Tidal Wave
Lyrics
It's not the barnacles that do all the damage
Figure this out too late
It's not the destination that makes the difference
It's the freight
Everything becomes a blur from six feet away
Get used to this
Every card ever turned over remains in play
Get used to this
Not every wave is a tidal wave
Not every wave is a tidal wave
It's not the mutiny written down in the diary
It's the manifest
Forgotten cargo in obsolete measurements
Anybody's guess
Even the proud, even the very proud
Probably die on their knees
Twin masts out on the open seas
Mistaken for trees
Not every wave is a tidal wave
Not every wave is a tidal wave
Banter
I'm so conflicted because, like, we played this last night. I'm conflicted because in 1999, Leonard Cohen had started touring again and he was playing Los Angeles. My friends and I went in to see him. And he was something else. One of the greatest songwriters to ever live. He had a shtick he would do where he would say, the one I remember is, "WHen the prince of peace hung from the tree, atop the hill called Golgotha, which means in Hebrew the place of the skull, he saw before him the vast panoply of human suffering. Of dignity and shame, of greatness and squalor, of great things and small things, and he knew then in his last hour: there ain't. No cure. For love. And it was astonishing, ahh, that was a great song intro dude, well done. So then I went home. Not right immediately then, I waited until the end of the concert, until it was over. But the next night, my girlfriend's roommate Carrie had enjoyed it so much that she went back to see it again, and he gave the same intro, and she was very disappointed. Said, ah, you know, it was good, but when you've heard it before, it's not as good. I have the kind of brain tendency where when I see someone I like dismissing something, like, for example, my grandfather made me promise when I was 7 to never get a tattoo. [laughing] That's why I didn't start getting tattoos until I was 41. Kind of waited until my grandpa's soul was far enough away. That's how I'm built. But sometimes, the reason you say the same thing two nights in a row is because that's the thing that applies to the song. So the thing is, when I was 19, around the same time of my life, actually, I had this intense jealous of religious people. Really engaged religious people. I had jealousy of like, cult members. They have something. They have the ability to surrender that I lack. They're able to - they've heard all the same stuff I've heard, you've heard, oh, you go near these cults and they're gonna brainwash you, and they go, I'm going in anyways. And I have a profound envy of these people, because they have all the answers. Now there's a gigantic cult they all joined, and they're driving us all to terrible fascism. But. In those days, the thing is, the evangelicals see that and go, we're still getting our piece of that. But in those days there were evangelical churches, and I would go to them to try to soak it up. In the hopes that maybe I would get hit by that bolt of lightning when you professed the sinner's prayer. Although as a Catholic I have to say, the sinner's prayer is some weak sauce. It's different every night, you can improvise it, what kind of a prayer is an improvisation? Improvisation is a beautiful way of communicating with god but a prayer is a thing that was sculpted, by somebody maybe more eloquent than you, and then he hands it to you. And you take it and you let that live. There's a number of good prayers, but the ones we make up ourselves are usually "please god please god no". That's not very eloquent! This does not please the Most High! But I would go to these churches and they had this way that they would value simplicity. Which I find very charming because it means that they, like all of us, just wish we were quakers. At core everyone has quaker envy. But they would always, and this is an ideological position, what they're saying is that Catholics have complicated things with all their structure and philosophy. So they way they'd introduce their songs, all of which were no older than 5 years or so, and which repeated their chorus about 30 times, really amazing, whoever was introducing it would say, here's a song that says, very simply, I shall rejoice in the name of the lord. and the very simply was there no matter what the song was. They'd insist that it was simple, like, here's a song that says very simply, I am covered by the blood of the lamb. That's not a simple claim! That's an extraordinarily complex claim that requires centuries of explication and notations on the sides of manuscripts in multiple languages. But yes, very simply, anyhow. Here's a song by the Mountain Goats, friends, it's just a very small song that says very simply, not every wave is a tidal wave. (2022-05-21 The Sylvee)
We don't know which audience will be the ones to get it until it happens, but someday, that's gonna be the whole set. Check twitter, they're still playing Tidal Wave. (2022-05-21 The Sylvee)
Live Performances
Footnotes