange crate label from the Orange Fuit Co. And, yes, I remember the town when vistas like that were still possible. Of course the sky was often that color, too… the smudge pots were brutal and even then the smog drifted down into Orange County from LA.
But the orange groves wrapped around the low hills and rows of eucalyptus did the sentry thing and… after the rain… the mountains would glisten with snow against a brilliant blue sky and it was… just… beautiful.
This first version of the song is very rough. The vocals and, ha ha, harmony are particularly shaky. Not that my saying so will make them sound better… I just want you to know that I know.
I was born so long ago
between some forgotten wars
times were different then I know
it’s the one thing that’s for sure
There were cows across the road
I can still feel the dairy smell
where it’s only houses now
and they stretch all the way to hell
and back then I never thought
I would ever hit the road
but before I knew what was what
there was nowhere else to go ch and right now I know I want
to find this place called home
I don’t know where it is
and I don’t know where to go
I was born between some wars
between the mountains and the shore
in a land so far away
you just cant
get there anymore
I saw the world there’s a lot to see
and sure I was impressed
lots of hope lots of fear
and lots of girls undressed
lots of bar rooms lots of dreams
lots of lifelong friends
lots of pals you’ll always love
and never see again
ch right now I know I want to find…
I was born so long ago
between some forgotten wars
times were different then
it’s the one thing that’s for sure
and back then I never thought
I would ever hit the road
but before I knew what was what
there was nowhere else to go
ch and right now I know I want
to find this place called home
I don’t know where it is
and I don’t know where I have to go
I was born between some wars
between the mountains and the shore
in a land so far away
you just cant
get there anymore
