Maybe Sprout Wings
Lyrics
A bad dream shook me in my sleep
And I woke up sweating
Ran through the dark to the shower
Already forgetting
Try to think good thoughts
Trying to find my way clear
Let the room fill with steam
Traced pictures on the mirror
Ghosts and clouds
And nameless things
Squint your eyes and hope real hard
Maybe sprout wings
I clawed my way to the living room window
Stood there in the cold
The last bits of my dream like figures in the distance
Hard to hold
I thought of old friends
the ones who'd gone missing
Said all their names three times
Phantoms in the early dark
Canaries in the mines
Ghosts and clouds
And nameless things
Squint your eyes and hope real hard
Maybe sprout wings
Banter
- This is a song about how sometimes you wake up and you say, 'oh, I'm ashamed,' and then you don't really know what it is you're ashamed of. So how would you tell anybody about that? You're not ashamed of any particular thing, just carrying a general sort of shame. It has its own sweetness to it if you live with it long enough. (2007-11-02 Gardner Lounge)
- You reach a point in the pursuit of solitude where the booze isn't going to do the job anymore. I know, that's sad news for some people, man. But trust me, there comes a point, it's sort of like a, oh, what the hell, book or movie, I don't know. Some book or movie, oh, 'The Iceman Cometh' by Eugene O'Neill.... And in this book, in this play, if you haven't read it, uh, all these drunks are hanging around at the bar and some guy comes in and tells them all that they're never going to make anything of their lives and they should stop pretending that they are. And then the booze stops working. [audience member: 'More booze!'] No. At that point you have to drink your own helplessness. It's considerably more costly than booze. This song is about drinking your own helplessness.(2007-11-03 The Slowdown)
- Sometimes when people yell requests, like, a bunch of people request something, and there'll be one dude who will say PLAY WHATEVER YOU WANNA PLAY. But that is actually the most confounding request of them all. Then you say, well, what DO I wanna play? And that's like a 5 minute question. Sit down with a notebook and the internet and think about things. You can't really do that on stage - well, you CAN, because people have no standards now, but generally speaking if you are using the internet on stage you are fucking up. Do not do that. I don't care what your purpose - just don't. This has been my masterclass. Totally free. But I think about it, I get home from tour and think, ah, that one dude in Pittsburgh yelled 'play what you wanna play' and you couldn't think of what you wanted to play so you just played something else, but what do you actually want to play? And today I was thinking about this when I was writing this - usually, down deep in my gut, this is the one I want to play. Because I'm a goth. (2019-04-30 Brooklyn Steel)
Live Performances
Footnotes