Tracklist
I recall that bowling alley, it’s now closed for good
They tore it down ten years ago and built a CVS where it once stood
Am I stuck in 1999 to see millennium’s birth
Back when sabertooths in navy suits roamed freely about the frigid earth
2066, won’t it come quick
Cause who know’s where we’ll be when we’re sixty-three
The time will come and go before we even know
And won’t it come quick
Open an antique shop in an outlet mall
Like a log cabin on a space shuttle
They turned a swamp into a suburb
Just trying to make sense of it all
Back in the sixties, all this was farmland
Before all these millennial condo things
They said they wanted change but not like this
2066, won’t it come quick
Cause who knows what we’ll be after we’ve found peace
The years will come and go before we even know
And won’t they come quick
In 1966, our grandmothers felt a kick
And didn’t you grow up quick
Don’t they grow up quick
The time will come and go before we even know
And won’t it come quick
Won’t it come quick
Count the stars on both your hands
Forget about all your big plans
We used to sit on the museum steps
But now they’re fenced off under indefinite construction
Spend the night down in the grass
And sit at the foot of David, and point and laugh
The day that Delaware dies inside me, I’m gonna leave this place behind me
And I don’t know when I’ll be coming home
Ascend the branches of a tree
And find inspiration among the leaves
But Shakespeare Hill is not that steep
And the lake is just a few feet deep, oh no
So what are you doing with that fishing net
The most you’ll catch will be a plastic bag, and don’t forget
The day that Delaware dies inside me, I’m gonna leave this place behind me
And I don’t know when I’ll be coming home
So after it all burns away
When flowers wilt and trees decay
The memories remain, of summer nights and snowball fights the same
So when the sun swallows us up
I hope you did enough, cause
The day that Delaware dies inside you, you better leave this place behind you
And I don’t know when you’ll be coming home
God only knows if you’ll be coming home
They say you were born from a star but you weren’t
You came from Children’s down on Bryant
You flew too close to the sun and got burnt
But makeup and bandages hide it
When you left home you were seventeen
Slept in the park and you lived in a dream
And I framed your poster from the underground scene
I bought your record and your magazines
You lived in the space of subterranean sound
In all the basements where they heard you
When daylight came you’d ascend above ground
To wilderness that awaits you
You played the clubs when you hit 22
And slept next to people that you hardly knew
And all of the basements and bars you been through
Were painted and tainted with traces of you
Your room is still the way you left it
Before you lived to roam
Forget about the fame and fortune
Won’t you please come home
You left home to go stake your claim
And make the whole city remember your name
And all of the cameras caught a photo of fame
But there’s a darkness that lingers by the edge of the frame
Night after night you stand on the stage
You take all your pain and play it away
Counting the hours to get through the day
And dark is the night when you’re finally awake
They say you were born from a star but you weren’t
You came from Children’s down on Bryant
You flew too close to the sun and got burnt
But makeup and long sleeves hide it
They said you lived til the end and I bet you had fun
Til they found you on Chippewa nursing on Lennon’s warm gun
Nursing on Lennon’s warm gun
Nimbostratus on the lake
Enveloping the cityscape
The fall of rubber soles on salty sidewalks
Below an avian escape
Hibernate and hunker down
With fallen flurries on the ground
Lake Erie’s churning, Ontario’s sound
Blizzards are burning, the world’s turning round
A frigid wind blows on the pier
The gateway to the southern tier
The sandy surface sits beneath the snowbanks
The lake reflecting like a mirror
Pick out the plastic from the sand
Where the beginning meets the end
Down down down
The world turns round
I sing a silent sound
As the world turns round
But as a looming wall of clouds
(Erie Michigan Superior Ontario Huron)
Engulfs the city and the towns
(Erie Michigan Superior Ontario Huron)
High school’s in the rearview, and all my aspirations involve you
We’ve graduated, inundated with an innovative prodigy or two
Doctors, lawyers, firefighters fighting for a leg up o’er another
But our sense of direction’s only steered us down the current toward each other
While all of our friends are making themselves busy
On a quest for more
We could move to Norway and spend our days just
Pining for the fjords
And we’ll crash at your parents’ for awhile
It’ll buy us time to save up
In the meantime I can get a job
Just something quick to make a couple bucks
And it’ll only take a couple years
We’ll buy ourselves a single story starter home in a post-war neighborhood
And it’s not much but it’s what we’ve got
And I know it’s not the life we want, but it’s good
Oh it’s such a shame how quickly life can whisk away a dream
And they say count your blessings, I got you, you got me
But at this point, what does that even mean
What does that even mean
On the outskirts of Eden, paradise’s suburbs
There’s an Eisenhower bungalow on a well-trimmed cul-de-sac
Built in the fifties with a half-finished basement and an
Above ground swimming pool in the back
I threw my car keys in the water cause I didn’t think I’d need them anymore
Where the sidewalk ends I walked along the interstate until my ankles got too sore
Call a taxi from a rusted motel payphone by the airport where a jet soars overhead
Flashes of lightning where the faucet needs tightening and the lightbulb is busted in the shed
And with the sunrise I will forgo my goodbyes and I’ll strain out the keys from the pool floor
I’ll miss my exit cause I, my mind forgets it and I step on the gas towards something more
This house looked better in white
Wrapped up in a four foot blanket of snow reflecting sunlight
From my newer line of sight
The trees don’t seem as tall as all the pictures in my mind
And when I think of my old school
I went to confession when I bent and broke the rules
In retrospect it seems so cruel
But I always find my way back to the plazas and the pools
I look at myself and see a man
But I’m a visitor where I first rode on two wheels with no hands
So I’ll hold on to what I’ve got
I’m a foreign tourist peering over seas of parking lots
Skating rinks and lawn care signs
Stained glass windows, blankets, pillows
Moments lost in time
Are we all pieces in a great design?
