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1. |
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Sitting here is like,
Admitting something embarrassing,
Maybe it would better if,
I just sat here quietly…
Well what would be the fun in that?
Well the awkwardness of an anxiety attack
“Well who are you and where did you come from?”
“Being the new kid, only lasts so long”
My dark sense of humor,
Never really gets any better
My dark sense of humor,
Never really…
Well masturbation only releases the need,
To make contact with others
But something feels lost…
Lost in the in between
Maybe it’s that you aren’t between the sheets
My dark sense of humor,
Never really gets any better
My dark sense of humor,
Never really…
I can configure my words,
In a book for you to read
And I can pass it off as poetry
To sit on your shelf,
To collect dust on your shelf
Well I think I’m already there
My dark sense of humor,
Never really get’s any better
My dark sense of humor,
Never really...
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2. |
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The house is a mess,
I guess that doesn’t matter when,
You’re an atheist
And I took the time and I figured myself out,
Through these numbers and equations I find
That I’m empty
But the universe is empty,
So I have a lot of time to figure these things out
And in May she dreams of water
Falsify mystery,
With eyes filled with misery
That’s company that I know well
I’m plain man with plain hands
Do you want to make a deal to start feeling?
And in May she dreams of water
And I’m as numb as the ghost,
That you’ve known since you were five years old
But I’ve never touched a spirit,
I’ve never kissed a soul,
Well that’s a lie,
But that was a long, long time ago.
And all year… I only dream of numbers dreams of water
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3. |
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I’ll be your SS number,
Could you make my barcode scan?
And it seems, it seems romantic to,
Those goddamn integer numbers
But they don’t know,
But they don’t know,
What it’s like,
What it’s like
To be a fraction of a fraction of,
Of a whole number
I can’t hear your words,
Over the crash of these cash registers
But if you mouth the sounds slowly
I’ll download them,
Download them directly
Decode them for any meaning
Erase human nature to see them clearly
To be a fraction of a fraction of,
Of a whole number
Looking for a decibel of meaning
Looking for a decimal of feeling
Looking for a decibel of meaning
Looking for a decimal of feeling
To be a fraction of a fraction of,
Of a whole number
To be a fraction of a fraction of,
Of a whole number
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4. |
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And there’s this bird at three am
She’s singing this chaotic mumbled hymn
Something about the air,
Making her chest feel tighter
She no longer bothers with lovers,
Just the numbers in the leaves
And the dead memories,
That are hanging from this decrepit park tree
She says there’s something going down
Where west end meets the poor parts of town
She’s only staying up to curse the sun,
To spit on all those bankers and Wall Street traitors
She has this feeling that something going down
That the ocean’s planning on killing us
The ocean is planning on killing us
The ocean is planning
In the early light,
With nothing but white socks on
With cold whipping at her shoulder
I heard ask,
In front of the bathroom mirror
“Am I a ghost of myself?”
“Well am I a ghost of myself?”
“Am I unwell?”
“Well am I unwell?”
Well history folds unto it’s self
That the ocean’s planning on killing us
The ocean is planning on killing us
The ocean is planning
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5. |
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I guess this is the age,
Where all your old friends,
They start dying
I guess this is the age,
Where you’re too old to start again,
I guess this is the age,
Where we all stop,
Where we all stop trying
When I put you on the train,
I hope you felt as sad as I did
And I hope you took your sweater,
And you covered your eyes and eye lids
When I put you on the train,
I hope you felt as sad as I did
And you covered your eyes and eyelids
And I hope someday that I’ll be the one,
Who makes you tea when you’re too upset,
To get out of bed,
And I hope someday,
We share the same last name,
And the same address,
And I hope so bad that we really meant the things we said
When I put you on the train,
I hope you felt as sa as I did
And I hope you took your sweater,
And you covered your eyes and eye lids
When I put you on the train,
I hope you felt as sad as I did
And you covered your eyes and eyelids
My best friend she said,
“This all too sad”
And living one more day in Nashville,
Well you know I’d rather be dead
And I guess this is just the way,
That these things end
But hey, just so you know,
It doesn’t have to be this way
I really did mean all the things I said
I want to be the place where you rest your head
I want to be your very best friend
Yeah, I want to be your man
But you make me want to write you stupid fucking love poems,
You make want to say things that will make you feel uncomfortable
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6. |
