Never Was

[billroper]

I got a bit of the chorus for this on the way to work the other day and have been hammering on it for a few days while daisy_knotwise puts Katie to bed and Julie is being kind enough to sleep through the banging on the guitar. At one point, I thought I was going to write another full verse and then a bridge, but when I came back to it tonight, I realized that:

The verse I was working on was the bridge

The tempo was too slow

The chords on the verse weren't quite right at the new tempo

And I desperately needed a tune for the bridge

Those things taken care of, I finished the song. :)

This is inspired by -- and otherwise has absolutely nothing else to do with it, save for a similar McGuffin -- a fine Astro City story by Kurt Busiek, "The Nearness of You".

All that said, I suppose I should actually post the lyrics.

Words and Music: Bill Roper
Copyright 2008

Never Was

What do you remember now that isn’t really real?
When I say it never happened, can you tell me what you feel?
A little trick of memory, a fragment of a dream
Are safer than believing that all things aren’t what they seem.

(Chorus)
What the moving finger wrote is now unwritten
And sent off to the land of never was.
And I’m cursed now with the knowledge that’s forbidden
As I’m left to find the way to break the laws
Of never was.

Time flies like an arrow, but its path is never straight
And the twists and turns it takes, you’ll never see till it’s too late.
The past is always changing, like a mist upon the wind,
And as it’s rearranging, it reshapes our where and when.

Tiny shards of memories are all that’s left behind
And we try to play them over, but we find we can’t rewind.
It may be your good fortune that you’re able to forget,
But I’m haunted by the memory of a girl I never met.

I remember her sweet smile and all the laughter in her eyes
And walks and talks together underneath October skies.
The smell, the taste, the touch or her, her hopes and all her fears
Have vanished in the never was that’s taken all our years.

(Bridge)
Now no one else remembers all the things that I recall
And if it weren’t for memory, she’d not exist at all.
So I’m waiting now for time to rearrange.
I’ll rewrite her life by mastering the change.

(Chorus, then alternate chorus)
What the moving finger wrote is now unwritten
And sent off to the land of never was.
And I’m cursed now with the knowledge that’s forbidden
And I’m going to find the way to break the laws
Of never was.

Comments

[mrgoodwraith.livejournal.com]

That's awesome, Bill! "Astro City" is one of my favorite comics of recent years; I don't think I read that particular story, but it sounds like exactly the sort of thing Kurt would write about. Can't wait to hear the song!

[billroper]

Thanks!