Альбом Bright Eyes

The picture's far too big to look at kid, your eyes won't open wide enough and
you're constantly surrounded by the swirling stream of what is and what was.
Well we all make our predictions but the truth still isn't out. But if you wanna
see the future go stare into a cloud.
Keep trying to find your way out of that maze of memories, it all sort of looks
familiar until you get up close then it's different clearly. But each time you
turn a corner, you're right back where you were and your only hope is that
forgetting might make a door appear.

Well is it your fear of being buried that makes you so afraid to speak? An
avalanche of opinions like the one that fell that I'm now underneath, it was my
voice that moved the first rock and I would do it all again. So I mean it's cool
if you keep quiet but I like singing.

So I'll be holding my note, stomping and strumming and feeling so very lucky.
There is nothing I know except this lifetime's one moment and wishing will just
leave me empty.

So you can try and live in darkness but you will never shake the light, no it
will greet you every morning and make you more aware with its absence at night
when you're wrapped up in your blankets baby, the comfortable cocoon. But I've
seen the day of your awakening boy and it's coming soon.

So go ahead and lose yourself in liquor and you can praise the clouded mind but
it isn't what you're thinking, it's the course of history, your position in
line. You're just a piece of the puzzle, so I think you better find your place
and don't go blaming your knowledge on some fruit you ate.

Cause there's been a great deal of discussion about the properties of man.
Animal or angel? You were carved from bone but your heart is just sand and the
wind is gonna scatter it and cover everything with love. So if it makes you
happy then keep kneeling mama but I'm standing up.

Because this veil it has been lifted, my eyes are wet with clarity. I've been a
witness to such wonders, I searched for them all across this country but I think
I'll be returning now to that town where I was born. Now I understand you must
keep moving friend but I'm headed home.

Yeah I'm gonna follow the road and let the scenery sweeping by easily enter my
body. Now I'll send you all this message in code, underground, over mountains,
through forests and deserts and cities. All across electric wire, it's a baited
line, the hooks in deep boys, there's no more time. So you can struggle in the

There is no beginning to the story
A bookshelf sinks into the sand
And a language learned and forgot in turn
Is studied once again
It's a shocking bit of footage
Viewed from a shitty TV screen
You can squint out at just snowy static
To make out the meaning

And keep on stretching the antenna
Hoping that it will come clear
We need some reception, a higher message
Just tell us what to fear

Because I don't know what tomorrow brings
It's alive with such possibilities
All I know is I feel better when I sing
Burdens are lifted from me
That's my voice rising...

So Michael, please keep the tape rolling
Boys keep strumming those guitars
We need a record of our failures
Yes we must document our love

I have sat too long in my silence
I have grown too old in my pain
To shed this skin, be born again
It starts with an ending

So thank you friends for the time we shared
My love stays with you like sunlight and air
You know I truly wish I could keep hanging around here
My joy is covering me
Soon I will disappear...

It's not a movie
No private screening
This method acting
Well I call it living
It's like a fountain
A door that's open
We have a problem
With no solution but to love
And to be loved

So I've made peace with all the falling leaves
I see their same fate in my own body
But I won't be frightened when I am awoken from this dream
And returned that which
Gave birth to me...

And the story goes
And the story goes

On a string, on a string, on a string, I was held, the way I move, can you tell?
My actions are orchestrated from above. So I swing and I sway, wave my hand,
kick my leg, and it's always right with the music.
Till all that swaying starts to make you sick.

For a song I was bought, now I lie when I talk with a careful eye on the cue
cards. Onto a stage I was pushed with my sorrow well rehearsed. So give me all
your pity and your money now, all of it.

We used to think that sound was something pure.

But if I could act like this was my real life, and not some cage where I've been
placed. Then I could tell you the truth like I used to, and not be afraid of
sounding fake. Now all anyone's listening for are the mistakes.

