Waste of Paint - Bright Eyes

I have a friend, he’s mostly made of pain

He wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again

He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper

I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover

And I tried to tell him he had a sense

Of color and composition so magnificent

And he said, «Thank you, please

But your flattery

It’s truly not becoming me

Your eyes are poor, you’re blind you see

No beauty could have come from me

I’m a waste

Of breath, of space, of time»

I knew a woman, she was dignified and true

Her love for her man was one of her many virtues

Until one day she found out that he had lied

And decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie

She was grateful for everything that had happened

And she was anxious for all that would come next

But then she wept, what did you expect?

In that big old house with the car she kept

And, «Such is life,» she often said

With one day leading to the next

You get a little closer to your death

Which was fine with her, she never got upset

And with all the days she may have left

She would never clean another mess

Or fold his shirts or look her best

She was free

To waste away alone

Last night, my brother he got drunk and drove

And this cop he pulled him off to the side of the road

And he said, «Officer, officer, you’ve got the wrong man

No, no, I’m a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you don’t understand»

The cop said, «No one got hurt, you should be thankful

And your carelessness, it is something awful

And no, I can’t just let you go

And though your father’s name is known

Your decisions now are yours alone

You’re nothing but a stepping stone

On a path

To debt, to loss, to shame»

The last few months I’ve been living with this couple

Yeah, you know the kind who buy everything in doubles

Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle

I love their love, and I am thankful

That someone actually receives the prize that was promised

By all those fairy tales that drugged us

And still do me, I’m sick, lonely

No laurel tree, just green envy

Will my number come up eventually?

Like love’s some kind of lottery

Where you scratch and see what’s underneath

It’s sorry, just one cherry

I’ll play again, get lucky

So now I hang out down by the train’s depot

No, I don’t ride, I just sit and watch the people there

They remind me of windup cars in motion

The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions

And I want to scream out that it all is nonsense

And their life’s one track and can’t they see it’s pointless?

But just then my knees give under me

My head feels weak and suddenly

It’s clear to see it’s not them but me

Who’s lost my self-identity

And I hide behind these books I read

While scribbling my poetry

Like art could save a wretch like me

With some ideal ideology

That no one could hope to achieve

And I’m never real, it’s just a sketch of me

And everything I’ve made is trite and cheap

And a waste

Of paint, of tape, of time

So I park my car down by the cathedral

Where the floodlights point up at the steeples

Choir practice is filling up with people

I hear the sound escaping as an echo

Sloping off the ceiling at an angle

When the voices blend they sound like angels

I hope there’s some room still in the middle

But when I lift my voice up now to reach them

The range is too high way up in heaven

So I hold my tongue, forget the song

Tie my shoes, start walking off

And try to just keep moving on

With my broken heart and my absent God

And I have no faith but it’s all I want

To be loved, and believe

In my soul, in my soul