An Empty Formal Gesture / The Names of Real People and Places

from Some Siren's Set List by The Marbled Page

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lyrics

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

credits

from Some Siren's Set List, released January 8, 2022

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The Marbled Page Chicago, Illinois

One-woman band from Chicagoland, with big guitars and quirky melodies

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