Or is this all, suburban malls and HOA fines
Are the neighbors growing old?
Or will did melt down in the sun belt, missing the bitter cold
But now I’m getting older too
And home is just a fleeting feeling of places I once knew
And when I drive out to the towns
There’s McMansions and there’s ranches
Where I waited to be found
I always yearned to see the world
But faces start to fade and all the memories unfurl
I look at myself and I’m afraid
I’m far from home and all I own are photos in my brain
Why can’t things just stay the same
But time is marching on without direction, without aim
Walking over a bridge named after peace
Waving to the boys in boats beneath
They fired cannons here in 1812
Where I stand two centuries later by myself
We began where the river meets the lake
Hazy memories of downtown fade
I had a dream where I fell and almost drowned
I saw Ontario from halfway down
The current swept my body down the falls
But I woke up and I survived it all
Before too long the water gets more rough
The whitecaps pierce and the current quickens up
Flanked by neighbors, savor every row
Like you used to all those years ago
At Riverside the water splits in two
Past the town of Tonawanda, with Ontario in view
The island separates me from the pack
I can try to fight the undertow but there’s no turning back
I followed the Niagara to the mouth
Above me flocks of birds were flying south
Cacophonies of freezing season’s sound
I looked for just a moment then turned around
I remember how the city looked in June
Back when all the cherry blossoms were in bloom
But it couldn’t last, the good times are past, and buried underneath an icy tomb
When the lake is flat and solid like a field
And the memories below it sit concealed
They yearn for the spring and the sunlight it brings
And all the dormant beauty it reveals
Mid-December always gets me down
The daylight scatters, seeps into the ground
I once made a silent promise in my head
That I won’t give up to time and throw the days away in bed
But at the end of the year, the whole world disappears
So I would rather stay at home instead
In the afternoon when the sun sets
Warmth retreats, the streets are desolate
Now and then I think about the way it was
Between the hungover headaches and street festivals
Electric and free, didn’t matter to me
But nowadays nothing ever does
Though the frost is hardening your mind
Sheets of snow coat Olmsted’s grand design
Winter’s breaking, stratus fills the sky
So watch from a window while time passes you by
When I first laid eyes on you
I was untarnished and brand new
I miss those days, I do
After all these long years
The images aren’t quite as clear
Yet here I am, still here
If nothing else remains
Why can’t you stay the same
If nothing else remains
Why can’t you stay the same
Time toils and ticks like hands of a clock
Flows like water over rock
Into a whirlpool down below
Each second is a falling flake of snow
Before the sunlight starts to show
And all the flowers blossom and grow
And after all the pictures fade
Tear and wither, burn, decay
We’ll remember what we made
The fleeting things we said today
And after all our days are passed
With each breath closer to our last
We’ll harken back and ask
“Where’d all the time go?”
If nothing else remains
Why can’t you stay the same
How can I remain
When nothing stays the same
They’re tearing down the grain mills after the storm blew through
I’m sure there’ll be a lawsuit from some preservationist group
They’re digging up the microplastics buried in industrial decay
And then they’re planting flowers next to highways that Robert Moses made
They’re tearing down the grain mills after the winds brought the walls down
And they might replace the skyway with something built down closer to the ground
Does anyone remember why they built that campus all the way out there
It seems so inconvenient but it seems that now nobody really cares
Long way from Bethlehem when only towering monoliths remain
Graffiti stains have turned to paintings on the canvas of the day
They’re tearing down the grain mills after the stone walls fell
They’ll televise the explosion, or implosion, I can never really tell
Sometimes significance of structures can go further than the looks
Immortalized in a coffee table architecture book