1. |
Siren's Sound Check
04:20
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Some sirens never make the charts
But bedroom tracks can still break hearts
I’ll be tired of the next one
Before it even starts
So one and done
Dear God, what have I done
Because this stopped being fun
A long long long long long long time ago
In my first message to Jon since age 19
I claimed to explain everything
But irony could die a thousand deaths
Before I’d tell him anything remotely close to what I mean
So he never did reply
And I don’t care to wonder why
Because I know I still sound like an asshole
Even when I’m trying to apologize
Now I’ll bet he’s glad to have escaped my claws
My minor chords and major flaws
I wanted less a lover than an audience
Less an audience than just the thought of their applause
So sail on back
Sing, o muse, of the names of real people and places
The faces I can’t recognize, the colors of eyes
I never noticed in real life or in the photos
Or the hackneyed, sordid stories we’d entirely forgotten were lies
Sing the stories we’d forgotten were lies
Sing the stories we’d forgotten were lies
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2. |
Paper Trail
03:43
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Boredom sings it’s spring again
When the things that I don’t understand
Always prove more important than I thought
But when my latest good intention fails
I’ll trace snail trails and comet tails
Across a long-outdated treasure map where repeated erasures mark the spot
And if I ever did come back
I’d stand beside you, but not with you
Start but not continue
To tell you only what I won’t retract
I’ll drive away this summer day
Maybe the things I never meant to say
Can rest safely at the bottom of the lake
But still I leave a paper trail
Of heavy-handed fairy tales
About a prince who was himself the curse some princess sent him on a quest to break
And if I ever did come back
(I won’t be there to catch you)
I’d stand beside you, but not with you
(The arrow points outside the heart)
I’ll bolt even if you
Give me all the breathing room I ask
And if I ever did come back
I’d stand beside you, but not with you
No excuse to give you
Just my half-assed disappearing act
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3. |
It May Not Be Impossible
04:24
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Under pressure, and for the changing weather
I’ll drop the excuses from my letter
Because I am going to try to be better when you get here
Just don’t expect it
There’s too much else I’ve neglected
And if the past could be corrected
I’d have half a mind
To strike the times you suspected we connected
I can’t stay long with so much to remember
And so much shit to keep together
I’ve got all night long to think about what I’ve done
Perhaps regret, but not just yet
Please don’t forget I told you not to hold your breath
I’m losing interest already
Trying to make you forget me
But for the record, no, it may not be impossible
Because I woke with this song in my head
That said simple things can take years
It appears that’s how we’ll proceed, if at all
But what if I blinked and you’re gone
So I blinked; now I think that you’re gone
You’re gone, thank God you’re gone
For the first month, I was cagey and reluctant
Then I looked too far ahead and went silent
It got too hard to play the part
And to be every possibility at once
With all this shit I kept to remember
But it’s all that’s keeping me together
I’ve got all night long to think about what I’ve done
Perhaps regret, but not just yet
Please don’t forget I told you not to hold your breath
I’m losing interest already
Trying to make you forget me
But for the record, no, it may not be impossible
Because I woke with this song in my head
That said simple things can take years
It appears that’s how we’ll proceed, if at all
But what if I blinked and you’re gone
So I blinked; now I think that you’re gone
You’re gone, thank God you’re gone
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4. |
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There’s nobody here, just the low-level fear
That I drag around like a small suitcase in my waking hours
It glares at me over the vase of plastic flowers
Across the breakfast table every morning now
And I know it’s not quite sporting how
I’m going to go sleepwalking back out of your life again
At any opportunity
Without its ever affecting me
Without conscience ever stirring me to reconsider
I like to think this flock of migratory birds, strayed or straggling,
Still follows me around, always seeming just about
To alight on my shoulders
But I’m ten years out and all I’ve really gotten is older
The things that I was told were all so plausible
To be responsible, turn back, and hear you out
And that I must not know what I’m about
To be missing out on milestones that I know I can’t make up
But there’s little chance I’ll wake up in time to reconsider
Now the happiest thing I can think of to sing
Is that moment on the tarmac when the plane touched down in Rome
And I realized I’d forgot my name, my age, and my home
And you were never farther from my mind
Borne along by the wrong bus line, I went out to find some sights to see
