Method Acting

(album: Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground - 2002)

There is no beginning to the story.
A bookshelf sinks into the sand
and a language learned and forgot, in turn,
is studied once again.
It's a shocking bit of footage
viewed from a shitty TV screen.
You can squint at it through snowy static
to make out the meaning.
Just keep on stretching the antenna,
hoping that it will come clear.
We need some reception, a higher message,
just tell us what to fear.
'Cause I don't know what tomorrow brings.
It is alive with such possibilities.
All I know is I feel better when I sing.
Burdens are lifted from me, that's my voice rising!
So Michael, please keep the tape rolling.
Boys keep strumming those guitars.
We need a record of our failures.
Yes, we must document our love.
I have sat too long in my silence.
I have grown too old in my pain.
To shed this skin, be born again,
it starts with an ending.
So thank you friends for the time we shared.
My love stays with you like sunlight and air.
Oh how I truly wish I could keep hanging around here
but my joy is covering me. Soon, I will disappear.
It's not a movie, no private screening.
This method acting, well, I call that living.
It's like a fountain, a door has been opened.
We have a problem with no solution but to love and to be loved.
So, I've made peace with the falling leaves.
I see their same fate in my own body.
But I won't be frightened when I am awoken from this dream
and returned to that which gave birth to me.
And the story goes on and on and on and on...