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lyrics

I climbed halfway up the mountain
and an old woman climbed halfway down,
and the birds started to titter
and the clouds blackened above the town,
and I got some kind of nervous
when a smile flickered across her face:
She said, "I don't mean to alarm you, but
this is a race.

"I have been watching, and by now you ought to know:
that shadow's going to walk with you wherever you go.
Eventually you'll stop a while and talk to it.
And it tells you its a window and without it you'd be blind,
though the only scenes it shows you are the streets you've left behind.
Do you take it at its word or throw a rock through it?"
I said "I still don't know, do you know?
Don't ask me rhetorical questions if you don't know.
It's mean-spirited."

From the foot of the mountain I dragged all my belongings
back to the swamp in which I first started breathing.
For every day that I've got nothing to show for
I could have been filling it with sand.

I met the devil on a desert retreat.
He said "I'll let you in on something, but keep it discreet:
It's these holy fools that keep my soul alive."
I said "I'm glad you told me, that's a mighty relief.
You wouldn't waste your time on my faint, whispered belief.
He said "Don't fool yourself, I also keep a nine to five."
So I turned on my heels and walked into town,
found a regular job and swore I'd hold it down.

From the edge of the desert I dragged all my belongings
back to the swamp in which I first started breathing.
For every day that I've got nothing to show for
I could have been filling it with sand.

credits

from How Are We Doing And Who Will Tell Us?, released January 21, 2011

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Jack O' The Clock Oakland, California

JACK O' THE CLOCK "presents a fine lesson on what it means to write songs that are at once approachable and human while simultaneously being incredibly profound in terms of timbre, depth of emotion, and harmonic complexity," Progulator.

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