[Intro]
E G#m
[Verse 1]
E F#
But I don't believe in ghosts or anything, I know that you are gone and that I'm carrying
G#m
some version of you around
F# G#m
Some untrustworthy old description in my memories
E F# G#m
And that must be your ghost taking form, created every moment by me dreaming you so
F# G#m F# G#m
And is it my job now to hold whatever's left of you for all time? And to re-enact you for our daughter's life?
[Verse 2]
F# G#m E F#
I do remember when I was a kid and realized that life ends and is just over; that a point comes
G#m
where we no longer get to say or do anything
F# G#m
And then what? I guess just forgotten
E F#
And I said to my mom that I hoped to do something important with my life
G#m F# G#m
Not be famous, but just remembered a little more, to echo beyond my actual end
E F# G#m
And my mom laughed at this kid trying to wriggle his way out of mortality, of the final inescapable
feral scream
F# G#m
But I held that hope and grew up wondering what dying means
F# G#m
Unsatisfied, ambitious and squirming
[Verse 3]
F# G#m
The first dead body I ever saw in real life, was my great-grandfather's
E F#
Embalmed in a casket in Everett, in a room by the freeway
G#m
Where they talked me into reading a thing from the Bible
About walking through a valley in the shadow of death
G#m E F#
But I didn't understand the words, I thought of actually walking through a valley in a shadow,
G#m
with a backpack and a tent
F# E
But that dead body next to me spoke clear and metaphor-free
[Verse 4]
G#m E F#
In December 2001 after having spent the summer and fall traveling mostly alone around
G#m F G#m
The country that was spiraling into war and mania, little flags were everywhere
G#m E F#
I was living on the periphery as a twenty-three-year-old wrapped up in doing what I wanted
G#m
And it was music and painting on newsprint
E
And eating all the fruit from the tree like Tarzan, or Walt Whitman
F# G#m
Voracious, devouring life, singing my songs
F# G#m
Sleeping in yards without asking permission
[Verse 5]
F# G#m
But that December I was shaken by a pregnancy scare
E F# G#m
From someone that I'd been with for only one night, many states away, who I hadn't planned to keep knowing
F# G#m
A young and embarrassing over-confident animal night
G#m E F#
And the terror of the idea of fatherhood at twenty-three destroyed my foundation, and left me freaked out and
G#m F# G#m
wandering around mourning the independence and solitude that defined me then
[Verse 6]
E
Though my life is a galaxy of subtleties
F# G#m
My complex intentions and aspirations do not matter at all
F# G#m
In the face of the crushing flow of actual time
E
I saw my ancestors as sad and misunderstood in the same way
F# G#m
That my descendants will squint back through a fog trying to see
F# G#m
Some polluted version of all I meant to be in life
E F# G#m
Their recollections pruned by the accidents of time, what got thrown away, and what gets talked about at night
F# G#m
But she had her period eventually and I went back to being twenty-three
[Verse 7]
E F# G#m
Eleven years later I was traveling alone again on an airplane from New Zealand to Perth, Western Australia
F# G#m
Very alone, so far away from you and the home that we had made
E F# G#m
I watched a movie on the plane about Jack Kerouac, a documentary going deeper than the usual congratulations
F# G#m
They interviewed his daughter, Jan Kerouac, and she tore through the history
E
She told about this deadbeat drinking, watching Three Stooges on TV
F# G#m F# G#m
Not acknowledging his paternity, abandoning the child, taking cowardly refuge in his self-mythology
[Verse 8]
E F#
And when she spoke I heard your voice telling me about the adults who had abandoned you as a sweet kid
G#m
and left you to grow precariously
F# G#m
And when she spoke I looked in her face and saw you looking back at me
E
On a tiny airplane seat screen at the bottom of the world
F# G#m
I saw a French-Canadian resemblance, and I heard suffering echoing
F# G#m
A lineage of bad parents and strong daughters withstanding
E F#
And she had black hair and freckles and pale skin just like you, and she told the hard truth and
G#m
slayed the gods just like you
F# G#m
I saw the cracks in the façade of posterity
F# E
I missed you so I went home
[Verse 9]
G#m E
The second dead body I ever saw was you, Geneviève
F# G#m
When I watched you turn from alive to dead, right here in our house
E F#
And I looked around the room and asked “Are you here?”, and you weren't, and you are not here,
G#m
I sing to you though
E F#
I keep you breathing through my lungs in a constant, uncomfortable stream of memories trailing out
G#m
until I am dead too
E
And then eventually the people who remember me will also die
F# G#m
Containing what it was like to stand in the same air with me, and breathe and wonder why
[Outro]
F#
And then distortion
G#m
And then the silence of space
F#
The Night Palace
G#m
The ocean blurring
F#
But in my tears right now
Esus2
Light gleams