Fallen columns strewn amongst the poppies and the pigeons
Drowsily I spent the afternoon
Draping garlands made of nonsense words over these quiet ruins
We could do worse than to aspire to their condition
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5. |
All of the Wrong Reasons
04:48
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You found me waiting in the station
Reading from The Four Quartets
Looking like someone else’s ride home
Like everybody you have never met
And wish that you had not
Now with the benefit of hindsight
You don’t have to feel so special
Because I’ve been lying to strangers all night long
Please don’t wake me
Maybe I could lose myself today
If I stay or if I leave it’s going to be
For all of the wrong reasons
This apartment is freezing
Now that I’ve spent every last dollar trying to buy more time
To sleep off the afterthoughts
And hold out for at least another season
All those ardent lines you sent me
And could not retract in time
Felt like the one before the one too many
I’d give anything to get you to let me fall behind
The “Keep off the grass” signs
And the well-worn greeting card doggerel
Be my Easter egg, my April fool
But I’ll always be my own valentine
Please don’t wake me
Maybe I could lose myself today
If I stay or if I leave it’s going to be
For all of the wrong reasons
This apartment is freezing
Now that I’ve spent every last dollar trying to buy more time
To sleep off the afterthoughts
And hold out for at least another season
Now I walk along the lakeshore
With the lonely jagged rocks
Still not knowing what I came for
I built a barricade of styrofoam and boxes
If you try to reach me at my new address
I’ve got to disappear discreetly
Anything but maintain or feign interest
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6. |
Sailor Take Warning
04:47
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No excuses, no rules
No script, no readymade defense
Only this silence, only me
And I’m always such a bitch to you
Because I don’t know what to do
I meant to will to love you
But I guess that I forgot to after all
And if you’re not appalled, you should be
Although I swear I meant no harm, dear
I still lie without wincing
So convincing without meaning to be
Finally meaning nothing
Without provocation
I’ve gone months without speaking to you
Always leaping without looking
Till I leave without loving
So I drew you a map
With monsters in the corners of it
But these warmer winds still filled your sails
And so you failed to see
That the monsters all were me
Or the storm already gathering
As the dawn threw squares in red
Upon the wall beside my narrow bed
Where I lay alone, and that’s as it should be
Although I swear I meant no harm, dear
I still lie without wincing
So convincing without meaning to be
Finally meaning nothing
Without provocation
I’ve gone months without speaking to you
Always leaping without looking
Till I leave without loving
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7. |
Siren's Scratch Track
02:27
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Another siren
Making commitments and excuses and mix tapes
Realizing I just wanted to escape,
But it’s too late
So now I’ll try to honor my mistakes
Because otherwise it sounds too fake
Just like a siren
Laying simple grooves down over a scratch track
That I promised I would try to leave intact
But perhaps
It can remain one still in spirit
Though not anymore in fact
So now I dare you
Lash yourself to the mast, open your ears,
And sail on by–there’s really nothing to see here
And I fear
The references, except on this song,
Are impossibly unclear
But I’ll write another
Because there’s no sadder sight than a siren
Shutting up and getting used to the silence
Of this island
Where I keep bringing on the shipwrecks
Without ever even really trying
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8. |
Lover, I'll Leave You
04:05
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Lover, I’ll leave you emptyhanded
And make my exit the way that I planned it
I’ve read some books, broke some hearts,
Wrote this song, but it was all wrong from the start
Because I know I’ll just do the same thing again
Give me three weeks at the outside and I’ll do it again
And write another song then
We are a scene change, a turn of the page
Such perfect mirror images that the whole thing feels staged
But try as I might to suspend disbelief
I still play every plot hole for comic relief
Each tired motif and cliché (and that thing about the swans,
I admit, is underdone and tacked on)
A forced attempt to fabricate the attraction
Between a stock character and a stubborn abstraction
It’s going to be a cold winter–what will we do?
I’ll fix it in memory and love it over you
May the angle of light and relentless north wind
Recall every moment as it had to have been
It’s like this old photo of myself in a rowboat as a kid
Where I don’t look scared, just a little dismayed
Without the sense or the strength to get back to shore
But here I am, so I guess I did
It’s going to be a hot summer–what will we do?
I’ll wait it out underground; I don’t know about you
Will you still be here waiting when I come up for air
After estivating until I simply don’t care?
