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[1] 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
- We went out to King of Prussia, because it's so picturesque there. A romantic place. Many writers go to stay across the street from the shopping mall to court their muses there. We had three days in a Holiday Inn Express across the street from an extremely large shopping mall in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I determined after the first trip to the shopping mall that it was probably better to stay inside. And that's what I did for the next two days, and when Peter would go into the shower, I'd write a song. Except that one song I got excited about and I went out into the hallway to write it because I couldn't wait for Peter to shower, because he had already showered that day, and I thought it would be strange to say, 'Peter, would you mind taking a shower?' This one, however, was written while Peter was in the shower. Hence its dark mood, because I missed him so much. (2006-09-20)
- This is a song about a guy who has no children, is that close? He has none because he is so alienated from his fellow creatures that it really wouldn't really do right for him to go and make children yet. That doesn't stop a lot of people, but, thank God, it stops our man. He should like to know somebody with whom he could have children. But he's fairly well convinced that everyone is out trying to kill him. Wish him luck, he'll need it. (2006-11-03)
- 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)
- You reach a point in the pursuit of solitude where the booze isn't going to do the job anymore. [audience: what?!?] 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)
- You know what a tincture is? Where you reduce something to its essence, instead of having a whole lot of something, in the case of the last song, you have a whole lot of something, but then, as the years pass, I got the idea to distill it. Little harder to deal with. This is sort of the 2007 reflection of the same sort of sentiment. (2015-04-22 )
- JD: I hadn't noticed this when I wrote the setlist, so, we're staying at the Holiday Inn Express here in town... [woo!]
Peter: Don't tell 'em, dude!
JD: I'm gonna be there for all of 3 hours after this show, so it's a [mumbles]. So uh, the reason I tell you that is that both Woke Up New and this song were written in a Holiday Inn Express, in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. You may say, oh, then I should go stay at a Holiday Inn Express for inspiration, no, it was not exactly, these are songs off Get Lonely. So the thing was, we had lost the will to live, but we had like, 9 days left on the tour, so we had to live whether we cared about it or not. So, and I couldn't be in the room, the room was just terrible, so I was sitting in the hallway, waiting for somebody to come up and ask me what I was doing. Sitting there, sitting with my guitar, writing, y'know, when Peter would go into the shower, then I'd quickly demo the song in the room. I would like to dedicate this song to the Holiday Inn Express. (2016-10-29)
- 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)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. "you phantoms" (2016-10-29)