In a house, by myself, I hear the ice start to melt and I'll watch the rooftops
weep for the sunlight. And I know what must change, fuck my face, fuck my name.
They are brief and false advertisements. For a soul I don't have, something true
I have lacked and spent my whole life trying to make up for. But I found in a
song and in the people I love, they will lift me up out of darkness. And now my
door, it stands open, I'm inviting everyone in, we're gonna laugh, we're gonna
drink until the morning comes.

Well you say that I treat you
Like a book on a shelf
I don't take you out that often
Cause I know that I've completed you
And that's why you are here
That's the reason you stay here
How awful that must feel
You said you'd be my dream
I could have you every night
And if by morning I'd forgotten
You well no big deal, that'd be all right
Cause you're the reoccurring kind
You're the reoccurring kind
You never really leave my mind

Are you the love of my lifetime
Cause there's been times I had my doubts
We were just kids when I first kissed you
In the attic of my parent's house
And I wish we were there now
That took so long to figure out
What this book has been about

Now I write when I'm away
Letters that you'll never read
You said go explore those other women
The geography of their bodies
But there's just one map you'll need
You're a boomerang, you'll see
You will return to me

You will, you will, you will, you will
You will, you will, you will, you will
You will, you will, you will.

Cause if you don't then this book's all lies
If you don't then my plans would all be ruined
If you don't then I'll start drinking
Like the way I drank before

I picked you out of a crowd and talked to you
Said I liked your shoes
You said thanks, can I follow you?
So it's up the stairs and out of view, no prying eyes
I poured some wine
I asked your name, you asked the time
It's two o'clock
The club is closed, we're up the block
Your hands are on me
I'm pressing hard against your jeans
Your tongue in my mouth
Trying to keep the words from coming out
You didn't care to know
Who else may have been you before

I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck
Where is the kid with the chemicals?
I thought he said he'd meet me here but I'm not sure
I've got the money if you've got the time
He said it feels good, I said I'd give it a try

Then my mind went dark
We both forgot where your car was parked
Let's just take the train
I'll meet up with the band in the morning

Bad actors with bad habits
Some sad singers, they just play tragic
And the phone's ringing and the van's leaving
Let's just keep touching
Let's just keep, keep singing

I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk
Where is the kid with the chemicals?
I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full
I need some meaning I can memorize
The kind I have always seems to slip my mind

But you write such pretty words
But life's no storybook
Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt
Do you like to hurt? I do, I do!

The rain it started tapping on the window near my bed
There was a loophole in my dreaming so I got out of it
And to my surprise my eyes were wide and already open
Just my night stand and my dresser
Where those nightmares had just been
So I dressed myself and left then out into the gray streets
But everything seemed different and completely new to me
The sky, the trees, houses, buildings, even my own body
And each person I encountered I couldn't wait to meet

Then I came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health
I said there is nothing that I can do for you
That you can't do for yourself
He said oh yes you can, just hold my hand
I think that that would help
So I sat with him awhile then I asked him how he felt

He said I think I'm cured
No in fact I'm sure of it
Thank you stranger, for your therapeutic smile

So that's how I learned the lesson that everyone's alone
And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow
But when crying don't help, you can't compose yourself
It's best to compose a poem
An honest verse of longing or a simple song of hope

That's why I'm singing baby don't worry, cause now I got you back
And every time you feel like crying you know I'll try and make you laugh
But if I can't, if it just hurts too bad, then we'll wait for it to pass
And I will keep you company through those days so long and black

And we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve
Of love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole
But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall
Then I think we'd see the beauty there and stand staring in awe

At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges

Is it true what I heard about the son of god?
Did he come to save, did he come at all?
And if I dried his feet with my dirty hair
Would he make me clean again?
Said they don't know when but a day's gonna come
When there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun
It will just go black, it will just go back
To the way it was before

I knew a lovely girl with such pretty pride
And every man wanted her, yeah and so did I
Yeah and so did I, but she up and died
In a fit of vanity

Now men with purple hearts carry silver guns
And they'll kill a man for what his father's done
But what my father did, you know it don't mean shit
I'm not him

