Distortion

E

[Verse 1]
                       E        
But I don't believe in ghosts or 
                       F#
anything, I know that you are gone 
and that I'm carrying
     G#m
some version of you around
       F#                          
Some untrustworthy old description 
      G#m
in my memories
                       E           
And that must be your ghost taking 
              F#                
form, created every moment by me 
  G#m
dreaming you so
             F#             
And is it my job now to hold 
   G#m                             
whatever's left of you for all 
           F#                   
time? And to re-enact you for our 
G#m
daughter's life?


[Verse 2]
       F#                  G#m    
I do remember when I was a kid and
                    E              
 realized that life ends and is 
               F#
just over; that a point comes
                          G#m
where we no longer get to say or do 
anything
         F#                
And then what? I guess just 
 G#m
forgotten
And I said to my mom that I hoped to
 E                              F#
 do something important with my life
                        G#m        
Not be famous, but just remembered 
                  F#             
a little more, to echo beyond my 
G#m
actual end
And my mom laughed at this kid 
          E                      
trying to wriggle his way out of 
F#                         G#m
mortality, of the final inescapable

feral scream
      F#                         
But I held that hope and grew up 
G#m
wondering what dying means
  F#                       G#m
Unsatisfied, ambitious and squirming


[Verse 3]
           F#                    
The first dead body I ever saw in 
real life, was my 
        G#m
great-grandfather's
              E                    
Embalmed in a casket in Everett, in
   F#
 a room by the freeway
Where they talked me into reading a 
               G#m
thing from the Bible

About walking through a valley in 
the shadow of death
             G#m                   
But I didn't understand the words, 
              E              
I thought of actually walking 
         F#
through a valley in a shadow,
       G#m
with a backpack and a tent
              F#                   
But that dead body next to me spoke
           E
 clear and metaphor-free


[Verse 4]
      G#m                          
In December 2001 after having spent
     E                        
 the summer and fall traveling 
 F#
mostly alone around
    G#m                            
The country that was spiraling into
 F                     G#m
 war and mania, little flags were 
everywhere
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      G#m                          
I was living on the periphery as a 
E                                 
twenty-three-year-old wrapped up 
  F#
in doing what I wanted
           G#m
And it was music and painting on 
newsprint
And eating all the fruit from the 
          E
tree like Tarzan, or Walt Whitman
F#                         G#m
Voracious, devouring life, singing 
my songs
            F#                   
Sleeping in yards without asking 
G#m
permission


[Verse 5]
         F#                        
But that December I was shaken by a
 G#m
 pregnancy scare
From someone that I'd been with for 
E                    F#          
only one night, many states away,
 who I hadn't planned to keep 
G#m
knowing
  F#                    
A young and embarrassing 
      G#m
over-confident animal night
        G#m                  
And the terror of the idea of 
 E                                 
fatherhood at twenty-three 
      F#
destroyed my foundation, and left me
 freaked out and
G#m                         
wandering around mourning the 
  F#                          
independence and solitude that 
     G#m
defined me then


[Verse 6]
Though my life is a galaxy of 
E
subtleties
   F#                    
My complex intentions and 
                    G#m
aspirations do not matter at all
       F#                          
In the face of the crushing flow of
 G#m
 actual time
I saw my ancestors as sad and 
E
misunderstood in the same way
        F#                         
That my descendants will squint 
            G#m
back through a fog trying to see
     F#                        G#m
Some polluted version of all I meant
 to be in life
Their recollections pruned by the 
E                           F#   
accidents of time, what got 
                      G#m
thrown away, and what gets talked 
about at night
                F#               
But she had her period eventually 
            G#m
and I went back to being 
twenty-three


[Verse 7]
Eleven years later I was traveling 
E                 F#             
alone again on an airplane from 
              G#m
New Zealand to Perth, Western 
Australia
     F#                            
Very alone, so far away from you 
      G#m
and the home that we had made
I watched a movie on the plane about
 E               F#               
 Jack Kerouac, a documentary going
                  G#m
 deeper than the usual 
congratulations
                     F#            
They interviewed his daughter, Jan 
                      G#m
Kerouac, and she tore through the 
history
She told about this deadbeat 
                         E
drinking, watching Three Stooges on 
TV
    F#                           
Not acknowledging his paternity, 
G#m                        
abandoning the child, taking 
  F#                  
cowardly refuge in his 
           G#m
self-mythology


[Verse 8]
And when she spoke I heard your 
                 E               
voice telling me about the adults 
                   F#
who had abandoned you as a sweet kid
                G#m
and left you to grow precariously
             F#                    
And when she spoke I looked in her 
                 G#m
face and saw you looking back at me
On a tiny airplane seat screen at 
    E
the bottom of the world
        F#                         
I saw a French-Canadian 
              G#m
resemblance, and I heard suffering 
echoing
  F#                               
A lineage of bad parents and strong
 G#m
 daughters withstanding
And she had black hair and freckles 
         E                         
and pale skin just like you, and 
           F#
she told the hard truth and
                          G#m
slayed the gods just like you
          F#                      
I saw the cracks in the façade of 
G#m
posterity
  F#                        E
I missed you so I went home


[Verse 9]
    G#m                            
The second dead body I ever saw was
 E
 you, Geneviève
       F#                          
When I watched you turn from alive 
               G#m
to dead, right here in our house
And I looked around the room and 
       E                      
asked “Are you here?”, and you 
 F#
weren't, and you are not here,
  G#m
I sing to you though
I keep you breathing through my 
                        E          
lungs in a constant, uncomfortable 
          F#
stream of memories trailing out
      G#m
until I am dead too
And then eventually the people who 
         E
remember me will also die
          F#                       
Containing what it was like to 
                               G#m
stand in the same air with me, and 
breathe and wonder why


[Otro]
         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