Lyrics '73: It Could Have Been Paradise - The Magnetic Fields

'73: It Could Have Been Paradise

We lived in Paia
Hippie central, I could hop to the beach
Sometimes we would hitchhike
Miles to school, school being a figure of speech
Where we sang (kahuli aku, kahuli mai)
We lived on a zendo
In the forest, silence for days on end
Caught up on my reading
Huckleberry Finn was my only friend
It could have been paradise
But for the horrible bugs
I could have gone to a real school
But for the murderous thugs
In the forest of paradise
We gathered magic mushrooms
But mostly I sat around
In rooms as quiet as tombs
It was heaven
My mother took up with
A trumpeter, red-bearded, pork pie hat
Found a lyric of mine
He took it home and set music to that
To impress my mother
He stole my song.
Better back off, mister
Fast forward two decades
Same thing happened but with Shakespeare’s sister
Why should it be paradise?
That’s just a place people go
It was home for a little while
But you can give me the snow
Give me the snow
My friend Shell was named for
A shell on the beach.
She spoke pidgin English
Everyday I swam out
Onto the reef, catching exotic fish
It could have been paradise
With one good reason to stay
If it had been paradise
Guess we’d still be there today
Singing away