And you think I need some discipline, well I had my share
I've been sent to my room, I've been sat in a chair
And I held my tongue, I didn't plug my ears
You know I got a good talking to

And I don't know why but I still try to smile
When they talk at me like I'm just a child
Well I'm not a child, you know I am
Much younger than that

Now I've read some books and I've grown quite brave
If I could just speak up, I think I would say
That there is no truth, there is only you
And what you make the truth

So I'll just sing my songs and I'll pass a hat
And then I'll leave your town and I'll never look back
No I don't look back, because the road is clear
And laid out ahead of me

Now I'll get home, I'll meet my friends at our favorite bar
We'll get some lighter heads for our heavy hearts
And we'll share a drink, we'll share our fears
And they'll know how I love them
They will know how I love
They will know how I love them
I'm nothing without their love!

Now I don't know when but a day is gonna come
When there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun
It will all go black, it will all go back
To the way it's supposed to be

And is it true what they say about the son of god?
Did he die for us, did he die at all?
And if I sold my soul for a bag of gold to you
Which one of us would be the foolish one?
Which one of us would be the fool?
Which one of us would be the foolish one?
Which one of us would be the fool?

Could you please start explaining?
You know I need some understanding
Could you please start explaining?

Well the future's got me worried such awful thoughts
My head's a carousel of pictures, the spinning never stops
I just want someone to walk in front
And I'll follow the leader
Like when I fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush
Started carrying her books and doing lots of drugs
I almost forgot who I was
But came to my senses

Now I'm trying to be assertive, I'm making plans
Want to rise to the occasion, yeah meet all their demands
But all I do is just lay in bed
And hide under the covers

Yeah I know I should be brave
But I'm just too afraid of all this change

And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt
I keep making this to-do list but nothing gets crossed out
Working on the record seems pointless now
When the world ends who's gonna hear it?

But I'm trying to take some comfort in written words
Yeah Tim, I heard your album and it's better than good
When you get off tour I think we should
Hang and black out together

Cause I've been feeling sentimental for days gone by
All those summers singing, drinking, my friend, wasting our time
Remember all those songs and the way we smiled
In those basements made of music?

But now I've got to crawl to get anywhere at all
I'm not as strong as I thought

So when I'm lost in a crowd, I hope that you'll pick me out
I long to be found, the grass grew high, I laid down
Now I'll wait for a hand to lift me up, help me stand
I've been laying so long, don't wanna lay here no more
Don't wanna lay here no more, don't wanna lay here no more

Everything that happens is supposed to be
And it's all pre-determined, can't change your destiny
Guess I'll just keep moving, someday maybe

Our love is dead but without limit, like the surface of the moon, or the land
between here and the mountains. Well it is not these hiding places that have
kept us innocent but the way you taught me to just let it all go by. And so
we've learned to be as faithless, stand behind bulletproof glass, exchanging our
affections through a drawer. And it was always horribly convenient and happening
too fast, you should count your change before you're even out the door, yes you
should.
But please return, return to the person that you were and I will do the same.
Cause it's too hard to belong to someone who is gone, my compass spins, the
wilderness remains.

Once too often I've retreated into the depths of my despair, I built a barricade
to block you on the road. But standing there with all of my possessions piled
higher than a house, I felt closer to you than you ever would have known. So let
these tiny acts of charity be common ground on which to build a monument to
commemorate our time. And though you say you've found another who will surely
speed you on your way, don't let the forest grow over that path you came there
by. But you will.

So hurry up and run to the person that you love and blind him with your kindness
and he'll make war, oh war on who you were before and claim all that has spoiled
in your heart. Now I tell myself I've mended under these patches of blue sky,
there's still a few holes that let in a little rain. So now it's crying on my
shingles, my floorboards moan under my feet, the refrigerator's whining so I got
reason to complain.

But I'm not going to bless you with such compliments, some degrading psalm of
praise like the kind that converted you to me so long ago because the truth is
that gossip's as good as gospel in this town, you can save face but you will
never save your soul. And that's a fact.

