Double Life

Lyrics

Homeless, homeless woman
What'cha gonna eat, where you gonna sleep tonight?
You say you don't want my help you just want my money
Precious, precious thing
I see you, you see me like this again

Fearless, fearless man
Believe in just yourself and no one will believe in you
What are you not afraid of? What you're made of I can see right through

-Chorus-
If you're like most you live the double life
It opens and it closes like a pocket knife
Open it, sharpen it, you just might cut yourself
Close it up and pocket it, and it's no good for nothing.

Brainy brainy wizard
How are you supposed to read with your nose up to the page
Faster, faster living
Forget compassion faster than Willie Mays

Sleepless, sleepless boy
How're you supposed to live without no hopes or dreams?
"Childhood?" one day they'll ask you
You won't know what they mean

-Chorus-

Loveless loveless couple
You once were good in bed, but you know that's not enough
Now you've got troubles. Now you've got troubles
And only luggage to put them in.

-Chorus-
-Verse 1-

Reflections

Although I rarely play this song anymore, I am enjoying listening to it right now.  It was probably written a few years before it was recorded, sometime in the early 90's.  I changed it up a little to fit the instrumentation of this recording.  The original starting chord was an A(sus) chord, but in this version it starts on an A major chord with a G (the dominant 7th in the bass) which gives it a very off-balanced sound.  The dissonance suits the lyrics.

The first line in this song came from an actual experience when a homeless woman didn't want me to tell her where the soup kitchen or a better shelter was - she insisted that I give her money instead.  The rest of this song isn't really in my voice, although I don't know if I recognized that at the time.  The grammar is atrocious; more double negatives in one song than I actually use in a year.  I think I was trying to be soulful, and perhaps it is hard to sound soulful while using proper grammar.  This is probably because soul music is more about the emotion behind the words than the precision of language.

There are some lines that show, while I definitely have a good verse-chorus structure, that at that point I didn't feel the need to wrap up lyrical loose ends.  The line about Willie Mays seems out of place, but when I wrote it I had just heard somewhere that he was the fastest baseball player of his era.  It made sense to me.  If I were to write this song today I might try to stick with with the central metaphor a little more closely.

The basis of this song is about embracing truth and being conscious of living according to reality, something all of us are challenged by.  When our lives are guided by  our selfish perceptions we not only hurt ourselves but hurt others as well.

I love the production on this.  The elastic fretless bass combined with the soft piano and organ add a great peaceful padding to the dissonance and syncopation.  The double kick drum during the climax of the chorus is one of my favorites too.