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

Distortion (Live)

53

Alternative

Distortion (Live) was released on September 28, 2018 by P.W. Elverum & Sun as a part of the album After (Live)

Song Details

AlbumAfter (Live)

Release DateSeptember 28, 2018

LabelP.W. Elverum & Sun

LanguageEnglish

Melodicness

Acousticness

Valence

Danceability

Energy

BPM

OVERVIEW

LYRICS

Music Video

Music Video

Credits

PERFORMING ARTISTS

Mount Eerie

Performer

COMPOSITION & LYRICS

Phil Elverum

Songwriter

Lyrics

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 re-enact you for our daughter's life?

I do remember when I was a kid and

Realized that life ends and it's just over

That a point comes where we no longer get to say or do anything

And then what? I guess just get 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 slightly beyond my actual end

And my mom laughed at a kid trying to wriggle his way out of mortality

Of the inescapable final feral scream

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

Unsatisfied, ambitious, and squirming

The first dead body I ever saw in real life

Was my great grandfather's embalmed in a casket

In Everett in a room next to 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 real

Valley in a real shadow with a backpack and a tent

We didn't go to church

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

In December 2001, after having spent the summer and fall traveling

Mostly alone around the United States, which is where I live

Which was spiraling into war and mania

Little flags were everywhere

But I was living on the periphery as a twenty-

Three year old in Olympia, Washington

Wrapped up in exclusively doing only whatever I wanted all the time

And it was painting and music on low-quality newsprint paper

And sleeping in people's yards without asking their permission

Waking up and eating all the fruit that grew on their tree

Like Tarzan or Walt Whitman, voracious, devouring life

Singing my song obnoxiously

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

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

LifeTheir recollections pruned by the accidents of time

What got thrown away and what gets talked about at night

But she had her period eventually

And I went back to being 23

Eleven years later I was travelling alone again

On an airplane from New Zealand to Perth, Western Australia

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

I watched a movie on the plane about Jack Kerouac

A documentary that went deeper than the usual congratulations

They interviewed his daughter, Jan Kerouac

And she tore through the history

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

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

I saw French Canadian resemblance

And I 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 façade of posterity

I missed you, so I went home

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 die also

Containing what it was like

To stand in the same air with me and breathe and wonder why

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

Shazam Footer

Select language:

Company

Legal

Chrome Web Store

Galaxy Store

Follow Us

© Copyright 2026 Apple Inc. and its affiliates | Supplier Responsibility

Loading...