"Man on the Corner" by Genesis
See the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know,
But he waits everyday now.
Hes just waiting for something to show.
And nobody knows him,
And nobody cares,
cos theres no hiding place,
Theres no hiding place - for you.
Looking everywhere at no one,
He sees everything and nothing at all - oh.
When he shouts nobody listens,
Where he leads no one will go - oh.
Hes a lonely man, there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know,
But he waits everyday now.
And hes just waiting for something to show - oh.
Nobody knows him,
And nobody cares,
cos theres no hiding place,
Theres no hiding place - for you and me.
Are we just like all the rest,
Were looking too hard for something hes got
Or moving too fast to rest.
But like a monkey on your back you need it.
But do you love it enough to leave it - ah.
Just like the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know - oh.
But he waits every day now.
Hes just waiting for that something to show - oh.
Whos the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know.
But hes there every day now.
And hes just waiting for something to show - oh.
Whos the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know.
Oh but he waits every day now.
Hes just waiting for that something to show.
---
No lyrics sheets needed for me on this album. Every word, every note, every beat just falls from my memories like burning water. My life is wrapped in this music. "Man on the Corner" in particular has always been meaningful to me, and becomes ever more meaningful as I get older and lonelier.
I have always been way off in left field. I have never met anyone who believes in most of what I believe, and very few people who believe in half of what I believe. The problem is that what I believe mostly all stems from one Commandment - "Thou shalt not kill!" For most people in this world, if they believe in that moral at all, they believe in it very flexibly. I understand violence ... I understand it all too well ... and I understand getting angry enough to want to kill a lecture hall full of naive ROTC jarheads. What I will never understand is someone who has made himself/herself complicit in murder and being able to stand with righteous arrogance and say he/she is proud of what he/she has done, that the murder was right. It seems to me that there is an error in their thinking, that they are insane, because they say these things without missing a beat, with no sorrow or guilt in their voice. When a person behaves like this outside of the context of war, they are called sociopathic. I don't understand the distinction. A corpse is a corpse.
I have hung my head in such crippling shame for over a decade for far less. That I felt the full weight of my crime got me labeled as insane and put on meds that completely incapacitated me and made me believe I was insane. No one will ever understand the Hell I went through. Now I am demonized while they goose-step behind their fascist leader murdering the world into submission. Even if we hate what they do, we are expected to support them, to support our troops, to support murderers.
So I remember the man who stood on the corner in my hometown. Actually, there were two, one on each side of the river, which is odd for such a small city. I don't believe now that there was anything wrong with them. They were probably very similar to me, and I know kids see me as somewhat similar - that weird cat man who lives down in the duplexes, dresses funny, never talks to anybody but himself, and never combs his hair.
I hear he doesn't believe in God, that he hates his country and thinks democracy is ridiculous, that he let some skinhead beat him so bad that he still pisses blood almost 20 years later and he didn't even fight back, and that he buys expensive organic food with food-stamps. I also heard he has sex with other men, that he has strippers come to his house, and that he visits prostitutes in Canada. He might be a child molester too.
This grasshopper is spitting brown juice on my finger. I didn't know they could do that.
We should walk home from school some other way. They're laying down new sidewalks and we'll get in trouble if we walk through it anyway.
See the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know,
But he waits everyday now.
Hes just waiting for something to show.
And nobody knows him,
And nobody cares,
cos theres no hiding place,
Theres no hiding place - for you.
Looking everywhere at no one,
He sees everything and nothing at all - oh.
When he shouts nobody listens,
Where he leads no one will go - oh.
Hes a lonely man, there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know,
But he waits everyday now.
And hes just waiting for something to show - oh.
Nobody knows him,
And nobody cares,
cos theres no hiding place,
Theres no hiding place - for you and me.
Are we just like all the rest,
Were looking too hard for something hes got
Or moving too fast to rest.
But like a monkey on your back you need it.
But do you love it enough to leave it - ah.
Just like the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know - oh.
But he waits every day now.
Hes just waiting for that something to show - oh.
Whos the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know.
But hes there every day now.
And hes just waiting for something to show - oh.
Whos the lonely man there on the corner,
What hes waiting for, I dont know.
Oh but he waits every day now.
Hes just waiting for that something to show.
---
No lyrics sheets needed for me on this album. Every word, every note, every beat just falls from my memories like burning water. My life is wrapped in this music. "Man on the Corner" in particular has always been meaningful to me, and becomes ever more meaningful as I get older and lonelier.
I have always been way off in left field. I have never met anyone who believes in most of what I believe, and very few people who believe in half of what I believe. The problem is that what I believe mostly all stems from one Commandment - "Thou shalt not kill!" For most people in this world, if they believe in that moral at all, they believe in it very flexibly. I understand violence ... I understand it all too well ... and I understand getting angry enough to want to kill a lecture hall full of naive ROTC jarheads. What I will never understand is someone who has made himself/herself complicit in murder and being able to stand with righteous arrogance and say he/she is proud of what he/she has done, that the murder was right. It seems to me that there is an error in their thinking, that they are insane, because they say these things without missing a beat, with no sorrow or guilt in their voice. When a person behaves like this outside of the context of war, they are called sociopathic. I don't understand the distinction. A corpse is a corpse.
I have hung my head in such crippling shame for over a decade for far less. That I felt the full weight of my crime got me labeled as insane and put on meds that completely incapacitated me and made me believe I was insane. No one will ever understand the Hell I went through. Now I am demonized while they goose-step behind their fascist leader murdering the world into submission. Even if we hate what they do, we are expected to support them, to support our troops, to support murderers.
So I remember the man who stood on the corner in my hometown. Actually, there were two, one on each side of the river, which is odd for such a small city. I don't believe now that there was anything wrong with them. They were probably very similar to me, and I know kids see me as somewhat similar - that weird cat man who lives down in the duplexes, dresses funny, never talks to anybody but himself, and never combs his hair.
I hear he doesn't believe in God, that he hates his country and thinks democracy is ridiculous, that he let some skinhead beat him so bad that he still pisses blood almost 20 years later and he didn't even fight back, and that he buys expensive organic food with food-stamps. I also heard he has sex with other men, that he has strippers come to his house, and that he visits prostitutes in Canada. He might be a child molester too.
This grasshopper is spitting brown juice on my finger. I didn't know they could do that.
We should walk home from school some other way. They're laying down new sidewalks and we'll get in trouble if we walk through it anyway.
hope your friday night is more eventful than mine