Sloop UV
(6:39) [2/21/99]
MP3
Liner Notes
In clutch, touch brake, shift neutral: On my SUV’s cellphone.
(I get air miles for talking so I don’t sit through delays alone.)
The traffic's dragging by, but at least the road’s are wide and clean:
We’re flanked by honky-sports bras, while Cracker Barrels give off sheens.
Gas up the SUV;
Pile in & turn the
key.
How much we got left to go
‘Till we get home?
‘Till we get home?
We wanna go home.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we feel so tired out
We wanna go home.
“Sometimes while I’m a-coming home, I forget which one is mine.
Neighbors say not to worry; themselves, they do it all the time,” I say
over the line.
Schilling says bye. I picture him saluting like a grunt on the Rhine:
Always a palm-out, stay-back wave. On clutch, off brake, first gear,
(Inside, inside my mind).
Unwind the SUV;
My luggage & my family.
How much farther to go
‘Till we get home?
‘Till we get home?
We wanna go home.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we feel so tired out
We wanna go home.
7-Eleven cuts right through the town.
It’s not so bad, I guess: a 3-minute walk on down
Will get us to the restaurants & supermarket grounds
& we buy our corn by the can.
We used to get them from the farmer’s stands:
Their card tables barely held all of those pies.
(Did Eagle Radio drive off even the blue-winged flies?)
It’s not so much a buzzing, more like the Wendy’s squeak of soda straws:
The thought behind your eyeballs, while calling your sons home, gives
you some pause.
Got no idea where they go, now that it never does get dark.
I used to play in fields; now we make a date to drive down to the park.
Downshift the Sloop UV;
Home’s where I used to be.
Why can’t I just see
This is my new home?
This is my new home?
I wanna go home,
Yeah, yeah.
This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on. |
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Jules Shear said the songwriter with the most CDs wins because his mind
is broad enough to try anything, but sometimes originality feels as
out-of-reach as escaping I-88’s interminable gridlock. As more
“reverse earthquakes” go up, we find ourselves amidst the
panacea that became urban blight: staying in file, staring studiously
at taillights &
mumbling, “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”.
Kathy & Gene Brooks - Background Voxes
Unrest - “Soon It Will Rain” / The Clash - “Straight
To Hell” / REM - “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us”
/ Alfred Newman - Score from How The West Was Won / Jim Jarmusch
- Stranger Than Paradise (Spoken by John Lurie & Richard
Edson)
“I heard
a Fly buzz ----- when I died -----
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -----
Between the Heaves of Storm -----
The Eyes around ----- had wrung them dry -----
And Breaths were gathering firm
For the last Onset ----- when the King
Be witnessed ----- in the Room -----
I willed my Keepsakes ----- Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable ----- and then it was
There interposed a Fly -----
With Blue ----- uncertain stumbling Buzz -----
Between the light ----- and me -----
And then the Windows failed ----- and then
I could not see to see ------ ”
- Emily Dickinson, “I Heard A Fly Buzz ----- When
I Died -----” (1862)
“This place you say you’re looking for
It might’ve washed out with the rains
It might not be there anymore
It might not be the same
But if you find it won’t you let me know
If I weren’t so poorly I’d surely go
Don’t you know I used to love it so
When I was just a boy
And the light shines long ago
On the cold December snow
And the river runs on through the past
I can see it in the bottom of the whiskey glass.”
- James McMurtry, “Vague Directions” (1992)
“Jeff? Hey man, how they hanging? . . . Not bad, not bad . . . Yeah,
I finished that deal yesterday . . . No, I made twenty grand ----- chump
change. Listen to this, man ------ this morning I cut a deal I made
seventy-five grand. You know what they say: ‘A hundred grand here, a
hundred grand there ----- pretty soon you’re talking real money.’ .
. . They have to pay me, man. They don’t pay me, I go next door, I make
twice as much. It’s like Bruce says, man: ‘No surrender, no return.’
Rock on, man.
I don’t know ----- maybe I’ll buy a Porsche for the country house, park
it in front of the tennis court, piss off my neighbors. Not even drive
it, just leave it there all the time . . . Huh? No, I can’t drive it
----- I don’t drive a stick . . . That’s an idea ----- Range Rover,
they’re good. They’re like 4-wheel drive, very ecological, right? Maybe
I’ll get one of those. Maybe I’ll get two of those, whatever.”
- Eric Bogosian, “Rock Law” from Sex, Drugs,
Rock & Roll (1991) |
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