The Assassin’s Apprentice
Stephen Fearing – 1992 © Mummy Dust / Fearing and Loathing Music
In this frame in this figure, this space within my head
There’s a man who lies in anger like a body in a bed
But I’ve been steering clear of myself
The ragged times and the emptiness I cannot fill
I’ve got distance on my breath a restless spirit in a bottle
I’ve got scars under my boots where my soul steps on the throttle
And I’m sick from constant motion with a lifetime of tomorrows in front of me
Chorus
Most everybody knows this halo this little ring of hell
All the questions we won’t ask ourselves and the answers we won’t tell
But in the margins of our lives the long bookends of each day
Dreams fly like ravens, as we see what we can’t say
Denial is a sickness, people get it like religion
A beacon in our bodies that we fly toward like pigeons
A curtain that we draw to keep us hidden from the people we were yesterday
I’ve got distance on my breath a restless spirit in a bottle
I’ve got scars under my boots where my soul steps on the throttle
And I’m sick from constant motion with a lifetime of tomorrows in front of me
Chorus
And I’ve been living in a country where everybody’s split in two
A state of limbo that divides us, what we feel from what we do
Where silence is a virtue, emotion is a child that’s seen but never heard, never heard
I wear my temper like a sheath, spiral shell upon a snail
And the winds that twist within me fill my body like a sail
I’m colder than a piston and I’m triggered by the fugitives inside of me
Chorus
Give It Up
Stephen Fearing – 1992 © Mummy Dust / Fearing and Loathing Music
Myself and Joan, a good friend, spent an evening in a bar
Drinking to our dreams and our desires
And finally after all we’d said, we ended up the night together
Distancing our friendship for a while
Chorus
For love is just a word, come rolling off the tongue
Smoke from burnt tobacco, clouds drifting past the sun
And it will only last until your cigarette is done
So give it up or light another
When the weather’s cloudy I dress to match the day
Black boots of leather and a coat to keep the rain away
And I wander ‘round inside my head, my personality
And tell myself that you never mattered
Chorus
These are fragile ties that bind us, these acquaintances we make
Forcing smiles and promises will surely make them break
Leaving nothing for your lips to do but ache for things to say
Try to talk your way into tomorrow
Chorus
Myself and Joan, a good friend, spent an evening in a bar
Drinking to our dreams and our desires
The Longest Road
Stephen Fearing 1992 © Mummy Dust/ Fearing and Loathing Music
I’m standing at a window,
I’m pressed against the past
I’m looking on in black and white
Through the eyes of photographs
And I’m falling into faces
Cultivated smiles
Two dimensional, Je me souviens Canada
Out of Gastown in the morning
On a train in ‘69
Into the ark-weld of the rising sun
We left the coast behind
And the wheels rolling a rhythm
And I heard in them for the first time
The endless song of traveling out of Canada
Chorus
Oh Canada, the longest road I’ve know
Paved with the kind of broken hearts that lead to broken homes
Looking backwards I remember
The cracks in all the paving stones
And the distances I’ve traveled out of Canada
Through the dog-days of the prairies
The boundless sky above our heads
My stepfather looked for Mounties in the streets of Winnipeg
And he told them that my mother’s love
Had stole his heart away
And we all stood there posed for Polaroids of Canada
Chorus
I awoke wrapped in my mother’s arms on the docks of Montreal
The ships lit like Christmas, and the moon a swollen ball
When a sailor spoke of England, I’d never felt so small
I waited, until the ocean turned from emerald to grey
The wind threshed the water
And washed our wake away
And the seagulls blew like words
Back to the mouth of the St. Lawrence
As we sailed out
On The Empress of Canada
Chorus
The first country of my youth
My heart was ever drawn to you
Like a tongue to a broken tooth
In a world where everyone was always leaving
I was trying to keep my fingertips on Canada
Expectations
Stephen Fearing 1991 © Mummy Dust/ Fearing and Loathing Music
What do you expect of me?
The sickly willow-kid became a willow tree
Bending in the face of that uncertainty
Breaking from the weight of what I could never be
What do you expect of me?
What did I want from you?
I reached, left myself unprotected
Set my sights so high and I expected
Isn’t that what fools and little kids should never do
What else could I expect from you?
Chorus
Expectations
confrontational scenes
Desperation
Do you know what I mean?
When I see your face reflected in my TV screen
What do you expect of me?
What do you expect of me.
What do I see
When I turn off the projector, stop the movie?
When I turn my back on you and let you leave me?
I see you as you are and as you will surely be
What else would you expect of me?
Chorus.
