Lebenslüge
(2009/Remastered 2023)
As with most of the albums on this te, Lebenslüge is now available in its remastered form on both iTunes & Spotify.
Lady Disdain (Smear) (4:24)
A Culver City/70's Thing (6:04)
Belong (3:32)
Forty Million Minutes (4:24)
Evaporating Angels (4:10)
The Absent Twin (3:34)
Bourbon Avenue (5:06)
From the Blue-Green into the Green-Blue (2:41)
BONUS TRACKS from 1977 Mecca (3:26)
Linda Strange (4:22)
All selections written, composed, performed, and produced by Frederick Moore except “Linda Strange” which was written by Frederick Moore and Rob Silkensen.
Completed in 2009
I’d been dreaming you were spitting in my face,
When the Earth fell through and the sky closed up.
Like a Sacrament you were spitting in my face,
We were doomed by proximity.
Left, Right. Left, Right.
There is no name for this,
There isn’t anything.
Down. Up, down.
There is no need to focus,
You’ve lost your sight.
Pretty, down, pretty, went in and got her.
Down, pretty, down, in Ancient Water.
I would smear my blood on your door,
If I knew it would make your Dark Angels pass by.
A dream’s a seed that dreams,
And a seed fulfills its dreamer’s needs.
Even our sordid little dreams carry their legacy.
Increasingly, We are diminished,
By these unused gifts and a dark dream.
But we glide upon the surface,
Some pieces fit, the rest we toss.
If depth is just another word for bottom,
I want the surface, I want the gloss.
Skydivers falling from the clouds like hail.
Christmas cards arrive, disguising dirty bombs.
Black Raven flowers that don’t need the light,
Venom for Lady Distain to immolate in shame.
My plate of stones, your band of scorn,
We could occupy different orbits.
Picked apart! You’ve been picked apart,
By these dark little things,
Disembodied and mean.
It only occurs to me now how often I’ve written about runaways and other feral children over the years. Of course I live in LA which has always been a destination point for the unwanted and discarded who have fled the heartland in pursuit of one naive dream or another.
If you don’t give it a name
It doesn’t exist,
And if you don’t say it out loud
Nothing has happened.
But you know the rage that moves from mind to mouth
Like fire spreading from house to house.
They hit you like they love you.
They lie as if they care.
You can go home again,
But there’s really nothing there.
There’s an agent in West LA,
There’s a driver who sings.
There’s an art loft on Venice Way,
A painter of storms.
They fuck you like they love you.
They lie as if they care.
You can go home again,
But there’s really nothing there.
They smash the bones of history,
And wash the stones of mystery.
They will hit you with stones if you let them.
And now you’ve let them.
When the director finally leaves the stage
And the actors have all found their marks,
You will scent the air with lonesome vows,
Though you have no faith to give.
Still we can be happy.
You watch as they step into the LA bus station,
The susceptible mixing with the devious
Who methodically disarm them.
The possessed and their possessors:
Inconsolably vain, and complacent, but pretty.
Don’t deny it, you are enamored.
And you with an uncharacteristic display
of you blazing elation unguarded and frail.
Small wonder they’re enamored of you.
Take the tones of this smiling theme
and break them down into a slow despondent riff.
For these pariahs and misfits,
They are your family now.
You dreamed an eye before the sun
Whose shadow you fell under.
Like a little god you swept the desert clean
With clouds of salt and thunder.
How’d it feel to pose as visionary?
Condoms on the hearts of missionaries.
You’ve left a mound of broken teeth,
But baby, let’s pretend.
For you it was a coup
But for me, I concede it was a rout.
You were standing on the bridge, when you pushed her in,
And then you fished her out.
Suppressing all accounts that dare to vary,
Crossing out entries from dictionaries,
You’ve written all the history books,
So baby we don’t even need to read em, we should just pretend.
There’s only time in the world;
We’re just barely in it,
For the random and swirl,
Forty million minutes.
You and me, we share a dirty secret,
We know what’s been done.
I found you pissing on my shoes in my own hallway,
But even that wasn’t enough for you.
Make a claim for trust and mystery,
Shadowing the stain of hidden history,
But now you hear the higher call,
Well baby, I'll just suck it up and pretend.
We’re given time in the world,
But you can’t see the limits.
So you're not really here,
A minute lost each minute.
There’s only time in the world
All we can do is feel it.
In this sad, glad world,
Forty million minutes.
Town by frowning town, no center to the swirl,
No markers in the sky from where we fell into the world.
