The Mime who Learned how to Talk

Cowabunga Breakfast #8 - The Mime Who Learned how to Talk

Recorded September, 2014 and written mostly throughout the summer that year,  this album concerns itself with the aftermath of the fire, and the reality of the flood. Central is the idea of the death of old magic like hair, and the mime learning only how to talk; simply the theory, not the practice. It is a contemplative birth from ash type of journey with love at the end. These are the lyrics.
 




Bonus Level Devil

Waking up from instructional dreams. All the trees in the sidewalk blooming,
got a bad burn from all that snow but now the color's ceaselessly zooming.
The empty space is so clean now, you really know how to spin.
Got a good deal on a heartbreak apartment, but I think that I'm ready to move again.
(ooo) Cause I beat the devil.
I beat the devil, in the bonus level.

Radio DJ don't dig it, he don't know me very well.
Those carcinogenic songs, so detrimental to your health.
As if they heart could be simplified in such an ugly way, hey hey hey,
my brothers be wary, be wary of the girl with the small vocabulary.

These days I don't know where I'm going, but I know where you could stay.
I am deliberately difficult to translate, and I think you know I like it that way.
And if you ever get your arms around me, I would never need to stray,
(aaa) maybe someday.

When I was a kid hanging out at the mall, my father gave me two or three quarters,
stood me on a crate so I could play the arcade.
And he said 'make them last', so I got good fast.
The speakers would scream and the lights would flash, you know, I noticed, that helps me every day.
He taught me how to beat the devil, ooo, I beat the devil.
I beat the bonus level devil.

Big Silver

Cellar door opens today, countless lichen grown on clay.
Asteroids is a fun game. Inward journey all the way.
Skeleton key, made from bone. Real quick now, pick a toe.
Understanding amputee. Counterclockwise spiral key.
Fish on land got to breathe. Scuba diver got to sneeze.
Broken treasure feels relieved. Gold fortune make believe.

Well he wrote his own movie he could star in.
And his alter ego hired all the actors.
And he got real blazed and explored the maze of echos. Echos.
And at the end he left a few blank chapters.

Highway system all linked up. Faulty neurons holding tough.
Miyazaki calls your bluff. Leaky red plastic cup.
Truman program on the brain. Bug's inheritance will remain.
To the Earth from whence they came. Meaning hard to ascertain.
Cricket naps throughout the day. Rolling stone just wants to play.
Mother Nature mocks your fame. Inward journey all the way.

Haunted Train Station

I live next to a haunted train station, this is no exaggeration.
Ghosts of all the space invaders I kill still lurking around.
Now, Halloween might set them free. Where's my tombstone gonna be?
But lives do not apply to me right now, please just calm down.
I know I always fight it, but this year I am excited for the cold.
Right before I met her I'd been reading about how luck favors the bold.

My apartment building got stuck in a flood, my friends swam over and smoked us up.
Branches, trash, and auto parts were floating through downtown.
It was a dark and stormy day, but not all pictures look that way.
The River Dragons flew above, and marveled when they saw their new creation.
But the flood could not destroy the haunted train station.

As summer spun in motion and I didn't fish the ocean with my Dad.
Not for lack of trying, I'm just dying to crawl back inside the hot sand.

I live next to a haunted train station, can you feel the track vibration?
Box car graffiti museum is rolling away. And every time I try to chase it,
my lungs remind me not to waste it; and the fortune cookie reads -
"You can't find Banksy in the Louvre."
I live next to a haunted train station, but I'm gonna' move.

I live next to a haunted train station; living is my main vocation.
Measured pulse of celebration, sacred in my estimation.
Spirits and intoxication; what's the final destination?
Waiting for our ride at the haunted train station.

Gravity Man

It's been a rager, a 700-pager. I never felt hazier than when I came down.
Heavy monstrosity at terminal velocity; crushed by the pressure of holding my ground.
Oo what a miracle, wow.

Gravity Man, he don't fly, he just stands. And the whole floor is quicksand, or lava...can't say.
Soon comes the day, just us feelings awake.
Learning violin as you begin to burn at the stake.
Could you help us fall into the lake?

All my blood's the receipt for the money I spent. Present coupon and remember,
no exchanges if burned. Take your bag and sit out the next turn.
All my desires get confused with my dreams, until I'm pierced by the laser beam exiting my heart.
Don't you never call me son, you don't know what I'm from;
we'll call Gravity Man, I know he's got some.
I was a cold, big fish from a dark, green ocean and these days I live in a tank.
I'm all bones and I've got you to thank.

Gravity Man, is your orbit your escape plan?
Twenty thousand feet, aren't you sore?
No it just ain't a miracle no more.

The Mime Who Learned How to Talk

My feels have left me high and dry since I stopped frying my mind all the time;
I felt like a Mime as I rounded up the shards of my life:
my Atari games and my local music archive, acrylic paints and my x-acto knife,
and a tape recorder and my meteorite; two warm pairs of gloves and my guitar.
Donnie helped me sweep my floor, and Bill took my old furniture.
We had some mean words with Landlord Jack, but I got my security deposit back.
I felt like a hack, but it had to be done. I'd lost enough to win this one.

The future moves before I speak, it's just a flashback to last week.
The past is bleak and shot through with holes that I don't know where they're from.
My kindergarten teacher told me I was smart because I knew what the word 'dilemma' meant;
and my first grade teacher, she told my mom that I probably could be president.
My actions are words and my nouns are verbs, and I'm my own experiment.
I had to get bent to wind down all the lines I had to walk.
Then in 2012 at the calender's end, well I almost got killed by my mirror friend
but instead we went to sleep beneath my sea,
a hundred fractal versions of me.

And all the words I set in stone, got reabsorbed into my bones.
And all the stones I carried 'round, they really weighed my pockets down.

What tough lesson, did I earn it? Why buy a flag just to go and burn it?
Sometimes I feel so blank and can't turn it into anything at all.
I'm supposed to be whatever I decide, and that's the inherent problem alright,
but I'm not defined by what I don't like, and I guess that's a pretty good start.
I've got Millipede skills, black rum lemonade, and the same wallet I've had since seventh grade,
and an ornament that  my late grandmother made, and it's one of my very best treasures.
My broken inventions got chopped up for parts, and I finally found a girl who knows my heart.
We feed the wild cats who live in our yard, and I like watching cardinals fly through the rain.
Loss and gain and faith and pain and ignorance that I cannot feign,
with excruciating practice I became, the mime who learned how to talk.

(Let Me) Bury my Head in the Sea

Burial at sea, that's the burial for me.
Disposed of by water, won't return a zombie.
Blue midnight green, let me sink into bed;
let me bury my head in the sea.

Burial at sky, a good way to get high.
Don't use no machine to keep this guy alive.
Though it might seem quite cold, I assure you, I'll thrive.
Won't you bury my eyes in the sky?

Burial in grass, well I sure had a blast.
My consciousness one with the vastness at last.
Feed the bugs all a treat, let the mold be recast.
Won't you bury my feet in the grass?

Burial in bone, cause the skin I don't own.
She loans you some crystals, then turns them to stone.
As the entropy rises and space pulls apart,
won't you bury my heart in your own?

(Tuck my Pants) Into my Socks

Self explanatory.