When I asked your forgiveness, I more than half hoped you’d refuse
And in your disgust, cut me loose
Now there’s a dozen more like you I still have to get rid of
If you’ve got any tips I could use
Lover, I’ll leave you, like I’ve done before
But drunk on nostalgia, I can’t find the door
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9. |
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Now sing, o muse
Of my last best chances to love somebody back
Or to recognize a lack
That was never really there
So I guess it’s funny I should care
How somebody somewhere might react
And if I choose
To play fast and loose with several of the facts
Relax
I’m perfectly aware
That we all get kind of scared
When the fictions for which we were prepared
Are inconsistent in their collapse
Andrew, you’re a problem in the abstract
That I’ve slowly learned to live with
In simple, in concrete but evasive ways
As familiar as the doorknob of the house that I grew up in
I skipped town and I holed up there for days and days and days
That’s where I live now
Although it’s getting harder
I often get the feeling that I fell out of time
But I’m just trying to make my way slowly back upstream
To that fever dream–but let’s move on
Jon, you stayed standing at the center
Of a great misunderstanding
Always searching for the one thing that would wake me up for real
From those yarns I’d try to spin you as we circled around from Highlake
To Prince Crossing, glossing over all you knew I couldn’t feel
But as a hollow courtesy
I let you grope me in the basement
And the Antiques Market parking lot on Parkway and Main
Both of us believing I could change
But not for you, and not for [redacted]
Though that name perhaps felt like
The most intolerable fiction,
It was fiction, after all, that first got me into this mess
To populate imaginary cities and have you stand in them beside me
Was the only thing that I thought might be happiness
I know you rarely cared to
And my attempt to change the subject
In the rain outside the Aqua Bar was so poorly played
But that’s why I’ve abandoned everything I’ve ever made
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10. |
I Was a Cold Front
03:09
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I was a rain cloud, I was a cold front
I was the snow and the ice on the beach
Just a chilly rebuke from a temperate climate
Of your vernal headstrong eagerness to overreach
Send all your friends to beat a path to my front door
With mousetraps, metatheater, and math too crooked to ignore
I just want to live in certainty
But I want to die in irony
I want to do defiantly
Most everything you won’t
Lord have mercy, because I don’t
You were a quick fix, you were a long shot
A deus ex machina, a skeleton key
The drag anchor of conscience and the unrequested answer
To a question that would never have occurred to me
Now all our friends would sell you out to have me back
And send your tender heart to shipwreck on everything I did to try to leave it intact
I just want to live in certainty
But I want to die in irony
I want to do defiantly
Most everything you won’t
Lord have mercy, because I don’t
If the wind is from the south, well then it may not be impossible
If from the north, there’s not a chance
I just want to live in certainty
But I want to die in irony
I want to do defiantly
Most everything you won’t
Lord have mercy, because I don’t
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11. |
Tightrope
04:18
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I was wet cement, but I set up much too quickly
For you to write your name in me
Alongside dirty words and footprints
But if you wonder where I went, I have been all over this city
Inkstained but still doing pretty
Full of five-dollar words and misprints, hey hey
Give it up for the tightrope
For the slight hope of a soft and graceful landing
Understanding that I won’t be there to catch you
When you fall from high above
The cold hard ground that you mistook for love
Or waiting on the other side
I just took the ladder down
The scaffolding that fell apart had been unstable from the start
It sent all my finer feelings running for their lives
Because there couldn’t be a lower art
The arrow points outside the heart
To where the hipster literati
Are getting out their forks and knives already
But get out on the tightrope
On the slight hope of a soft and graceful landing
Understanding that I won’t be there to catch you
When you fall from high above
The cold hard ground that you mistook for love
Or waiting on the other side
I just took the ladder down
Look out below
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12. |
Pictures of Apartments
05:46
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Your still-beating heart was a dead metaphor
Or a dead horse, a pang of buyer’s remorse
And I, with nothing to lose, shook the rocks from my shoes
Because it’s a long walk to the fifth floor
I’ve saved up pictures of apartments
I won’t live in and you won’t see
A garden of forking paths
Float every possibility till the morning
We’ll figure out everything in the morning
Just wait until the morning
I’ll get back to you in the morning
In the morning
Although I tried my best, I couldn’t lose you in the move
So tell me what’s it going to take to get forgot?
