-----
A commission, for which I mostly rearranged and rhymed some musings sent to me by the song's godparent.
This is really the theme of this album. I love technology. But it can get in the way. And when it fails you, it fails you big. Paper is reassuringly simple.
-----
There's the paper and the pen and me
The storm stole the electricity
With a kind of ancient purity
Cliché, but right and whole and real
And I make my words so differently,
Stroking, scripting, thoughtlessly
Every sound a curving path
To calm the keyboard"s artillery
Just the scratching of the page and me
My handwriting has atrophied, it"s been so very long
Mistakes stay on the page to see, it"s real when I am wrong
There is no cut and no delete
There"s time for finding what I mean
My glowy box can do a lot, it hooks me up so I can talk
At the speed of everybody else"s lives
But it does not feel like home to me, my portal lets in everything
And it suggests and it corrects
It disembodies all the text
The skies have changed since I was young,
The stars are dimmed, the roads all hum
I"m landlocked and I"m light-polluted
I"m choked with updates on what all you did
O turn me southbound to the sea, the paper and the pen and me
O cut the electricity, oh wheel Orion over me
Oh spin the stars and spun I"ll be
The paper and the pen and me
A commission, for which I mostly rearranged and rhymed some musings sent to me by the song's godparent.
This is really the theme of this album. I love technology. But it can get in the way. And when it fails you, it fails you big. Paper is reassuringly simple.
-----
There's the paper and the pen and me
The storm stole the electricity
With a kind of ancient purity
Cliché, but right and whole and real
And I make my words so differently,
Stroking, scripting, thoughtlessly
Every sound a curving path
To calm the keyboard"s artillery
Just the scratching of the page and me
My handwriting has atrophied, it"s been so very long
Mistakes stay on the page to see, it"s real when I am wrong
There is no cut and no delete
There"s time for finding what I mean
My glowy box can do a lot, it hooks me up so I can talk
At the speed of everybody else"s lives
But it does not feel like home to me, my portal lets in everything
And it suggests and it corrects
It disembodies all the text
The skies have changed since I was young,
The stars are dimmed, the roads all hum
I"m landlocked and I"m light-polluted
I"m choked with updates on what all you did
O turn me southbound to the sea, the paper and the pen and me
O cut the electricity, oh wheel Orion over me
Oh spin the stars and spun I"ll be
The paper and the pen and me