If we have no witnesses, then we have no history,
So just how far back does this little war go?
But if there is a way for us to live again,
We’ll have to find it amid these darkened parks and dingbat-covered walls.
So we hope to hope for hope.
It’s me mother, the absent twin,
The lost fruit of thy womb.
Momento mori in a drumskin,
A candle, a lampshade.
Your little dream of a master race,
My very own diaspora,
No exit wounds,
Just organic shrapnel and broken music.
Aligned to the border, the curve of your spine,
I tried to take his half, he tried to take mine.
Still I have to ask
When we press the bow, do we hurt the string
Serenading the greater nothing?
Is my big picture your little picture
Ensconced in archaic tunings?
Was it a sacrament or a sin offered to a minor deity?
Whatever it was, it took you in,
But I was left drying on the sheets in two forty-one.
In the warm rain, counting the mist.
From the cold flame, a kick and a wish.
We pretend to fly, but we’re only falling.
Silence. We could fade into silence.
We could keep our names at the bottom of a well,
With the discarded shells of those we’ve passed
collapsed in the road.
Violence. We’ve endured the Violence.
You can pull a penny from an eye,
An oath from a sigh, a sparrow from a sky
Filled with dangerous birds.
They’ve danced before in the wingdust.
Unexpected gloom, the second week of June,
A mother and her boy arrived on Bourbon Avenue.
The boats from the harbor floating in the spume
Were all that that boy could see from their discounted room.
In the tide’s air,
They could hide there,
From crazy boyfriends,
And things they portend.
Several days and nights of TV in the room
His mother broke the spell, her smirk was back, her laugh relumed.
Her foot on the pedal pulsing with the tunes,
They drove through the fog that covered Bourbon Avenue.
In the tide’s air,
They headed nowhere,
In the gin glow,
Of a new world.
Suddenly a figure floating in the mist,
Colliding like a hug,
Concussing like a kiss.
He could feel something underneath the tires,
But she kept on driving,
She kept on driving.
Unexpected gloom, the second week of June,
A dim light pierced a wall of silhouetted dunes.
Back to her boyfriend, back to his school,
They left their new world behind on Bourbon Avenue.
She never said a word.
Rest awhile more my spacey one,/ Just ignore the morning sun./ It's always there, it's everywhere,/ The feeling makes us run from where we are.
Say goodbye to all around you,/ Say hello to you and me./ You've always cared, you've always shared/ The feeling that has brought you where you are./ It's gonna be a long, hard ride to California./ Don't know what to do when we get there./ It's gonna be a long, hard ride to California./ Stepping aboard the greyhound bus,/What lies ahead for us?
Sail another ship my spacey one./ Mecca's wind holds only one./ It's always there, my everywhere,/ The feeling makes us run from where we are./ It's gonna be a long, hard ride to California./ Don't know what to do when we get there./ It's gonna be a long, hard ride to California./ Stepping aboard the greyhound bus,/What lies ahead for us?
We’ve been walking on water,/ We’ve been turning back time,/ And I know these thoughts will fall on you./ With the weight of a candle/ And the fright of nightmare,/ Can you see yourself without a shadow./ And I can’t drive your ghost from my bed.
We’ve been walking on water,/ In a time far from when/ Choices clear, no thoughts behind a smile./ You can hide behind laughter,/ You can block pain for years./ It will grow, take more than has been given./ And I can’t drive your ghost from my bed,/ Nor the words I’d wished I’d heard,/ Your feelings I preferred to show me./ Through a picture that was blurred/ Had time occurred, it would have braved us./My sweet Linda Strange.
Linda Strange, you keep making me promises/ And breaking them in two,/ What’ you gonna do?/ Linda Strange, I keep making you promises/ And breaking them too,/ And if we don’t change we’re gonna change ourselves,/ And we’ll both find a place on the shelf.And we’ll both find a place on the shelf./ Linda Strange.
I remember your ball and jack,/ I remember your welcome mat./ She’s your lover, she’s your mother, she’s your color TV,/ Oh my love your so twentieth century./ I found you at the pier at night,/ Fluorescent lady of the neon night./ Living out an act from a worn out play,/ Etching out a version in a modern way.
And I can’t drive your ghost from my bed./ Through a picture that was blurred/ Had time occurred, it would have braved us./ Through a picture that was blurred/ Had time occurred, it would have braved us./ Through a picture that was blurred/ Had time occurred, it would have braved us./ My sweet Linda Strange.