So hurry and run to the one that you love and tie him up in your likeness and
he'll become, become the prisoner I was and know all that has spoiled in your
heart. He'll know all that has spoiled in your heart. So hurry up and run to the
one that you love and blind him with your kindness and he'll make war, oh war on
who you were before and claim all that has spoiled in your heart. Yeah he'll

I have a friend, he's mostly made of pain. He wakes up, drives to work and
straight back home again. He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper, I
thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover. Then I tried to tell him
that he had a sense of color and composition so magnificent and he said thank
you please but your flattery is truly not becoming me. Your eyes are poor,
you're blind, you see no beauty could have come from me. I'm a waste of breath,
of space, of time.
I knew a woman, she was dignified and true and her love for her man was one of
her many virtues until one day she found out that he had lied and she decided
the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie. But she was grateful for
everything that had happened and she was anxious for all that would come next.
But then she wept, what did you expect, in that big old house with the cars she
kept. Oh and such is life she often said, with one day leading to the next, you
get a little closer to your death which was fine with her, she never got upset
and with all the day she may have left she would never clean another mess or
fold his shirts or look her best. She was free to waste away alone.

Last night, my brother he got drunk and drove and this cop, he pulled him off to
the side of the road and he said officer, officer, you've got the wrong man, no,
no, I'm a student of medicine, the son of a banker, you don't understand. The
cop said no one got hurt you should be thankful and your carelessness, it is
something awful. No I can't just let you go and though your father's name is
known, your decisions now are yours alone, you're nothing but a stepping stone
on a path to debt, to loss, to shame.

The last few months I've been living with this couple, yeah you know the kind
who buy everything in doubles. They fit together like a puzzle and I love their
love and I am thankful that someone actually receives the prize that was
promised by all those fairy tales that drugged us. And they still do me, I'm
sick, lonely, no laurel tree, just green envy. Will my number come up
eventually? Like love's some kind of lottery where you scratch and see what's
underneath. It's sorry, just one cherry, play again, get lucky.

I've been hanging out down by the train's depot, no I don't ride, I just sit and
watch the people there. And they remind me of windup cars in motion, the way
they spin and turn and jockey for positions and I want to scream out that it all
is nonsense, oh your life's one track, can't you see it's pointless? But just
then my knees give under me, my head feels weak and suddenly it's clear to see
it's not them but me who's lost my self-identity as I hide behind these books I
read while scribbling my poetry. Like art could save a wretch like me with some
ideal ideology that no one could hope to achieve and I am never real, it's just
a sketch of me and everything I've made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint,
of tape, of time.

Now I park my car down by the cathedral where the floodlights point up at the
steeples. Choir practice was filling up with people, I could hear the sound
escaping as an echo, sloping off the ceiling at an angle and when the voices
blend they sound like angels. I hope there's some room still in the middle. But
when I lift my voice up now to reach them, the range is too high, way up in
heaven so I hold my tongue, forget the song, tie my shoes, start walking off and
try to just keep moving on with my broken heart and my absent God. And I have no
faith but it's all I want to be loved and believe in my soul, in my soul, in my

There's a man holding a megaphone, he must have been the voice of god. The
bystanders claimed they saw angels flying up and down the block. They must have
been attached to wires, I seen one laying in the lawn with a broken arm, so I
called 911. Well that's one less founded opinion, one more cause for a dispute
so the streets filled like a basin up with cameras and their crews. And they
washed away the rumors leaving just the concrete truth. It was a spectacle, no-o
I mean a miracle.
So I fell like that girl from a balance beam, a gymnasium of eyes all were
holding onto me. I lifted one foot to cross the other and I felt myself
slipping, it was a small mistake. Sometimes that's all it takes.

Now I'm staring at my wrist, hoping that the timing's right when the planets
will align, there'll be no planets to align, just the carcass of the sun, and
little painted marbles spinning senseless through an endless black sky.

