Distortion Lyrics - Mount Eerie

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 

That must be your ghost taking form 

Created every moment by me dreaming you so 

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

And to reenact you for our daughter's life? 

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 

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 

My mom laughed at this 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 

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

Embalmed in a casket 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 

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 

Sleeping in yards without asking permission and eating all the fruit 

From the tree like Tarzan or Walt Whitman, 

voracious, devouring life, singing my song 

But that December I was shaken by a pregnancy scare 

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

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

A young and embarrassing over-confident animal night 

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 life 

Their 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 twenty three 

Photos 

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 

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 

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 a French-Canadian resemblance 

And I heard suffering echoing 

A lineage of bad parents and strong daughters withstanding 

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 

The second dead body I ever saw was you, Geneviève 

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

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 all 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 

And then distortion 

And then the silence of space 

The Night Palace 

The ocean blurring 

But in my tears right now 

Light gleams