| Once I met a girl from Roanoke, Virginia
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| Her eyes were green, her hair was red, she was 24 and I was 19 and we’d fuck
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| like bunnies all day on her waterbed
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| We listened to Hüsker Dü's 'Candy Apple Grey' and 'Warehouse Songs &Stories' so
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| many times that my ears bled
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| We listened to Lou Reed’s 'Berlin', I loved the sadness and the starkness of
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| Caroline Says and especially 'The Kids'
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| Sometimes her and I we’d have a lot of fun and sometimes we’d fight
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| She had a son, he was 4, one time they dropped me off at a Greyhound bus
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| station in the middle of the night
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| And I sat there all night waiting for the bus
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| Knowing it was finally the end of us
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| It took me years to see where I was wrong
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| I didn’t have any money back then and she got tired of carrying me along
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| But we kept in touch and one day in Philadelphia
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| She came to a show of mine and we went back to her apartment together
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| Her son was taller than me and he was sitting there at his computer
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| And the next morning we met up at a Jewish deli with some friends of hers
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| And I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen her since then
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| But up in Vancouver I did meet Lou Reed I told him how much that I loved
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| 'Berlin'
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| And he said «And who are you?»
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| And I also met Bob Mould from Hüsker Dü at an Austin airport on my way home
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| And he said my version of 'Celebrated Summer' was on this phone
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| It’s funny where life takes you
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| And all the adventures that we go through
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| And who we meet along the way
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| The things that catch our eyes that make us think of yesterday
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| It’s crazy where life takes you
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| And all the music that we hear that reminds us of the friends and lovers we knew
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| And as we get older every corner we turn
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| There’s still new things that open our eyes and things to learn
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| There’s bittersweet and love and sadness
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| there’s uplift in the air and there’s insanity and madness
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| Gonna read some poems by some street kids in Argentina
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| Gonna walk through the Lower Ninth Ward and think of Hurricane Katrina
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| I remember walking around those streets before the houses got washed away
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| It’s hard for me to walk around this world and not think about yesterday
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| When I walk through the Broadway Tunnel I think of a shitty fight
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| That I had with an ex-girlfriend before I jumped on a flight
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| And flew like a bat out of hell out to Tennessee
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| Where a girl in a house in the country took me in and rescued me
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| And we came back late from Donuts and a deer’s head was laying in the driveway
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| An ex-boyfriend of hers was trying to send me a message like «stay the fuck out
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| of my way!»
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| But I have nice memories of that house listening to NPR and drinking tea
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| But her puppy Sally was shot and killed when she went onto to somebody else’s
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| property
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| Some memories are happy and some are sad
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| I take the bad with the good and am grateful for what I have
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| And walking from my place to my girlfriend’s on Russian Hill
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| I get overwhelmed with memories of the Broadway Tunnel
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| This life of beautiful animals and people
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| This life of so much art and poetry
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| I walk down the street and I’m still inspired by everything I see
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| This life of many rivers, seas and lakes and oceans
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| This life of many landscapes
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| This life of so much warm sunshine
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| This life of so many storms and so much pouring rain
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| I walk past the restaurant I used to go for Chinese
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| I knew the twin waitresses there, Mindy and Muriel, since they were both 15
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| I saw them both grow up and have children and I saw them turn 40
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| Now the place is all boarded up with plywood and I miss the wonton soup there
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| like crazy
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| The grocery store where I used to go that played music from the 60's
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| Got taken over by the Google kids from Silicon Valley
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| But I won’t let it run me out and I won’t let it faze me
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| This city has always been and will always be an inspiration
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| Friends come and go, the world continues to spin
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| Don’t know that I’ll ever hear from that girl from Virginia
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| Or that I’ll ever see Mindy and Muriel
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| But I hope someday that when I die it’s near that Broadway Tunnel
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| Walking by your side around Russian or Telegraph Hill |