Storyline Fever

(Album: Purple Mountains - 2019)

On occasion, we all do battle with motivational paralysis
Unable to perform some simple task
Trapped at the stage of analysis
Thoughts of the shortness of life may beget
Bouts of shortness of breath in your chest
Doubts about the worth of the nights you got left
Crowding out all but fear and regret

You got storyline fever, storyline flu
It's filtering how everything looks to you
Don't you reckon it's affecting your attitude?
Storyline fever got its hooks in you
Storyline fever got its hooks in you

You took your love to the marketplace
In the wanting corner of a Western state
Where every other shopper is a basket case
Just relies on the horizon, forms a frowning face
Hanging around those haunts at night
Where half the clientele was part poltergeist
Grinding an axe against all that exists
Minus their protected exceptions to it

You got storyline fever, storyline flu
Apparently impairing your point of view
It's making horseshit sound true to you
Now it's impacting how you're acting too
Now it's impacting how you're acting too

Got a comb over cut circa Abscam sting
Make a better Larry than Lizard King
But you got to find a way to make it work
'Cause your feet is where your demons lurk
When you're seller and commodity
You gotta sell yourself immodestly
Turn your pedestal into a carving board
If that's what the audience is starving for

You got storyline fever, storyline flu
You're filtering how everything looks to you
Don't you reckon it's affecting your attitude?
Storyline fever got its hooks in you
Storyline fever got its hooks in you