Wrote this one after hearing about a friend of a friend's delusional tendancies.

Sky is falling down on what I believe
They're doing everything they can 
Just to get to me
But they themselves do not, they themselves do not
Believe what they believe
They themselves do not believe

And don't you follow me down here
Don't you follow me

I lost everyone I know
I lost my faith at thirty thousand feet, thirty thousand feet
Circling SFO

I'm revising all the days of May, 2009
I'm telling you just how I feel
I'm showing you the signs
But still you just refuse, still you just refuse
To see what I can see
Somehow you just refuse, even in my dreams

Ten to One

King of Reeds

Are you scared about today 
Are you scared about tomorrow
Can you wait another day?
Would it only bring sorrow?

Should I look the other way?

Can you find yourself a home
In the appointments of the city?
In the chainmail ironies
Of the lonely and the pretty

Should I look the other way?

Did you make yourself a name? 
Did you simply take another's?
Go unnoticed all your days
Collapsed inside a lover?

Should I look the other way?

Damn the Birds!

New York, 2015

The calm before is clear and cold 
And sun sets over the hills of his watchful eyes
The truth as plain as the day you're born 
But your father will only hear pleasant lies

Thought I heard your father say
As though somewhere far away
Thought I heard your father say
It's a good day to be alive

Was hard to know just what to say 
I can talk of the weather and patterns of children's play
I can scrape my plate, and I can stare at shoes 
And I can talk about anything but what must be true, what I know is true

And I tried so hard to say
Though I felt so far away
I tried so hard to say
It's a good day to be alive

And if what they say is true, there's endless copies of me & you

But I was me, and you were you
And just for a moment I thought that we'd make it through
But the train don't go someplace new just by wishing and hoping
The rails run through, they only go just where they want

So I cried and cried all day
It's a good day to be alive

Good Day To Be Alive

A song about the fairly precise moment at which a new love meets an old reality.   Dashed off as an apology of sorts.  Written in Melbourne, recorded in San Francisco, 2017 as part of "Tasmania"....  At some point I think I said I'd throw this song away.  Clearly, I lied.

Ben Osheroff: Guitar / Vocals
Mark Komater: Upright Bass
Charles Choi: Violin
Rick McKay: Resonator
Louise Nalbandian: Harmonies

If I could have said last night how I felt 
Instead of all of the things that I said
Then maybe today would be never tomorrow
And we'd smile over coffee in bed

Well people are broken and people are perfect, struggling endlessly
We're just two trying, two trying, two trying to be

Somewhere in the basement, away from the tourists
There's a picture that nobody sees
And the brushstrokes are such that they're take all your breath
And your life will change effortlessly

Well someday I'd like to go there and see it
And I'd hope it's of you and me
We're just two trying, two trying, two trying to be

So I say some dumb shit and you get all mad
And you storm off to the sea
And the sun keeps on setting again and again
Still there's no place that I'd rather be

And we hold on to hurt like a baby that's crying
And fall away tearfully
We're just two trying, two trying, two trying to be


Extra Special thanks to Laura Madonna Murray

Tasmania

Two Trying

This song lived as a couple of incarnations before I found old piano in an office building Denmark to bang on.  A very indignant German told me to stop, because "ve are having a meeting."

Adam Cohen on slide guitar, Rick McKay on mixing and production.



Coraline

My New Friends

I'd say it's reasonably self explanatory.  The lyrics go like this:

Paint yourself in any corner that you please 
It's all the same to me, and everybody knows
With whom I take off clothes and what and where and why and when

The things I do to get over you
It won't be long unless all my dreams are wrong

That I meet her on the sunny side, whistling and walking by
Meet her in the sunny after-all

Know yourself, unbearable though it may seem 
It sends me round the bend to erase those sunny days
And the way you pressed your feet against my legs to keep them warm
It seems so long ago

I'll write your name on a thousand fortune cookie slips
And drive them down the coast 
And rolling down the windows, the wind will take your name and all my love into the sea



Damn the Birds

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