It was in the foreign hotel bathtub I baptized myself in change. And one by one
I drowned all of the people I had been. I emerged to find the parallels were
fewer, I was cleansed. I looked in the mirror and someone new was there. But I
was as helpless as a chess piece, when I was lifted up by someone's hand, and
delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in. But in all of my salvation,
I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell, that is myself.

So I'll wait for the day when I'll hear the key, as it turns in the lock and the
guard will say to me: oh my patient prisoner you've waited for this day and
finally you are free, you are free, you are freezing.

Now I'm staring at the sun, waiting for it to explode, because a day is gonna
come, don't know when but it will come, and we'll finally know the way out of
here. And I'll throw away this wrinkled map, my charts of stars and compass
cracked, then I'll climb that tree all wet with sap to avoid the hungry beasts
below. I'll cut out my lovers tongue and sing of a graveyard gray and a garden
green and we won't have to worry no more. No we won't have to wonder again about

Laura, are you still living there on your estate of sorrow? You used to leave it
occasionally but now you don't even bother to ride that commuter train west to
Chicago, to stroll through the greenery in the park past the statues. How their
eyes seemed to follow you like a hated addiction, their beauty carved out of
absolutes you could never claim or even envision.
Laura, you were the saddest song in the shape of a woman, yeah I thought you
were beautiful but I wept with your movements. But I hope that you're laughing
now from that place on the carpet where we shared a sleeping bag in your
sister's apartment. Oh how she would worry so, you know I was just a stranger
but she asked me to care for you, yes she did and I went and betrayed her. But
do you know we're in high demand, Laura, us people who suffer? Because we don't
take to arguing and we're quick to surrender.

Well I think I would call tonight if I still had your number, your thoughts they
always laid close to mine, we were both skipping supper. But you should never be
embarrassed by your trouble with living because it's the ones with the sorest

The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness, a baby cries hard in an
apartment complex as I pass in a car buried under the influence. The city is
driving me out of my mind. I seen a child, he's caught in the sad trap of
gravity, he falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree and lands in the
grass and weeps for his dignity. Next time he will not aim so high. Yeah, next
time neither will I.
Now a mother takes loans out, sends her kids off to colleges, her family is
reduced to names on a shopping list. While a coroner kneels beneath a great
wooden crucifix, he knows there's worse things than being alone. And so I've
learned to retreat at the first sign of danger, I mean why wait around if it's
just to surrender? And ambition I've found can lead only to failure. I do not
read the reviews, no, I am not singing for you.

I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well and I would throw my whole
billfold if I thought it would help. With all these wishes I make, I should buy
something real, at least a telephone call home. Now my teachers they build this
retaining wall of memory, all those multiple choices I answered so quickly and
got my grades back and forgot just as easily but at least I got an A and so I
don't have them to blame.

Well I should stop pointing figures, reserve my judgment of all those public
action figures, the cowboy presidents. So loud behind the bullhorn, so proud
they can't admit when they've made a mistake while poison ink spews from a
speechwriter's pen, he knows he don't have to say it so it don't bother him.
Honesty, accuracy is just popular opinion and the approval rating is high and so
someone's gonna die.

ABC, NBC, CBS - bullshit. They give us fact or fiction, I guess an even split.
And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment, we're still the pawns in
their game. As they take eye for an eye until no one can see, we must stumble
blindly forth repeating history. Well I guess we all fit into your slogan on
that fast food marquee - red blooded, white skinned oh and the blues. Oh and the
blues, I got the blues, that's me!

I awoke in relief, my sheets and tubes were all tangled, weak from whiskey and
pills in a Chicago hospital. And my father was there in a chair by the window
staring so far away. I tried talking, just whispered...so sorry, so selfish, he
stopped me and said child, I love you regardless. There is nothing you could do
that would ever change this. I'm not angry, it happens...you just can't do it
again.

So now I try to keep up, I've been exchanging my currency while a million
objects pass through my periphery. Now I'm rubbing my eyes cause they're
starting to bother me, I've been staring too long at the screen. But where was
it when I first heard that sweet sound of humility? It came to my ears in the
goddamn loveliest melody. How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery, to