Gary the Piano Guy (my piano tuner) just finished attempting to rejuvenate some stuff I did with Ron D. back in 1987 – which is pretty cool – but not all that well recorded (Ron D. has the master tape and as my readers know – I can’t locate Ron).
I bring this up not because it’s been 25 years since we recorded it; nor because VAN HALEN is bringing out a new album with David Lee for the first time in 28 years (I dare say my lyrics plumb a bit more than whomever writes VAN HALEN’s [though I love the David Lee-fronted VAN HALEN]); nor is it because I wanted to compete with The Watchman – and try to write something as compelling as his stuff…it’s because daughter-in-law Tanya is about ready to take over this here column and instill some German structure into it, and, while I was familiarizing her with what goes on in The Inn – I noticed all sorts of snippets from my articles on Google!
I was shocked – I felt butt naked – I only thought that people stumbled upon The Doctor’s Inn and then perused an article-or-two that looked interesting: I didn’t know that many of my perceptions were unfettered, extrapolated and otherwise de-contextualized…to be issued forth as farts in the wind (and here I was going to keep The Doctor’s Inn a secret from my potential Aussie employers). Giti said: You can forget about that…
So being naked – I remembered that the most naked you can get, figuratively speaking, is in your prose or poetry, and, one of my old lyrical attempts (set in the Reagan presidency [and part of the Ron D. resuscitated tapes) seems to have bearing on the nonsensical Republican primaries of today…I’ll let my clever readers figure out what I was trying to say:
What you say and what you do
Are two different things to me
The devil staring back from the mirror
Is plain for all to see
First you paint the world white
Then you paint it black
And when you turn it upside down
You don’t get anything back
There’s water in the halls
I’m not taking any more calls
I’m surrounded by four walls
They’ve got me by the balls
You build a dam to hold back the flood
Have little boys thumb the leaks
Turning a deaf ear to the cries of the poor
Your metal feet trod the weak
And when the damn breaks open wide
And the hungry come clawing through
You build them homes of paper dreams
And smile when they fall through
There’s water in the halls
I’m not taking any more calls
I’m surrounded by four walls
They’ve got me by the balls
I’d say the tide is rising
It’s almost to your head
Did you plan to take to the skies
Leaving us for dead?
Rainbows promised never again
We’d be flushed down life’s long drain
But the water flowing through the halls
Has drained out from your brain
There’s water in the halls
I’m not taking any more calls
I’m surrounded by four walls
They’ve got me by the balls
Lines of Sanity
Cross through eternity
In Man’s Vanity
We swim a Silent Sea
Water in the Halls…