Distortion - Mount Eerie: Song Lyrics, Music Videos & Concerts

Distortion

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Distortion was released on March 16, 2018 by P.W. Elverum & Sun as a part of the album Now Only

Song Details

Release DateMarch 16, 2018

LabelP.W. Elverum & Sun

LanguageEnglish

Melodicness

Acousticness

Valence

Danceability

Energy

BPM140

OVERVIEW

LYRICS

Music Video

Music Video

Credits

PERFORMING ARTISTS

Mount Eerie

Performer

COMPOSITION & LYRICS

Phil Elverum

Songwriter

Lyrics

[Verse 1]

But I don't believe in ghosts or anything, I know that you are gone

And that I'm carrying some version of you around

Some untrustworthy, old description in my memories

And that must be your ghost taking form, created every moment by me

Dreaming you so

And is it my job now to hold whatever's left of you for all time?

And to reenact you for our daughter's life?

[Verse 2]

I do remember when I was a kid and realized that life ends and is just

Over, that a point comes where we no longer get to say or do anything

And then what? I guess just forgotten

And I said to my mom that I hoped to do something important

With my life, not be famous, but just remembered a little more

To echo beyond my actual end

And my mom laughed at this kid trying to wriggle his way out

Of mortality, of the final, inescapable, feral scream

But I held that hope and grew up wondering what dying means

Unsatisfied, ambitious, and squirming

[Verse 3]

The first dead body I ever saw in real life was my great grandfather's

Embalmed in a casked in Everett in a room by the freeway

Where they talked me into reading a thing from the bible

About walking through a valley in the shadow of death

But I didn't understand the words, I thought of actually walking

Through a valley and a shadow with a backpack and a tent

But that dead body next to me spoke clear and metaphor free

[Verse 4]

In December 2001 after having spent the summer and fall

Traveling mostly alone around the country that was spiraling into war

And mania, little flags were everywhere

I was living on the periphery as a twenty three year old

Wrapped up in doing what I wanted and it was music

And painting on newsprint, and eating all the fruit from the tree

Like Tarzan or Walt Whitman, voracious, devouring life

Singing my songs, sleeping in yards without asking permission

[Verse 5]

But that December I was shaken by a pregnancy scare

From someone that I'd been with for only one night

Many states away, who I hadn't planned to keep knowing

A young and embarrassing overconfident animal night

And the terror of the idea of fatherhood at twenty three

Destroyed my foundation and left me freaked out and

Wandering around mourning the independence and solitude

That defined me then

[Verse 6]

And though my life is a galaxy of subtleties, my complex intentions

And aspirations do not matter at all

In the face of the crushing flow of actual time

I saw my ancestors as sad and misunderstood

In the same way that my descendants will squint back through a fog

Trying to see some polluted version of all I meant to be in life

Their recollections pruned by the accidents of time

What got thrown away and what gets talked about at night

[Verse 7]

But she had her period eventually and I went back to being twenty three

Eleven years later, I was traveling alone again on an airplane

From New Zealand to Perth, Western Australia

Very alone, so far away from you and the home that we had made

I watched a movie on the plane about Jack Kerouac

A documentary going deeper than the usual congratulations

They interviewed his daughter, Jan Kerouac

And she tore through the history

[Verse 8]

She told about this deadbeat drinking, watching Three Stooges on TV

Not acknowledging his paternity, abandoning the child

Taking cowardly refuge in his self mythology

And when she spoke, I heard your voice telling me about the adults

Who had abandoned you as a sweet kid

And left you to grow precariously

And when she spoke, I looked in her face

And saw you looking back at me

[Verse 9]

On a tiny airplane seat screen at the bottom of the world

I saw a French Canadian resemblance and heard suffering echoing

A lineage of bad parents and strong daughters withstanding

And she had black hair and freckles and pale skin just like you

And she told the hard truth and slayed the gods just like you

I saw the cracks in the facade of posterity

I missed you so I went home

[Verse 10]

The second dead body I ever saw was you, Geneviève

When I watched you turn from alive to dead right here in our house

And I looked around the room and asked, are you here?

And you weren't, and you are not here, I sing to you though

I keep you breathing through my lungs in a constant uncomfortable

Stream of memories trailing out until I am dead too

And then eventually the people who remember me will also die

Containing what it was like to stand in the same air with me

And breathe and wonder why

[Verse 11]

And then distortion

And then the silence of space

The night palace

The ocean blurring

But in my tears right now

Light gleams

Written by: Phil Elverum

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