I don't write songs unless I record them (repeat)
I don't write my songs for me, I write songs for you
(Inaudible)
I don't write songs unless I record them too
Cause it's no fun for me to sing to myself, I need an audience of one or two
I take a basic Rock n' Roll and a structure and I make it go my way
Sometimes the rhythm changes and sometimes it stays the same
I like
To be heard
By people
Around the world
Cause, people, you know what I'm talking about better than I do myself
I don't like to sing songs
All to myself
Better yet, I don't like to keep my songs
All to myself
But so far, so far I'm the only one
Who listens to them more than once
And that defeats the purpose, it defeats the whole project
And that defeats the purpose of this whole project
I don't write songs if I'm just gonna sing to myself
But the funny thing is
I spend my time
Listening to myself
Singing songs
That I wish somebody else
Would play to themselves
Play, play to yourselfs
Cause I don't write songs unless I know for sure, at least one person in the world will hear
What I have to say about singing songs to myself
And when I fuck up, I just keep going around my mistake
Cause when I make a mistake, I just gotta keep going with the punches
Or should I've said "rolling"?
You see that single mistake can now become a point of ironic departure
You say eye-ronic
I don't swing that way
You know the song about the tomatoes
We don't have to agree
And the rhyming of way
With agree
I like it when I
Come up something like that
Cause it makes me feel like somebody else might like it too
Somebody else might like it too (repeat)
Cause somebody else might like my mistakes, might like the way I rhyme
It's a five minute song for cryin' out loud
"People Wanna Fill in the Blanks"
I have to come up
With another two chords
G and E-minor's a classic
but C and A is usually a part of a trifecta
I'll stick with it cause I know I can get somewhere if I try
Let's make this one about how
Sometimes songs just don't come together the way you want them to
The point is I shouldn't say too many things
The point is I should just be mysterious
What was that, was that mysterious?
It sounded like silence to me, it sounded like
A pause in your imaginative capacities
Shhhhh! Don't say so much
It 'll spoil the fun
Cause people wanna
Fill in the blanks
So shhh
Don't spoil the fun
Don't say too much, because people wanna fill in the blanks
Really?
Really, now you've gone too far
You've gone and made the listener self-conscious
That's a mistake because it breaks the fourth wall
And that wall can't be built back so easily again
Hey
Viewer!
Are you
Paying
Attention?
P.S.
Fuck you!
You heard me
I'm talking to you, you, yeah, yeah
Not the person behind you
The schmuck with the headphones
I'm sorry if I offend you
I am trying to be confrontational
Actually, I think this is the most successful piece I've ever done
Won't you agree with me?
Is my lack of
Using
Big words
Does that count
As the kind of mysterious you were after
A few moments ago?
I'm asking you, yeah, the schmuck with the headphones
You, fourth wall, is coming down
Don't cry about it, rebuild it! (repeat)
Unless you are interpreting that to be an anti-Zionist comment
Or something even worse
More pernicious more pernicious
Like anti-Semitism
The Real Thing
I think I'll call this song
"Self-Hating Fill in the Blank" (repeat)
Now who does what?
Judas? Did you just say "Hoodas", cause that's Judas in Spanish
"Who does what?" is what I meant to say.
Who does what?, who does what?
Judas Iscariotes! Shh!
Let the listener make the connections, Sh!
Let the listener make—
There you go again, being mysterious
There's nothing mysterious
About thinly veiled metaphors for the Wailing Wall
I swear that's not what I meant
And the same thing goes for Judas
That wasn't what I meant,
Trust me
I would know what I meant if I meant it
And I don't even know what I mean by this song
I mean, do I love jews, do I hate jews?
I love jews, I'm a jew!
Genetically, that is
Though jews don't count it that way so I guess I can be a self-hating jew
Cause half I'm Jewish and half I'm not
And half thinks I am, and half thinks I'm not
So you see how that works?
I'm chosen: No you're not!
Chosen!: Not on your mother's side
My sperm, the sperm was chosen!
Not the egg though
Which came first, the jew or the egg?
The egg, fick-fuckin idiot
The egg, fickanin, fuckin idiot
You see that? That was sweet.
Fickanit friggitit fakinit feckenin fickenin frickenin frickanin fickanin fickanin fakenin frickaninin nin nin
Pickanniny
"Metaphor for Life"
Number 3, what are you gonna be about?
You've explored two different facets already, what's the third?
If this were a coin it would not have anything other than an edge
So this song is the edge of the coin
This song is that bumpy edge
It sometimes says things in other countries
But that's neither here nor there so let's get to it
What's the beef gonna be in this sandwich? (repeat)
I should come up with a theme very soon so that I can proceed
With the beef of this sandwich
I would go with beef, but I think beef is too easy a topic
But, who knows?
