Lyrics to Jack & The General (Mirror Man, Act One)
(1996)

Out of the night, into the dawn,
Rose lighted road rolls on and on.
Carpenters are knockin it up
with the hammer, and the saw
as I come into view.

"This is one of those facades," she says.
I says, "This town will grow on you."
Then comes the voice from the burning hot,
"It ain't that good but you know what ya got."

There's always a sign that points the way home
Uuntil some jackass blows the arrows off with his shining shotgun.
Right from the start I knew I'd always be running from you.
"Now, how did you know that?" she says.
I says, "I'm not the only pawn on this lost highway."

Carson Lake, Sand Mountain, Cold Springs... you'll bypass Desatoya Peak, cross New Pass Range over to Bob Scott, and in Jornada del Muerto there's 250 souls, looking at you with 499 eyes - the Horn of Death. For a hunnert miles you'll be blinking at that tall stone tower, built by who knows who for who knows what in who knows when. Where the Great Basin empties in the Sulphur Spring Range between the Wah Wah Mountains and Confession Ridge, uh, Confusion Rage. They call it the loneliest highway in the world, where the road heaves up like a volcano of solitude. Sulphur Spring Range. Carson Lake. A volcano of solitude, a party for silence, a shard of glass, a cracked rear view tacked up on a porch post - What's the mirror see, anyhow? The mirror is a sea, I'd say. "Drinkin coffee from a crimped up can..." Why there's even a Cleveland here if you take that detour north on 10. Hell, that's no detour, right by Charlotte and Ruth - places named for women. Can't even remember to forget em anymore. Over there where the names are stripped from the roads so's all you get's numbers, whistled in the wind - 15, Ought-6, good ol 75. The flappin tin sign on the loose shingle board puts the price up at about 17 cent a gallon. And that's even afore there was such a thing as unleaded. 17 cent a gallon, and the highway bright and shiny like it's asking for more. You know, somebody said the past didn't go anywhere, and I'm just settin here waitin till it does.

I saw this guy in Green River at a hardware store
Paddling his hands in bins of nails -
like he was playing at some keyboard.
Like he was looking for something in the distance.

He was listening for something, something intangible.
You want to testify? You testify to that!

I was born in Florida. Florida is in the eastern United States. It's kind of at the bottom of it. It's kind of at the end of it. It sort of looks like a gun. I don't know if that means anything. Anyway, Florida is not the same. It used to be a world full of lands. Now, it's a world full of worlds. Now, it's this Disney type of thing. It used to be gators and swamps and begging Seminole Indians. It used to be little but it had some attractions, and the attractions had these giant billboards and they'd tell you how many miles it was to get there and when you got there there used to be something really good like maybe some animals playing instruments. My favorite one had a chicken named Randy. He was playing a toy piano. My parents used to take to this hotel while we were there and we would eat in the restaurant and from that restaurant you could see a big view of the lake and in the middle of the lake was a monument with some kind of fountain. No one knew what the fountain was for or who it was dedicated to because while they were building the fountain one of the masons fell in the cement and he died. So I always thought it was a monument to a guy who was working on the monument. I never really figured all that out but it kind of messed me up for a long time.

Anyway, while I was in Florida recently I was walking around and it just wasn't the same. There's all these Worlds. There's no more Lands. There's no more Fork Land. There's no more Gravy Land. There's no more Gator Land. There's no more Green Land. There's no more England. There's nothing. There's no more Lands. Now, they tell you "It's a Small World After All." It is not a small world. It used to be a small world before Disney came, before Exxon came, before they all came and took it all away from us and took that smallness and made it big. Because Big Is Good, right? Well, it ain't right. So, anyway, I was walking around Disney World. It was spring, summer, fall - I don't know what season it was but I was walking around and I was thinking, you know I felt kind of like those pigs on an A-bomb test site in Nevada where they used to put sunglasses on them and wrapped them in foil. And I wondered what those pigs were thinking. Maybe they thought, "Maybe they're gonna feed us. Hey, I'm on vacation. Who knows?" And then suddenly, boom, they're vaporized. Late at night I drive around. And there's nothing on the radio late at night in Florida. Maybe there's nothing on the radio late at night here. But while I'm in there, driving along with the windows up and the air-conditioner blasting, I just wonder what it'd be like if Randy was on the radio. So I come up to a stop sign, and I see a car next to me and I roll down the window real fast and I yell out, "Play it, Randy!"

There's nothing left of me.
I gave it all away.
I left in a beach and it washed out with the waves.
I laid it on a chair in Florida somewhere.
I threw it in the air and the clouds walked over me.