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There’s a lot of good looking men in Montreal,
But they have agenda’s,
They want to see you break your heel and fall
But I just want to see you in your black velvet dress
Doing the two step… and the three step…
Down here in cannibal city,
Where preachers put cigarettes out on the children of the needy
I’d like to be the venture capitalist who invests in your heart
And I’d like to be the flint who lights your spark
And you are your mothers daughter,
But you get your plans by reading the fortune of your father’s hands
Well I’d like to make you boring
Well I don’t want to make you boring
Well I like you because you’re boring
There’s a lot of good looking pins on the map on my wall
But my car is old and the transmission wants to stall
And I just want to keep moving my feet
To the memory of your heart beat
And down here in cannibal city,
Where they make bow ties out of dead butterfly wings
Where prophets only talk profit
And security guards, guard empty houses,
That people use to live in
And you are your mothers daughter,
But you get your plans by reading the fortune of your father’s hands
Well I’d like to make you boring
Well I don’t want to make you boring
Well I like you because you’re boring
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7. |
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I’ll be the greatest,
Goddamn jobber you’ve ever seen
Let the ref count to three,
Who cares this isn’t me
Take my mask off
Loosen the strings of my boot seams
See a sea of broken teeth
Would you touch my broken feet?
Well peasant life,
Never look in the eyes of a greater man’s trophy wife
I’m not pretty enough to hang out in these bars
I’ve got a weathered face and these palms are soft
The ghost of me,
Will be worse than lonely leaves,
Thrown against your front porch
Well the ghost of me,
Will be worse than lonely leaves,
Thrown against your front porch
What happens if,
If we get old or if we get sick?
And the idea of children never occurred,
Because words like security,
Are foreign to people like you and me
And your wrist hurts,
From your job,
As a grocery store clerk
And the loans from the education that you never completed
Have left you in a rut feeling defeated
My job as the salesman,
Is to sell you the dream,
But the dream now feels empty
Was it the economy or is it me?
The ghost of me,
Will be worse than lonely leaves,
Thrown against your front porch
Well the ghost of me,
Will be worse than lonely leaves,
Thrown against your front porch
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8. |
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Last night I got choked up,
After the fight,
Between Rocky and Apollo
And that’s a strange thing to get emotional about
Inside of the fire,
Trying to embrace the shame
That we do not talk about
Creating space,
By holding the grapple
And throwing myself in and out
But I know this place,
I know it all too well
My friend called me and asked
How much damage should he do to himself?
I said as much as you can as long as you’re still living
I guess that’s the point of being human
I guess that’s the point of being human
She asked me if I’m really living,
“Well am I?”
Laying on the grass,
You had so much class
With your sweater tied around your waist
We shouldn’t of tried to recreate
We should of stayed strangers
Like a photograph,
Would you look back fondly?
An inopportune, awkward comment,
Defines my time of living here,
I missed my chance…
I’m thinking of taking the week off
And closing the blinds,
And locking the door
I guess I’m not really living
I guess that’s the point of being human
I guess that’s the point of being human
She asked me if I’m really living,
“Well am I?”
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9. |
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And I’m not sure if I wanted to say,
Less or more now…
But depression it falls heavy on,
On the weekends
Well tell me how did you spend your weekend?
The rest of the week I’m so busy that I can’t comprehend how lonely I ‘am
And everything seems worse when you have to listen to your downstairs neighbor having sex
And I think of you often, I think of you quite often I, Yeah I think of you quite often
And your clenched palm, yeah I want to be inside your clenched palm
That’s slamming into everything
I wonder,
Do you wonder?
And I wonder if you wonder?
What do you do when your old car doesn’t run?
What do you do when you’re the old one?
What do you do when your old car doesn’t run?
What do you do when you’re the old one?
And there’s too much paint covering the hand writing on these walls
And I’ve surely given up on hanging out with the living
I just waste away in front of my television set
There’s nowhere where I really need to be
And I work on being desire less
But there’s no way in hell that,
I could know that things would feel like this
And I don’t want to be an actor on the stage
And I don’t think about any one else’s play
But I have this problem where,
I always feel like I’m the audience in my own life
And I’ve been hiding a fire in my apartment
When I go out, I put it inside my jacket pocket
And I breathe onto the kindling
To reignite it
What do you do when your old car doesn’t run?