The Station
Stephen Fearing – 1992 © Mummy Dust / Fearing and Loathing Music
Have I been crying? Working hard everyday
To find the time to hear what my poor heart might say
The only sound is like a diesel’s distant thundering
I’m a desolate town with a railroad station where my heart should be
A railroad station where my heart should be
I got a railroad station where my heart should be
Through the years, I stopped myself from falling down
The engineer who never set feet on the ground
Under the strain of those empty rails in front of me
A runaway train with a railroad station where my heart should be
A railroad station where my heart should be
I got a railroad station where my heart should be
Oh I’ve been driving myself underground
Leaving parts of me behind
Now I’m at the station waiting
For the missing person to arrive
For the missing person to arrive
For all the missing people to arrive.
Oh hear that whistle blowing, hear that midnight shout
Lay me on the tracks and turn me inside out
Yes and don’t you wake me up, I know what I need
Roll me through the heartland in a boxcar to the sea
Have I been crying? Working hard everyday
To find the time to hear what my poor heart might say
The only sound is like a diesel’s distant thundering
I’m a desolate town with a railroad station where my heart should be
A railroad station where my heart should be
I got a railroad station where my heart should be
Echoes
Stephen Fearing – 1984 © Mummy Dust / Fearing and Loathing Music
So Long sweet dreaming, I’m going to step outside
I stood and watched her flight this evening
Blue eyes filled with brighter skies
I’m left with all the times I’ve sat and found myself alone
Always listening for a song echoing my own
Chorus
I feel the moon behind me breathing
As the daylight dips below
The circles turn for no apparent reason
We follow where they go
The first thing I remember is the last thing I will feel
This sense of ancient motion, heaving windmills spinning wheels
As I roll along the path between the cradle and the stone
Chorus
It seems I had a notion that life was like the sea
A calm and gently motion unrolling endlessly
But the currents never carry you to where you think you ought to be
So long, sweet dreaming.
The Brilliance You Need
Stephen Fearing – 1991 © Mummy Dust / Fearing and Loathing Music
I don’t understand you, so I read about me
Reach for what I need through truck stop paperbacks and poetry
I crawl between the pages, turn the covers like a bed
‘Cause I get tired of how you hide inside your head
It’s what we can’t say that destroys us
What we can’t see makes us bleed
We are mirrors to each other, mostly blind to our own needs
We are mirrors to each other, mostly blind to our own needs
I never see you, I have just begun to see
Sketches of a face emerge in myth and pop-psychology
The son’s ascent to heaven waxen wings and eggshell bones
And the Holy Father petrified in stone
It’s what we can’t face that destroys us
What we can’t feel makes us bleed
Unbind your secret shadow and find the brilliance you need
Unbind your secret shadow and find the brilliance you need
Don’t waste your time denying what’s behind you
Drinking all your empty nights alone
‘Cause I see you clinging to the only thing your bitter little mind cannot disown
How can I forgive you? How can I ask you forgive me?
One word cannot encompass this emotional geography
Like the raw skins of an onion, the barren earth beneath the road
Our world is wreathed in silent stinging cold
It’s what we can’t face that destroys us
What we can’t feel makes us bleed
Unbind your secret shadow and find the brilliance you need
Unbind your secret shadow and find the brilliance you need
Don’t waste your time denying what’s behind you
Drinking all your empty nights alone
‘Cause I see you clinging to the only thing your bitter little mind cannot disown
I don’t understand you, so I read about me
Reach for what I need through truck stop paperbacks and poetry
I crawl between the pages, turn the covers like a bed
‘Cause I get tired of how you hide inside your head
It’s what we can’t face that destroys us
What we can’t feel makes us bleed
Unbind your secret shadow and find the brilliance you need
Unbind your secret shadow and find the brilliance you need
The Life
Stephen Fearing 1991 © Mummy Dust/ Fearing and Loathing Music
All the faces are engaged tonight, the conversation’s taken
The singer on the bandstand has a voice so close to breakin’
Pulling songs from a guitar, dark with nicotine and time
And a sunburst top that sets against the evening
And the showbusiness officials turn a deaf ear to the stage
Their hearts are locomotives and their minds are narrow-guage
You can hate this way of living, you gotta love this way of life
Creativity and ambition will keep you hungry
A life of empty boxes, rented rooms and hire cars
And the eyes that turn to watch you in those little redneck bars
Midnight buses on the prairies, people curled inside themselves
So many things to feel and nobody to tell
So you pick up your guitar and you play it for yourself
These days you only play it seems, for everybody else
Pull the strings into you hands and hold the wood against your hips
Unwind the miles of silence from you fingers
And tonight the songs are lost among the cartwheel chandeliers
The microphone is old it tastes like bitterness and beer
Lyrics sink into the bottles and the music disappears
And you’re thinking about where you’ll be tomorrow
Where the faces turn to listen and the energy shifts and moves
Your voice goes reaching over all the people in the room
Put your body to the rhythm, roll the wheel into the road
Let the moment life your heart and make it easy
Put your body to the rhythm, roll the wheel into the road
Let the moment life your heart and make it easy, make it easy. |
