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When panic grips your body and your heart is a hummingbird
Raven thoughts blacken your mind until you're breathing in reverse
All your friends and sedatives mean well, but make it worse
Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt
Better find yourself a place to level out
Got a cricket for a conscience, always looks the other way
A cocaine soul starts seeming like an empty cabaret
Hey, where have all the dancers gone? Now the music doesn't play
Tried to listen to the river but you couldn't shut your mouth
Better take a little time to level out
I never thought of running
My feet just led the way
Mixed up signals
Bullet train
Cars are switched out in the crazy rain
I could meet you any place
If the brakeman turns my way
All this automatic writing I have tried to understand
From a psychedelic angel who was tugging on my hand
It's an infinite coincidence but it doesn't form a plan
So I'm headed for New England or the Paris of the South
Going to find myself somewhere to level out
Are your brothels full, oh Babylon, with merry middlemen?
Never peer out of their periscopes from those deep opium dens
All this death must need a counterweight, always someone born again
First a mother bathes her child, then the other way around
The scales always find a way to level out
I tried to pass for nothing
But my dreams gave me away
Mixed up signals
Bullet train
People snuffed out in the brutal rain
I could live to any age
If the brakeman turns my way
It is an old world, it's hard to remember
Like a dime store mystery
I'm a repeat first time offender
Who has rewritten history
Mixed up tea leaves
Phantom pain
Fuzzy logic in the the crazy rain
Getting better every day
If the brakeman turns my way
Mixed up signals
Bullet train
Cars are switched out in the blinding rain
He'll be smiling as he seals my fate
When the brakeman turns my way
Raven thoughts blacken your mind until you're breathing in reverse
All your friends and sedatives mean well, but make it worse
Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt
Better find yourself a place to level out
Got a cricket for a conscience, always looks the other way
A cocaine soul starts seeming like an empty cabaret
Hey, where have all the dancers gone? Now the music doesn't play
Tried to listen to the river but you couldn't shut your mouth
Better take a little time to level out
I never thought of running
My feet just led the way
Mixed up signals
Bullet train
Cars are switched out in the crazy rain
I could meet you any place
If the brakeman turns my way
All this automatic writing I have tried to understand
From a psychedelic angel who was tugging on my hand
It's an infinite coincidence but it doesn't form a plan
So I'm headed for New England or the Paris of the South
Going to find myself somewhere to level out
Are your brothels full, oh Babylon, with merry middlemen?
Never peer out of their periscopes from those deep opium dens
All this death must need a counterweight, always someone born again
First a mother bathes her child, then the other way around
The scales always find a way to level out
I tried to pass for nothing
But my dreams gave me away
Mixed up signals
Bullet train
People snuffed out in the brutal rain
I could live to any age
If the brakeman turns my way
It is an old world, it's hard to remember
Like a dime store mystery
I'm a repeat first time offender
Who has rewritten history
Mixed up tea leaves
Phantom pain
Fuzzy logic in the the crazy rain
Getting better every day
If the brakeman turns my way
Mixed up signals
Bullet train
Cars are switched out in the blinding rain
He'll be smiling as he seals my fate
When the brakeman turns my way
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-- Conor Oberst
But I think there is more to it than that. Anyone who knows anything about Conor is that he tries to incorporate as many meanings as possible; he tries to make it universal.
So take with it what you will, but I think it's about letting life take its course. That you need to quit worrying about all the problems and live it. but i think thats what Conor was saying anyway. lol...
:)
Thanks, Conor, for your music... trying to recover from PD and PTSD isn't easy, and your music has been a friend.
I'm pretty sure Conor has experience with spontaneous panicking too.
"And this nervousness, it isn't all your fault
It's just these shaking hands won't do what I want them to"
-Act of Contrition
"are your brothels full of babylon and merry middle men?,"
hes a true fuckin genious.
i love conor.
Personally, I relate it to my anxiety attacks and phobic fits. I've breathed in reverse and, trust me, it's not nice, haha.
Aloooot of it reminds of On the Road
like Ginsbergs den, hopping trains, finding oneself, change and whatnot.
nevertheless, amazing song.
<3
You have a destiny and where ever you end up was where you were meant to be.
Everything will work itself out in the end :)