What do you do when you’re the old one?
What do you do when your old car doesn’t run?
What do you do when you’re the old one?
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10. |
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I wake up tangled in bed sheets,
With dreams,
That won’t let me go back to sleep
And therapy wouldn’t be a bad thing,
But the idea of getting out of bed,
Seems to me to be,
The worst idea
And I’ve been pushing this mood swing,
As far as it will go
But now it’s pushing back at me
And I’m the most unattractive comedian you’ve ever slept with,
And you’re the worst actress that I’ve ever been with
And I’ve stretched your name across 1,314 miles
And I’ve taken blame,
But I digest it like bile
And you scratched your brain,
With religion and piles of sex and cocaine
And I’ve hurt my face,
Standing and contemplating my own grave
And I put my face on
With mascara that has the same base
As these streets
It only seems to crack and break,
When I awake from your dream
And I’m the most unattractive comedian you’ve ever slept with,
And you’re the worst actress that I’ve ever been with
And broken men,
They still tend to other dead men’s gardens
And broken men,
Still tend to other dead men’s gardens
And what does that mean?
And what does that mean to you?
And what does that mean?
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11. |
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There’s anniversaries and birthdays,
To mark our psychological scars
There’s thunder storms that work like alarm clocks
There’s therapists that won’t return my calls
And there’s calendar event’s that used to make me feel depressed
Now I’m old and I just forget
Now there’s a lot of love lost in the 21st century
Now that lovers fuck using pocket TV’s
And I remember the way you put your dress on,
Over those jeans
And I awake to the sound of,
Of a distant heart beat
And I will sleep, and I will dream,
On the two days that I have off
I got sick last night,
And man this is not the way that I want to die,
Alone in a room with the fan blowing
And scratching at hives
Scratching at anything behind my eyes
And trying to rid the nonsense that’s taking over my mind
Trying to beat this fever of doom,
Trying to beat this image of me dying,
In this room
Trying to beat this,
This fever of doom
And I awake to the sound of,
Of a distant heart beat
And I will sleep, and I will dream,
On the two days that I have off
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PRESS RELEASE
Bashful Hips
"Too Old for a Coming of Age Story..."
5.15.15
It was November 2014. The record was done and I had left Nashville for Montreal with my then partner. Our affair dissolved in Canada. I was really in love with this girl and as I left I asked her if she thought there could be any universal meaning to the end of our relationship. She told me I was too old to be looking for meaning. That I was too old for a coming of age story.
That stung a bit…also I had shelved my latest record because I didn’t quite understand what it was about. But with that one sentence, everything made sense.
“Too Old for a Coming of Age Story..,” is about feeling it’s too late to live a happy and meaningful life.
A year before Montreal, I had just moved to Nashville Tennessee. I would spend the next nine months there writing and recording what you’re hearing now.
This was a relatively slow pace for me. Previously I had written fourteen records in fourteen months under the Bashful Hips moniker.
This record is a political statement, but during the writing process it was completely unintentional. I was dealing with slum lords, college loans, class warfare, health insurance, poverty, global warming, workers’ rights, religion and financial insecurity. Every song mixes those topics with issues of the heart like depression, spiritual bankruptcy, isolation, love, suicide, dating, drugs, aging, sex, loneliness, regret and death.
“Too Old for a Coming of Age Story..,” is a Gonzo document of the frustrated American who was promised the dream, only to find it was a lie. But I’m not a politician, I’m an artist. My job is to observe and through what I create, report.
I still literally dream about the “American Dream”. I dream of a house, kids and a wife to grow old with. I don’t know how that will happen, it very well may not.
My life couldn’t be any more different than it was a year ago. But I’m excited to start writing about the alternative life I’ve found since this record has been completed.
When it comes to being too old to be looking for meaning, I say fuck that. I’ll always be looking for meaning in everything I see and do. There’s no reason for me to be on the planet if I’m not learning some lesson and trying to grow. No matter how old I get or how beautiful/ugly something is; I’ll look at it and write a story. Because that’s what artists do.
Bashful Hips currently does not have a permanent home. I do find myself spending the most time in Colorado though.
Email any questions to
ianfellerman@gmail.com
or follow at
facebook.com/bashfulhips
released May 15, 2015