I threw it in the air -
Maybe near the bird on roller skates.
The clouds walked over me.

The clouds walked over me.
I gave it all away.
I left in on a chair.
It washed out with the waves.
There's nothing left of me.
I gave it all away.
I threw it in the air and the clouds walked over me.

Nah, the chair dont rock and the swing dont swing. And I can see most anything in the horn blast when the present collides with my face. The collision of place and memory, thats my face, I'd say. River, a river of stone, stream and course, a drift over the rise, and my sweet honey riding my arm, a patch of song a shard of the past, a wound in my side and a kiss on the face of time itself. This is progress, and these here photos of Jack and the General I tacked up, ah, dont get me started! Like those were the days of nonstop, kid... vision, utopia... words. Those were days of gold flowing black shiny concrete building the land itself. Speed limits hell, a time of speed without limit, of time without end, just like the river that flowed out back by the porch, the rails that sang over the bridge, the highway that started in the backyard and rolled out, a prescient shadow, a mole with a soul.

I read the rear view.
I read the face of the refugee I see.
"What's there to stop for?" I say to him.
What's there to see that can't be passed by along the road to e-ter-ni-tee?
"Honey," I say, "Honey, we're gonna drive like there's no tomorrow."
There is no tomorrow.
They used up tomorrow.

In the state of Montana
The Year of the Ford Nineteen Hundred & Fifty-Four,
People are leaving, they're driving all night.
Women are crying, they're frozen in light.
And we roll on the river.

Our river is black.
Our river is deep.
Headlight and moonlight, a space full of grief.
Secrets and heartaches must carry the load.
The heart of the thing is the thing we don't know.
And we roll out the barrel.

Lo and behold, the night is too long.
Anchored in sorrow, afraid of the dawn
Nobody changes, the truth is all gone.
Bosses have said, Everybody must go.
And we roll on the ribbons of our dreams.

The good times are gone and we must drive on.
But how will those pale ribbons feed us?
Where will we go?
And how do we know where these aimless wheels will lead us?

Not to some luscious and heavenly place,
draped with the future in luminous lace -
where overtime flows on the sparkling Ford stream,
and windscreens are scaled to the cinema screen -
but back to our thoughtless and futureless cause,
back to our colorless, laborless thoughts -
where the treads of our tires turn to shreds with each mile,
and our mirror in shards frames the boss's last smile.
Tossed on the winds of the night's leaded beams,
we roll on the ribbons of our dreams.

Here's the big sky, a howling big wave.
I saw it coming.

Here's where the sun comes in: a glowing gas & heat, a cauldara in a universal volcano. And here's where the sun steps out: your dancing partner, your collar, your grandparents' last breath, the neverending night of slight breeze.

In my head morning never comes.
Sadly we go never come back again.
Them days I feel like a motherless child.
Marking time under a morbid sky.

The heart is a lonely man.
My hands stretch out and roll back again.
Somehow I know
You & I were never meant to be.
You & I, flowers under a morbid sky.
Strangers under a morbid sky.
Marking time under a morbid sky.

Slowly, slowly we dance -
Turning, waltzing.
Waltz across to Texas.
Waltz by the sea.

"Liar."

I heard only raindrops
Bursting in the dust.
Hard.
Bursting in the dust.

In my head the morning never comes.
Though we wait, daylight never shows.
Marking time
Under a morbid sky.

Ya see it everywhere
Out there in the middle of nowhere -
Abandoned gas stations
Forlorn handcrafted theme parks.
Rattlesnake World.
Motel Dust.
Cafe Despair.
And you ask yourself,
"Why did anyone ever think to build that thing out here?"
You look around and you don't see anyone.
"It's trailsign," you say to yourself.
There's been something broken pass thru here.

Mayor calls just to ask me my will.
Chief of police says,
"Do not fret yourself, no one got killed.
"There's nothing here that we cannot fix for you.
"No one's to blame when your eyes have played tricks on you." Linda Thompson: David Thomas:
Linda Thompson:
David Thomas:

Shadows On The Face

Bob Holman: David Thomas:
Bob Holman:

Memphis

Robert Kidney: David Thomas:

Over The Moon

Linda Thompson: Bob Holman:

If The Deer Blinks

David Thomas: Bob Holman:

Bus Called Happiness

Linda Thompson: David Thomas: Bob Holman: David Thomas:

Weird Cornfields

Robert Kidney:

Songs variously published by Ubu Projex, Polygram Music & Tess Music.

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