I might not get very far away from it
No matter where I go
We'll see beef turn up as a metaphor for something that I'm doing right now
It could be consumption, it could be destruction
Beef as metaphor
Beef is a metaphor
Beef is a metaphor for everything I do
I wake up, it's beef
I go to sleef
I brush my teef
Everything relates back to beef
On a corn-fed diet, that's conspiracy thinking
Let's not go that route
Everything must somehow, by six or seven degrees of separation, or less
Be connected to the meat of a cow animal
Bovis Bovanus (repeat)
I hope I'm correct cause
If I am, that's a wild guess (repeat)
Not a wild buffalo
Or the descendent/antecedent of the cow that the Nazis tried to breed
Let's not go that route
Open metaphors, oh, oh, won't you close the door on your way in
Cause there's not enough room in this world for all the meaning you possess
Life is like a song
Life is like a bird
Life is like a fan on the ceiling
Life is like a lamp
Life is like a helmet on fire
Life is like a tray for your tea
Life is like The 2006 Guinness Book of World Records
And life is like a fire extinguisher
Life is like the chords that I missed
Life is like a self-referential song
Life is like a dog that yawns
Life is like a butterfly:
You live to fuck and you live to die (repeat)
You live to fuck until you live to die
Life is like the A-minor
There's a lot of people that would agree
That of all the chords you can play the A-minor is the one that has the most tendency to remind you of your living state
Remind you of your living condition
Remind you of your living situation,
Situation, situation, situation!
I don't want to end this song on such a bad note
I don't want to end on such a note, it's bad
Please Diego, can you come up with something else?
Something that
Won't be so depressing, won't be so depressing
As the mistakes that I made to make sense, ah!
"The G and the C"
Let's try something easy, let's try something easy
Let's do one in which there's no point at all
No point at all
I want no point at all
Explain to yourself how this song may be different from your other endeavors
It's the same
It's the same idea, just the consciousness is different
This time (repeat)
No point at all
No, no point at all
This song has no point at all
Slipping away from this idea of the private
It's now being made exposed
You see how I chose
The words that I didn't use
Oh, oh
No point at all (repeat)
This one will be the one that will be longer than all the other ones combined or more
For reasons that one can't say at this time
But at least one or two that are obvious to me
I'll say that the G and the D
And the G and the C and the C (repeat)
Is one of the reasons I play this song
Longer than I think I should
Because it's easy on my fingers
It's easy on my fingers
This used to be one of the things that when I first learned how to play guitar
If you can call what I do play guitar
Was the G to the C (repeat)
Distractions take me off my game
Distractions make me break my own rules
Distraction, it negates the thing I just said
Distraction, I just can't get it out
The G
The C
The G
The C
Remember that this song was supposed to have no point at all
And if I make it too much about distraction—
The G
And then C
I hope you're not learning from me
Because I'm purposefully
Inverting what I called C
I was about to call G, G
About to call G, G
This song could become a paean
To G and D and C
G and C and D
No, not D, you haven't heard D
You've only really heard G and C
And there was another kind of C where you drop off your index finger
Unless you do the C with your middle finger
Start the C with your middle finger
That'd be hard on your pinkies (repeat)
For my own sake
For showing off
"In Tee Double-You Oh"
The first four songs are hard but the second four are soft
That's a decision I made when I started this song
But the number of songs is yet to be determined
Even though I promised four more there might be two and they might be of lesser quality
Than the first four that you heard
Unless you skipped to this part you didn't earn the right to right to hear this song
Skipping is mandatory
The other thing about the last four songs is that they can be more pensive
No, that's not the thing I meant to say at all
The thing about the last four songs is that they should all be a little sweeter
Also missed the mark
They can all not use strumming
By which I mean there won't be strumming
Maybe the last four are the ones where all the rules get broken in two
In t-w-o
Not i-n-t-o
Like a house or a vehicle
Or a vehicle
Broken—you get it
So what were the règles du jeu ?
Les règles du jeu, one of them was that I shouldn't speak other languages
I thought I was supposed to be quiet in this song, and pensive
Ici, je casse tous mes propres règles
Voyez
Je suis en train de déranger mon chien
Et je ne veux pas qu'il se réveille maintenant, c'est une chose terrible
Réveiller un chien fatigué, c'est pas possible
La quantité de mots que j'arrive a trouver pour rimer with -ible
Ça serait pas très, pas très, pas très
Sensible, pénible
OK, je n'ai pas tellement de mots comme ça
Pas assez de mots, c'est ce que je veux dire
Maintenant, maintenant , maintenant c'est le moment ou l'audience reconnaît
Que je ne parle pas Français
Comme je veux, comme je devrai,
Comme un citoyen français
Mon pauvre chien qui essayes de se reposer
Il n'arrive pas a se coucher
C'est presque trop facile
C'est pour ça que le rap français est toujours terrible
Ou presque toujours terrible
Il faut jouer avec les mots plus que dans les autres langues
Spécialement l'anglais
En français, c'est beaucoup plus difficile
Difficile(repeat)
Difacile
Ah, j'ai jamais pensé à ça, en ?
