this place is a prison / and these people aren't your friends / inhaling thrills / through $20 bills / and the tumblers are drained and then flooded again and again
there are guards at the on ramps / armed to be teeth / and you may case the grounds from the cascades to puget sound / but you are not permitted to leave
i know there's a big world out there like the one i saw on the screen / in my living room late last night / it was almost too bright to see / and i know that it's not a party if it happens every night / pretending there's glamour and candelabras / when you're drinking by candlelight
what does it take to get a drink in this place?
what does it take, how long must i wait?
-The Postal Service: This Place Is A Prison
**********
Mental instability sucks. It makes small things seem like big things and big things seem like small things. It makes you feel like things arent reciprocal when they really are, and it makes your psyche climb the inside of your skull looking for an exit.
but there never is one, is there?
Were all trapped inside of ourselves, to the supreme satisfaction of our own neurosis. We just get to sit and fester about things that do not require festering when we would let them go if we were normal.
but normal is a loaded word, isnt it?
Who would decide if something or someone is normal? Do the chemical imbalances in my head stop me from being normal? Do they make me defective? Do they make me damaged? Do the events that have happened to us in our past and the ever present demons that lay just beyond our eyelids make us less than normal? Do they make me less of a man because they haunt my dreams and grant me waking terrors? Do they make me less normal because the memories of them cause me to deny myself any sense of normality, because my life could spiral into a happiness that I, myself, believe I dont deserve?
or does that make me normal?
Does the constant thought of physical torment make me normal? Does the desire to hurt myself physically and mentally for the sins that I have commited in the past, for the sins I will commit in the future, and for the sin of not being who I should be or what everyone expects me to be make me normal? Does it make the child in the bathtub who has slit their wrist out of desperation and longing for acceptance normal? Does it make the child who decides to destroy peoples lives through a singular act of aggression towards the very people he wishes would accept him normal? Does it make any of us normal?
TELL ME HOW TO BE NORMAL
because Im tired of being the way I am
there are guards at the on ramps / armed to be teeth / and you may case the grounds from the cascades to puget sound / but you are not permitted to leave
i know there's a big world out there like the one i saw on the screen / in my living room late last night / it was almost too bright to see / and i know that it's not a party if it happens every night / pretending there's glamour and candelabras / when you're drinking by candlelight
what does it take to get a drink in this place?
what does it take, how long must i wait?
-The Postal Service: This Place Is A Prison
**********
Mental instability sucks. It makes small things seem like big things and big things seem like small things. It makes you feel like things arent reciprocal when they really are, and it makes your psyche climb the inside of your skull looking for an exit.
but there never is one, is there?
Were all trapped inside of ourselves, to the supreme satisfaction of our own neurosis. We just get to sit and fester about things that do not require festering when we would let them go if we were normal.
but normal is a loaded word, isnt it?
Who would decide if something or someone is normal? Do the chemical imbalances in my head stop me from being normal? Do they make me defective? Do they make me damaged? Do the events that have happened to us in our past and the ever present demons that lay just beyond our eyelids make us less than normal? Do they make me less of a man because they haunt my dreams and grant me waking terrors? Do they make me less normal because the memories of them cause me to deny myself any sense of normality, because my life could spiral into a happiness that I, myself, believe I dont deserve?
or does that make me normal?
Does the constant thought of physical torment make me normal? Does the desire to hurt myself physically and mentally for the sins that I have commited in the past, for the sins I will commit in the future, and for the sin of not being who I should be or what everyone expects me to be make me normal? Does it make the child in the bathtub who has slit their wrist out of desperation and longing for acceptance normal? Does it make the child who decides to destroy peoples lives through a singular act of aggression towards the very people he wishes would accept him normal? Does it make any of us normal?
TELL ME HOW TO BE NORMAL
because Im tired of being the way I am
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
...she said, "Why can't you be normal?" And old Miss Brownell rapped Morrigan on her shin - rudely - with her cane, and said: "He is normal - what you meant to say is 'average.'"
Utah Phillips' Stories, Songs, and Poems (Part 1)
hasta cena esta noche,
~demille
p.s. His stuff sounds much better read aloud and with music. I heard that bit on an album by Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips called "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere." Another nifty quote from that:
...looking at the freaks out in the street, and muttering under his breath: "Now matter how new-age you get, old age gonna kick your ass."
Not particulary relevant to your post, but I do love it so.
(edited to fix badly formed link)
[Edited on Jun 25, 2004 1:52PM]