boston

I used to travel on business quite a bit. I never once took a trip that didn't end up being a little crazy in some way, but the nuttiest trip I ever took was to Boston. I won't go into all of the details here, but it did inspire me to write a song.

I've been neglecting both blogging and playing music lately, so maybe if I jot down the lyrics, it will count a little towards both.

I have issues with presenting song lyrics in my blog (refer to previous song lyrics post). But I've also found that the older I get, the worse I spell, the worse I edit, and the less I care, so I'm proceeding with that general approach toward the blog. It's this or nothing tonight.

(Funny thing: My band once played at Bottletree in Birmingham, and we opened with this song because it's very fast and energetic, kicking off with the boomwhackers in F and C. The show was a benefit for Black Warrior Riverkeeper, and it so happens that the president of the company I work for is also the father of the Riverkeeper, so he was there in the audience. I guess it was okay, because I still work there.)

The name of the song is Boston, but I like to call it the punkass song, just because it's fast as hell and we do it with a lot of attitude.


Flying underneath the stars into Boston / I had never seen constellations on the ground
I named them after the people I knew / One was Elizabeth, one was you
The lake was like a black hole pulling us into the runway / Into the runway
The drinks were a poor substitute for feeling genuinely better / Genuinely better
I dial 8 and then 1 and then your number / You're like the pen on the desk in the hotel
I just figure you're there for me

Crawling out of bed at six thirty in the morning / 23 degrees in the sun and the snow is
Blinding on the way to the big boardroom meeting / B-O-R-E-D, big boardroom meeting
Where the power is wielded in points on a white screen and we all ask our questions / All ask our questions
The strategy hovers like a preying mosquito, we will curse when it bites us / Curse when it bites us
I try to keep my shit together / I'm a professional, shit together
But I just want to go home

Too bad no one was there to see me step out of the stretch limousine
In front of the Days Inn / Pimping in Atlanta on a layover night
Three days later we're back again with the hot spring breakers
Wearing their flip-flops, wearing their fake tans / With their teeth as white as the snow up in Boston

highland court

In my last post, I mentioned Sloss Furnaces. I spent most of my young adult life living in various apartments on Southside. The last place I lived as a single girl was called Highland Court.

Glen and Joe and Becca lived in Highland Court. That model chick and her cute musician husband lived in Highland Court. The crazy girl who didn't own a pair of comfortable shoes and turned up the techno music at 3am lived in Highland Court. I had a small balcony and my dog Lucy and the long, narrow stairwell up to my door. I rode my bike everywhere and fell asleep to Michael Hedges or John Coltrane or Peter Gabriel. As happy as I was to get married, I had a hard time saying goodbye to Highland Court.

Every now and again we'd build a little fire in the middle of the courtyard and stay up all night. One night we decided to walk to Sloss at around... hell, I don't know... maybe 2? 3? 4? On the way, we had to stop for a train. There was a cop parked next to the tracks. The train was carrying tank after tank after tank. The cop said he was there to make sure nothing happened. He didn't hassle us at all, which was fortunate given our general state of mind. It was a little odd.

The train rolled past and the tanks got smaller. The cop took off, and we kept walking. I don't remember how we got onto the premises -- whether we had to sneak through or climb over anything, or whether it was all pretty accessible. But we got in, and we wandered through, and we climbed up that really high tower, which is way higher than you realize until you're up there. We smashed our cigarette butts into a film cannister so as not to litter. And later I wrote a song.

I'm a little reluctant to post song lyrics, because they never quite work unless they're being sung. Poetry is meant for the page; lyrics are meant for the song. But I'm going to give it a go and see how it turns out. I think I probably wrote this in 1998 or so. I typically fingerpick variations of C and G with a capo on the fourth fret when playing it. It's called Highland Court.

Came dancing through the courtyard,
wings and wands and fairy dust
Sprinkled it beside me on a night made out of August
Followed them to the railroad,
saw them ship the tanks off for the war
It used to be that war was just a word
we never heard

Taught me how to read the map,
how to find the belly of the tree
Biggest one in all the forests east of the Mighty Mississippi
Older than my daddy,
old as god, old as mercy
It used to be that mercy was just a word
we never heard

Climbed the stairs to the furnace,
climbed down into the canyon's bowl
Ate my granny apple, lay back as the time unfolded
Quiet as the backseat
in the dark on the way home
Quiet is a ladle full of words
we never heard

Yeah, well -- not quite the same as a poem. Music adds rhythm and inflection and an emotional sense that would otherwise be built into a poem. Lyrics alone are confusing and easy to stumble over.

Wrapped up in this song is a whole nother adventure in the Sipsey Wilderness, as well as one in the Little River Canyon, but I'll save those for another day. They all took place while I was living in that little apartment, with all of those people that I wonder about now.

(And yes, I do consider "a whole nother" to be perfectly acceptable Alabama grammar.)