A Riddle
Words: 02-26-1992
Music: 02-26-1992
What’s It All About?
Several times, I’ve used emulation as a way to approach writing a new song. That’s a high-falutin’ way of saying I try to copy someone else’s style.
Fortunately, I’m never anywhere near as good as the artist I’m mimicking, so it comes across as (more or less) original. “A Riddle” is me channelling the Grateful Dead, or, perhaps, just the song “Friend of the Devil.” The lyrics seem to be my own twenty-four year old budding self-knowledge trying to tell me something.
This number was only ever part of my solo acoustic sets; no band I was in ever adapted it. The recording here is live at a big independent coffeehouse in Long Beach, California.
Lyrics:
I am history
I am pain
I am nothing if I am not your friend
I am a lover that went away
I am everything you never said
And the days pass
Full of might-have-beens
Remembered voices
Drift by on the wind
One and one always seems to add up lonely
And you wonder when you’ll get your turn to win
I am a mystery
This much is plain
There is so much you have yet to learn
I live at
That place inside
Where you swore you never world return
You want the misery
To finally fade
And so for you I have one more clue
Before you ask
To dance with love
You’d best be sure
You know how to walk with you
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One Response to “A Riddle”
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I like it! Just out of curiosity, where was it recorded? It seemed like some sort of hall given the echoes of the applause…