| Fell asleep last night listening to a train whistle blowing across the
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| Carquinez Strait
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| And to the wind blowing through the eucalyptus trees
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| Watching Paolo Sorrentino’s «The Great Beauty»
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| Fell asleep last night listening to a train
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| I want to visit my friend because she’s in a lot of pain
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| It was the shingles, then C. diff, now they’re saying lupus
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| She’s a single mom with two kids and she don’t deserve any of it
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| I’d like to go out there when I can
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| But I’m just back from Finland and soon I’m off to Switzerland
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| For a part in a film, but when I get home
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| Going to go see my friend and keep her company for a week or so
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| I feel bad for not going there now
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| But I got a life out here, I need to hold the fort down
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| Got hard wood floors buckling up and an old leaky pipe
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| Thirty yards of fallen fence that I need to put back upright
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| And I broke a tooth on a bone in some beef stew
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| I was eating in Belgium and it cracked right down to the root
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| My gums are bleeding and they’re turning blue
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| And I’ve got a dentist appointment on Tuesday
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| Went to a 7/11 and the clerk, his hands were shaking
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| I said, «are you all right?"and he said, «it's my first day and I’m Indian and
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| I work at a gas station»
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| I said, «you'll be fine,"got my change and as I turned, he said nervously, «yes sir, thank you, have a good day sir»
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| It’s a nice spring day, April 19th
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| And the flowers are in bloom and I did yard work until my arms turned pink
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| And my girl broke my laptop while making the bed
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| She went right to Best Buy and bought another because she felt so bad
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| Then we went and bought and an old Vic drawer I liked
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| And went to an open house, it was built 1902, been kept up real nice
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| Had a nice back porch and the walls were original brick
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| It was a great old house but I didn’t like the way the cars blew past it
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| Fell asleep last night here in Flims, Switzerland
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| Reading the John Connolly book «The Wanderer In Unknown Realms»
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| Book dealer goes missing, the detective sets out to find him
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| And he ends up on a murder spree, or was it a hallucination?
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| Fell asleep last night here again in Flims, Switzerland
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| Said goodnight on a hotel phone to my girlfriend, Caroline
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| This movie set’s doing weird things to my head
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| I’m not Italian, I’m not Swiss, and I can’t act, and I don’t exactly fit in
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| Went to sleep last night, yeah again, here in Flims, Switzerland
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| And woke up to the sound of Michael Caine’s voice, echoing
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| Down the hall and just like Martin Sheen in «Apocalypse Now»
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| I was doing pushups and situps and I was going fucking crazy and crawling the
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| walls
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| Walked down the street and I pet a little kitty cat
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| She was sweet for a second then she turned into a little fucking brat
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| Came back and Jane Fonda was in the lobby
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| And we talked about her father, and she was lost and couldn’t find anybody
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| And we talked about the movie with her and Jon Voight, «Coming Home»
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| She said she produced it, and that was a fact that I didn’t know
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| And I asked her to dinner and she said, «I'll take a rain check»
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| If only I had class like Ted Turner or Gregory Peck
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| And I’m falling asleep again in goddamn Flims, Switzerland
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| A closed down ski town with one coffee shop and a field of dandelions
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| And I look at the snow covered Alps and I’m here until June 9th
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| Got some scenes this week, which is great, because at this point I’m losing my
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| fucking mind
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| Never mind all the other verses I’ve written about Switzerland
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| There’s new things going on in my life, like my girlfriend got a new kitten
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| And a friend of mine gave out my number to some crazy motherfucker
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| And I got all pissed off and she said, «who do you think you are,
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| Mick fucking Jagger?»
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| I fell asleep last night in New Orleans
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| Just back from Switzerland, where like I said, I was going insane
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| And I went and got oysters on the half shell and some blackened alligator
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| Then I called my friend in Ohio and I flew up there and I stayed with her
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| Went back to Europe for a tour and I was watching TV
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| There were missiles flying back and forth from Gaza to Tel-Aviv
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| And it concerned me cause I got friends over there |
| When I talk to them on the phone I can hear it in their voices that they’re
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| scared
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| Some shit went down on tour and I had to let go one of my band guys
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| And it hurt me so much that for a solid forty-five minutes I cried
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| Came to my room and he said, «Mark, I really need this job»
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| I said, «it's tough love my friend, take some time off and we’ll make music
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| again one day I promise»
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| Just back from Europe and it’s Labor Day and I went walking
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| I laid in the sun all day and I called my friend Jude and we got to talking
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| Jude’s the widow of my old friend, Tim
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| I said, «whatever you do, please, don’t ask me about Switzerland»
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| Then my dad called about someone we love
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| I put a check in the mail, gotta do what I gotta do when push comes to shove
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| I hear her voice sometimes and it’s an octave higher
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| Cause she gets weak from the drugs that dehydrate her
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| It’s hard to handle but I just keep keeping busy
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| Traveling and playing and writing until I’m fucking dizzy
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| Some people love what I do and some get fucking pissy
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| But I don’t give a fuck, one day they’re all gonna miss me
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| A year ago, I was in a car with a handicapped kid
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| I said, «so what are you gonna do with your life?"and he sat there blank
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| And I said, «okay you think about it a minute»
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| And a few minutes passed and I said, «so what are you gonna do with your life,
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| it’s been a minute?»
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| And he said, «I'm just gonna, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna
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| live it»
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| I’m going to sleep tonight and I can’t fall asleep listening to the high
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| pitched foghorns of the Carquinez Strait
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| They sound like a cacophony of piccolos and flutes, they echo all night
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| And I just turned forty-eight and I spent seventeen grand on the
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| Mayweather-Pacquiao fight
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| Going to sleep tonight with a goddamn ear infection
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| I broke another tooth on a piece of hard bread, and my gums are fucking hurting
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| And my friend Ben went on a 50k race and he broke his wrist
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| And he called me up the other day and he asked me to join him as his guitarist
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| To play with him in San Francisco, February 23rd
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| And I said, «yes sir, thank you, have a good day sir»
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| So I played last night with Ben at the Swedish-American hall
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| And man, I was so nervous that I was gonna hit the wrong guitar chords
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| But Ben sang beautifully, and everything fell together pretty well
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| What a nice combination that was: Ben singing, me on guitar, and a great
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| pianist named Zach Rae
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| Caroline was there, and so was Ben’s girlfriend Rachel, they both loved the show
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| I talked to Bob Mould afterwards
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| And I told him about how me listening to Candy Apple Grey on a sunny day at an
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| old girlfriend’s house made it into some lyrics
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| And I hoped that someday they’d make it into a song
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| It was a pretty funny night
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| Earlier at dinner, I got picked on a little for still having a flip phone
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| But after the show, some guy walked into the backstage area and was introduced
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| to me as «The Smartest Guy In The World»
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| They said he was a physicist or something like that
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| And I pulled out my phone to check the time
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| He pulled his phone out and pointed out that he had the exact same phone that I
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| did
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| Everyone was laughing, there were some girls looking at us like our phones were
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| really gross or something
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| We were all getting pretty tired, Ben and his friends took off
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| Caroline came back to my apartment, we watched part three of the HBO series The
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| Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
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| It’s February 24th and I still feel a little high from how good everything felt
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| last night |