Facile, difacile
Je ne sais pas s'ils sont connectés
Difacile n'est pas le meilleur mot au monde, mais
No strumming, any more mister
"Creativity"
Breaking the rules
By using unorthodox chords
This is an F-major 7—I'm not sure
Breaking the rules, that's what rules are made for (repeat)
Repetitive lyrics are a sign of exhausted originality
Exhausted originality
Singing scales whether forwards/right or backwards/wrong also a sign of
Waning originality
Originality? Nope!
That's not the word it should be, originality
Ingenuity makes more sense to me.
Play it twice, my friend—who?
My friend?
Who's my friend?
Who are you talking to?
Repeating chords in silence is a sign of lessening ingenuity
So take that as a sign
Take it as a sign (repeat)
Back and forth
Backgammon
Roll the dice
Backgammon
Objects that are near me from left to right:
There's cellphone and envelopes and cards from Kyunghwa Shon
There's a book on Otto Dix called "Der Krieg"
There's a book... I had to see
It's a book on anatomy
Followed by a—what do you call that?
Slide tray for my mother's scanner that she threw away cause she didn't know it was useful
Ashtray,
Flashlight,
Matches.
USB cord and a rubber band thing for your hair
My hat for winters in Chicago and my key to the door for here
In Brazil, keychain is Cuban
And then there is my—what do you call that?
A binder without any binding mechanisms
It's a zippy thing that my mother got in Tibet or the Bhutan cause she travels, OK!
Camcorder's remote control
Camcorder
Old copy of the New York Review of Books
Book on Lumière's early color photographs
The 2006 Guinness Book of World Records
And the songbook of Caetano Veloso
A lighter and my latest pair of glasses
Which I think they are at least one or two years old
Me and my guitar
I'm wearing jeans, t-shirt, and socks, and undies
My guitar is quite naked
My dog, Fidel
I call him Chucho
I call him Cheecho
I go cha-cha-cha-chu-cha
I make some "ch" sounds
"Track 7"
Two chords, two more
Two more chords, two more songs
Two more chords and two more songs
And two more chords and two more songs (repeat)
This one is the hardest one of all
This is the one that I will top all the other ones with
This is the one that everybody will remember
Is this track 7, is this track 7?
I'll make it track 7!
Even if it's dishonest with the viewer
This one will be in the 7th location
Doesn't mean that anything had to happen for it to be in the 7th location
7th location
7 places that I've been to
7 houses that I've slept in
7 people that I've met
7 umbrellas
7 is my lucky number
7 used to be the color blue of numbers
Everybody loved 7 for no reason other than
It's got this nice ring to it in every language
Six is too close to sex
8 is kinda fat
But 7 is a thing of beauty
7 is a thing of beauty
I'm making this too easy on myself,
It's gotta be harder cause I know it's gotta top the other ones
And I know it's a tall order to fill
And it's not because the other ones are genius
It's cause the other ones are spontaneous
And this one's gotta mission, it's gotta be the best one
This one's gotta top all the other ones that came before it
This one's gotta be the song that changes everything
Well you know why, it's on track 7
You know why, it's track 7
Track 7, it is the best song on every album haven't you noticed?
On every album!
Now if you take that rule too literally
You'll be finding all kinds of examples to contradict me
And that won't be fun for you or me
So just think about the song 7 that you like on any album
Song 7 (repeat)
It might help for me to have an example of a song 7 that just rocks
But I can't think of a song 7 on any album that I love
I can't think of a song 7 on any album
"Sgt. Peppers"
"Getting Better"?
Or is it "When I'm 64"?
I prefer "Getting Better"
But when I first listened to the album my favorite song was
What was it?
It was a "Lovely Rita"
Lovely Rita Rita meter maid
Lovely lovely lovely Rita
Wouldn't you like to meet her
With her lovely lovely Rita
On "Abbey Road", favorite song has always been "Something"
That's not true cause for a long time it was "Carry That Weight", which is song 12
Or 11, but it sure ain't 7
It sure ain't 7-11
It sure ain't song 7
Song 7 is—it's not "Octopus's Garden"
It goes:
"Come Together"
"Something"
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"
"Octopus's Garden" with you
It's not "Here Comes the Sun" that's the 6th song
So what's the 7th?
Maybe 7 is "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window"
That's a pretty fucking rad song
What are the other albums that I like as a child
Do I really have to go through this?
Do I really have to go through this
Or does this song connect with you already in some way?
Do you already get enough of the gist
To get what I'm saying about the song 7
Wouldn't work if I was a fan of 6
It only works with 7
Who's favorite number is anything but 7?
Who's favorite color is anything but blue?
Is there a 7 somewhere where we grew up?
Because the sky is blue but I can't explain the 7
I can't explain the 7, I can't
I can't even explain the 7
Your mother maybe dressed you in blue (repeat)
But it's not like your 7th birthday was the greatest
It's not like anything 7 was so excellent
7 cookies
7 chocolates
Never looked forward to that, my number was 10
10 sodas!
10 pieces of cake!
10 bifes a milanesa!
Sh! 10, you're a mistake
Chicken fried steak (repeat)
Takin' it too easy on myself again
This is supposed to be a challenge
Right?
Art's supposed to be a challenge (repeat)