I won’t conceal I was a crooked, crooked deal
But still the only car left on the lot
And if you’ve got your heart set
I’ll do anything to change it
But for now I’m keeping silent
I’ll read more carefully in the morning
As the grass grows and the paint dries
And the wind blows sand into my eyes
I keep the past close, more than life-size
God, I hold those afterthoughts like a prize
Don’t act so surprised
I tried to give you every warning
But that’s not how it’s going to strike us
In the sober light of morning
In the morning
Just let me figure it out in the morning
I’ll get back to you in the morning
Just give me till the morning
There’s a hallway in my heart
But somebody changed all the locks
There’s a hallway in my heart
But the fire escape is blocked
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13. |
Sackcloth
04:56
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You and I are two sides of the same coin
Heads and tails, so close that we never can face
And I knew it; I tried to sleep through it
But woke to find the problem in exactly the same place
Because I’ve tallied up lean years and vague fears, the leers and the catcalls
Their sum is the city that’s turning me mean
All rat poison, gas leaks, the chain and the deadbolt,
Blue lights at the corner, and a murder scene
And if I were sorry, I’d write you a love song
Like these people all want to hear
And I could, because I’ve studied the postures
I never got one wrong till now
And it’s given me away entirely, I fear
On the long bus ride home from the Gold Coast I draft my confession
Though I know I’ll lose heart and just throw it away
The same way I’ve done with everyone
Who swore I could not be as cruel as I say
My reluctance it clashes with sackcloth and ashes
But each winter, which one do you think keeps me warm?
When you were just a New Year’s resolution
I could never stick to, and left only half-formed
And now I’d sell my life story for a small cup of coffee
If I could cross out the parts I don’t like
And I would: I would leave it so boring
That you never would want me at all
Just keep erasing till I prove myself right
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14. |
Siren's Swan Song
11:02
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Lie the lie, I’ll lie the lie
Because it’s the one thing left to try
This hopeless April night
With trees like nerves against the sky
Tongue-tied, you just sigh
A bit too often
As you pace and pace around a scene
I’ve been trying to erase, and trace
A hardshell case, a borrowed bass, and my mic stand
That I sent you across the street to try to get back from the new band
They more than likely formed to spite me
But you asked them so politely
It seemed unsightly
So I waited, clinging tightly to the songs I was trying to save
That they claimed, but to my knowledge never cared to play again
And bitterly I’d say
That that’s what friends are for
But not anymore
I got tired, so I forgave
But still this ineffable pull from every kind of light and weather
Leaves my heart too full to drag it from the place it’s tethered
The only difference now is that I can keep a secret better
And lie the lie, lie the lie
I’ve relied on little lies
They padded out my whole reply
I’ve been revising half my life
I still haven’t got it right
What you implied, I don’t deny
But it’s never been as simple as you think
The walls are thin, so don’t begin
You’ll never know the places that your ghost has been
I’ll never know how much I forfeit
Or what I may someday regret
I cut the rope and kind of hope that you’ll forget me someday
God bless you if you don’t
I just try not to think too much on what I’ve pissed away,
Give no one grounds to say I’m breaking character at last
Relax. Some sirens never change
Nor stray beyond a narrow range of subjects
In these lonely jagged rock songs
I wish you’d sail around to hear
Stop by sometime and have a beer
I swear I’ll explain everything I don’t regret
At least not yet–maybe give me twenty years
But on a good night, you might imagine me to be
Penelope, unraveling and traveling just fast enough
To keep one step ahead of all the stupid shit I said
I hope that you remember
I hope you don’t remember
And that it doesn’t trouble you
How these things can take forever
In the meantime, I get sidelong visions
Not of what might have been,
But of things as I suspect they really are
This melancholy dream’s the only one I care to offer
Of a mostly empty restaurant where I met your wife and daughter
It was stilted and unpleasant, but the kid was well behaved
I hope she grows up just like me and gives you hell someday
But I’ve gone on
And against these premonitions
I’ve kept and scrapped,
Then reassembled beyond recognition
All the least important pieces
Of the story I loved more than you
Yet tried to let you in on
In its irrelevance, its lack of any real direction
It’s taken on a certain unexpected beauty
I know that if I tried to tell it over, though,
It would seem to you like getting called for jury duty
I guess I failed
I think that ship has sailed
I know you never will reply
But if you were here now
I’d tell you how the DuPage County courthouse rented a pair of swans
To ornament an artificial pond
But if I took you there to see them on the weekend, they’d be gone
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The Marbled Page Chicago, Illinois
One-woman band from Chicagoland, with big guitars and quirky melodies
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