(Note: lyrics are always my favorite parts of music, I love me some instrumental jazz and the such, but being a literary guy, the lyrics do it for me....and here they are - in case you cared)
Took a bus
straight to Baltimore
On the way he
took a nap
Dropped off a
note that said "Im giving this note back"
PS there's a
lot going on underneath
There's roots,
there's pipes, there's drainage leaks
You're on,
you're wrong
Truly sorry, I
see clearly
Calmly
crashing, I pace faster than anyone
Hinges
rusting, they swing louder than anything
Truly lonely,
this place is flatter than it seems
I;m upset and
I leave the doors open wide
Our hearts are
used up, cracked and dry
Pulled the
scabs off of regrets
We haven't
learned to read our conscience yet
Truly sorry, I
see clearly
Hardly hoping,
I spend it all on game machines
Calmly
crashing, I pace and I figure it out again
One hand
clapping, awake but napping
Rows of lights
to illuminate lines
Why don't they
turn the off and let us see night
Drove crazed,
grooming my lies
You can't look
in on one way eyes
When I first listened to this song in my adolescent years, it fueled my soul with the beauty of wanting to reach out and discover more. I never ventured far from my humble abode of North Carolina, regardless of how much I loathed the fucking state. I remember getting stoned in a room of my parent's house spectulating I'm worth more than this...eventually I will fly from here. Twas just last year me and two of my friends, Steven & Andrew, made arrangement to go to Cleveland, Ohio to see Foxy Shazam...and here's a clip by them, in case you were ever so curious:
I had missed them in Charlotte the previous Spring break and was fucking determined to see these guys live (Note: especially because I saw video footage of Eric Nally swallowing cigarettes on stage...alas he did not do so at the Cleveland show but there was enough to keep me entertained throughout the night). I put on Ohio on my car's stereo right when we got into Ohio and immediately it breathed new life into a song I had held dear for so long. This was the journey I had dreamed of in these wasted days and here I was making it a reality. I could go on and on about the 2 night venue of Foxy Shazam we saw up in Cleveland last fall, but that is a story for another time because just a few months later the meaning of Mouse's Ohio changed for me yet again. February 2014, I drove up to Columbus, Ohio to help my uncle move to Charlotte, NC for him to spend his last few months before the cancer took him away. When put on Ohio as Gregory pulled into Columbus, it no longer was a song of infinite discovery while rather transcending itself into a heapless mount of chords bent on the end of possibilities. I hadn't seen my uncle Tommy since I was 6, and here I was with my lasting impression of him this sick old man (Note: he was only 57) crippled on a couch spitting phlegm gasping for life.Out of my family though, he was one of the few who supported my decision in coming to China and that was the last thing I talked to him about and he told Gregory and my mum to stop giving me such a hard time about leaving the country...he knew the only way I would evolve would be in leaving behind the states and trying to figure out who I am. I didn't see him for a few weeks after that and our next encounter was placing his corpse into a van.
I hadn't listened to that album for sometime with the memories I associated with that song, and it came on the other day as I walked to work. It no longer held the meaning passed down through years of constant play...once again I found new depth in a hollow place. If you read the lyrics to Ohio, there really isn't that much to the song, but I have transcribed so much context from it in the past decade. If it weren't for constantly changing, life wouldn't be worth what it's worth to me now.
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