Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
Album - 12 agosto 2002 - Debaser id 34166

Your picture is far too big to look at kid.
Your eyes won't open wide enough
and you are constantly surrounded by the swirling stream
of what is and what was.
Well, we've all made out predictions but the truth still isn't out.
So if you want to see the future, go stare into a cloud.

And keep trying to find your way out of that maze of memories.
It all sort of looks familiar
until you get up close and 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.

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 am 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 and stomping and strumming
and feeling so very lucky.
There is nothing I know except that this lifetime is one moment
and wishing will just leave me empty.

So you can try and live in darkness but you will never shake the light.
It will greet you every morning
and it will make you more aware with its absence at night,
when you're wrapped up in your blanket,
babe, that comfortable cocoon.
But I have seen the day of your awakening boy and it's coming soon.

So you can lose yourself in liquor
and you can praise the clouded mind
but it isn't what you're thinking
no, it's the course of history your position in line.
You're just a piece of the puzzle so
I think you'd better find your place.
And don't go blaming you knowledge on some fruit you ate.

Because there's been a great deal of discussion, yes,
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, Mom,
but I'm standing up.

Because this veil is has been lifted.
Yes, My eyes are wet with clarity.
I have been a witness to such wonders.
Oh I've searched for them across the country
but I think I'll be returning now
to the town where I was born.
And I understand you must keep moving, friend, but I'm headed home.

I'm gonna follow the road and let the scenery weeping by
easily enter my body.
I'll send you all this message in code,
under ground, over mountains, through forests and deserts and cities.
All across electric wire, it's a baited line.
The hook is in deep, boys, there is no more time.
So you can struggle in the water
and be too stubborn to die
or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.

there's 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 at it through snowy static
to make out the meaning,
and keep on stretching the antennae
hoping that it will come clear
we need some reception, a higher message,
just tell us what to fear
cause 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,
oh it starts with the ending
so thank you friends for the time we shared
my love stays with you like sunlight and air
oh, how I truly wish I could keep hanging around here
but my joy is covering me,
soon I will disappear

it's not a movie,
no private screening
this method acting,
well, I call that living
yea, it's like a fountain,
a door has opened
we have a problem with no solution
but to love and to be loved

so, I've made peace with the falling leaves
I see their same fate in my own body
but I won't be frightened when I'm awoken from this dream
and returned to that which, gave birth to me
and the story goes
and the story goes
it goes on and on and on and on...

On a string
On a string
on a string
I was held
The way I moved, can you tell
My actions are orchestrated from above
And so I swing and I sway
Wave my hand, kick my leg
And it's always right with the music
(katie and tiffany: 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 card
Onto a stage, I was pushed
With my sorrow well rehearsed
So give me all your pity and your money now
All of it
(katie and tiffany: 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
Well then I could tell you
The truth like I used to
And not be afraid of sounding fake
Now all that anyone's listening for are the mistakes
(katie: sorry!)
No it's ok, it's ok
One, two, three!
One, two, three!
In a house by myself
I hear the ice start to melt
And I 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
I spent my whole life trying to make up for it
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
That's what we're gonna do!
Come on!
Come on!

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 nightstand 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

And I came upon a doctor
Who appeared in quite poor health
I said there's nothing that I can do for you 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
And 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 your back
And every time you feel like crying
I'm gonna try and make you laugh
And if I can't
If it just hurts too bad
Then we'll wait for it to pass
And I will keep you company for 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 then
We'd stand staring in awe

At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges
Like a story told
By the fault-lines and the soil

Our love is dead but without limit
Like the surface of the moon
Or the land between here and the mountains
It is not these hiding places that have kept us innocent
But the way you taught me to just let it all go back
So we've learn 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
Well, 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, but 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's let these tiny acts of charity becommon 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, 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
(alright, now help me out boys)
But 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
And so it's crying on my shingles
My floorboards moan under my feet
The refrigerator's whining so I've got reason to complain
But I'm not gonna bless you with such compliments
Some degrading song of psalm
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 won't ever save your soul
And that's a fact so, so hurry up and run to the one that you love
And tie him up in your likeness
And he'll become, become, oh, the prisoner I was
And know all that has spoiled in your heart
He'll know it all
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, And claim 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, And claim all that has spoiled)

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
And 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
It is truly not becoming me
Your eyes are poor, you're blind, you see
No beauty ever could have come from me
I'm a waste
Of breath, of space, of time

I knew a woman she was dignified and true
Her love for her man was one of her many virtues
Until one day she found out that he had lied
And decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie
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
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 days 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, a 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
And 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
Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle
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 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
I'll play again, get lucky

So now I hang out down by the train's depot
No, I don't ride, I just sit and watch the people there
They remind me of wind-up cars in motion
They way they spin and turn and jockey for positions
And I wanna scream out that it all is nonsense
Their life's one track and can't they 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
And 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'm 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

So I park my car down by the cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice is filling up with people
I hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
When the voices blend they sound like angels
I hope there's some room still in the middle
But when 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

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 street 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, I mean a miracle
And so I fell like that girl from a balance beam
A gymnasium of eyes
all were holding on to me
I lifted one foot to cross the other
and I felt myself slipping
It was a small mistake
Sometime's that's all it takes
Now I'm staring at my wrist, hoping that the time is right
When the planets will align
There will be no planets to align
Just the carcass of the sun and those little painted marbles spinning
senseless through an endless black sky
(and so it never started and it will never stop just like I am and you are)
It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub I baptized myself and changed
And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been.
And 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 wait for the day when I hear the key
as it turns in the lock and the guard will say to me:
Oh my patient prisoner you have 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 will throw away this wrinkled map and my chart of stars and compass, cracked
And I'll climb that tree all wet with sap, to avoid the hungry beasts below
I'll cut out my lover's 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 how this song or story ends,
about how this song and story will end

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 the 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 have always laid close to mine
we were both skipping supper
but you should never be embarrassed by
your trouble with living
cause it's the ones with the sorest throats, Laura,
who have done the most singing

La la la la la la. la la la lah...