|
Lyrics
WHY I HATE PLAYING A STEADY HOUSE GIG
Night after night, you revel in your failure;
You struggle to simply die by inches
Before a crowd of wary gawkers
Drunk and under dim lights, they
Bear witness to your futile sufferings
And they sit, as a jury, cold and
Deprecating by default as you reveal
The subtle inadequacies of your life.
Going everywhere you think they might want you to go,
Middle of the road, left and right, pan out
On the extremes, work the spectrum, run the gamut
Sing em slow, moderato, quick, fast, and
Everything in between; and then, at your limit,
Shoot the moon, go for broke, risk it all,
Take a chance; bet your pride against their stony,
Stoic silence, show yourself and the world
What you’re really made of. They dare, and so
You wail; you stomp,
Throw em a bone, strut some chops
Its as desperate a tightrope as you’ll ever skip across
And if your lucky and, that night, you got it,
Made it, attempted and succeeded,
It won’t really matter cause it will never be again
But
Most times, you will fail.
You will fail spectacularly; you will be seen as a wondrous disaster,
A guilty, freakish curiosity,
That no one will ever forget, while you finish,
Trying to end the disaster you’ve started
Desperately, suddenly stripped of all dignity even as
You know that you will always remember.
That night you learn a cutting truth; you learn
That those who reach for the moon, those who
Are brave enough to risk, to seize a chance, but
Fail, will plummet smoking to the earth
Where they will be laughed at and scorned
By the careful mob who enviously shuffle around
The small successes of those who dare to dream.
That, in a nutshell, is why I hate (and love)
Playing a steady house-gig.
copyright 2002 by Seth Barkan
|
lo fi play
hi fi play
download
email track to a friend
add to My.MP3