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Spend a Lifetime Dying

from A Landscape of Ghosts by Rob Siegel

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about

The only song I've ever written with three endings. End it at "I haven't got a clue" and it's unrelentingly grim. End it at "but baby can I spend it here with you" and it's redemptive. End it way I finally did and it goes somewhere else entirely.

lyrics

there’s a couple on the subway
so in love you feel the heat
you’d think that they made aging
obsolete
all eyes fixed on heavenly bodies
raise the periscope of youth
we spend a lifetime dying
we don’t want to know the truth

wise men want for nothing
while rich men dig for oil
the tree of life transmogrified
into rich financial spoil
thirty thousand days spent marching
like a lemming toward the cliff
we spend a lifetime dying
and we don’t know how to live

it’s not fair
I got distracted
in the middle of my swing
can I call in my mulligan
and become a different thing
can I dig in with the crampons
can I roll away the stone
can I throw the dogs of reason
a bone

put the longings in a scrapbook
cull the gems and junk the hoard
put the dishes up on craigslist
put the stone back on the sword
I’m afraid that where you’re going
you won’t need sensible shoes
I’ve spent a lifetime dying
and I haven’t got a clue

but baby can I spend it here with you

baby it’ll be alright
would you be mine tonight
I could read a book by your light

credits

from A Landscape of Ghosts, released March 24, 2018
Guitar and vocals: Rob Siegel
Fiddle: Bronwyn Keith-Hynes
Electric bass: Peter Tillotson
Organ, percussion, and drums: Doug Kwartler

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Rob Siegel Boston, Massachusetts

Rob Siegel is well-known in Boston folk music circles as an innovative songwriter who draws from his idyllic yet stressed- out middle-class suburban existence and produces memorable, intelligent, well-crafted songs.

His first new CD in 14 years, "A Landscape of Ghosts," will be out in April, with a CD release show at Club Passim on Monday April 30th.
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